The Vale trip passed painfully if relatively uneventfully. Ryk walked ahead to manage the Valeer and avoid everyone else. Wake snapped at anyone who tried to talk to her. Eth alternated between worried looks at Ryk and sharp looks at Aida, as though she was the one responsible for his bleak moodiness. The rainbow people occasionally asked Eth unintelligible questions and hurt to look at with their ever-shifting dappling of stark white and deep black.

She was almost looking forward to whatever might be awaiting them back in the One-Eighth when she saw the now-familiar Thorn clearing it stood in and realized that was where they were heading. With all her own troubles and distractions, she'd never even thought to ask as to their destination until they got there.

As the Vale faded away and the ash-thickened humidity of the One-Eighth soaked into her. Rising unsteadily to her feet, she could only stare at the changes wrought in the couple days since she'd left.

For starters, the Terrtle skull no longer sat anchored in place only by its own weight, but a sturdy framework crossing beams now surrounded it. To one side, a long, sturdy plank ramp now ran, stretching almost a hundred meters out into a clearing with a dozen paths carving through the surrounding Tangle every direction from where it touched ground.

In front of the Terrtle where the empty eye sockets stared and where few had lived previously due to the denseness of the jungle, the Mune had chosen their new home. In however-long it had been since Aida left, they'd cleared a square section of Tangle, erected orderly rows of blue tents, laid clay foundations for several large buildings, and strung cords between stakes to mark out a dozen more smaller ones around the periphery. The Mune themselves seemed to be largely self-contained in that cleared area; a sea of blue robes and glinting jewelry with only the rarest dull brown or dingy off-white worn by most everyone else passing through their midst.

A canal dredging seemed to be in progress, carving a blue line from the new marshy lake that had been growing slowly not far from the Terrtle. Aida shrugged off a momentary feeling of inferiority and resentment. She had never been able to organize anything like such a thing while she was in charge, forcing them to rely on rain-catching pots, plant leaves, and the unreliable, pocked holes in the Terrtle skull for water.

Not far from the Mune's orderly, self-contained section, the Shanties provided harsh contrast: the five-hundred-odd slaves Aida had dispatched here led by a mute, hostile Alerestro while the she'd led Sava and her Legions off to Ink came with next-to-nothing and there was little more than that here waiting for them. Even worse, it looked as though the area they'd spilled out to claim had been abandoned by the former residents. A crude wall of garbage and chopped bushes now stood between the rest of the Shanties and the miserable quarter abandoned for the slaves to squat in.

The slaves, at least, seemed to have found use for the Terrtle's broken neck. Bits of spongy marrow apparently remained pliant within the core of the vertebrae and they set to carving it out to throw in large clay pots heated over fire pits. Where bones lay stacked or leaned against one another, they'd made rough lean-tos to help accommodate their spread.

As a more positive development, it looked as though a section of Tangle near the rotter pens at the back of the Terrtle now sprouted neat rows of what were hopefully fruit trees tended by the Arborist. Rotters hooked to simple plows trudged along a roughly-cleared area nearby while large, alien-looking insect-octopi ambled among the trees. The diminutive Arborist rode a strange, uncomfortable-looking saddle on what might have been one of the creature's heads.

Glancing towards the distant mountain-top Syphon the Directory had long been constructing, she saw they'd made significant progress as well. Above the irregular, boxy base plated in the same rusting iron the Directory seemed to use everywhere they built outside Ink, several long variously-tall masts now thrust up into the sky like radio towers. While these shared the guy-wire supports and were assembled from triangular sections of steel poles the way a radio tower on Earth might be, these hosted no antenna or dishes. instead, they sprouted long arms dangling with what looked like black leaves.

They must have turned the thing on, for already streaks and clumps of denaturation traced down the sides of the mountain. Streams of wet ash or grey mud leaching the color from everything around them.

While new, none of those developments were entirely surprising; she'd had some say and foreknowledge that pretty much all of them might be coming. What did surprise her, however, was a clear path trampled and slashed in a straight line to a spot perhaps a kilometer away from the Terrtle. There, in a broad swath of cleared Tangle, the first two, massive tiers of what looked to be the start of a giant bronze-plated step-pyramid or something rose inside a web of scaffolding. White-clothed figures swarmed all over it. Several massive centipede-like creatures crawled across it hauling beams or bronze plates in their mandibles while a scattering of tall cranes with all the trappings of the Directory stood atop the completed first tier or rose from low platforms about it.

A small city of black-trimmed, white tents spread out in orderly rows from the base. Several tall flagpoles hosted rippling white banners bearing a black, vaguely-circular sigil in the center. She couldn't make out more details due to distance and haze.

A few long convoys of bizarre walking wagons stomped the path to or from the Terrtle. The contraptions centered around a long, thin-walled, rusty metal storage areas dimensioned something like a long truck bed with two sets of four-spoked, muddy, T-shaped legs affixed where wheels would normally be placed. A motor or whatever it was that powered the things housed in a compartment the size of an air conditioner at the things' backs. Each caravan consisted of a dozen-ish of the things connected by what looked to be iron rods on flexible mounts so the walker wagons could pivot and turn somewhat while still being held roughly in a line.

The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

The pair of tank knights leading and trailing each convoy plus the gray-clothed, pants-wearing figures riding in the front wagons confirmed her suspicious as to the origin of the contraptions if not who hired them or what the hell they were doing here.

In the time she and the others had spent recovering from the Vale transition and surveying the changes, several figures had scrambled up the net ladders towards them. Aliasara reached the top first and both nearly fell over as they rushed forward into a ferocious hug.

As they pulled apart, Aida flashed her friend a weary grin. "I was half afraid you were coming at me with a knife after I dropped the One-Eighth on top of you and ran away."

Aliasara wiped tears from her eyes and flashed a brilliant if tired smile back. "I'm just happy you're alive. When Rega's people showed up here-"

"Rega?" Aida croaked, her head snapping back towards the incipent bronze step pyramid. "Those are her people? Is she here?"

"She isn't, but yes. They are hers," Aliasara said, staring off the same direction with a look of bemusement. "No soldiers, just endless ConMach convoys full of materials and supplies and swarms of laborers pouring through the Thorn to build that thing. We thought they were invading at first, but aside from a few Monopolis Versal troops tagging along to keep any of us from stealing anything, they seem to be all craftsmen and laborers. They won't even really talk to us, though I've heard a few let slip a few bits about it."

Aliasara looked up as though remembering and ticked off on her fingers as she enumerated. "Rega's in a hurry to get it done for one thing, paying them small fortunes on one side and threatening their lives on the other to keep them motivated. They don't seem to know exactly why here or what the thing is for, but it is supposed to be hollow. Sections of each layer are designed to be removed, presumably to bring something inside."

"Okay," Aida said, her tired mind churning trying to take it all in. "What about the Wretches and the Professor? They haven't killed anyone else, have they?"

"No," Aliasara said, shaking her head. She bit her lip then as though not wanting to say anything else.

"What?" Aida said, suddenly tense. She looked around, expecting to see impaled Wretches or lurking assassins or who-knew-what ready to wreck things. Wake stared pensively at Rega's pyramid. The rainbow people who followed them from Ink wandered off down the ramp, pointing fingers like tourists.

Eth and Ryk stood huddled with two strangers in some intense, whispered conversation that included a sharp look in Aida's direction as she looked at them. One of the strangers was a nondescript young woman, the other a slightly-older man who wore a slight smile on his handsome face. Both wore the grisly eyeball-staring-from-a-slit throat tattoo at the base of the necks, the one she hadn't seen since the lady in Ocyl's court. Seericides or something.

No assassins, tortures, or other looming disasters to be seen.

"Jaxe is here," Aliasara said, staring at her toes.

"He's what?" Aida's temper flashed to an instant boil as the image of Jaxe murdering Broadaxe flashed through her mind unbidden. "Where?"

"He showed up yesterday with dozens and dozens of soldiers wearing his pale purple. They marched about breaking things and beating people up for a while, then Cleft Hand and his cronies crawled out from wherever they went after you left." Aliasara paused and stared at her sandals again. "They... they killed a few people at random and left them for you, then headed off towards Ryk's training area."

Aliasara paused again, then winced as she said, "Alerestro came with him. I thought at first he'd been captured by Jaxe, but as soon as they got here Alerestro led them off."

"Goddammit." Aida was already at the top of the net ladder when Ryk and Eth pulled her back.

"Let me go," she shouted hoarsely, her voice cracking.

"Don't. Your strings are broken," Eth said, her voice soft and borderline sad. Aida stared at her, shocked to see tears run down the Imminent's cheeks.

"Oh, shit," Aida whispered, a rock falling into her gut. Since she'd learned to harness her strings, she'd felt powerful, bordering on cocky. Without them, she felt naked and small. Seeing her look, Aliasara gave her a hug that offered little comfort.

Aida kissed her friend on the cheek and glanced at Ryk to find him staring at her as though trying to memorize her face. Never had he looked so young nor so determined, the confident ease he'd always carried vanished as though it never was.

Wake approached her, pointing at Rega's new construction. "I don't know what that is, but I know we have to do something about it. If it's important enough for Rega to build it here, its important enough for us to break it."

"Go for it," Aida said, walking around the glaring Dynast. She walked over to Ryk and brushed her fingers across her cheek, her heart aching. As she neared, Eth grabbed the two Seericide's sleeves, dragging them to the far side of the Thorn.

"Did we love each other as much as Eth says?" he whispered, placing his hands on her shoulders as if to hold himself up.

Aida glanced at Eth. The Imminent argued loudly with the female, terrified-looking Seericide. Aida couldn't catch exactly what they were saying over a strong breeze that came up, but caught the name 'Hanyon' out of it.

Aida turned back to Ryk, wiping a tear from his eye. She suddenly remembered Eth's warning when Aida had tracked her down and thrown a hundred questions at her atop the Terrtle shell. Don't break his heart. Was no more than a week or two ago, but felt like an eternity.

"I loved you as much as I've ever loved anyone," she murmured, surprising herself at the truth and heat of it. "Just because our love has only burned briefly doesn't mean it hasn't burned brightly."

The second part of what Eth had said then flickered through her mind, sending a chill down her back despite the heat and humidity of the One-Eighth. He must love you until he dies.