Ocyl's strider dropped to its knees so he could dismount.

"Aida." Ocyl bowed as he pulled off his riding gloves. "No one could say your presence doesn't liven up Heaven's Tread."

"I'm not under arrest?" She stared at the still-mounted Ferals and gathered soldiers.

"Under arrest?" Ocyl laughed and threw his gloves into the bushes. "Alas, one cannot arrest a Dynast without express orders from a Black Court Tribunal. I came upon word of a mob threatening my favorite villa containing my favorite guest. Well done handling them, even if you are giving my seamstresses fits."

He glanced down at the torn gown dangling from the shawl Ghillie had found.

"You were waiting?" she said, incredulous. "I faced down a crowd of hundreds alone and you were here the whole time?"

"More like thousands." He collapsed down into a stone bench as if his bones gave out. "I bore full confidence in your abilities and so kept out of sight until it became clear you had no need of me. That 'menial equality' rubbish certainly makes great rhetoric to get people to your Shithole, but you'd better rein it in eventually. Menials need strong hands to guide them or they'll destroy themselves and take the rest of us with them. Keep them weak enough they stay busy keeping themselves alive, but never so much they grow desperate and rise up: this is the fine line every Dynast treads."

"Having just been up close and personal with them, I think you might be pushing yours a bit over the desperate line. And having been a 'menial' myself until recently, I'll agree to disagree with your philosophy." She put her hands on her hips. "Speaking of your philosophy, next time you have a choice between protection and rescue, I'll take protection, thank you."

"Please. With that performance you gave, if they'd taken you, you'd have them eating from your hands by now. You're truly a remarkable woman."

"You're not angry I told a thousand of them to follow me to the One-Eighth?"

He laughed, the sound pleasant even if she felt like strangling him. "Take ten thousand if you can get them there! Though many disregard it in this degenerate age, it remains your right as a Primus to take who and what you need to ready for supplying your share of the Donative. No one will take you to the Black Court over a few menials, especially not me with Heaven's Tread teeming, overflowing, clogged even with menials. They could use a good thinning."

"About that." Aida slumped down onto the other end of the bench. "They may thin out sooner than you think and more than you'd like."

His eyebrow raised and he gestured languidly over the walls. "You mean the strange sickness that has all the Inoculists a tizzy? My Lady Verser of Jadeye ordered armed detachments to follow them to prevent them raising a panic."

"Yes, I mean that exactly." She took a deep breath. "I brought it here on accident. If it's out in the population already there's probably not much we can do to stop it, but you should quarantine Jadeye to keep it from spreading to wherever the Irises at each end go. Shut down the Thorns to keep it from getting into the rest of the Kiloverse. Slow it, anyway, since it's probably too late to stop it by now. No idea how hard it's going to hit, but could be bleak."

"Kiloverse?"

"Yeah, the Book, The All, whatever you call it. Everything I just said and you ask about the Kiloverse?" She stood up and paced. "Your people, hell, everyone in the Kiloverse has zero resistance to this and it still kills people from Earth even with centuries of resistance built up against it. Killed my best friend. Nearly killed me. If Fallon took a couple more days to fetch me I might not be here."

"So, you're saying many will die?" He sat up and plucked a fruit from a nearby tree.

"Yes, very many. I don't know what it'll do but it could be a tenth, it could be half. Maybe more. I'm not a virologist, but it'll be really, really bad. Do you get what I'm saying?"

After examining the fruit thoroughly, he took a bite and chewed slowly. He pointed at the Sighted Way flowing through the core of Jadeye. "Some of them have it? How can we tell?"

"When it's early, you can't. You feel kinda crappy, but it takes a few days before it's enough to stop you from going out and spreading it."

"How does one get it?"

She sat down again, hard. "Cough, sneeze, throw up. Anyone around can get it."

He returned to investigating the fruit. "Then it's too late to stop the spread to the rest of Heaven's Tread."

"Probably, but if you seal off Jadeye you might limit it."

He nodded, then pointed up.

"What am I looking for?"

"The Thorn Cupola. You're saying if I act quickly I can keep it from spreading to the rest of The Book."

"Yes!" She wanted to grab him and shake the importance of this into him. "Everyone who goes through increases how far and fast it will spread. You have to close it now!"

"Do I?" He took a leisurely bite. "Why's that?"

"Why's... why is what? I just told you."

"So it might be like how they say the White Kiss killed, ending nine out of every ten who caught it."

"'They say?' I thought you were there. But yes. Hopefully not that bad, but it was a rough strain this year even for us and we have a lot of immunity."

"And if I act quickly, I may contain it so only Heaven's Tread suffers that fate."

"Yes. Millions of lives could be saved."

He chucked the fruit as he rose to his feet. "Not millions of mine."

"What? Not millions of... are you..." She suddenly understood the destination for his train of thought. "You can't do that!"

Ocyl raised his hand towards the cluster of striders and Janali appeared, carrying a bundle wrapped in white silk. "Yes, Dynast?"

He took the bundle and set it on the bench. "Have the Irises to the Circular Sea and the Greenlands closed immediately. Send word that all other Irises be closed as well until further notice. Make it known across Jadeye that any who wish to travel through the Vale should expedite their plans. Leave by tomorrow or not at all. Dynasts excepted, of course, since I can't legally order them to do anything."

"No, now! You have to stop them all now!" Aida grabbed Ocyl's arm and he turned slowly, glancing down at her hand. Janali froze in place and Ocyl's Porcelain Guard tensed. Aida didn't care.

"I've had people damned for less," he whispered.

"You're damning the entire Kiloverse for nothing, why should I care?" Aida let go, but stayed in his face.

Ocyl waved Janali off, his words shedding their laconic tone for the first time.

"You are new here, fresh to being a Dynast, and completely out of your depth so I'll tell you exactly why I'm going to let it spread. The Ancients basically own Ziggurat. Heard of it? Where the Legions Uncounted base?"

He plunged on without waiting for her answer. "Plus they run the great bank that is Monopolis from which every increasingly-debased bit of currency spills. The Fractious Fraction entice every freemancer and Lineage Master in the Book to Berujat, seeking an edge. Isolates across The Book cheat the Donative, stockpiling currence and watter to fuel their own Mancers or currency to hire Keen mercenaries from Ink while raising their own private Legions in secret. Smaller chapters reject the Black Court's 'corrupt rulings' and renege on their share of the Donative entirely."

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He stared off for a moment before continuing. "Throw in Inro the Impossible and the Sunset Legions he's been gathering for centuries, supposedly to fight an unstoppable entity that's been asleep for more than half-a-millennium. Thread Imminents through all of it steering us towards who-knows-what and you have at least the surface of how things stand in the Book."

Aida struggled to piece his words into a coherent picture. "That doesn't explain why you're going to unleash a plague on them."

"You unleashed this on us, not me." Ocyl tapped her roughly on the sternum. "I've kept my verse out of everything in hopes of saving it from the worst of what's to come when it all breaks. If Heaven's Tread loses half its people while other verses are spared, the usual requests, pleas, cajoling, and bribery streaming from every side trying to pull me one way or the other will cease and, instead, one morning I will awake to find Legionnaires pouring from the Vale from every Thorn to take it from me. That alone could start a war that breaks the Dynasty."

"So you're letting them all suffer with you as an act of mercy to spare the Kiloverse a potential conflict," she said, sarcastically.

"Civil war is coming no matter what I do. The Imminents whisper, muttering in my ear about it constantly. Have for decades, centuries. I can't imagine they whisper to me alone either." Ocyl fell back onto the bench. He smiled and his voice resumed its tired sanguinity. "Tell me, oh Mother of Exiles, if an order of seers endlessly whisper of coming war into the ears of the most powerful Dynasts in The Blook, do they tell the future or make it?"

"This isn't about who runs the Kiloverse, it's about saving millions of lives!" Aida stood and clenched her fists. "You, right here, right now, have the power to spare the people your precious Dynasty lords over untold suffering and death, yet you're going to let it happen so you can be a fucking queen on the chessboard instead of a pawn?"

"I like this 'fucking queen'. I'd love to meet her." What she once thought of as his charming grin now made her want to punch him in the face. "You'll have to tell me more of this chessboard sometime."

He stood and glanced down at the parcel he'd brought as she glared, fuming at her own impotence. "This is for you. A few gifts in parting as I imagine you and I shall both be quite busy shortly. Oh, and since my most recent Imminent informed me she'll be going with you; a warning. Those who know the future know less than those who know the past in many ways. Their predictions and suggestion prove useful at times, but if you aren't careful you'll find yourself only walking wherever they point.”

As if on queue, Eth emerged from the garden, trailed by Rustrovan and a lithe, dark-skinned, pony-tailed young man carrying a long spear. Steel gleamed from the armor enwrapping his forearms and shins, the first steel Aida could remember seeing since the flintlock in Ocyl's Spire come to think of it.

The man carrying said steel also happened to be the most beautiful man Aida had ever seen. She couldn't take her eyes off of him. When his eyes shifted to her, lightning struck.

"Uh oh," Aida murmured, placing her hand on her racing heart.

Ocyl waved jauntily. "Ah, Eth, we were just talking about you."

Without warning, Ocyl plucked another fruit and hurled it at the young man with the spear. Without even looking, the young man stepped aside, then nodded to Ocyl.

"Ryk, smooth as ever." Ocyl nodded back.

"Ocyl, as antagonistic." Ryk's voice clipped as though he sought to save energy by shaving every extra bit of sound off his words. "You shan't be missed."

Ocyl grinned at Aida. "They have no social graces either so I'm sure you'll get along famously."

"Gee, thanks." Her knees wobbled as Ryk looked at her and smiled. She smoothed her shawl and messed with her ripped dress self-consciously, bumping and jangling the brass rings of the pouch on her belt in the process. "The note!"

Ocyl quirked an eyebrow. "Say again?"

She dug around for a moment. "Can you read this for me?"

Ocyl glanced at the wrinkled, torn sheet with something like disdain, but he ran his fingers over it. "It's worn, but I think it says 'Pearl Harbor', wherever that is. Some place of great wealth from your verse I'd imagine."

"Holy shit." Aida staggered to the bench. The assassin outside her apartment was one thing since Eth could have sent the crazy woman for all Aida knew, reading her mind was another. Eth gave Aida a classic teenage "Duh!" look.

"Yes." Ocyl frowned at her as he handed it back to her. "I thought you said you couldn't read it."

"I did. I can't. What? Why?"

"The second line says 'holy shit.' Another element on your chessboard? I greatly look forward to our next meeting when you teach this game to me."

He bowed and Aida flipped him off with both hands, destabilizing her shawl. She scrabbled to secure it back around her shoulders as she rose from the bench, speaking quickly. "Oops. Uh, thank you, Ocyl. I appreciate your hospitality even if I think you're an evil asshole who treats people like animals and engages in biological warfare with people you aren't even at war with."

"Let's talk about it again in a hundred years when you've actually ruled a verse, shall we?" Ocyl walked to his strider amid a cloud of Porcelain Guard.

"Not likely," Eth grumbled as he left. She approached Aida to stand too-close. "You believe me now."

Not a question.

"I didn't disbelieve you before, exactly." Aida thought about Ocyl's obscure comment about the future and past as she watched him mount up and ride away. "One more test."

Eth motioned for her to hurry. "I know the answer already so get on with it."

Aida frowned, but held her hand behind her back with three fingers extended. "How many fingers am I holding up?"

To her surprise, Rusty showed his crooked, brown teeth and held up three fingers.

"Um... what?"

"I told him before we got here, obviously." Eth tapped her foot impatiently. "You'll insist we do it again, so get on with it."

More hesitant this time, Aida put her hand behind her back. One finger. "Now?"

This time, Rusty held up four fingers. Aida thought for a moment, then changed her one to four and held them up feigning surprise.

"There, see?" Eth waved an arm at Rusty. "Can we get on with it now?"

Interesting. "Not psychic then, only know the future you'll see?"

"What?"

Realizing she'd spoken aloud, Aida shook her head. "Talking to myself. Oh, did you-"

"None of your business," Eth flushed furiously.

"-pack Mr. Floppers?" Aida finished, grinning.

Eth changed the subject quickly. "I already know it happens, but I suppose this is where I inform you I'll be coming with you."

"You know, huh? I'm tempted to refuse just to prove you wrong."

"No one refuses an Imminent, no one with any shred of intelligence anyway and you have a shred." Eth scoffed.

"Gee, thanks."

"And the answer to the question you're about to ask is: you don't, so far as we know. If you had someone following you around recording everything like I do-" she gestured at Rusty "-then maybe you'd remember I said you're the cheat piece. You enter the board, knock over half the pieces, then leave the original players to clean up the mess. Or, with a different metaphor: you show up, rip the spine out of the Book, then leave right as the pages come raining out. Don't let it get to your head, though; there are worse fates than death."

With that, Eth stormed off, trailed by Ryk who winked and smiled. Aida gave a smile much larger than she'd intended back.

"If I may," Rusty said, his voice scratchy and worn out as he looked. "What is it you were going to ask her?"

"How do I die?" Aida stared after the bizarre teenager and her smoking hot bodyguard. Even her Ferals stared after him dreamily.

"Ah, very good." Rusty jabbed a stylus at his omnipresent slate as he wandered off.

Worse fates than death Aida could understand. One pass through the nursing home's 'Memory Wing' where the demented and Alzheimer'sed slowly unraveled from the inside out or a visit to her great grand-nephew lying in a vegetative state after the motorcycle accident could convince anyone.

Riccaro moved into her peripheral vision. "Ahem."

Aida sighed. "Yes?"

"The rest of your visitors await an audience." He looked her up and down with disapproval. "Shall I have them meet you in the villa courtyard after you've had time to change?"

"Change?" She let her the shawl fall from her ruined dress 'on accident'. "Oops. Who else's here?"

Riccaro suddenly obsessed over the stitching of his robe. "Dynasts Jaxe, Wake, and Reck. High Parser Maxem of the Directory. Then various riffraff seeking favors of some kind or another."

"Fine." She spotted Ocyl's parcel as she turned away. "Not like a plague's about to sweep through and wipe everything out or some civil war about to kick off or anything. Let's play Queen for a day! Or whatever the 'cheat piece' would be in chess, I guess... a checker? I came all the way here to be a checker it looks like."

"Very well." Riccaro sniffed as he bowed. "I shall have them attend upon you as soon as you are as presentable as you can manage."

Waving him off with a regal flick as though he was but a speck of something dirty, Aida squatted to unfold the parcel. Gasped.

"Ocyl, you certainly keep things interesting."

A new dress. A long sword in a gold-traced scabbard and belt. Most precious of all, her long-lost toiletry bag and pink 'Well Behaved Women Rarely Make History' baseball cap.

After flipping the hat on and examining her toiletry kit to be sure everything remained within, she lifted the dress. Something fell out of it into the bushes.

Leaning over to pick it up, Aida froze.

A mask of real human skin stretched over a perfectly-fitted clay mold with the eyes and mouth cut out. A jagged scar along the jaw line. The grimmest of masquerade masks and the face of her would-be-assassin from the Spire.

She looked up to see Ocyl nod from the back of his strider, mouthing "as promised" as he rode around the corner of the villa. With shaking hands, Aida lifted it only to have a second face fall out from beneath it.

Braid. The Valeer's murderer.

Aida stared at it with horrified fascination and a sense of deep disquiet.

She never told anyone about the man or even mentioned that any of the gang remained unaccounted for. Maybe Ocyl possessed a ruthless efficiency and managed to hunt down every last remnant. Maybe Ghillie knew and he got it out of the mute Feral somehow. Rulers throughout history set examples like it all the time; a show of force to prove his brutal effectiveness, avenge her lost companions, and reassure her of her safety in his realm.

That's what it meant. He couldn't have had a hand in it. What would he gain?

No, it had to be her first idea.

Probably.

Possibly.

Maybe.