With the answer

it hunted for an age

finally at hand.

Aj stirred again.

On its form,

ten-thousand alert eyes fixed.

The Black Court faded, replaced by the Vale.

Hassani swayed on her feet for a moment after the shift, tucking her cane under her arm as she pulled the uncomfortable press of echoseer shells from her ears. Indentations dimpled her flesh after wearing them so long, her ears tender where the shells drove the tiny silver loops of her earrings into her flesh. Undoing her bun and shaking her head sent long hair tumbling down her back, normally blond but harsh white here in the Vale.

She brushed her lips across the brailled bumps on the back of her hand, reading Avani's name from them like a prayer. Her longing to see her daughter again came as no surprise, but she never would've expected to crave regular people, animals, and even weather after the unchanging, unnatural deprivations of Black Court and Vale.

Her musings halted abruptly, her senses snapping to alertness; a figure waited for her, hunched in the shadows not far from the Black Court's Thorn.

Biting back a startled cry, Hassani studied the form as she controlled her breathing. Close-fit, sharply-cut male robes. A wide-brimmed hat tilted low over a dark face. Everything mottled in the jagged light cast by the dome of thorns spreading overhead.

She arranged her hands carefully on her sword-cane, ready to twist the blade free. "I hope you haven't waited long or we'll both be greeting the Mourne shortly. If you're waiting for someone else, I'll leave you to them."

"I will accompany you if you're not opposed." The figure spoke in a barely-audible, scraping whisper. It rose to its feet in a strange unfolding motion, uncrumpling more than standing. "You are Hassani Jaxekin?"

Shifting to full combat alertness, Hassani struggled to present a calm exterior. "Company is welcome in the Vale, for novelty if nothing else. You are...?"

Even the way it walked bespoke strangeness, the legs crinkling and folding as they lifted. Hollow. Her suspicions about its origins shifted towards certainties.

In spite of the dry, shallow raspiness of its voice, Hassani caught humor in its tone. "If you think I'm a wealthy Vale suicide-by-Mourne or an utterly impractical bandit, sorry to disappoint. My concerns are more practical and far reaching."

Having assembled a rough sketch of how and what was going on, Hassani mentally scrambled for who and why.

"Practical enough to send a skin rather than speak in person." She paused at the edge of the Black Court thorn-dome, rummaging her belt pouch for the two small crystal shapes of her Valeer's fingernails.

Its gloved hands made barely a pat as it clapped. The whispered echo of a laugh accompanied a tip of its hat. "My molt was right in choosing you. Well done. "

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Keeping the skin in her peripheral vision, she drew the pouch and slid both Valeer's 'nails out, running a finger over their crystal faces and edges. Brushing the brailling etched into the first told her Black Court, so she drew the other and held it before her, turning until the irregular, pure-white wafer within became visible.

"This way. You also go to the Stacks?" She kept a safe few strides between her and it, one hand ready on her cane. "Out of curiosity, do I call you 'you'? I've never dealt with a hollow before so you'll have to pardon my ignorance of proper etiquette."

"Call this vehicle what you will." Its gestured up and down its body, arms folding into themselves at the elbow. "Or call it nothing to save time wasted on pleasantries. I meet you in this place in this way with a question and an offer."

"Simpler means exist, surely." Hassani gestured at the endless, wyre-strung bramble. "This seems overly elaborate and risky. What if someone else departed the Black Court before me?"

"I knew it would be you," it said blandly, as if time and location worked so reliably in the Vale to make such a statement casual.

"Elaborate why I'm worth all of this then."

"The Dynast."

"Singular? Here I thought there were a thousand. Is that the question or the offer?"

"The barbarian, Aida, the one whose Partaking you observed before you left. What was your impression?"

"My impression was confused by these." She touched the knobby echoseers resting on her collar. "But this Aida was an ignorant savage."

The Vale distorted her voice more the louder she spoke. "She knew neither language nor custom and fought the Partaker as though it was trying to murder her! Her Seneschal proved himself incompetent, obstructionist, or both, her interlocutor indifferent, the whole ordeal a farce mocking the Dynasty's most sacred ritual."

Only with it all out did she realize how deeply the Partaking disturbed her. In her agitation, she missed the skin's whispery voice and strained to track its words.

"...and though few in the circles of power high enough to know of such things cared to do their duty as Witnesses, those who did share your outrage."

She struggled to regain her emotional footing, covering with a question. "And your originator is one of those outraged or merely a servant of such?"

"One can serve in many ways, whatever one's place in our tangled and knotted hierarchy," it non-answered. "But questions of my service are insignificant compared to yours."

"Your creator Witnessed the Partaking, knows who attended, dispatched a skin to meet me precisely when I emerged into the Vale, and yet needs a freshly-appointed Inviolate scarcely known beyond her verse to somehow set The All to rights?" She let her normally carefully-controlled language evidence her disbelief.

"Precisely." It stopped and tilted its head. "I hear the Mourne calling. Does your 'nail still point to the Stacks?"

Though she gripped said crystal so tightly her hand it hurt, she'd forgotten about it entirely. She lifted it, turned about. Sure enough, they'd missed a branching somewhere. She redoubled her pace back the way they'd come.

The skin's grotesque, boneless run proved even more disconcerting than its walk. When it caught up, it spoke again, its voice the same flat rasp while Hassani's chest heaved with the exertion.

"You are chosen precisely because you are fresh to the Court, not yet fallen into any of the pits sunken deep into the Dynasty's workings by the weight of those so bloated with power their bulk drags the rest of us down with them. Here's your opportunity to not only do what's right, but what's necessary. A chance to serve everyone. All that needs be done is the job you've already been assigned."

"That's all a bit melodramatic, isn't it?" Hassani said, the skin's words rubbing raw a buried pile of worry and doubt she'd done her best to repress. "Besides, I haven't been assigned anything yet."

"Your assignment is the same as any Inviolate's: serve the Black Court, protect the Dynasty, uphold the Chant, root out corruption. I simply suggest you dig deeper into the travesty you've witnessed lest it grow from anomaly to regularity. What I ask is Earth."

"Earth? Is that a place or person?"

"Earth is the answer to a question few even know how to ask." It nodded as if deep in thought, neck folding in; a turtle pulling back into its shell. "Resolve the riddle of Earth and you perhaps find a door out of the rotting edifice entrapping us all."

She frowned as they reached a fork in the path, a glance at the 'nail confirming their way. "You seem to know something of it, why don't you handle it? My resources clearly pale compared to yours."

"Less than you think. We're all slaves here, even those who rule." It shrugged. "Perhaps the rarity of an uncivilized Dynast blows things beyond proportion and my originator's concerns are for nothing. If my worries prove unfounded, it shouldn't take long for one with your capability and newfound authority to ascertain the truth."

"You said something about an offer but all I'm hearing is requests and rumors. You propose I do the duty I've already accepted; your offer is...?"

"Everything I now possess." It bowed deeply. "And also..."

She returned its bow instinctively, presenting an opening for it to leap.

Cane sword twisted free, her bronze blade punching through the skin before she even had time to think. Off-balance at the lack of resistance, she stumbled and the clothing enwrapped her. Whatever animated the thing faded a heartbeat later, its slight weight sliding off in a heap of cloth and thick tatters of dark, dried flesh.

Perhaps it was a trick of her imagination, but she heard a final whisper in the skin's crinkling collapsing as she stumbled back, heart racing.

"...immortality."