Between cracks and rumbles from far above that shook the entire stack, distant terrified or tortured screams that could last minutes, and the knowledge that any corner or stairwell exit they might turn and come face to face with something out of a nightmare forced Hassani to focus everything she had to avoid drawing the Aze Blade. If she did, she might not be able to sheath it again this time.

"Can we res', Amma?" she said, plunking down on last stair of a long flight. Fresh blood pooled and ran from under a doorway nearby. Though stone and door mostly muffled it, she made out a chewing sound from within. Hassani moved quickly both to block the sight from her daughter's view with her body and kept half-an-eye on it.

"Not much farther," Hassani said, kneeling down and lifting her daughter's chin. "Can you be strong for Amma and Adda just a little bit longer? Hear that regular rumble from below? That's the waves. We're almost to the docks. You can rest as long as you want when we get our boat."

Avani's pale face screwed up with determination. She stood solidly and nodded.

"I knew you were strong," Hassani said, standing back up. "Takes a lot to-"

The whole stack seemed to lurch sideways. Hassani caught Denault as his bad leg gave out, gritting her teeth as he smashed her wounded leg into the wall.

"Did the entire dome just come down?" he said, rubbing his sweat-streaked face against his shoulder.

"Maybe. Felt more like that came from somewhere below. Jaxe's private harbor?"

"Whatever it was, we need to get out of here," Denault said, swaying as he stumbled a few steps down the next hallway. "The whole stack is shaking. Feel it?"

Hassani did. They hurried as best they could. Her relief at getting away from the bloody door came light a tortured chord on a stringed instrument finally fading to silence.

When they broke out finally into the sunlight, they stood squinting at the sudden brightness. "Where is this ship of yours, Denault?"

Denault carefully set Deia down and raised a hand to shadow his eyes. Anything that could sail had already left, sails and the blocky shapes of barges filling the horizon.

"There's nothing left," Hassani said, slumping against the wall. She didn't want to look at her leg.

"Amma, look. I foun' a boat."

They turned to see Avani sitting on a the slender, ugly gray shape of a ConMach courier. No sign of the crew.

Hassani limped over to it, smiling. "Good job, honey. Only we don't know how to make it go."

Avani lay her cheek against the hot rusty block abutting the paddle wheel. "Its 'live, Amma. I can feel it."

"It's just a boat, Avani," Hassani said, staring out over the waves and judging if they could throw some flotsam in the water and use it as a float to swim to one of the barges. With her bleeding, Denault crippled, and Avani barely able to swim, she didn't like their chances even without who knew what lurking out there in the water.

"What do we do now?" Denault said, dragging Deia's body by the collar.

"How could you disrespect my master like that?" Hassani shouted, shoving Denault aside. He fell hard on the dock, wincing. Out in the full light of day, she saw suddenly realized how gaunt and ragged he looked.

"No disrespect meant," he said between pants. "I just don't have strength left. Barely been eating. When they thought I was dead and you vanished, Jaxe seized everything. Worried if I tried to come back and make a claim, he'd just make the dead stick. You'd never guess we were Kin by the sorts of things he's been doing in the name of fighting the war. I lived off the generosity of Wretches until Jaxe finally had them rounded up a week ago. Can't remember when I ate last."

She reached down to pull him up, feeling his ribs against her arm as she looped it around his waist.

"At least we die together as a family," Denault said as the Stack shuddered. They ducked as large stones splashed down into the fizzing waters, soaking them to the bone instantly.

"I got it goin', Amma!" Avani said, waving at them as the paddle wheel on the courier slowly spun to life.

Rather than questioning the miracle, Hassani helped Denault to the craft then turned and gathered up Deia's body. Denault untied the boat's mooring line as she jumped aboard.

Avani petted the metal block and cooed at it. As ridiculous as it seemed, the wheel churned faster in response and propelled them away from the crumbling stack with surprising haste.

"By the Ascen," Denault whispered as a cracking boom blasted across the waters and a massive piece of the stack tilted away and crashed into the water. "Hold on!"

They clutched at whatever they could on the small craft as a wave twice Denault's height crashed into them. Denault cursed, Avani screamed, and it was all Hassani could do to hold onto Deia and keep herself aboard as the water rushed over them.

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Somehow they remained afloat and all of them aboard. By the next huge chunk of the stack sheared off, they'd managed to put enough distance between themselves and the stony pillar that the waves merely rocked the boat. They stared in stunned shock as the whole thing collapsed.

"What happ'n'd to our home, Amma?" Avani said, her voice tiny and trembling.

"Home is wherever you are, my precious," Hassani said, reaching over and clasping Avani's hand tightly. With Deia's head resting in her lap, she turned and grasped Denault's hand with her other hand. "Wherever we are together, that's home. From now on, that's all we ever need."

Tears ran freely down Denault's face, streaming from eyes lit with a warmth she'd never even hoped to ever see there.

"Home," he echoed, gently brushing tears from her cheeks.

"Home is 'ere," Avani echoed before looking out across the ocean. "But where we goin' now?"

"To take her home," Hassani said, glancing down at Deia for a moment before looking back up at Avani. She released the girl's hand and pointed the general direction the other ships sailed, every one of them drifting towards the Heaven's Spear visible from the hazy distance only as a faint darkening on the horizon. "Can you tell this boat to sail that way?"

Avani leaned her cheek against it, burbling singsong nonesense at it and petting it.

While Avani handled the boat, Hassani took a deep breath, drew her knife, and set to extracting the black barbs hooked into the already-swelling, blood soaked mess left of her leg. Denault moved closer, helped her with precise incisions. He offered her a handful of his robe to clutch as he carefully extracted the hooked barbs.

After they'd cut and prised what they could free and lacking anything else to use, she ripped an inner layer of her skirts free. The bandages came out crude and uncomfortable, but they couldn't do any better with what they had.

That done, she used her hands as scoops, drank some sweet, bubbly water.

"I'm going to rest for a minute," she said, planning to just rest for a moment and figure out a plan. She only woke up when the boat bumped up against something.

A radiant sunset lit the clouds with inner fire. The Heaven's Spear blotted out the far horizon. She swiveled her neck to see the slight pillar of Deia's stack rising before them.

"We're here," Denault said, wincing as he pulled himself to standing.

Hassani tried to stand beside him, but her leg gave out.

Only by using Denault for support could she rise to standing. Once they reached the stairs and she could use the outside of stack to lean against and hold herself up, she sent Denault back to grab Deia's body. The stairs she usually bound up two or three at a time seemed to take an hour with a concerned Avani hovering behind her and putting small hands on her leg or rump to support her every step.

Once atop the tiny stack, she stopped to adjust the blood-soaked bandages while shooting glances out across the waters towards the Heaven's Spear. A hundred ships, barges, canoes, yachts, and anything else that might float sailed towards it. With Jaxe gone, it didn't seem like much safety as everyone who had a 'nail had probably left weeks ago, but where else was left?

She reached into her pouch and produced her chain of nails: Stacks, Libriam, Heaven's Tread, the unknown one the skin gave her what felt like an age ago, and... Terminus? She wondered when that one slipped in, how she hadn't noticed it when she came to Stacks, and who had done it. The skin? An Imminent while she'd been caged and she just now noticed? Fatma stashing a lone 'nail with hers to keep them in the same place?

Snatches of Deia's last words came to her. Three to Terminus, two leave, one to... she couldn't remember exactly. To end it all? Had Deia slipped it into her pouch while Hassani visited her? Three, two, one what or who?

Denault grunted as he reached the top of the stairs, laying Deia's body down carefully and leaning against Hassani. They held each other up for a while, staring at the beauty of the sunset lighting the clouds and sparkling off the waves. Avani slipped between the two and held both of their hands.

"We just leave him here?" Denault said, nodding down to Deia. "That ConMach courier moves five times faster than anything under sail. There's a Thorn in the Spear; sooner we leave, sooner we beat the mob."

"We should put her inside at least," Hassani said, eyes suddenly blearing with tears as she looked down at her master. "In bed. Deia can rest there forever, until the verse collapses."

"Verses don't collapse," Denault said, releasing her hand. "And Deia's dead, won't know the difference either way."

"Gods don't die either, yet I saw one floating in the ocean on my way here and others elsewhere," Hassani said, limping over to the trapdoor and heaving it open. "Lower her down to me."

She climbed down the ladder into the cluttered room, her leg nearly giving out again as Denault lay prone, held Deia under the armpits, and carefully handed her slight weight down to Hassani.

"We come'n down too, Amma?" Avani said, eyes wide as she looked around at the clutter.

"No. I'll just be a moment," Hassani said, tucking Deia into bed and pulling the covers high and tight. If she didn't know any better, her master could just be sleeping, ready to awaken at any minute with a sharp comment, sideways comment, or mocking ambush.

Tears and snot flowed as her mind flitted between memories. Deia had been the bedrock of her life, her own personal stack she could always come to. Deia had been the one who convinced her through action rather than word that Hassani might make something of herself some day, even as a Pale little nobody. Without Deia, she would have been exatly that: nobody.

She kissed Deia on the lips and turned to survey the room a final time. Her eyes halted on the second trapdoor descending further into the stack. Scrounging around, Hassani found a lamp with a bit of watter still sloshing about its reservoir, lit it, and pulled the trapdoor open.

Inside, a darkness barely pushed back by the lamp's dim light.

"Where are you going?" Denault called, poking his head down through the upper trapdoor. "Where does that go?"

"I'm going to find out quick. Be right back." Hassani lowered herself down the ladder slowly and carefully. With a lamp in one hand and one leg a throbbing, stump, she barely made it down the ladder without falling.

Leaning against the worn wood of the ladder, she raised the lamp to look around and gasped, nearly fumbling the lamp as she reached for the Aze Blade.

The room at the base of the tower sat empty but for a single other occupant.

At the exact center, folded in lotus position, sat a form forged of darkness so complete the light did nothing to illuminate it.

The Aj.

Eyes as bright and pure a white as its body was dark creased open and the Aj stared into her.