Kaela is taken by Lianna, an old nurse, to Titus haut Mikide's townhouse (more like a mansion in the city), where she finds her mother, Abana bedridden. Kaela tries to tell her mother of what she learned at the City of Hands, but Abana seems to regard it all only as mere legend. In the meantime, it appears that a more pressing matter is Abana's health … beset with hardening joints and greying fur, an affliction that apparently follows successive generations. Kaela, nonetheless, firmly restates her conviction that her mother will recover…