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The stranger, still upside down, waits for Sefawynn to spring whatever she has worked out about him — and is briefly relieved when what she has worked out is wrong. She has him pegged as a grifter: a confidence man who staged the burn-circle with stencil and oil, scattered pages of "incantations" around it, brazenly snatched one back from the offerings, and tried to extort the thegn with a cobbled-together aelv act. Why he picked Stenford over the much wealthier Wellbury down the road, and why he could prepare so elaborate a scam while neglecting to do the basic playacting research, is beyond her. He observes, privately, that "grifter come to bilk the locals" is a fair description of any dimensional tourist, and decides to ride the misread for as long as it will carry him.

He plays into it. He blames his memory lapses on the plank she hit him with, and lets her draw the rest out: that the two messengers — who share his accent — are his confederates; that the plan was to make the lord pay them to leave; that his disguise was supposed to look more exotic than this. He learns, in passing, that Ealstan is not Sefawynn's father after all — "little father" is the local courtesy for the thegn — and that she and her brother Wyrm are merely passing through, summoned back to Stenford for her skop's craft. He apologises for the head wound and pitches her a clean exit: she gives him another boast or two in front of the lord, he plays whatever she tells him to play, she hands him off to his "friends," and nobody walks away unhappy. To his slight surprise, she answers that it is not an unreasonable ask.

The play also costs him. Sneaking, combat augments, a practiced talent for grifting — the portrait of who he used to be is becoming actively unflattering. He should, by his own logic, recognise himself in it. Instead, something in him is shouting that this is not who he is. He files that, too, alongside everything else he cannot yet explain.

Sefawynn names her terms — she knows his type, she knows he will turn the moment he can — and accepts. She slips a knife from a pocket in her dress and cuts his hands and feet free. The pocket distracts him: a flicker of memory surfaces of someone named Jen complaining that her dresses never had any. He tucks and rolls out of the ropes, demonstrating to himself, at least, that the word "athletic" still applies, and decides against bolting; the messengers are still his best route off this. Except, he reminds himself, the messengers were not actually looking for him, only for someone with his accent. He needs more information than he has.

He asks after the rest of his "incantations." Sefawynn agrees to fetch them, though she warns him that playing with the written word draws the attention of the gods — burning the pages would invite the ire of Logna, and merely keeping them invites the ire of Woden. So he will take them, and the wyrd they carry, away with him and his foolish aers, and out of Stenford. He nods agreement, makes a quiet vow to himself to learn the medieval England he is now living in, and starts a mental note that Jen would laugh at how little he knows of —

The thought arrives ahead of him. Jen is dead.