Heaven's Tread stunk.

Fear, disease, desperation, hunger, all wafted on a breeze already thick with the stink of the sewage-laden canals. Ghulen walked the desolate streets, weaving between rotter-pulled carts hauling the Plague-dead to the Crowmen, dodging the rare merchant caravan, and fending off the odd beggar desperate enough to approach him despite his Inviolate black and the risk he might carry the Plague.

He passed burned-out, collapsed tenements, markets half-empty and heavily-guarded by mercenaries and Versal troops liveried in white and green, skirted a smoky sun plaza from which Jadeye's light roared, and was forced to take a major detour around several streets clogged with the rotting, tree-trunk sized limbs of a dead reacher. Half the unnatural beasts in the city seemed to be dead, but the Sighted Way traffic far above ran so lean, it likely wasn't too much of an issue.

After waving his Inviolate crystal about a few times at passing patrols of Ocyl's green-and-white liveried Versal troops to learn his whereabouts, he closed in on Ocyl's location. Abruptly, the worn clay-brick or packed-mud streets transitioned to paving stones coarse-brailled with prayers to the Ascen and local saints. Statues, engravings, and murals of the saints doing sometimes-bizarre saintly things. Fading prayer flags strung thickly enough across the seemingly endless street fronting countless shrines, temples, and monasteries to shift the feel more towards tunnel than road.

Where most streets he'd passed held more corpses than people, he found this long Shrineway claustrophobically tight with menials of every type, variety, and condition. Some dragged their feet across the braillestones, others waved incense sticks, knelt in prayer, lit candles at shrines, overflowed across stairs and gardens fronting packed temples echoing with chants and holy songs. The more wealthy or foolhardy feverishly paid any passing monk, priest, swindler, madman, and cheat for blessings, wards, relics, flowers, or offerings to lay on altars and across shrines.

It smelled equally of desperation and devotion laid in thick layers barely-masked by pungent incense, drifting candle smoke, and sweat-stink. Subtle hints of vomit and diarrhea told him many here already felt the touches of the Plague. He was fortunate to have been hit by a mild case while running important messages from Rega to Baka in Ziggurat a few weeks back. Only knocked him down for a few days even though it killed half the soldiers in the Legion barracks he'd been shuffled off to when it swept through.

He found Ocyl not so much by locating the Dynast himself, but by spotting the gleaming white of his Porcelain Guard walling off a short, dead-end street. As he drew closer, he saw the street terminated in a heavy stone plinth supporting the worn statue of a bare-breasted woman holding a sharp-toothed lizard suckling at one breast and a bird of prey at the other.

Flashing his Inviolate Vial didn't budge the Guard. Annoying. Only by reducing himself to jumping up and down, shouting Ocyl's name, and waving the Vial about his head did he finally garner the attention of Ocyl's elegant Seneschal.

At her gesture, the Guard parted. He smelled the sweet, sharp hints of the watter that sustained them in their sweat, along with the pleasant scents of oiled leather and the slowly-tarnishing bronze of their weapons.

"Inviolate Ghulen," the woman said, inclining her head. The pearls laced through her hair gleamed and he caught a whiff of roses and whatever oil she rubbed into her skin to make it gleam so richly.

"Seneschal Janali," he replied, duplicating the gesture. He hid his surprise that she knew who he was, but he figured Ocyl hadn't survived over six centuries of Dynastic politicking because of luck. "I wish to speak to Ocyl."

"Ocyl does not see many since the Plague. Keeping Heaven's Tread from falling apart consumes all of his time," she said, glancing towards where he stood staring up at the half-naked saint. "What is your purpose here?"

"I will only take a few moments of his time. I'm looking for another Inviolate who came through here and was hoping he may have heard of her."

"I can handle any sort of inquiry-" she began, before catching Ocyl's gaze as he turned towards them and motioned them over. "...or perhaps Ocyl will see you know."

"Dynast Ocyl," he said, bowing deeply as he approached. He noticed a cage full of Ocyl's six-eyed specially Sect-bred dragonflies of which he'd seen several fluttering around since arriving in Heaven's Tread. Though he kept them specially for himself and so their full capabilities were unknown, it was said that devouring the head of one revealed flashes of what it had seen. Perhaps that was how Ocyl remained so shockingly aware of all that transpired within his domain.

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"Lapdog Ghulen," Ocyl said, bowing a touch deeper and causing the outermost layer of his many-flowered kimono to spill open to reveal an inner layer swarming with brightly-colored sewn serpents. A mocking smile twitched about his lips. "What can I do for the charming and loquacious Rega?"

His voice reverberated strangely and, to Ghulen's surprise, he saw Ocyl wore strings. Not the implanted ones woven into Seneschal throats, but an external set dangling from a chain crown and worn as a tight choker. He'd have to dispatch the information to Rega from a Skeinry before he left Heaven's Tread.

Ghulen hid his surprise at the strings and suppressed his irritation at Ocyl's flippancy. Though he'd never met the man, he know this Dynast delighted in throwing others off-balance. The man's smell proved especially distracting; perhaps because Ocyl was said to have undertaken a journey to visit every verse in the Book and not a few since lost or forbidden. His scent carried faint, random hints of aromas unique to a dozen different verses.

"Since you clearly know everything and everyone that comes into your verse, I thought perhaps you might help me find another of my kind that passed through here a while back."

"By 'your kind' do you mean another sniffer or another of Rega's lackey's? I'm unfortunately in short supply of the former and fortunately short on the latter at the moment, I'm afraid." As he spoke his voice subtly modulated and shifted in tone and pitch. Either the Dynast had found a new toy to keep his audiences off balance or he was just learning how the thing worked.

Ghulen gritted his teeth. "An Inviolate. A woman. Blond. Carrying a sword."

Ocyl's eyebrow quirked. "A pale Inviolate and Kin no less? I see why she has you so intrigued."

"So you haven't seen her."

"Not physically, no."

"Sorry to have wasted your time then," Ghulen said, turning on his heel.

"Though I may have heard a few things about her," Ocyl said, bending to grind a pinch of iode in a pestle. A burst of metallic-smelling flame flashed and sputtered long enough for him to light a pungent, sweet-smelling incense stick. He carefully placed it into a tiny hold likely bored into the statue's base just for that purpose. "Wasn't she the one who escaped Rega and Baka on Ziggurat? Even more reason to bring her to heel."

Ghulen's training and experience told him to treat Dynasts with deference and take their abuse without reaction, but the impression he'd gleaned in their short time together combined with scraps of rumor and gossip about Ocyl told him it might be more productive if he tried a different tack. "Did you let me past your Porcelain Guard so you could impress me with how much you know? If so, could you have your lovely Seneschal bring me a chair and a drink so I can rest my tired feet while you astound me with the breadth of your intelligence apparatus?"

Ocyl stared flatly for long enough that Ghulen wondered if he'd given into his instincts for the last time. Then Ocyl laughed: a cheerful, deep sound that titled even Ghulen's cynical core towards delight. "My apparatus wasn't deep enough to tell me why Rega will stand someone willing to throw a Dynast's arrogance back in their face. Well played, Inviolate. And indeed, let us have chairs and drinks, toast the end of the Book together at the feet of my favorite saint."

His Seneschal swished away to realize Ocyl's capricious whim, leaving them staring up at said saint's statue.

"Who is she? Must be quite the tale to whatever miracle is carved here."

Ocyl chuckled and looked about surreptitiously, as though anyone other than a wall of mute Ferals stood anywhere within hearing range. "Quite the tale indeed, though the miracle part is far more dubious. Would you believe this was the first statue commissioned on the Shrineway all those centuries ago when the Blind Priests finally nagged me long enough to order the construction of their 'holy road'?"

Ghulen looked at it again, noticing the wind-weathering, creeping lichen, and creeping cracks forming at joints. Saint or no the woman had been ugly when first carved and time had done nothing to improve her likeness.

"An ancient tale then."

"Are you calling me ancient, Ghulen?" Ocyl mock-frowned at him then extended his arm towards a gaggle of shockingly-beautiful redheaded serving women wrapped in sheer silk dresses carrying stools, silver trays, clay jugs, and a pair of crystal goblets laying on a lime-colored velvet cushion. As they placed one of the fine, gold-banded crystal goblets in Ocyl's hand, his frown shifted to a smile. "Admiring my servants? Quite fetching, aren't they? One advantage of the Dynast's Plague, doesn't disfigure like any of the poxes. End up with still-beautiful or dead, nothing between."

"Wretch Plague," Ghulen said automatically as he accepted his goblet and sat upon one of the cushioned, vine-engraved stools. He sniffed at the drink suspiciously. It smelled of juniper, fermented barley, and a hint of fruit he couldn't identify. And, of course, alcohol. "I've never smelled a drink like this before. One from your legendary travels among the verses?"

"Yes, one of my favorites from my more youthful adventures," Ocyl said, sipping and turning away from his open admiration of his women and back to the statue.

"Youthful meaning only a couple hundred years old," Ghulen said dryly.

"Indeed. Still a happily-ignorant youngster back then. Didn't know how good I had it." Ocyl said, raising his glass towards Ghulen. "Drinks are for drinking, not for smelling, even for your kind. No need to poison you with a small army of Ferals here who'd be all-to-happy to strangle you to death at my slightest whim."

From most other Dynast, Ocyl's statement would have screamed threat, but from Ocyl it read as mere statement of fact.