Semon rose early, slipping on his yellow robe and rising quietly so as not to wake Hue or Sadar. Strygen had never come home the night before, the dusa engrossed with examining the elaborate silk looms in the Seamery at the heart of the village.

Sliding the wooden screen open on the small elder's house they'd been granted near the edge of the village, Semon crept out and slid the door closed behind him.

Misty streamers rose from the rice paddies stretching out in irregular terraced ponds down the mountainside. A few fishermen strode the ponds with spears, wading slowly and deliberately in hunt of the gleaming golden fish swimming among the rice stalks. A mountain breeze rippled through the bamboo and mulberry trees sussurantly, as though the verse whispered a poem to him as he sat staring out at the rustic beauty.

Sitting cross-legged on the simple plank deck fronting the house - the only dwelling made of wood and not a simple woven reed hut - he crossed his legs and sat in meditation. He wished he could stay here forever, especially after what all they'd been through since Heaven's Tread. A cool breeze ruffled his beard, hair, and robe like a playful big brother tousling a sibling.

Here in this place, he could almost forget.

Fire and blood. Screams. Horrors stalking the night: things of naked sinew and gleaming beak, mangy red fur and bladed talons, undulating flesh and misshapen eyes. All-hunting, all-killing. Last night was the first night since they'd escaped from the butchery at Halforth that he hadn't awoken in a cold sweat, peering into the darkness and expecting a demon to claw through the roof, ensnare him with a hooked tentacle, and pull him screaming out into the night.

"What're you thinking about?" a child's voice said from his knee.

He opened his eyes and smiled.

Half-a-dozen children huddled around, all too young to have reached their first Namedays. Gaunt, dirty, stunted little things who, if they wore anything at all, wrapped themselves in insufficient, shapeless clothing made from rough flax. Ironic given the fine silk spools of silk hauled from the village by the wagon-full. A few wore miniature versions of the crude, vaguely-conical rice-stalk weavings the locals called hats. Most hung back, afraid to get too close to him, but a little trio squatted close enough to touch. "I was thinking about the Mother."

"My amma died," one little girl said, looking down at her dirty toes. "The big eel god in the paddies ate her."

"The Ascendant Priests say that's a very holy death," Semon said, wondering if anyone actually believed it.

The girl, whom he spontaneously named God Girl, looked up at him and frowned. "If they're holy people, why don't they go get eaten up by gods then?"

Semon laughed and patted her on the head. "An excellent question. I'll ask the next Ascendant Priest I see. The good news is you have a new Mother now."

"Is she bringing food? I'm hungry a lot."

"Wherever she goes, the Dynasts and Verser Lords no longer feast while the rest of us starve." True in part, at least. If she showed up at some populated verse, the feasting would definitely end and the fighting start. From what he'd heard, however, the Mother's overcrowded One-Eighth hosted about as many feasts as this nameless village likely did. He gazed off into the distance reverently, as though looking through the mist for her. Several of the kids stood and squinted that direction hopefully as well.

Another little boy stood up and shook his head, talking around a mouthful of mud. "She shouldn't come that way. She'll get eaten by the god. I saw it swimming in the inner terraces yesterday. She doesn't need to be any more holy, does she?"

"No," Semon said. "The Mother is the holiest person in the Book, perhaps even the All."

The tiniest girl there looked at him wide-eyed, reminding him of his first daughter who'd died not much older than she. "Wassa diffence tween ta Book and ta All?"

"Everyone knows that stupid," Mud-mouth said. "You're stupid as a Wretch."

Semon had only been in the village for two days, had learned the locals delayed their children's Namedays until their seventh years to avoid bad luck. Most of these young ones had nicknames at best. Any older kids who survived to earn names waded the paddies harvesting rice, picked cocoons with their parents in the mulberry groves, or spun silk in the sprawling Seamery.

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Though she clearly fought to hold it in, the little girl's lip began to quiver and her eyes to water. Semon scooped her up and set her on his knee. "The Mother says no one is useless or unworthy. Not a Wretch. Not a poor, pale menial child in the far reaches of Silk. No one. And to answer your very good question, the Book is the part of the All that the 100th Dynasty rules."

Tiny, as he dubbed her, smiled as he complimented her question. She squirmed off his knee to snuggle up against him. Surprised and unused to the affection, he almost pulled her away. Then he reminded himself he did the Mother's work. If that meant giving some small comfort to this smaller menial then that was his path. He gently rubbed her back and she nestled in tighter.

"Not Wretches?" God Girl said. "You making that up? My adda says only thing that we've got is at least we're not Wretches."

"Perhaps that's all you had until now, but now you have the Mother."

"Where?" Mud-mouth said, looking out towards the paddies again. "Is she bringing food?"

"He already answered that, Muddy," God Girl said, shaking her head. "My adda says if you eat too much mud and your insides turn to mud."

"Hungry," he grunted.

"Mud isn't food."

"Makes me feel full."

"You're the Wretch, not her." God Girl pointed at Tiny.

"Wretches are just regular people," Semon said, surprising himself slightly. He'd been working on smothering his old beliefs with the Mother's for months, but he'd expected it would have taken longer to overcome such entrenched feelings of revulsion, distaste, and superiority over the Wretches. Interesting. He was making progress. "They only have to crawl because the evil Blind Priests and Dynasts force them to do so. Same reason they make us go hungry."

"But the Mother's going to make the bad people crawl and give us their food?" God Girl said, looking up at the small Ascendant Temple perched on a rocky spire in the hills above the village. A small Versal barracks clustered at its base.

"Exactly."

"Is that her just showed up on the striders?" Mud-mouth said, pointing at the barracks.

Semon stood so quickly he forgot Tiny clinging to his robes and almost fell over. He wrapped an arm around her and squinted through the mist to try to make out who rode the striders. A man Inviolate black. A woman whose limbs looked almost as stretched as the striders'. Some sort of Mancer almost certainly. Lastly, a short, grubby, disheveled figure in sack cloth. A slave? Some captured menial?

Regardless, bad news.

"Tell your parents it is now time to do all that we talked of late into the nights when we first arrived," he said softly. "Tell them the time comes faster than we feared. Hurry children, for the evil ones are coming."

He rushed into the house, his old joints aching and legs stiff from the endless traveling, running, hiding. Too many close escapes, too many Disciples cut down or that they'd been forced to leave behind as they fled.

Hue sat up, rubbing at his eyes and yawning. "Morning already?"

"That Inviolate we heard Rega sent is already here," he hissed. He grabbed his good traveling cloak, walking stick, and small pack from beside the heap of thin blankets that had been his bed. "Have you seen Strygen?"

Hue blinked and looked about, still stretching. That the Vibrant seemed to posses no sense of fear or haste certainly proved calming when no danger lurked, but in times like this the man could be an infuriating liability. "Dunno. Maybe out fishing or taking apart a loom again. Maybe off to find that god. I want to try to find it and the locals said it follows lanterns-"

By the time Semon managed to get the babbling Hue dressed and outside, fires already cracked in the Seamery

"Mother preserve you," he said, the blessing doing nothing to ease the weight of what he'd asked the people to do. However poor they were, how much worse would it be when the looms, rice stashes, and groves they worked, and what pittance they could claim as their own lay in ash? He'd heard of the horrors Asta and the other Dynasts inflicted on any who dared to revolt so it always shocked him when people listened to his words, gave them shelter, and rose up again and again in the Mother's name. "I pray to the Mother that word of your courage escapes with us to a hundred other verses and brings meaning to your sacrifices."

"We should probably look for Strygen," Hue said, yawning again and squinting into the drifting mists the sun had just barely begun to burn away. He started shouting out over the rice paddies. "Strygen. Hey Stregen! You there?"

"Strygen can take care of himself. We have to leave."

"But Strygen is the one who knows where the Thorn is."

"Damn you to a Feral, you're right," Semon cursed, looking about for the damn dusa. "He'll have to find us later, we have to-"

Too late.

Three striders trotted into town, one bearing archers, a second bearing a lancer plus a few heavy Versal warriors armored in bronze helms, breastplates, and greaves while bearing long spears and round shields. The third carried the Inviolate and a few more warriors. A ragged line of lighter troops rushed towards the Seamery with leveled spears. Shouts and cries of pain called out, followed by curses. The fires exploded higher.

Semon turned to run, but the woman with the unnaturally long legs loped down a trail leading from the bamboo groves fronting the rice paddies. So much for the only other way out of the village.

She grinned, her jaw distending to reveal too-many, too-sharp, needle-like teeth. When Semon turned back, Hue had vanished. Of course.

"Hue, where are you?" He looked about frantically, but he'd discovered the Vibrant could be anywhere or look like anything. Unless Hue wanted to be seen, he wouldn't be. Semon was alone.

A weary sigh escaped Semon's lips. He fell to his knees, head bowed. No Disciples remained to sacrifice themselves for him, no fanatical mobs thronged to defend him, no more menials stood ready and armed to throw themselves between him and danger. There would be no escaping this time.