"You'd just casually murder an Inviolate?" Ghulen said, taking a tiny sip. He hated alcohol or any substance that interfered with his control. "I know things unravel quickly, but didn't think we'd fallen so far yet."

"No thanks to Rega's coup."

"Or your murder of the Inviolate arresting the Mother of Exiles and your brazen attack on Wake and Jaxe's troops that followed," Ghulen countered. "Rasofi was a good man."

"Rasofi was a stiff, boring pain in my backside. And, to play the contrarian, those were my menials Wake and Jaxe conscripted and armed in my verse. With Rasofi dead and no Tribunal imminent, that wasn't the start of a civil war, it was just me putting down a couple armed menial mobs illegally roused by Dynasts outside their domains and therefore beyond their rights."

Ghulen feigned another sip to avoid starting a debate. He needed to walk a fine line between showing some spine and poking back at a prickly Dynast. The incense drifted narrow strands of smoke their direction in a gentle breeze, the cloying sweetness of the smoke making him want to gag. He wondered if Ocyl did it on purpose knowing he was a Scentsor.

"And it was Aida's Seneschal who murdered him anyway, not me. Wasn't he the son of Rega's Sensechal? Expelled him from the family for some dalliance with another man back on Monopolis?"

"Some dalliance with his fiance's brother," Ghulen said, wincing at the memory. Festrin was a miserly, strict, and proud man at the best of times. After he'd kicked the son he'd spent a decade grooming to replace him to the street, he became utterly insufferable for months. "I took every little task or mission that might pull me away from Monopolis and each one was a blessing."

"'Never get between an old man and the wedding he's arranged for you', that's what my father always said. If he hadn't died half-a-millennium ago, I'd tell him 'never get between a young man and his youthful dalliances'. Did he and the other fellow at least find some happiness, contentment, or at least continued sexual gratification together?"

Ghulen grunted and shook his head. "Poor idiot was in love with Fallon, but I think Fallon only did it out of rebellion to shock his father. Get back at the old man for controlling everything about his life. Unfortunately, Fallon's fiance found out about it before his father did and Fallon ended up off to the Cerebrists in Berujat then to fetch the Mother of Exiles from whatever barbarian verse they spawned her in. Last I heard, the fellow was still trying to prove himself worthy of Fallon's love to Festrin and Fallon. Set off to kill some Paragon or something stupid last I heard. Likely dead now."

"Ah, a tragedy all around then. Pity." Ocyl drained his drink and casually extended his cup out towards the freckled beauty holding a fresh glass decanter full of the water-clear liquid. Rather than refilling his goblet, she took it and handed him a new, full replacement. "But we've gotten distracted from our saint here."

"Ah, yes, I can't wait to hear." Ghulen couldn't wait to leave and resume the hunt. Some part of him suspected Ocyl knew as much so he hid his impatience in admiring the goblet. If Ocyl knew he was inconveniencing Ghulen, he was likely to invite him to stay for a month just for the chance to annoy Rega and leave Ghulen collateral damage in petty Dynastic politicking.

"Not so elaborate as you think. I gave in, as I said, to a particularly insistent Abbess or High Priestess or whatever they called themselves at the time. She proclaimed me a saint on the spot. Saint Ocyl, can you imagine?" He drew himself up dramatically, holding his goblet to the heavens and letting his mouth hang open as though in awe of some descending divinity. After holding the statuesque pose for a few seconds then shifted the pose so his other hand grabbed his crotch. "Patron of apathy, leisure, and debauchery."

"Sounds like a most popular saint," Ghulen said, smiling in spite of himself at the ridiculous, almost absurd image before him. Wasn't every day you got to see one of the most powerful Dynast's in the book grope himself while miming being a statue. "Until recently, anyway. Can't imagine there's much apathy or leisure going around lately."

"More's the pity. I rather miss my apathy." Ocyl turned back to the statue looming over them. "She commissioned a massive statue of me holding a joyous infant in one arm and a holy book in the other. Its revelation was to be the centerpiece of the week of festivities held when the Shrineway finally opened. Attempting to keep it a secret to surprise me was among her many mistakes for I allow no secrets kept away from me in my verse."

The last bit, too, could have been interpreted as threat. Ghulen was less sure now it wasn't. "So what happened to the statue? It seems like something like it would be famous."

"I hired a stonemelder from Shale at no small expense and under great secrecy to reshape it. They hid it behind a canvas-draped scaffolding so I couldn't see it, but that cover also served to keep them from seeing its new form until the great unveiling ceremony. I'll never forget that moment of hushed silence after her interminable speech when they yanked the canvas clear to reveal... this."

He gestured grandly towards the statue, sloshing his drink in the process.

Ghulen saw the statue again for the first time. Indeed, it wore Ocyl's unusual visage plain as day despite centuries of weather's wear. So too did Ghulen see where the hawk's wing could have once been the pages of a book, the lizard's tail the curve of swaddling around the babe it once was.

Stolen novel; please report.

"If I could make that memory an object, it would sit proudly at the center of my Irreplaceables. The Blind Priestess, of course, couldn't see as she stood before it giving her long dedication speech. I almost came apart trying not to laugh and eventually failed. You've never seen a crowd more confused and awkward than the assembled throng listening to her prattle on in front of it. She nearly died of shock, confusion, and embarrassment after. Think she took a vow of silence and fled to a remote monastery in Azure afterwards to contemplate humility before the Ascen or something equally dramatic and pointless. Didn't have to listen to her nag at me ever again anyway."

Ghulen tried to imagine Rega pulling a ruse so petty, amusing, or self-effacing. Rega possessed no capacity for any of those descriptors in the slightest and anyone pulling anything remotely like such a prank on her would wake up the next morning hanging in a cage in the canyons of Berujat.

"They've studiously ignored it ever since," he said, chuckling and plucking a piece of rotting fruit from a wooden bowl placed at the statue's feet. "Menials still bring it offerings and pray at its feet on occasion asking for who-knows-what. Over the years, the occasional wandering monk, mad priest, or charlatan tries to scrap together a cult or build a following around the teachings of great saint whoever-the-hells. I secretly support them however I can whenever such arises because it amuses me."

Ocyl dropped onto his stool and they sat in companionable silence for a while regarding the statue. While Ocyl seemed to have drifted into a nostalgic reverie, Ghulen ran possibilities through his mind for ways to bring the conversation back around and steer it in a useful direction.

As they waited, a strange-looking child wandered through the Porcelain Guard. By his simple but fine clothing and the way the Ferals didn't look twice at him as he passed, the boy was some element of Ocyl's retinue. Not entirely surprising since the Dynast was a well-known collector of oddities of all types. The boy's head was shaved, his eyes drifted constantly without ever seeming to fix on anything, and he mumbled to himself endlessly. Like a mini-Valeer.

"Hello Sadar, my young Twine. Come to admire my statue?" Ocyl said, glancing at the boy and gesturing expansively at said statue.

The boy didn't even seem to notice him, instead pausing half-facing one of the saint-embossed walls along one side of the dead-end and talking to himself. Ghulen strained to hear him over the religious clamor flooding over from the Shrineway.

"...and I ask you in return: how many people just died here? One boy, but how many children, grandchildren, and on? One arrow slays dozens spread across centuries. I've just come across Ocyl meeting with an Inviolate near the ugly woman statue. Ocyl is meeting with a who? An Inviolate, don't you listen?

Ghulen glanced at Ocyl and quirked an eye. "A Twine you say? Where's his other half?"

"She was here. Hassani, I mean" Ocyl said, his sudden shift back to Ghulen's purpose instead of answering throwing Ghulen off-kilter. "Looking for her daughter. Pale little thing. Like Jaxe whose blood-lineage she shares through her father."

"Did she locate the daughter?" Ghulen said, speaking carefully lest he accidentally launch Ocyl off on some other story.

"Slavers," Ocyl said, finishing his drink again. He stood, held the many-faceted crystal cup to the light of a sun plaza for a moment, then dropped it. The expensive goblet shattered on the prayer-brailled cobblestones. "Hassani raced off after trying to find her. Probably too late as Jaxe probably already bought her. Likes all his servants Pale like himself, especially when residing in his palace in Stacks. Reminds him of himself and there's nothing Jaxe loves more than Jaxe."

"Ah," Ghulen said, standing slowly and setting his own mostly-full goblet carefully on his stool. The Dynast might be willing to break things just because he could, but the man was volatile enough Ghulen didn't want to risk finding out what happened if Ghulen duplicated his action. "And the Phero, Adonissian, did she find him?"

"Yes."

"Killed him, I'd expect."

"No. Wretch Plague took him or maybe creeping sickness from the shattered arm he had when he arrived here got him first. Found his body bereft of stabs or slicings. Dead whatever way and good riddance. Never could stand that Lineage: lust should be lust for lust's sake."

Ghulen felt similarly, but for different reasons. With his sense of smell, he might become enamored of a Phero from half-a-city away. "Thank you, Dyanst. I'm grateful for the information. And the companionship."

It surprised him that the last wasn't just a politeness. Despite the subtle hints of edge and iron beneath the bored, fluffy exterior Ocyl presented, the Ghulen sensed surprising layers of depth in the man he'd only barely begun to peel through. It would never happen, but Ghulen could spend a decade interrogating and carefully torturing truths from him the Dyanst himself might not even know himself.

"Information is cheap as wind and often just as useful," Ocyl said, tossing the rotten fruit over his shoulder to splatter amid the crystal shards on the street. "I do ask a favor, though."

Of course. Ghulen froze. "Anything, Dynast."

"Take Ado's bodyguard or minder or whatever she was with you. Kass. She's fallen in with a Venger who was vainly seeking employment in my court before everything fell apart. The two of them are causing just enough havoc to be a thorn in my side without becoming worth the hassle and expense of having them tracked down and killed. Maybe you can find use for them in your hunt."

"I'm sure they could. I'll find them and take them with me." Ghulen turned to go, walking as quickly as politely possible before Ocyl could dredge up any other favors he might decide to need.

"Oh, and Ghulen," Ocyl said as Ghulen reached the line of white-gleaming Ferals at the dead-end's mouth. "I know of you and what Rega uses you for. If you work your ways on anyone in my verse, I'll have Fetriene pry all your methods from you, then use them on you while she also ensures you stay alive long enough to rue the day you ever set foot in Heaven's Tread."

"Fetriene?" Ghulen said blandly.

"My soresearer. She's as useful an interrogator as she is a healer."

"As you say, Dynast." Ghulen bowed and ducked through the Porcelain Guard and back into the street.

Ghulen preferred working alone, but between Rega's directive to hire some muscle, Ocyl's command that he take Kass and the Venger, and the danger that came from trying to capture a highly-trained Inviolate carrying a legendary Aze Blade, circumstances definitely necessitated he not go this one alone. In his ability to track Hassani down, he was certain. Containing, controlling, and capturing her when he caught up to her, however, was another matter.