50: BACKBREAKER POWDER

After waking in a hospital room, recovering from poison, and being confronted by an enraged but sympathetic though disappoint­ed, a devastated is banned from continuing her wardship and exile, Her poisoning of companion revealed in truth: the young ''ardent'' who courted her was actually an assassin sent to kill her patron, using her as unwitting bait—now dead from his own poison.

After recovering from poisoning in a guarded hospital room, which she infers is because she was poisoned. She panics upon remembering she returned the stolen Soul­caster to her patron, but worries about the fate of her companion ardent, the gentle bread-seller who got her to eat poisoned bread with jam as antidote. When a furious and cold, though justified, and controlled by pain, a patron finally enters the room, confronts her and for her earlier theft—questioning who she was working with. Under questioning, the young ward confesses she stole the fabrial for herself, not for any devotary, driven by her family's desperation: her father's death, mounting debts, her brothers' need for funds. Her patron—now sounding oddly amused—notes the scheme was idiotic, but offers mercy: exile to the ward's homeland tomorrow. The patron then shatters the ward's world. The ardent wasn't a true religious student. The bread was poisoned with backbreaker powder, salted for her patron; the jam was antidote used each visit. Nobody remembers where the ardent came from. He was an assassin using the ward as an unwitting tool. He realized his last chance and used lethal amounts of powder, which backfired and killed him instead. The patron delivers cold final words: the scheme—failed or not—will stain the ward's life for decades, cost her any future wardship, and destroy her once-promising intellectual career. The ward is left alone, devastated and friendless, wishing the poison had worked.