 Locke and Jean return to Tal Verrar with the "Poison Orchid" and reestablish contact with Stragos, to whom they promise to begin attacking ships, and Requin, who they fool into thinking they will immediately return to the Ghostwinds.They and the Orchids deliberately aggravate the archon by only partly adhering to his orders, staging a half-hearted raid on a small merchant vessel but mounting a massive assault on a town to the northwest where peasants let themselves be put through cruel and humiliating games by nobles for money.Locke and Jean hope to get close enough to the archon's alchemist during one of their subsequent meetings to somehow take the antidote, but Stragos eventually refuses to see them again unless they have mounted a proper raid on a ship.