The small boat skipped over the waves, the two sailors manning sail and tiller competent enough that Hassani let her mind wander as a warm wind played with her hair.

Jaxe's Spear half-filled the horizon, rising as far as the eye could see and casting Deai's tiny stack in deep shadow. The Spear's sheer immensity made comparison difficult with any other Stack. Deai's tiny Pillar rose like a single hair lying in the shadow of a god. A child standing next to the great wandering city of Roam. Hassani standing alone in the empty, obscure expanse of the Black Court.

A barge laden with stone from the Spear's steadily-expanding, slave-carved caves or from the Endless Stair floated the opposite direction destined for Broadcliff or Tallmarket. Further on, a sturdy, weather-beaten fishing trawler hauled its nets. Shouts, curses, and fish-stink carried on the breeze. A pleasure yacht's form traced an elegant line, its billowing deep-purple sails showing off wealth as its sharp swerve away from the trawler proclaimed displeasure at its proximity.

Hassani leaned over the gunwale to cup and sip the water, marveling at its sweet freshness and bubbling bite. The locals took it for granted, but no other verse she knew of possessed an ocean untainted by salt or other contaminants. In Assessing the Stack's productivity, she'd found Jaxe certainly utilized it effectively. Small wonder the Stacks Dynast already stood in the ranks of the wealthiest in spite of his relative youth.

Dark clouds smearing the sky around the Spear's curve elicited a frown as the wind they fought hailed from that direction. This visit would be brief even by Deai's standards should the storm break their way. By his scanning eyes and tight lips, the tillerman shared her opinion. He clearly knew better than to voice it to an Inviolate, uniform or no.

Fortunately, no craft blocked the small ledge serving as Deia's dock. Another wonder: most adults she knew from Jaxestack boasted of a least one visit to Deai and the count of Hassani's visits had to outnumber anyone else's by a wide margin, yet in all that time Hassani had never found the dock occupied. She squinted towards the Pillar. Atop it Deai's compact, cross-legged form sat wrapped in a faded red blanket.

Her master didn't return her wave. Never had.

A nimble leap landed her on the stone quay. That feat plus her practiced catch of the tossed mooring line earned a respectful nod from the graybeard and a none-too-subtle reappraisal from the younger sailor.

She took the look as a compliment as she carefully climbed the narrow stair spiraling the Pillar. Even from the top the fall wasn't dangerous, but she had no desire to meet Deai soaking wet.

As she stepped onto the Pillar's flat top, she smiled at her master. Hassani always thought of her as a woman despite many heated arguments with others who held the contrary opinion. Deai sat easily, back straight. Grey-white stubble covered her scalp over weathered, dark skin wrinkled only at the eye corners. Loose red robes hung off Deai's slender frame, hiding the body beneath but for one arm resting palm-up in her lap.

As always, a "sword" sat beside her. This time a broken oar.

Hassani genuflected, forehead touching the cool stone. "Master."

"Arise, girl." Deai spoke in a rich alto that some labeled a low tenor. "No master here, just an odd old bit slowly wearing away in the waves."

A smile danced in Deai's eyes and tinged her lips as Hassani rose to kneeling, hands resting on her knees. The storm's approach stirred Hassani's sky-blue cloak and tickled a blond lock across her forehead. Thus began their greeting ritual, unchanged since Hassani first came to train with sticks many years before she'd married into Kin and thus earned the right to carry a sword.

"What did you bring me?" Deai raised her hand from her lap. "What do you have to tell?"

"I bring tea from Heaven's Tread." Hassani leaned forward to toss the wrapped package across the smooth gray stone. Hassani constrained the toss, knowing from experience she could cross Deai's Pillar in ten large steps.

Deai caught the parcel deftly and tucked it into her enwrapping blanket without looking at it.

Her master nodded exactly as she did whatever the offering. Currency, shells, jewelry, food, pebbles, Black Court dispatches, and gull feathers all produced the same muted response. "Gratitude for your gift. Now tell."

"I no longer serve as Assessor, but advance to Inviolate." Hassani should have known better than to expect surprise or praise, but it still stung when Deai simply nodded for her to continue.

"I witnessed my first Partaking, a barbarian named Aida." This pushed the boundaries of secrecy, but she found herself saying it in search of any reaction. "You'd think we were raping the woman, not granting immortality."

Nary a twitch or eyebrow flutter, just annoyingly-imperturbable equanimity.

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

"I am perhaps the most powerful person in this verse beyond Jaxe, his retinue, Verser Lords and Ladies, and closest Kin. More, the youngest Inviolate in Stacks history so far as it goes and I was our youngest Assessor before that. Yet my husband hates me out of envy that I am his superior, wants me only for my salary and my womb, and my daughter doesn't even know me well enough to hate me but she's learning to anyway."

Only the hiss and splash of the waves, snatches of coarse laughter from the boat below, and a wheeling gull crying out disturbed the following silence. The gull landed a few arm lengths from Hassani, tilting its head at her to assess her for danger, crumbs, fish guts.

"Kill the bird. Strike now!"

"What?"

Hassani fumbled for her cane, the motion startling the bird. Her sword clicked free from the cane-sheath, slicing empty air as the bird launched away in an indignant squall of squawks and feathers.

"Why was I-" Hassani turned into the tea sack bouncing off her nose.

"Good thing that wasn't an arrow." Deai adjusted the fall of her blanket as the approaching storm cut a chill breeze through.

"I stabbed someone." Hassani mimed running the skin through. "In the Vale."

Deai looked up and squinted. "Man, woman, or child?"

"What? Why would I kill a child?"

"Does it matter? The corpse after is merely variously-sized meat."

"Of course it matters!" Hassani scooped up the parcel and tossed it back.

It disappeared again beneath the blanket. "What would any of it prove?"

"I wasn't trying to prove anything, it attacked me."

"And you killed it?" Deai smiled faintly, as if she knew the answer.

"It was just a skin, but were it a man, he'd be dead."

"Prove it." She carefully folded her blanket. Hassani undid her cloak as Deai lifted the small trap door descending into her home. With a deft motion, the woman caught Hassani's thrown cloak, folding it smoothly before setting it inside.

As Deai raised today's practice sword, Hassani locked her blade back into the cane with a twist and click, barely in time to intercept a blow whistling towards her head.

Everything else fell away as they moved about in mock combat atop the Pillar, the wind increasing its violence to match their gathering speed and intensity.

Whilst training at swordplay, the rest of the world fell away, all other concerns unable to fit into the space between cuts and deflections, footwork adjustments, and split-hearbeat reads of her opponent's movement, form, intention. Several times Hassani came within a finger's breadth of landing a touch on her master. She pushed harder, striving, certain today was the day she'd succeed.

Until the woman's oar clipped her jaw. Fading daylight swam in her sight.

Hassani wiped blood from her chin, breathing heavily. "I almost got you that time, you have to admit it."

"I have to do nothing. Right before I struck you, what passed through your mind?"

Hassani imagined the woman's breathing drafted a touch deeper and longer, but if their exertions tired Deai, the woman hid it perfectly.

"Avani. I wished she could see me here."

"Your daughter doesn't exist."

"What?"

"Touch her."

Hassani sucked her lip, wiped sweat from her brow. The damp wind felt good rifling her clothing, but she knew it would grow chill quickly. One step ahead, as always, Deai disappeared momentarily into the trapdoor, returning with their overgarments.

"I can't touch her now. She's at home."

"When you are here with me, you leave to go to her. When you are with her, where do you go?" Deai shook her head, waved her oar. "That is what a sword is really for, to cut away everything not of this moment."

"Here I thought it was for killing."

"Fight with your mind elsewhere when the blades are sharp and it will be for dying."

The wind rose, wet with mist. Dark clouds raced full out. Hassani leaned over to tell the sailors to make ready but found them already making preparations. Maybe the energetic watter rising from the deeps caused it, but storms in Stacks dwarfed those she'd experienced in any other verse.

"Ask." Deai moved the ritual towards completion: gift, tell, train, ask, gift.

"How did you kill the Unkillable Swordsman?" Hassani said without hesitation.

"With a sword, I imagine."

Hassani could suppress her frustration. "With the sword. Aze's last blade, remember? The one that everyone talks about but no one's ever seen? That's no answer. The man was a Paragon. How do you kill a man who can see the future?"

"By not having one." Deai pulled back her blanket, revealing a battered sword hilt.

Hassani suppressed a groan. Since she'd married into Kin and could legally carry, Deai gave her another dinged, bent, or dented bronze blade practically every time they met.

A sailor shouted from down below. She waved at him. Rain fell now in earnest, plastering her hair to her forehead.

Deai handed over the chipped wooden scabbard. A much longer, heavier blade than usual and surprisingly heavy. Probably even more poorly made than the rest. "If you are going to be dealing with arms, best carry a proper one yourself."

Hassani stared. "What? How could you possibly know?"

"Know what?" Deai's eyebrow arched.

"About my orders? Why did you just say that?"

"Who knows why I say what I say? I'm old. Too many meaningless words pass through these lips. Wind in the wind." The woman adjusted her blanket. "I stopped listening to myself ages ago and am so much the better for it. Perhaps you should too."

Deai bowed, glancing at her gift.

Hassani pulled hard and managed to draw it slightly from its sheath. Just enough for thick, black grease to ooze from the scabbard. She re-sheathed it quickly, before any could leak out.

"The blade won't tarnish at least." Especially since she'd never use it. Hassani re-sheathed it. Bowed.

"That it will not. May it serve you well even if it's noisy. If it weren't, you'd leave it behind during a storm. Freedom's key against the barred gate and all the more valuable when it returns again after being caged even if it is still used on time."

Hassani barely registered Deai's obscure parting words in her impatience to go. She took the stairs so fast she almost slipped, her mind already racing on. Speaking of a storm, one brewed just beneath the Book's cover formed so far only of layered whispers and hints. Plus worrisome orders. And family. And the enigmatic skin carrying obscure hints. And the unknown 'nail it carried.

She carried her master's gift the whole rough, perilous, terrifying voyage back to Jaxestack, but by the time she arrived, anxiety about her next nuptial interaction drove her master's parting words from her head entirely.