Hassani was deeply grateful for the hard, repetitive task of pulling the ropes on the Stacks trolley. As Johine trudged past her to grab the line at the front of the trolley, he'd shoot her worried looks. Shaved and bedecked in the uniform and armor of a Vale Legionnaire they'd cut down on their way out of Berujat, he looked practically human.

Much more human than she felt. Numbness and a chill far beyond the one born in the chill rain drizzling from Stacks' gray skies penetrated her core. She'd caught Fatma, dragged her pleading through the looting, fighting, and fleeing that had become Berujat, and shoved her in the same cage Fatma had thrown her in. To no avail. Even the filthcages had only led Hassani to a false Avani.

The little girl posing as her daughter pleaded for Hassani to take her with as Fatma had ripped her from her family to duplicate Avani, but in her disgust and despair, Hassani had left her behind to fend for herself in the chaos. Hassani should have cared, but she couldn't make herself.

What little hope she held out that perhaps Goboro and his network of connections in the heart of the Black Court bureaucracy would somehow have found her died in the smoldering ruins of the Analis. She'd stood on the docks, staring at its burned husk, the rotting corpse of a murdered god swarming with insects in the marshes. A clutch of fleeing refugees had spoken of the Aj lose in Libriam, killing gods and anything or anyone else who got in its way. She hadn't believed it until she spotted the creature laying lifelessly in the muck, somehow magnificent and awesome even in death.

When she set out to search the collapsing, smoldering ruin that was the Annalis she had tripped over the day-old corpse of an old man with a slit throat propped against a dock post with the severed head of a dusa sitting in his lap.

No sign of Goboro anywhere, living or dead, headless or otherwise.

One faint hope propelled her: Deia. Inscrutable and frustrating, yes, but Deia had somehow known she would would almost leave her sword behind after the fight with Denault. She had known Hassani would need it to shatter the gate in Ziggurat to reach the Thorn. She knew Hassani would reclaim it after her time as a slave. If the odd old woman knew all that then, perhaps she knew where Avani was now.

If she didn't, Hassani would dive off into the deep watter and swim until she couldn't. That or hunt down Rega herself, force the Dynast to turn the whole power of the Ancients towards finding her daughter, or die trying.

They'd come to Stacks to find a brand-new fortification surrounding the Thorn. The quality of the work looked hasty and poor, but not nearly so poor as the quality of the guards Jaxe had left manning it no so hasty as their rush to open the gates to her and Johine when she'd drawn the Aze blade. Word of what had happened at Ziggurat had traveled, it seemed. That they were certainly sending wyres to every Ancient stronghold in the Book at this moment bothered her little. Without Avani, nothing mattered.

When they reached Broadcliff, they found a cluster of militia guarding the line house. These, too, dispersed upon sight of the Aze blade, giving her and Johine wide berth as they climbed out.

"Lines to Jaxestack intact?" she asked the large man with the spear who seemed vaguely leaderish. They'd found several lines severed in Tallmarket, a shocking sight considering how many Anchorites had died and the massive outlay of watter and currency Jaxe had spent with his Primus Thread when he'd been granted Stacks in the first place. Given the state of the Book now, every line was irreplaceable.

"Yes," the man grumbled. "Though Jaxe left some versal guard with a mancer at their lead to protect the linehouse on this end."

Hassani mused on this for a moment. "Boat?"

"None for sale," he said. He watched her hand casually float to the handle of the Aze blade and raised his hands. "But for an Inviolate, I'm sure we'll work something out."

An hour later they rode the waves in a small cutter, skipping across the waves with a stiff wind at their back. Though he'd never sailed before, Johine proved competent enough at the tiller while she dressed and directed the craft's single mast. The dark fell rapidly as she moored the boat at the tiny jetty jutting from the side of Deia's stack. Their whole approach, Hassani had peered intently at the tiny sliver of a stack, hoping to see her master sitting and watching.

For the first time, Hassani climbed the stairs and stood atop the stack without her master watching her. She approached the small trap door slowly, half-expecting a trap of some sort. Wiping her rain-soaked bangs from her face, she waved down at Johine. "I'm going in. Keep the boat ready, just in case."

He nodded and returned to staring at the sky-scraping, horizon-filling spread of the World Spear.

The trap door lifted open silently. Peering within, she beheld the small, surprisingly-cozy home of her master. A small bed nestled next to a fireplace that must have been cleverly vented as Hassani had never noticed any sort of smoke hole in all her trips to the stack. Shelves lined every available stretch of wall, packed with odds, ends, and oddities of every sort and description.

Golden chalices studded with gems held gaudy bead necklaces and tiny shells. Blades of every description, quality, and length overflowed a tattered wicker basket held together with silver chains and fishing nets. Priceless paintings leaned in rows against the walls, their corners serving as impromptu hooks for robes, necklaces, fine silks, and plain knotted ropes. Chipped clay jars overflowed with gleaming coins of every metal, denomination, and age.

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Hassani cared nothing for any of that. When scrambled down the sturdy ladder in all haste it was to kneel by Deia's side as the old woman huddled shivering under layers of thick blankets.

"Not you too," Hassani said, clutching at her master's suddenly-frail-looking hand. "I've lost everyone else. You can't die."

For a moment, Hassani wasn't sure Deai heard her, the old woman's lips moving without making a sound. A light tap at her neck startled her and she twisted to see its source.

A chopstick rested lightly against her throat. "Dead," Deai whispered.

Hassani laughed in spite of herself. "Can't help yourself can you?"

Deai's eyes cracked open. "Not much time left now."

"Don't say that. You could live for years yet," Hassani said, wondering even as she did so how old Deai truly was.

"Not me. The All," Deai whispered. She reached for a wooden cup, but her shaking fingers knocked it over. Hassani leapt to her feet, snatched up a gleaming silver pitcher full of what smelled like spiced wine, and filled the wooden cup.

Deai drank at length, then handed the cup to Hassani. "The search for your family."

Hassani blinked, trying to decipher Deai's meaning. "I search for Avani still, yes."

"She's here. But not here."

Hassani barely resisted the urge to roll her eyes or snap at Deai in frustration. "You mean she's in my heart? Or that our memory of a person is just as real as they are?"

"No." Deai closed her eyes. Hassani thought she'd fallen asleep again and rose, but Deai held tight to her hand and opened her eyes again. "I didn't kill the Immortal Swordsman."

"What?" Hassani said, wondering if her brain was extra-foggy from exhaustion or if Deai had always been able to surprise her so. She couldn't remember. "You didn't kill him?"

"You can't kill an Imminent."

"Of course not. If you could, why would they show up?"

"No," Deai said, shaking her head and closing her eyes again as if holding them open took too much effort. The frail woman coughed a few times before continuing then opened her eyes again. "If they die they can't be born. He let me wound him, knowing his death was near but willing to make the sacrifice so you would get that."

Hassani looked towards where Deai pointed. It took her too long to realize Deai pointed at the Aze blade. "This? For me? Why?"

"To kill the One-Eighth Aj," Deai whispered. Hassani leaned close to hear her over the sound of the wind and rain.

"To kill the eighth Aj? What about the other seven?"

"No seven. Just the one. To begin an unravelling. To allow the rethreading that must be done for any Dynasty to survive. Here or real."

Hassani stared at Deai mouthing back the cryptic words. "I don't understand."

"You will at the right moment. Das told me you would." Deai's eyes drifted from object to object littering the room, unseeing. "Only three of them left now of all the thousands of years of Imminent. Three to meet on Terminus. Two to leave. One to witness another end and bring forth another beginning to be sure the next end is realized. An end with no beginning. A beginning with no end."

"None of that makes sense. An Imminent told you all this?" Pieces began to click together in Hassani's mind. "Did he tell you about the sword on the night of the storm? About the sword being the key and finding it after being caged?"

"He told me, but you must tell him before Eth makes him Imminent. Before that, you must go home and return here once more. This stack holds one more treasure, even if it is one you do not wish to carry."

Hassani stood up and punched her fist into her palm. "Home? Stacks is home. Enough with the riddles! Just tell me clearly so I know what to do."

Deai shook her head. "I know only what I have been told to say. Das told me all this years before I first met a young, Pale girl for the first time. He was why I taught her to wield a sword it was illegal for her to carry. He was why I arranged for you to come that morning not long after you became Assessor, knowing you would encounter Denault on that trolley. They leave nothing to chance for nothing survives the wrong roll of the die."

"How do you know? How can you believe them?" Hassani said, pacing about the room. "Everyone believes their every word, yet for every happening they foretell, two lies fall from their lips."

"Because I watched one let me slide my blade between his ribs, unresisting," Deai said, looking over at the basket of swords. "Saw the fear and determination in his eyes I dealt him a mortal wound he knew he wouldn't survive. His sacrifice, his belief birthed mine."

"I'm not doing anything until I have Avani," Hassani said emphatically. "He and even you can sacrifice what you want, but I'm not doing anything until she's safe."

"This is the only way she can be safe," Deai said, pointing weakly at the ladder. "But if you want to see her, you must go home now."

"Home?" Hassani said, staring at the ladder as if it would reveal some sort of answer. "Denault? He's alive? He has her?"

"He will. But you have to leave now."

Hassani was all the way up the ladder and running down the stairs before her mind registered Deai's parting words. "And I'm sorry."

Those words mulled through her mind as they raced back across the water towards Jaxestack in the darkness. She killed the guards who challenged her on the docks ringing the stack without thought or hesitation. A twisting snarl of stairs and hallways passed in a blur, Johine's cries as she left him behind. When she threw open the door to her apartment, her heart leapt to her throat when she saw a figure leaning against the archway to the balcony where she'd last seen her husband.

"Denault?" she gasped, surprised at the strength of feeling that rose in her chest.

The figure turned and moved into the moonlight. Hassani gasped again. "Goboro?"

The black swelling around his eye, the bruising along his jaw, and his cracked lip warned her, but not in time.

Another figure slid up behind Goboro, the glint of a long knife lifting the scribe's chin. Two other figures slipped into sight as she reached for her sword hilt: a massive man filling the doorway behind him, a sturdy war axe tight in his hands and a short-haired woman stretching a bow with an arrow's feather's brushing her cheek.

"Who are you?" Hassani growled.

"Ghulen," he said amiably. "And you must be Hassani. Drop the sword or both you and your chubby friend die here."

"Where's Avani?"

"Here too," Ghulen said, his plain face catching the moonlight beside Goboro. "Be a good girl and you can see her. Put the sword down."

Against every instinct of her training, she unbuckled her belt and set her sword down.

"Good girl," Ghulen practically purred. "I can't tell you how long I've been waiting to meet you."