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Seven years before, the day after Miasal died in his hands on the cobbles of Hearthstone, thirteen-year-old Kal stops short at the mouth of a narrow alley between two of the village's stone houses. Two women have come around the corner ahead of him and have not seen him. One says — quietly, but not so quietly that he does not catch every word — *It ain't right, what they do. You ain't supposed to cut into folks, peering in to see what the Almighty placed hidden for good reason.* The other agrees. They name his father. They name surgeons in general. One of them uses the word that is the chapter's title: *butchers*.

Kal does not move. He has been crossing the village all morning on errands he does not really need to run, because he could not face the surgery yet, and because the smell of yesterday's blood is still under his fingernails no matter how often he washes them. He stays in the wan grey daylight of the alley and listens, and the women keep talking — about the girl's father's wailing in the night, about what right a man has to put a knife into another, about the way the Almighty's order is meant to be honored not opened. Somewhere across the village square Harl's wailing has at last stopped, and the silence after it is somehow worse.

Lirin walks past the mouth of the alley a few feet from his son without seeing him — calm, unhurried, on his way to the surgery to begin the morning. Kal watches him pass and cannot make himself follow. The women keep talking. He stays where he is, with the blood drying somewhere under his nails and the quiet certainty settling into him that the world is not built the way his father said it was — that doing the right thing carefully and well does not, in this village, make anyone love you for it. He stands in the alley for a long time before he goes home.