Vivien travels with Frederic to Luneau, where blood, status and spectacle govern the city's courtesies. The menagerie gathers creatures from beyond the court's own experience, but the rhetoric of conservation quickly gives way to disposability. Captive animals are valuable for what they provide their owners.
A staged display of violence pushes Vivien to intervene. The Arkbow supplies creatures whose essences she carried out of Skalla, linking her resistance to a home Bolas destroyed. Her attack on the Baron of Vernot does not end the encounter. He overpowers her, and his guards take her captive.
The chapter establishes the conflict without making the city's beauty an excuse for its practices. A collection may preserve specimens while destroying any meaningful freedom for the lives inside it. Vivien recognises that contradiction because her own means of remembrance began with the loss of an entire world.