Sarene starts work on networking in the court. She attends embroidery sessions with the queen and the other women, and suggests they all take up fencing. We learn that the men don't fight because King Iaden has something against swords. Between that and the weak military this country has no hope against an invader.
In a conversation with Sarene's seon, Ashe, we find out more about how people don't trust seons so much since the fall of Elantris. Ashe claims that seons had nothing to do with it.
Ashe failed to find out much about Elantris. The Elantrians he met just begged for food. From this he concludes that they are simply feral and weak. But nobody feeds them. So isn't it obvious that they are just hungry? How hard can this stuff be to figure out? The guards aren't any help either, having come to the same wrong conclusions. Ashe at least figures out that they are useless as a military force.
Sarene goes to a ball at Duke Telrii's mansion. He has had unspecified good fortune that is probably something to do with his deal with Hrathen. She goes with Shuden who introduces her to people. The king is there. She has to keep up a pretence of stupidity with the king. Maintaining multiple personalities proves awkward.
Lord Waren is there. He's the devout one from court. The sewing ladies were talking about how he had converted. Now he's at the party with Hrathen. Sarene is worried that Hrathen has a head start on her when it comes to influencing people.
The king gets some bad news during the party. When Sarene gets back to the palace she learns that someone broke into the King's chamber (Raoden and Karata, we know). That might be the bad news. I wonder if the king will take some sort of action against Elantris in response.
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