When the grey-bearded monk shows up on the doorstep of their home, Casavir is mostly scared for his sisters. As the ten-year-old boy is led out into the stuffy Neverwinter night he glances back at the curtained windows above the workshop – they are dark and blind, a sign of the recent death in the house – and hopes that Kayla will learn to warm milk for the little one. The child has no name yet – in the three days the fever was gnawing at their pale unconscious mother Casavir was the only one who acknowledged the existence of the newborn life and had the courage to ask the old fishwife who lives next door for help and advice.

Kayla will have to grow faster and take the responsibility, he thinks distantly, trying to keep up with the monk. Or maybe Father will have another wife, and Casavir prays tentatively that she be a kind woman. He is not sure that he has the right to pray for anything seeing that he is the reason their mother died. A late child, an answer to his mother's prayers, he had been promised to the gods before he was born; he was supposed to be taken away as soon as her womb brought another male child about, so he was never seen as a real child by Father – a temporary guest, a changeling with blue eyes, an outsider, a substitute for an heir.

They turn into another alley, and for some reason Casavir finds it important to sum up his life into precise words so that at least the gist of it stays with him when the gods take him back from the world. He thinks of the day Kayla was born and Father took one look at the baby, turned around on his heels and ran out of the room, down the stairs, out the door, up the street, into the tavern. And then he returned drunk, angry and cruel, and bruises bloomed on Mother's face and wrists for the following week, but she did not let him throw Kayla off the balcony while he shouted curses. He thinks of all the good things that happened to him – their little garden with herbs and flowers, the neighbour's dog that had a litter of fluffy grey puppies, the freshly baked bread in the kitchen, the quiet evening stories, the books he learned to read, the day he and Kayla quarreled 'forever' and made up an hour later. Casavir has read in his books that such childhood memories are going to fade. He does not want to let them go without a fight, but he also has doubts whether he deserves them after all. He is a promised child, a donated soul, a mercy of fertility in exchange for a lifetime of service. He has heard that children like him do not really have parents, they are lent from the gods and must return to the gods. Mother borrowed him, Father refused to return him, the gods took her life as part of the overdue payment. Did they have the right to do so? Did they have a choice not to? Casavir knows that the ugly feeling in his chest is resentment, and he stamps down on it: if he does not understand the terms of the bargain he cannot judge the gods. He can be sad, tired, and anxious – but he does not want to be angry and selfish because it is the anger and selfishness of Father that led them all here.

By the time they approach the massive gate of the chapterhouse Casavir locks his childhood deep in his heart and is ready to pay for the misjudged decisions of his parents. They walk up the gravel path and he subdues his pride and self-pity and tells himself that he will serve honestly and humbly if this is what they needed to have done. He looks up at the wooden faces of the Triad in the temple where the grey-bearded monk leaves him to wait kneeling; he implores them to take everything from him and not from anyone else in his family. Let Kayla grow into the sunny girl she should be; let the nameless child be safe and happy; let their father have his treasured male heir; let our mother's soul rest in peace, he thinks passionately, as if the sheer force of his wish can make it happen, let me be the only one to pay your due; let the evil you did not want to bring about stop at me. He searches the faces of the three wooden statues –Torm, Ilmater and Tyr. Duty, mercy and justice, all of them so fitting his determination. The third statue has a bandage over its eyes, and someone splashed red paint all over it with a generous hand to represent blood. Justice is blind and ugly, it does not see who suffers the toll of its hammer. Casavir inclines his head before the third statue. He gets a fleeting sensation that the god of justice must be hurting from all the grief he has to cause, and compassion floods his tired mind.

When another monk, an older and more fragile one, appears in the doorstep and beckons Casavir to follow him, the boy straightens his shoulders and resolves himself to his fate.

There is nobody in the now empty temple to notice a glimmer run across the wooden figure of Tyr.