In my continued efforts to prepare, I pursued other interventions of the Nine, known and unknown.

"Unknown" being the bigger problem. Mysterious disappearances are difficult to investigate, as you might imagine, and proving a negative isn't easy. There are always other explanations.

There are a few interventions that I can confirm. Orin, of course. I spoke with her of her Ghost and the Red War, but not much new to learn there.

There is Lodi. There is also, potentially, Sjur Eido. Queen Mara is convinced her death was also written by the hand of the Nine. She knows it, she says, "carved in starlight and weregild," and in Lodi she now has some measure of proof.

The intervention of the Nine is like using a rocket launcher to erase a drawing. The goal will be attained; what happens because of it, they either don't know or don't care. Or both. They are expansive beings, greater in scale than any mortal or immortal foe.

(I am forced now to wonder what disaster Lodi's disappearance from his own time foretold.)

Any great catastrophe might represent their hand, including those they have not seen fit to let us witness. My only conclusion is that we cannot know for certain.

I don't like it.