"Er... um... what about marriage, kids, stuff like that? Seems like it would be hard to do when you don't get to know who anyone is."

"A couple who decide to become intimate may swear so to the collective and thus are granted leave to see one another in private." Viviana gestured to a Mune couple - older by the wrinkles on the little exposed skin they revealed - holding hands as they watched a group of children play on the bone heap. "They must remain together for at least one year after. When that time has passed, they may decide to remain together or separate."

"What... um... what if they find out they're the same gender?" Aida said, tapping her pointer fingers together. "Hard to make kids that way..."

"I see why you were chosen," Viviana said, voice sweet as honey. "You take three steps in your mind for everyone one most others take."

"I'm amazing, I get it. Would be more amazing if two of those three steps weren't backwards," Aida said, giving up on trying to hide her annoyance. "How about less buttering me up and more telling me about these people we'll be dealing with. I have a million other things to be doing right now."

Viviana laughed, but Aida cut her off. "No laughing either. Just tell me."

"As you wish Dynast," Viviana said graciously, with a slight curtsy. That the woman wasn't flustered in the slightest bothered and impressed Aida in almost equal measure.

"If the couples are not capable of producing a child together, they hold a Childling Ceremony. All the adults come together. All present are blindfolded while one member of each couple walks carefully out into the gathering extending a finger if they are in need of a male member to conceive or a fist if they are seeking a womb. Whomever is touched touches back with the same gesture if they are able and willing to provide the missing half. The child produced is raised by the three until the next Decanth after their 10th year when it joins the collective."

"Strange. Interesting. Weird." Aida struggled to wrap her brain around such a foreign culture and eventually gave up. "To each their own, I suppose. Does it work?"

"The Assessors generally agree that it is among the most productive of all the verses in The Book. They are highly skilled, pragmatic, generally well-governed due to their process of electing a leader and how they distribute-"

Aida raised her hands. "Okay, okay, I get it. So they aren't ruled by a Dynast? How's that work?"

"No. Any Dynast joining typically sells their verse to the Directory and delivers unto the collective their payment for the benefit of all the Mune."

"Oh yeah! I should probably go talk to them," she said, staring off towards the distant, steel-framed structure coming together on a dead volcano a few days' walk away. "Ink, or the Directory, that is. Barely seen them since they showed up with those strange centipede-machine things. Actually, since I don't have a car, maybe send for one of them to come talk to me."

"A ConMach convoy?" Viviana said, following Aida's gaze. "Even them lending one such construct could be invaluable for-"

"Steel!" Aida shouted, drawing critical looks from the Mune. She punched her fist into her hand. "That's what Eth meant. They know how to make it so they can teach us!"

Viviana shook her head. "The secret of Ink's steel is closely-held. No one in the history of the Dynasty - or at least what history remains after The Kiss - has been able to pry or buy it from them."

"I'm breaking all sorts of 'no ones' and 'nevers', so maybe I'll be the exception in that too. Get someone here for me to talk to regardless. Even if they won't, maybe I can sit down and meditate or something see if I can remember how you do it. Seen enough documentaries back in the nursing home to know a little bit about almost anything."

"I will dispatch a messenger to them immediately," Aliasara cut in a bit too quickly and loudly.

Aida managed to not sigh. "Perfect. Get me their Director or whoever. Could use some more pants anyway and also been wondering about the other specifics of our deal. Was a bit hectic that day and don't remember exactly what all we're supposed to be getting. Presumably a lot more than the nothing we seem to be getting now at least."

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"It will be done," Aliasara said, curtsying with almost as much grace as Viviana and turning quickly away.

"Great." She turned to Viviana. "Okay, tell the Munists or whatever you call them to setup in any chunk of land they want that isn't already taken. Then send whoever their leader is currently my way."

"As my brilliant Dynast wishes," Viviana said, her curtsy held deeper and longer than Aliasara's.

This time Aida did sigh. "Perfect. Awesome. Amazing. Swell."

Viviana blinked.

"Nothing. Go make it happen." She turned away and found Alerestro waiting for her. "What?"

As unruffled as Viviana, the man simply bowed in the face of her abruptness. "There was another who tagged along with the Mune. Let me introduce Sephily, Arborist from Groves."

He stepped aside to reveal a dwarf woman wearing a scratchy-looking robe over scale- or bark-like red-brown skin. The woman didn't bother to bow, but instead stared up at Aida with her hands on her hips. A bulging backpack framed in bamboo and woven with branches rose from her back taller than she was.

"You look familiar," Aida said, squinting back into her memory.

"I aught'a," the woman said, her voice scratchy and rough. "I was there in Ocyl's court when you marched in and lost me my appointment."

"Gosh, I showed up and screwed something up?" Aida said in mock surprise. She snapped her fingers as the memory came to her. "Ah, right! You're the lady who had the the little bonsai tree thing. Didn't work out with Ocyl I take it since you're here."

Sephily hocked and spat off the skull. Aida winced, imagining the unpleasantness someone was about to catch somewhere below.

"I'll take that as a no. So what can-"

"I grow things," the woman said, still staring at her in a manner Aida felt bordered on aggressive.

"What sort of things?"

"Rocks and striders and men's cocks."

"What?" Aida said, glancing at Alerestro in perplexity. He chuckled.

"Plants. Tress. Bushes. Green things that grow. Arborist."

"Not conversationalist, clearly," Aida said. "You really don't, ahem, beat around the bush."

Either the idiom didn't exist here the woman didn't care for puns. Or both. "I brought as many seeds as I could pack in each pot. Grains, fruiting trees, herbs, medicinal plants. All of it."

"My god," Aida said, glancing at the half-dozen clay pots packed onto a small, tired-looking strider behind the Arborist.

"What about it?" the woman said, staring out towards the moving mountain dragging across the distant countryside.

"The Ascen favor us today," Alerestro said. "Fine artisans from Mune replete with tools and an Arborist besides!"

"Yeah. I barely believe it," Aida said, glancing from the diminutive Arborist to the Mune still relocating their belongings in their highly-efficient manner and back to the Arborist. "Either way, you're hired, or whatever it takes to keep you here. Take as much land as you want, recruit as many people or commandeer as many rotters as you need to make it happen. God knows we have enough of those around. Take your pick."

"Things begin to come together," Alerestro said, clapping her on the back in a brotherly fashion.

"Yeah," she muttered. "Too good to be true. Just waiting for the other shoe to drop."

As if on cue, a series of shouts rang out from the Shanties below.

Aida groaned. "Great, what now?"

Stiller sprinted towards the skull, stopping abruptly when he caught Aida's eye. He began gesturing frantically in the Feral-sign Ghillie'd been teaching him. As much as Aida had been practicing, it was all too fast and too far away for her to comprehend. She turned to Ghillie.

"What was that?"

Wretch. Dead or dying.

A feeling of dread sank into Aida stomach. "Yeah? They're pretty resilient but this place kills everyone given the chance. Surprised we haven't lost more of them."

Not plague. Not starvation. Murder.

"You sure? There's a lot of critters out there that can mess you up in a way that looks like-"

Ghillie cut her off with a slicing gesture.

No. Impaled on stake. Still alive he says.

"Fuckers," Aida swore, dropping to the nets and scrambling down far faster than was safe. She didn't care. "I know I said exile would be the worst punishment, but if I find out who did this, I'm going to make a special exception. Just when things start to look up..."

Fury combined with the strength and speed of a Dynast propelled her down the ropes and through the dirty sprawl of the Shanties faster than even her athletic Feral could keep up with.