Aida crawled out of the tent dragging her clothes behind her. She stretched and dressed languidly, not caring that several figures crossed the Neck towards her as she did so.

As the lead figure became clear, her heart warmed. "Aliasara!"

Her friend looked a decade older and three kilograms lighter than last time she'd seen her. A flicker of that amazing smile appeared, then snuffed out. After a long hug that still felt too short, Aida opened her eyes and all warm feelings rapidly fell away. She wasn't sure she'd ever seen anything more creepy than the way the two Anticore dudes ambled across the Neck, clinging to the guide ropes with their fingers bending the wrong way to hold on to them.

"What do they want?"

Alisasara glanced at them, then turned to Aida, backed up a step, and looked her up and down. "How do you ruin your clothing so quickly?"

Expecting giant tears or holes or something, Aida twisted about trying to see herself. "Just some fern stains and knee holes. Oh, and some moss stains on the backside. Need to teach those Ink people how to make some Levis."

Rustling behind her drew their attention. Viviana ducked out of the tent wearing only a tunic that barely reached her thighs. Her long, brown hair fell free and loose. A mischievous smile danced about her lips as she swayed towards them. Alerestro stepped out a moment later, not even bothering with a tunic as he sauntered their way in his birthday suit.

"Um, Aliasara, meet Viviana and Alerestro. My new... companions I guess." Aida suddenly felt uncomfortable introducing them, like she'd been holding back some secret. "I would have told you about them earlier but I haven't seen you for a while."

Aliasara's look of disapproval as she looked them over hardened as she turned to Aida. "I apologize, Dynast. I was quite preoccupied burying half my family."

"No, Aliasara, that's not what I meant," Aida said, groaning. "It's just-"

Before she could figure out what she was going to say, Aliasara hugged her again. "No, it's okay, my Aida. They died free. Those who remain have all passed to the living side of the Plague. They say those whom it doesn't kill no long need fear it."

As they pulled away, Aliasara's radiant smile made an appearance. "I've missed you and feel remiss for leaving you alone through all of this. I was too preoccupied with my own life to help you."

"She's a pretty one," Viviana said, gliding around them and looking Aliasara over with a pleased expression. "I see why you keep her around."

Aida brushed her fingers through Aliasara's long black hair and smiled. "She's my dearest friend. That she could be a cover model is a bonus."

"She is indeed a model of radiance," Alerestro said, taking Aliasara's hand and kissing her palms. "The dearest friend of the Mother of Exiles is the dearest friend of Alerestro and Viviana."

In spite of all the time she'd had to acclimate to their culture, Aida still felt a bit uncomfortable about Alerestro's casual nakedness. She'd never thought of herself as a prude, but compared to people of the Book she was a Puritan. Back at the rest home, she'd watched a documentaries on Medieval culture with accounts of nobles banging each other at the dinner table or walking about naked in their homes, but living it was another thing altogether. Then again, they also watched torturous executions for entertainment back then and half of them died before they were thirty, so maybe bodies in general were less precious and special back then.

"A pleasure," Aliasara said, with no pleasure at all in her voice. The skeptical look she shot to Aida made her wonder if her friend was jealous or paranoid or maybe both. Had Aida accepted the attractive couple into her life too easily? Wouldn't be the first time she'd invited the wrong people into her life and not gotten rid of them soon enough.

"Or the last, probably," she muttered to herself. She glanced at Ghillie, the Feral leaning at the mouth of the turtle shell. She often wondered what the Feral thought. Even during their signed conversations she wasn't sure she'd ever managed to get any personal details out of the woman. Ghillie chin-checked towards the Neck.

Aida glanced that direction. Watching the Anticores clearing the last vertebrae then shuffling over in their unsettling manner pushed all other concerns away. Aliasara stepped to Aida's right and Viviana immediately took her left. Alerestro wandered back towards the tent, perhaps to grab some clothes as a stiff breeze came up.

"Greetings again, Mother of Exiles of the 100th Dynasty."

This made Aida frown. "Have you met anyone from other Dynasties?"

A awkwardly-long, increasingly-uncomfortable pause.

"Yes," the other one said.

"Which one?"

The first spoke again in their same method of alternating talking and gawking. "The 36th, of course."

Aida blinked, trying to wrap her mind around it. She supposed Dynasts could live centuries, who knew how long these... whatever they were lived.

"Of course," Aida said, smacking her hand against her forehead. "How silly of me. How old are you?"

Another pause, mercifully not quite so long. "Which part?"

"Riiight," Aida said, changing the subject quickly. "I suppose you come wanting a woman again?"

One of them tilted its head in a way that it probably tried to present as inquisitiveness but came out instead as a horrible deformity. "Woman available?"

"Absolutely not!"

"No then," it said, thankfully righting its neck back to straight. Well, almost straight. These things never quite held themselves the way normal people did. A dozen tiny misalignments and rotations added up to a huge feeling of wrongness.

"Okay... what do you want?"

"Life. Growth. Expand. Cooperate." They said the words like a chant, just slightly out-of-sync with one another.

She gritted her teeth, speaking quickly to help end this conversation as quickly as possible. "You said that before. You want to breed creatures here? Like the reacher hydra-octopus-vine things on Heaven's Tread?"

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One nodded poorly, the down motion triple the speed of the up. "Like, but grown for this verse. Adapt. Shitholes are most useful for-"

"I don't really want to know," Aida said hastily, waving her hands. "I got that before. If we won't give you a woman, what do we trade?"

"Trade?" the other one said.

Viviana leaned in close to Aida's ear. "The Sect never ask for anything in trade except the odd breeding animal."

"Why would they do that?" Aida whispered back.

"Symbiosis," an Anticore said. "Sect help, Sect spread. 100th Dynasty spread and grow, Sect spread and grow."

"Um... I don't really think of myself as part of the Dynasty anymore, but I suppose I still have their blood. So I guess why would anyone say no to free aid?"

"No one ever does," Viviana said.

"Then, sure, let's do it. Sounds like a win-win." After facing constant choices between a bad option and a worse one, this seemed like a slam-dunk. "Can't remember the last time I got one of those."

"The Sect agrees," one of the Anticores said, bowing deeply in the middle of its torso where ribs should have been.

"You don't have to do that," Aida said, looking away. "Really don't have to."

As the two abruptly turned to shuffle off towards the Neck again without a word or gesture of parting, she turned to Aliasara, Viviana, and a newly-robed Alerestro. She glanced beyond them, hoping for a glimpse of Ryk. No luck. "Must be taking a nap or something."

"Well done, Dynast," Alerestro said, smiling broadly. "Another step towards a flourishing verse."

"Maybe finally a step forward without three steps backwards coming along with it," Aida said, glancing back at the Anticores. "They want a woman for the reason I think they want a woman, right? Or do I not want to know?"

Viviana opened her mouth to speak, but before she could Aliasara stepped forward and began to recite in the way a schoolchild might a poem they'd memorized for class, repeating the 'Though shalt not' bit before every verse in a way that grew quickly tiresome:

"Thou shalt not...

...disrupt the Donative.

...endanger a Dynast.

...disobey the Black Court.

...oppose an Inviolate

...arouse a God.

...sever a Thorn.

...kill a Master.

...give a woman to the Sect."

After the recital, they all stared at her. Alerestro with amusement, Viviana with something like pity, and Aida with confusion. "What was that?"

Aliasara pointedly ignored the other two and focused on Aida. She lifted her chin. "That was the Sacrosanct Chant, as we are taught from childhood. It is what holds the Book together. Or held, I suppose."

"Huh. I sure hope 'arouse' means wake up and not the other thing," Aida said, staring off into the distance where the river draggin' gradually stomped its way across the horizon, its mass literally dredging a river into existence behind it. Small adjoining ponds or gullies remained behind along each side where it's immense paws or feet or whatever they were gouged and compacted massive holes as they hefted its impossible weight onward. "Wouldn't want that thing getting horny."

Alerestro and Viviana laughed in a way that came across simultaneously genuine and somehow pointed at Aliasara, as though she where the butt of the joke. Aliasara clearly got the same sense as she crossed her arms and regarded them flatly.

"Hold on. Uh uh. No no no no," Aida said, shaking her head. "Ain't none of that happening here."

The beautiful couple's laughter died down as she crossed her own arms to match Aliasara and moved to stand beside her friend.

"Did we do something wrong, Dynast?" Viviana said, sliding close to press up against Aida.

Aida held her at arms length and looked her hard in the eyes. "I'm not sure what sort of game or political thing you two are up to here, but let me make something clear regardless. If you think you're going to subtly turn me against my best friend, the woman who held me together when I thought my brain was going to explode back in Jadeye and nursed me back to humanness, then you'd better rethink your plan. I chucked three Dynasts and all their Ferals across a courtyard with a word for laughing at her. As much as I like you both so far, I will break you in half if you try to come between us."

Both bowed, managing a perfect combination of grace and contrition.

"Of course, Dynast," Alerestro said, swooping in and wrapping an arm around Aliasara's shoulders. "If our humor came across too pointed, then we expressed ourselves poorly. We shall love her exactly as we love you."

"Um, she's married so maybe not 'exactly' exactly," Aida said, glancing over at Ryk finally stirring from the tent. In full battle gear. "Oh crap, what's going down now?"

Ghillie must have seen him emerge armed and armored for she pushed away from the turtle shell and stood near Aida. One hand slipped into her ghillie suit as her gaze swept their environment in every direction.

"I hope you're just off to do a dress rehearsal or something," Aida said, looking everywhere for some sign of a threat.

"Nothing dress about it," Ryk said. He winked, then startled Aida by grabbing her and performing some sort of foot sweep that drove her down onto the shell and he directly on top of her.

"What the f-" she began, but the whistling whoosh of arrows zipping directly above them answered her questions.

She sprang to her feet and reached for the fine sword she'd worn everywhere since Ocyl had gifted it to her then realized she'd probably be more of a danger to herself than anyone else if she tried to use it. Especially when up against trained killers. Against every instinct, she released the hilt.

Rough voices called out. A dozen men rushed from the shadows, peeling layered rags away to reveal hardened leather armor. Bronze swords and spears glinted in the sun.

"Best let me handle this," Ryk said, twisting his grip on his spear and bouncing on the balls of his feet. "Ghillie and I stop this with much less destruction if you stay out of it."

"Dynast!" Alerestro shouted, pointing the other direction. He and Viviana seemed unbothered by the imminent violence. Aliasara, on the other hand had dropped to a crouch, eyes wide.

Half-a-dozen more figures scrambled across the Neck's guide lines, moving with risky speed to flank them. As they watched, a man slipped and barely caught a foot line to save himself from a plummeting death.

Aida stepped that direction, a hum building in her throat that set the strings vibrating in resonance. "Fat chance, lover boy. They picked the wrong Dynast."

From the vertebrae, an archer raised a short bow and loosed in a smooth motion. Aida barked a shout and the arrow shattered into a thousand splinters a few meters from her that barely touched her as the wind swept them away.

"As you wish. I knew you would do it no matter what I said, but I promised Eth I would try. Just don't say I didn't warn you afterwards." Ryk shot her a grin before sprinting towards the mouth.

Some rational part of her mind said she should be scared or at least worried, but months of pent-up frustration stirred with anger. These assassins or whoever they were dared to attack her here in her own home, in front of her own people.

"Not this time." With Ghillie close at her side, she strode towards them. The hum at the base of her throat pitched up as its resonance amplified and reverberated. Her whole body began to vibrate in tune. "Maybe someone hired them to kill me, but that doesn't mean they have any idea who they're fucking with."