Last time on the sun’s unchosen, Ratcatcher. Today, Wren!

Yes, we’ve finally switched viewpoint characters again. Wren is accosted in the street.

a short, swarthy woman wearing the jerkin and baggy trews of a Guildsman. Her nose showed clear signs of having been broken ungently some time in the distant past, and her eyes were narrowed in a permanent squint.

I am filled with approval at this description. It’s a shame we’re going to find she’s incompetent, but admittedly competence is thin on the ground in this book.

She says Fong – that would be the same guy as Ratcatcher learned bought the dagger – wants to see him. Wren says she’s mistaken.

“Shotan Fong wants to see you,” she repeated, stubbornly. “He told me to find you, Eliezer Wren, and that he wants to see you. He said that he has ‘a problem that can only be solved by your priestly expertise.”’

So naturally Wren pitches a fit in the street, calling her a whore, to distract everyone while he drags her off to somewhere quieter where he explains that it’s a bad idea to identify everyone involved like that.

Wren comments that it’d odd Fong would be so dumb about sending someone to get him. It seems Fong is throwing caution to the wind and has a dozen people searching for Wren. She says he’s really anxious, and Wren blows this off saying Fong is always anxious.

It was clearly a trap, and not a very good one. Fong’s usual dealings were as subtle as spidersilk. The very clumsiness of the thing was what made Wren feel better about it. If Fong was making no effort to hide his hand, perhaps his need to see Wren was real and urgent after all.

This suffers from the general rambling problem this book has. The final sentence would seem to be contradicting the first, suggesting that Fong legitimately needs to talk. I think the idea is that Fong always tries trap Wren and then forces him to help out with some problems to be released, but it’s not communicated well. Neither is it clear how this opening bit is a trap – the woman is just there to tell him Fong wants to see him, there’s no sign anyone could stop Wren from just taking off. Not that they need to, since Wren wants to find out what’s going on.

Before leaving, though, Wren decides to go back to the Immaculate temple he’s staying at, so that people will know where to go looking if he mysteriously disappears.

Chapter 23 brings us back to Holok, Ketchup Carjack’s other buddy.

He rode at the tail of a straggling column that should have been, by all rights, a Wyld Hunt.

From the rest of the chapter, it is a Wyld Hunt. So what’s this sentence doing here? The author seems ambivalent like he was originally toying with the idea of this not being a proper one for some reason and he never went back to do a proper consistency edit.

We learn that other astrologers have finally got in on the panicking omens, and spend two paragraphs on it, one on the panicking and one on Holok telling the diviner to shut up because he’s dealing with it.

His presence was one they could not explain and did not desire, and as such they avoided speaking to him whenever possible. While he was garbed in traveling robes such as any lower-level monk might wear, his command of the situation at the temple had indicated that he clearly was something more. He refused to enlighten them, however, as to what exactly that was. If they were clever, they would discover it, and in the meantime, he wore a band of red cloth tied across his brow.

This is a particular low for the book.

He’s completely capable of putting on different robes. If he’s meant to be in charge, they can easily present him as a legitimately higher ranked monk. If he’s supposed to be undercover as a regular monk, he shouldn’t be throwing his weight around. This is basic, basic stuff. The Sidereals didn’t get this far by hanging around in plain sight smugly singsonging “I know something you don’t know!” for weeks on end.

They absolutely, absolutely do not let anyone know they’re Sidereal. Not even if they’re “clever”. The official word on exalts is there’s exactly one type, the Dragonblooded. Anyone else is a demon possessing the body of a former person and should be killed on sight. If there was another exalt type around, people might start asking questions.

There had been infrequent towns, and more infrequent attempts at ambushes, but the former held no interest and the latter held no challenge.

This is an interesting little tidbit.

I was mentioning earlier how the way to show societal breakdown is better done by showing people driven to banditry. Here, we see a fully equipped Wyld Hunt is facing bandits for some reason. And remember a few chapters ago when Chejop mentioned how the invincibility of the Wyld Hunt is common knowledge. Just how desperate would people have to be to be attacking them?

Well, probably too desperate to make sense. I mean, this is the Wyld Hunt. It’s unlikely anything but the most desperate bandits would challenge an ordinary lone Dragonblood, and the Wyld Hunt is a pack of highly trained ones. More reasonable would be for the Hunt to, well, hunt. Run across some bandits and slaughter them.

Vultures feasted well on the corpses they left in their wake.

…Well aren’t you a bunch of raging assholes. Now whoever comes by next is going to be set upon by swarms of hungry ghosts. Good job protecting Creation there. Maybe next you can make a full out shadowland, that’ll help.

They rode when the lead Huntswoman said they rode, and stopped when she ordered they stop, and occasionally she asked Holok if they were still following the correct path.

As usual, so close and yet so far. The Hunt is led by a woman, except in actuality it’s Holok calling the shots. This is about as good at equality as you can expect, though – on an internal level, there’s women in various roles and it’s entirely coincidental that they just happen to never be the ones we’re paying attention to, which is a big improvement over a lot of other media. It’s not especially praiseworthy on its own, though.

Holok’s also slowing them down because his horse is slow. The book talks lovingly about how the rest of them have horses were bred for the chase, lean stallions used to swift pursuit. The thing is, the Dragonblooded actually aren’t much for cavalry because their anima flares cause damage and will quickly kill any horse they’re riding. Horses are used to get you from one place to another, but to use them in an actual fight requires a chariot setup. It’s a detail I like, because it forces things to move away a bit from the standard knight on horseback thing.

…and that’s all there is of the chapter – Holok, between places, and his slow horse. Mm, filler.