Aj despaired.

The Mon,

its hope for aid

in its terrible task,

now sought vengeance

not correction.

Their terrible children

capable in their numbers

and murderous fury

of even killing a god

turned to massacring

the creations

of their once-kin.

With nothing else to do,

the Aj continued on.

The All

continued to bloat

and the Real

to shred.

At first, Aida thought her dis-ease came simply from proximity and witness to the Vale transition. Only as the two men slouched towards her did she realize it was them not the Thorn. Though dozens of other people came through behind them, the pair stole her attention. Subconscious voices screamed wrongness in her head.

Wrapped carelessly in bland robes and wearing wide-brimmed hats which cast their faces deep into shadow, the men seemed otherwise for all initial appearances to be normal. The way they moved, however, just felt... off. As desperately as her mind scrambled to place exactly why, she couldn't pick a single standout detail. Instead, a dozen small quirks and anomalies swung red flags deep in her brain.

How they lifted their legs as they approached. Odd angles in their posture. Barely-perceptible asynchrony between each eye when they blinked. Something strange in the way their chests swelled as they breathed. The faintest of scraping sounds as they bowed to her.

Aida slid one leg back and hummed the deep rumble she had found would set her strings thrumming faintly in resonance. Only Ghillie's calm presence at her side kept her from blasting them off the turtle skull on instinct.

“Wel... ah... welcome to the One-Eighth.” She managed. “Are you refugees?”

“Greetings, Dynast Aida. We come, not flee. Offers bring we.” The darker-skinned one spoke, voice rasping. Something about the way they never quite made eye contact set her on edge, but when their eyes finally met it was far worse. She'd met people with a lazy eye and felt the strangeness of that slightly-off gaze. These guys gave her the same feeling when they looked right at her.

“Offers of...?”

“We are Anticores of the Sect.”

The name sounded vaguely familiar. A pang shook her as she missed Fallon for the hundredth time even if he had been a pompous, pretentious, know-it-all. “Okay. Offers of?”

“Creatures of use. Functionalia. Things bred for purpose.” While the first one spoke, the other turned his head to take in turtle and Tangle, his body shuffling slightly to follow the head when it turned too far. They seemed to ignore which one she spoke to. When one took a turn talking, the other stared about at random things.

Aida took a step back, wishing she could take ten more. “Right. Um, what purpose is that?”

“Life. Growth. Expand. Cooperate.” This they said almost in sync.

“And what do you want for whatever that means?”

The second turned and both spoke in absolute unison. “Woman?”

"You want a woman? Um, what?" She couldn't take being around the two anymore. “How about I take that under advisement, we table this, and you make yourselves at home. Don't shit in the waterholes, don't hurt anybody, don't steal anything, and we're all good. Oh, and don't go near any women.”

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They nodded in a way less head tilt and more bobble as if their skulls were coming lose. Standing as far away from them as she could without falling off the skull, she watched them slouch past to examine the rope mesh slung down to the ground as if figuring out what it was and how it worked.

“Those guys made every hair on my body stand straight up,” she muttered. “My heebie-jeebies have heebie-jeebies.”

Only when they figured out how to descend did she turn to see what else the Vale deposited. Woven baskets full of who-knew what. Small wooden cages containing a bizarre array of critters smeared around the intersections of insect, lizard, crustacean, and octopod. A vaguely-Oriental-looking, dashing, male supermodel in a blue sarong and an unbuttoned sunshine-yellow vest approached, eight-pack gleaming with sweat beside a smoking-hot brunette accenting her curves with a knee-length, black-trimmed silk dress otherwise red as blood.

“Damn,” Aida said, her mouth drying as the man strolled over. The woman sashayed after him, her hips moving like a belly dancer's with each step.

“By your magnificence and beauty, you could only be Dynast Aida,” the woman breathed as she sank deeply and took Aida's hand. The man grinned in an open, relaxed way as he took her.

“By my overly-busy, impolite, straight-forwardness you must be...”

They laughed together, the sound mingling like a song. Aida glanced at Ghillie. “Are they for real?”

The Feral's eyebrow quirked as she shrugged.

“I am Alerestro formerly of Azure and this is my luscious wife Viviana, born, bred, and fled from the meat markets of Berujat.”

Viviana caressed Aida's shoulder as she walked around her, admiring her from top to bottom.

“Nice to meet you, I suppose.” In her distraction, Aida barely noticed taking Alerestro's hand and shaking it. After the briefest of hesitations, he shook back as firmly as if he'd grown up in the Midwest. Viviana instantly reached out and shook her hand as well. “What can I do for you?”

“Absolutely nothing.” Alerestro stepped back and crossed his arms as Viviana completed her circuit about Aida and stood beside him. “We are here to do for you.”

“Do what?”

“So many things the recounting is a thing in itself. For a start, my wife and I can help staff, manage, and even populate your harem if need be.”

“Harem? I get a harem now?”

Alerestro took Viviana's hand and spun her away like the final flourish of a tango, singing out in a stage voice half the shanty town could probably hear. Whenever Viviana took a breath, he'd step in, sometimes literally as they strutted, pranced, and danced about her like Aida'd hit her head and woken up in a Broadway musical.

“Not only that, but we can, apart or in conjunction, make, judge, and evaluate art.”

“Find out forgeries or make you better ones.”

“Act as your council in the courthouse.”

“Council your actors in the playhouse.”

“Play music and sing for your pleasure.”

"Pleasure you in sensation or thought."

“Sing your praises and play your enemies against each other for your politics.”

“Identify several score distinct Lineages.”

“Tell the secrets of a dozen.”

“Perform the secret arts of a one or two.”

“Understand the workings of high to low, from Dynastic courts to Wretch Councils.”

“Stand beside you against foes wielding words or weapons alike.”

“Back you up in contests fair, rig fair contests in your favor, find back doors out if all else fails.”

“Lay beside you at night singing lullabies or wielding the secrets learned on the pleasure barges of Swirl.”

“Secrete people or items of need in or out of any verse.”

“Verse you in the lore of a hundred Dynasts and their dominions.”

Aida didn't realize how hard-up she'd been for any bit of entertainment or levity until these two launched themselves into this... whatever it was. As it rolled on, Aida fell temporarily out of her endless concerns and worries amid the delightful spectacle. For those blessed few moments, she forgot skepticism and wariness, proclamations of exile and outlaw, and the hundred stresses large and small bundled up in the package of being Mother of Exiles and Dynast of the One-Eighth.

When Viviana and Alerestro whirled away from one another, kneeling with arms splayed wide, chests heaving and smiles beaming, she burst into applause. The small crowd they'd drawn joined in with whistles and cheers. The two took it with perfect modesty and grace, bowing several times to the laughing, chattering, impromptu gathering before approaching Aida with easy confidence.

“Don't know what I can pay you or when, but if you're okay with an IOU, then you're hired,” Aida said, giving each a spontaneous hug. “God did I need that, did we all need that! Something to make us look up from our trough of daily toil and misery. Remember how to laugh again! Whatever else you say you do, great, do that too when it comes to it. For now, though, your job is to help scrub away the gloom and doom caked all over us. How long did you two rehearse all that?”

“Rehearse?” Viviana asked, eyes wide.

“You expect me to believe you just came up with that on the fly?”

They gave each other a look so perfectly bewildered it could only be genuine or even more rehearsed than their performance.

“Honestly, who cares? I don't know what stuff you have, but you're welcome to join my personal camp over there. See those canvas-tarped platforms below the curve of the shell and above the Tangle over there? That's supposedly where I live except I'm never there. Take up as much of it as you want.”

“You're most gracious.” Alerestro bowed again and gestured to a pair of bulging leather packs and a pile of parcels. “We will take what little we possess and deposit it there with haste so that we may throw ourselves into your service.”

As they gathered their things, Aida massaged her jaw and cheeks. “Haven't smiled so much in so long my face hurts. Hey, Alerestro, Viviana, one more quick thing before you go...”

The two paused at the edge of the skull and looked back.

Aida crushed her smile, memories of Broadaxe and Fallon hardening the edge in her voice. “I like you already, but if someone hired you to hurt me or my people, I will shred you into tiny pieces with a word and feed you to the hungry critters in the turtle shell that ate my fingers. We clear?”

Viviana smiled and winked. “Worry not, Dynast. You have never met a pair who hold to their convictions and loyalty with such fervor or flexibility as we.”

With a flashed grin from Alerestro, they slipped over the edge.

Aida stared after them for a minute before turning to Ghillie. “What the hell did that mean?”

Ghillie's eyes crinkled in what Aida now knew to be her smile. The Feral punched her lightly in the shoulder, winked, and began again to ascend the Neck again.

Aida blinked. “Okay, what the hell did that mean?”