Jordan surprises Amanda, on her run through the park. He laughs, to himself, when she's startled. She's embarrassed, at her progress. "I can't even remember the kids' names! These people don't even trust me to do the dishes." She explains about Mar-Beth, the hold she has on the household; the only one among the wives and husbands who questions Clarice at all. How dangerous she makes Amanda feel.

"You're doing fine. You just stay observant, pick up what you can. Subgroups, patterns of behavior, pecking orders, anything like that. It's all good." It's all good, he says: They're not a family, they're a cell. They're not wives and husbands and children, they're terrorists in a close-knit group, who trust in their God and keep guns in the basement. He's her handler now. He tells her she must float, upon the world. To know them, to love them, to never forget that they killed her daughter but to lose that anger and learn to make them love her. Mar-Beth to begin with. Subgroups, pecking orders. "Open yourself up to her," he says, like a fresh sheet of paper. "I don't care what you do. But do it soon." They are running out of time. He thinks the danger is in her house, it isn't. It's in his.

Running guns to the courier. Larry's on the phone and Sam smiles when he speaks to him, more groceries and more chances to remember why they married. He says goodbye to him in Tauron; Larry used to love that, before he saw the scars. When the city workers stop in front of them he smiles at Demos, his partner today, and says goodbye to Larry. Sam and Demos relax into the comfortable rhythms of bitching; they drive a hearse for cover, for guns, and they laugh. But they're not city workers. Another car pulls up behind the hearse and the men in suits pull guns.

Guns are the province of a ratty man, Atreus. He takes point, aiming his gun at Sam's head and offering to kill him right away. Sam calls him adelphi and asks for mercy. One death begets another, the line of blood continuing, calling blood for blood; his name is Atreus for a reason. Demos lies dead and Atreus holds his gun to Samuel's head and pulls the trigger, laughing. The soil calls to Sam and then its call recedes; Atreus was only being cruel. No more bullets. "You tell your Guatrau to stay out of our gun business, or the soil is gonna get crowded." Demos lies dead; a web of blood and Tauron honor connects him to the next thing, and to the gun trade, and to the deaths back on Tauron, and to the corruption that lies atop the city, floating like a film on water. They leave him, in the rain and in his debt.