Cassia watches Indie tenderly gather her pack. She questions Indie’s story about her mother and the boat, wondering “how well I really know Indie” (256). The clock is ticking now that Hunter has alerted the Society to trouble in the Carving. Cassia, Ky, Indie, and Eli plan to head for the plains as soon as possible. Fortunately for Cassia, a storm strands them in the library cave for a few hours, buying her some time to find more information about the Rising. She gets sidetracked from her mission by a book of poetry. She finds the complete first stanza of the poem on Sarah’s grave marker. Another poem describes a voyage across desert and sea—a hard journey, but a price the speaker is willing to pay. Cassia thinks about Sarah’s grave, the price of freedom in the Carving, and decides she doesn’t believe in the Society’s mission to resurrect its Citizens anymore: “It would never be us, not again” (260).

As they search for useful information, Ky tells Cassia that he can sort, just like her. His uncle Patrick once traded a page of old writing from Ky’s father for an illegal-market scribe; it was risky, having an unauthorized computing device in their home.