c/w state/police violence (intro: 1:30-4:20), injury descriptions, discussions of death and post-death, family drama

“The rest knew only the ryne of power. They were blades singing to be used, even if by a tyrant’s hand. They came with their Bismuth nooses and gave Mawk’s Mantle its name.”

c/w bribery, death threats, family conflict

“Within a matter of weeks all manner of scandal and blackmail, violence and assassination incident brought the council to its knees. And we were left unsure as to whether to celebrate its demise, or fear what appeared in its place. The nim Shifs ascendant, a dictatorship ruled by Valour and Vigor. The Sunspear banners like summer’s flowers blooming on near every corner.”

c/w arrest, difficult parent/child relationships, lost pets

“You ever done much gardening Belka? You know how you never really see a sapling appear out of the soil. Just one morning it’s there? It was like that and, honest, it was hard to believe that it hadn’t always been there.”

c/w insects, eating of an envoy, temporary hearing loss

“The Gall, naturally, fell into Oken’s hands. That discarded thing, relic lost and living, vessel to a remnant’s power. I’m not sure whether then or later, he understood the potential of what he carried. Raised himself on power’s sap, could he truly read its dread portent? Maybe he saw it only as ember, in the carcass the jackal only sees a thing to be consumed, it does not behold the new life promised in the ground beneath.”

c/w insect-like envoy

“Lilylium was the second. Envoy born before there was Embrace, before there was Alamire. In many ways we were lucky that it was the Jubilant that faced them, even if it was to be in the labyrinth they’d made their hunting grounds.“