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On the porch of the Davar manor in vine-tangled western Jah Keved, crippled Nan Balat sits at twenty-three with his cane beside him and a small crab in his hands, pulling its legs off one at a time. He has never liked talking about the habit — not even to his betrothed Eylita — but ripping the legs off small animals quiets the constant ache of his bad leg and of being his father's son. Scrak, his sleek smaller-breed axehound, is on the sitting green chewing the legs off a captured songling. Beyond the porch the manor's stonework walls disappear under climbing vines, and wild songlings scrape rhythms in the distance.

That morning a spanreed message arrived from Shallan — six months into her journey, she has succeeded in the first part of the plan and become Jasnah's ward. So his shy baby sister, who had never set foot off their grounds, is now positioned to rob the most important woman in the world. Nan Balat tries the usual excuses — only a woman could get close enough to Jasnah; someone needs to stay back and run the house — and finds them hollow. He feels like a coward. He thinks of his broken family: Asha Jushu driven to vice, Tet Wikim given to despair, and the eldest, Nan Helaran, who alone stood up to their father, vanished, and is now dead alongside him. He should never have let Shallan go.

The thought is interrupted: Tet Wikim hurries out onto the porch from his most recent melancholy, paler than usual. There is a problem at the estate. A pretty big one. He waves Nan Balat after him.