Iddawc’s theft from the Arch-Rike’s palace removes a weapon designed to wield power over death from the ruler who commissioned it, setting off a struggle over who should control it and why. The blade’s purpose is contested from the start: Tyrus arranged its theft to keep it hidden and prevent further deaths, while the Arch-Rike later presents it as a safeguard for preserving knowledge against the Plague.

Commission and Theft

The Arch-Rike commissioned Iddawc as a weapon for his most feared protector, the Quiet Kishion, but it was never delivered for that purpose. Tyrus arranged to have the blade stolen and hidden from the world, seeking to prevent it from claiming more victims. The theft therefore precedes the later search to recover the artifact, while leaving its location and control open to others’ competing aims.

The weapon’s history makes the act more than a simple removal of property. Iddawc was made to kill and to hold power over death, yet Tyrus’s intervention turns concealment into a means of limiting its use. Its continued existence remains dangerous: as its maker Drosta explains, the blade seeks a powerful master, and when one dies it seeks another. It cannot be destroyed; it must be hidden and safeguarded.

Competing Claims to the Blade

At Drosta’s lair, Kiranrao offers a self-serving account of Tyrus’s role. He says Tyrus used his services to steal the dagger from the Arch-Rike, knowing that Kiranrao would want it, and hid it in the mountains. Kiranrao treats the expedition to Havenrook as a personal insult and declares the dagger his, even though the others found it. His account presents the theft as part of a contest over possession and leverage, not simply an effort to keep the weapon out of circulation.

The Arch-Rike gives Paedrin a different account when explaining why Tyrus is considered a traitor. He says the artifact had been commissioned and paid for but never delivered, and accuses Tyrus of being behind its theft. The Arch-Rike describes the blade as a means to preserve the memories and experiences of those it kills, storing them in its hilt for the bearer to use. Because he expects the Plague to return, he regards this power as essential to Kenatos’s project of preserving knowledge. The opposing accounts make the same theft signify either dangerous interference with the city’s survival or a necessary effort to keep a lethal weapon hidden.

A Contest over Knowledge and Power

The arguments surrounding Iddawc connect its theft to a wider tension between control and freedom. Paedrin tells Annon and Hettie that the Uddhava begins with observation: being watched changes how people act, and understanding an action requires asking what motivated it. Kiranrao’s attempt to steer the group’s understanding of Tyrus illustrates why motive matters, while the Arch-Rike’s account places the weapon within an argument about the city’s authority and future.

The Arch-Rike uses a black garnet ring imbued with a spirit to prevent falsehoods from being spoken by its wearer or in its presence. He offers the ring to Paedrin before declaring Tyrus a traitor and explaining the blade’s supposed value. The ring lends formal weight to the ruler’s claims, but it does not erase the conflict between his preservationist rationale and Tyrus’s stated aim of hiding Iddawc to prevent further victims. Around the stolen blade, the struggle is not only over who possesses a weapon, but over which danger—death, the Plague, or the concentration of power—must be confronted first.