"Arrest me for what?" The answer wouldn't take Sherlock Holmes to figure out, but Aida asked anyway.

"Conspiracy, inciting Reck's murder, treason, whatever they can dredge up and pin on you." Eth shrugged. "When you control everything you can always find something."

Aida glanced at Fallon, but he hung onto the ropes tightly, eyes closed and lips pressed tight.

"I could fight it in court." Aida looked back towards the Cupola. "I didn't mean for Reck to die, just wanted to scare them."

"They are the Court. Think." Eth poked Aida so hard between the eyes that she lost her balance and would have teetered back off the tower if not for her death-grip on a support.

Suppressing her temper, Aida thought back to her first husband and his many law troubles before he enlisted. "Avoid the summons. If we don't know we're accused we can't go to court."

Eth nodded. "Though you'll still be outcast, blacklisted-"

Aida grinned. "Exiled."

"Along with everyone following you."

"Never liked those Dynasts much anyway. Doesn't sound that bad."

They half-walked, half-floated to the netted bridge cutting through the Sighted Path. Squinting through the acrid, stinging smoke and endless floating river of refugees, Aida located the Thorn again. Jaxe's Ferals and other tiny purple-trimmed figures pushing to encircle it, shoving the surrounding throng back.

Aida's heart sank. "Any other Thorns?"

"Beyond the Irises, yes, but Ocyl's sealing them all."

Indeed, beyond the collapsed Wicker Way, a huge net spread across the Iris. Those snared in it found themselves directed at spear-point down the networks of stairs jagging away from the Iris in all directions, jamming against those still flooding up the overcrowded, steep stairs.

Aida shifted her focus to the ropes, pulling herself from one handhold to the next. Some day when all this was over, she wouldn't mind spending a day floating back-and-forth across and enjoying the weightlessness, but this was not the day. "So I have to get us through somehow."

"Yes."

"Can you tell me how I do it so I don't have to give myself a panic attack trying to figure it?"

Eth sailed past, smirking back at her. "And miss the fun of watching you squirm?"

"Great, thanks."

Anxiety and worry destroyed any hope of enjoying the rest of the free-sailing journey across the heart of Heaven's Tread. At the Wicker Way's center, a large wooden launching-off or landing platform jutted into the rapidly-thinning Sighted Path. Aida paused there to watch over her followers and be sure they made it safely, but her attention continually drifted to the Thorn, who, and what waited there.

Far below, or maybe above now, Wake's forces marched towards the Wicker Way's base. "They've spotted us."

Aliasara rested a hand on her shoulder for a moment, baby still clutched to her chest and family gathered around. Using one hand to pull herself along the guide-ropes threaded about the platform, Aliasara made her way to the edge, hooked a leg around a rope, gazed lovingly down on her child, and sang the lullaby she'd sung to Aida in the bathhouse.

Aida watched through a veil of tears as her friend finished the final refrain, kissed the baby's head, and leaned out into sparse traffic. A gentle shove sent the tiny bundle spinning off towards the hazy, waterfall-clouded far end of Jadeye.

The woman hung suspended alone with her grief, then turned and passed through the caressing, comforting hands of her family. A long embrace with the worn, hard-bitten man who Aida guessed to be Aliasara's husband flooded Aida with guilt.

She'd been so caught up in her own troubles, she called Aliasara her best friend but didn't even know her husband's name. Or any other family member's name for that matter.

When close enough, Aida wrapped her friend in a hug. Fortunately, Aliasara kept the presence of mind to hold on or they might have drifted off on a potentially deadly trajectory.

"I'm sorry again for the flu and that I'm not a better friend. I promise I'll do better in the future. With the friend thing, I mean. I don't think I've got more epidemics to unleash."

Even now, Aliasara managed a smile. She kissed Aida's cheek. "You have my forgiveness, now and always. Don't worry about me. As you've seen, I have a large family supporting me. Focus on your family."

"My family? What family I had is back on Earth."

Aliasara gestured at Aida's followers drifting past, each one turning to smile, wave, or make some ritual gesture about their heads while coughing in the ever-thickening smoke. Amid them, Ryk and Eth clung to the ropes, arguing about something. Aliasara cupped Aida's cheek and turned her back.

"Your family's far larger than you imagine and grows wherever words of your deeds reach. Whenever you doubt what you've done or whatever ill the Imminent says you will do, know that the history of the Dynasty reaches beyond the remembrance of anyone living until even the moldering books in Libriam and oldest Dynast's memory cannot encompass it. Never in that time a Dynast attempted half of what you've already done for us menials."

"Not one?"

"Not one. The Kin from which Dynasts arise are bred apart, fed even as babes on stories of superiority, their exalted place in the Book. Those who live to become Dynasts know nothing else. It has been centuries since the last barbarian Dynast who grew up somewhere outside the Book proper."

"Hallelujah for us barbarians, I guess." Aida gave Aliasara a final hug as Eth gestured impatiently from the far end of the ropes.

By the time down shifted direction and progress moved them down the far Wicker tower, Jaxe's forces controlled the Thorn Cupola utterly. Soldiers stood in ranks encircling the Thorn and sealing it off from the sea of potential emigrates churning about it like Mecca. Meanwhile, Wake's pursuing forces seethed up the Wicker Way's far end now above them.

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"I'm terrible at planning," Aida said as they reached stone again and descended a wide, worn open-air stairway. "I've got squat on what to do after all that time."

"I'm sure you'll come up with something," Aliasara said, rubbing her back.

"I am not." Fallon looked away as if uncomfortable. "You see what awaits us."

Aliasara glared at him. "She's gotten this far. Have you looked below us?"

All about the base of the Wicker Way towards which they descended, thousands of Jadeye citizens gathered, looking up.

"Got this far by the barest thread of luck." Fallon turned towards Aida but didn't meet her eyes. "There is something I need to tell you that shames me. I-"

They turned the last right angle of the stairs and whatever Fallon said after washed away in a wave of cheers and chants. "Mother! Mother! Mother!"

Overwhelmed by the sheer volume, Aida pressed back, Broadaxe and Ghillie immediately stepping in front of her.

The Ferals' proximity reminded her. Aida bounded up a flight of stairs and leaned out as far as possible at the edge, looking up.

"What are you doing?" Fallon hissed, grabbing her arm. "This is no time to change your mind."

"Goldilocks! I saw her before we went up looking pretty bad, but I don't remember seeing her as we crossed the Wicker Way."

"She is a Feral. If she was too weak to keep up she is not worth-"

She punched Fallon, sending him stumbling down the stairs into a pack of Wretches.

"She's human, a person!" Aida shouted, the ring at her throat thrumming. "Can't you get that into your thick head? They're all people: Wretches, Ferals, Valeers, menials, Dynasts even. Everyone."

Another hand alighted on her shoulder. Aida whirled, surprised to see Ghillie behind her.

Gone, she signed. Dying. Task.

"What?"

Ghillie pointed up. Aida stepped to stair edge again, leaning dangerously far out and craning her neck. "I can't see. What task?"

She raced down the stairs and shoved her way through the crowd, ignoring their cries, brushing away grabbing hands, not stopping until she could see the purple-clad figures swarming up the far side of the Wicker Way.

A flame flickered on the center platform.

Her Ferals and the Imminents reached her, pushing the crowd back to give Aida space.

"What's she doing?"

"Buying us time." Eth didn't look up. "The Wicker Ways won't stand if the center is removed. We need go. Now."

"She could cut it and join us!"

"We told her when we first met her she wouldn't survive the Wretch Plague," Ryk said softly, looking intently at Aida. "She chose to die doing something meaningful for a cause that mattered rather than die for nothing."

"Is that why she looked so miserable the whole time? That's cruel!"

As he spoke, the platform above burst into flames, the fire spreading with startling rapidity.

"It's what needed to be done. We stockpiled pitch and alcohol near the Wicker Way days ago." Eth pulled at Aida's arm. "If you want her sacrifice to matter, waiting here until the whole tower comes down on us will just make what she did for you meaningless."

Angry yet powerless, Aida let herself be pulled. "I never asked her to do that for me. I barely knew her. I don't want anyone to die for me."

"You didn't have to." Ryk's fingers brushed the back of her hand. "People make sacrifices for those they love."

Aida jerked her hand away and wheeled on him. "Would she have died or did you just tell her that so she'd do what you wanted?"

"Does it matter now? Done is done. She likely pushed off into the Path; a Reacher will hopefully grab her." Eth glanced among the reachers. Several sat unattended, their tentacles weaving about aimlessly in a way that Aida interpreted as distress.Others lay dead, killed by who-knew what, their long tentacles falling across several blocks. Only a few still did their duties.

Eth grimaced as she looked back to the Wicker Way. "Brace yourself."

"For what? What now?"

A huge roar went up, the crowd's mood changing instantly from chanted devotion to seething rage as they spotted Wretches descending.

"No, no! They're with me!" Aida shoved, yanked, and elbowed her way forwards. Her followers standing between the mob and the Wretches wrestled, punched, and struggled, but inexorably gave ground against the onrushing thousands pouring up the stone stairs.

"Run! Climb!" Aida's shouts vanished in the sea of voices. She drove harder back towards the Wicker Way. "You fickle bastards, they're with me!"

The Wretches scrambled the few stories to the top of the stone, but sparks, ash, and embers floated down from the growing conflagration above them. They stopped not far up the structure's wooded section.

"Clear a path or they're going to kill them," Aida shouted at Ryk and her Ferals.

"If we cut our way there, you will murder to prevent murder," Fallon shouted in her ear. "And this mindless menial horde will turn on us instantly."

She knew he was right, but she didn't have to like it.

Aida clutched the ring at her throat, trying to remember how she'd gotten it to work before. It seemed so clear, so obvious in the villa courtyard. But even if she did make it work, what if it made things even worse?

"How are you not concerned?" Aida screamed at Eth as they struggled forward. "I'm not leaving them behind so if you don't want to die when that tower comes down on our heads, start running or tell me what to do."

"Semon." Eth pointed to the stone stairs where a golden-robed, white-haired, one-eyed man ascended slowly, those above parting at his touch. Blood spattered his arms, head, and robes. Behind him followed a tight grouping of yellow-swathed men and women, heads bowed and chanting.

The highest tendrils of mob broke through the last of Aida's resisting followers, scrambling up the wooden structure. Larger bits of smoldering debris began to fall amid the ash and sparks.

At the last stone stair, the blood-soaked old man stopped, his groupies arraying below him. Above, hostile city folk hurled a few unfortunate Wretches off.

Whatever Semon yelled vanished in the clamor, but his chorus half-chanted, half-shouted his words in unison, their voices stilling the ruckus until Aida could make out the words.

"The Mother stands among us proclaiming those Wretches protected by her hand. Would you blaspheme and kill those touched by Holiness?"

Those closest to the cowering Wretches turned, shouting over each other.

"They brought the Plague!" "It's the Mother's Will!" "The Prophet said they were to blame!"

"The Prophet is dead, a Martyr for the Mother." Grief overcame the man as he raised his bloody arms. "I am Semon, her First Disciple, and I failed to protect her from the Dynasty's assassin. She learned it was they who unleashed this Second Kiss through the Wretches and they killed her for it. Harm those poor vehicles for Dynasty's perfidy no more; they are but tools the Dynasty's hands to be discarded when their unwitting work was done."

Aida utilized the crowd's stunned stillness to push the last bit to the Wicker Way, taking the stairs two-at-a-time. Angry shouts and curses echoed Semon's words.

"Ten times ten times ten Dynasts rule over us yet twice that many Dynastic hands remain idle to aid us even as a thousand times more of our backs break serving them! For what? That they might reap our labor's rewards, sit in idle luxury, and make us all slaves, slavants, or sexual playthings for their depraved cravings?"

More shouts and cries resounded as Aida took the final few flights.

"Only one Dynast stands up for us. Only one raised her voice and with the power of truth hurled the Dynasty back. Only one risks all for those to whom she owes nothing, offers freedom from the yoke of Dynastic tyranny, challenges the false Ascendant Faith speaking an endless refrain serving only to keep us down."

The last bit drew another silence followed by confused mutters. Aida's breath came in gasps as she took the last stairs.

Semon glanced down at her as his disciples parted, his good eye gleaming.

"Here is the Dynast whose Will we serve! Here is that Dynast, come to lead us from the Dynasty's clutches, enter willing Exile, rewrite the Book, and set all to rights. Here, the Mother of us Exiles!"

Cheers erupted as she reached Semon's side, his hand on her shoulder turning her to face the sea of upturned, exultant faces.

"Where was this... when I was down there... trying to get them to listen to me?" she panted between heaving breaths.

"Smile and give them your blessing." Semon spoke softly, through a plastered-on smile. "You must learn when to stand above them and when to go among them. They are ignorant, superstitious, and suffering desperately. If you don't learn to control the flame of their love, it will consume you."

So Aida smiled and extended her hands out like some portrait of the Virgin Mary. These people were whom she served and who would, in turn, serve her against the Dynasty's might. Two families at feud: Aida's immense, starving, downtrodden, angry; The Black Court's small, fractured, rich, powerful beyond reckoning.

"Bring it," she murmured. The people knelt, heads bowed beneath glowing swirls of spark and ash.