A path formed

in Aj's sleeping mind.

With it,

sorrow.

Salvation through destruction.

Aj's eyelids fluttered

as internal battles raged.

This could not be the way.

Reinforcements to its watchers poured.

Long-feared yet barely believed,

Aj's awakening their worst nightmare.

Ozone and salt, crying sea birds and gliding lizards diving for fish, trawlers and deep watter extraction platforms drifting the bright blue waters under a golden sky, the sea fizzling and popping with the energy welling from current-rich deeps, brightly-colored ribbons and banners snapping from long poles: home.

Hassani breathed deep. Her clenched shoulders and gut releasing as the trolley rolled the long wire from Tallmarket towards misty Broadcliff growing large on the horizon. Though crowded by the Stack's standards, the long, narrow car retained several empty seats, feeling spacious and free after the dark, intense pressure of the Black Court and the Vale's stark contrasts.

Like every city in Stacks, Broadcliff burrowed into a huge column of rock jutting up from the endless ocean. Unlike some stacks, however, Broadcliff's width allowed a proper above-ground city to sprout from its top complete with a few precious gardens and parks. Most stacks rose so slender that residing within one felt like living in a large tower, not a small city.

Families crowded at the railed platforms at the trolley car's front and rear to take in the view. Only a few jaded merchants, sailors, and old hands filled the seats inside to smoke, converse with their fellows, play at coins, or nap. Dull thumps on the ceiling pounded a mass heartbeat as the linemen marched their endless loop: grab the tarnished bronze wire. March to the back. Plod to the front. Repeat. Release quickly as the wire passes through a line anchor point affixed to airy nothing by the Anchorites. Repeat until trolley glides into linehouse at the far end.

Despite her excitement to see Avani and deliver the tiny wind-up strider she'd bought in Tallmarket on the way through, a pang of sadness twinged at missing so much of the girl's life.

The car lurched to a halt in the dark, cool linehouse cavern hollowed out of Broadcliff's walls. The linemen scrambled over the side, dropping door ramps to bridge the gap to the stone floor. A waiting crowd pressed forwards to meet friends and family or took stairs down to the channel in which the trolley hung to unload twine-bound cloth or canvas parcels, clay urns, and woven baskets.

After grabbing her worn leather travel pack from the battered brass racks slung beneath the dangling trolley, Hassani hiked the wide stairs spiraling up to sunlight. The sun's fat, golden orb cast everything in a radiant tint. The crowds spilling out into Broadcliff's foot-worn streets chatted, danced, drank, and sang, days deep as they were into Jaxeday festivities.

In her youth, she'd looked forward all year to the boat-carvings, feasts, and Fishhead games, the dances swirling with girls in their pretty dresses, the boys scrubbed clean and combed, children's sarongs flaring as they ran and played, nights packed with sailors' tales of leviathans and storms, catches so full they'd torn nets, shipwrecks barely survived, and mates lost to the roiling deeps.

Once rare and exciting, the festivities now felt quaint and nostalgic.

The locals' faces fell as Hassani approached, eyes dropping. Even the burliest sailor or lineman stepped quickly aside as her formal gold-trimmed-black vest and functional robes cast auras of sobriety, respect, and fear. Dark looks and subdued grumbles followed behind her.

She was no longer one of them. The realization landed hard, accompanied by grief and a vaguely-unpleasant sense of superiority.

Stepping into a narrow alley to slip into less formal clothing made her look less an outsider even if she still like felt one. Without the Inviolate uniform many still recognized her, shifting uncomfortably, turning away, dropping their voices, stiffening up.

Whatever her feelings, the streets of Broadcliff still felt as familiar as her own skin. It took no time at all to find her way to the ugly, high-walled Skeinry. Rust-streaked, rough iron plated the outer walls, the hunched cluster of harshly squared-off metal-paneled buildings. An ugly, brutish contrast to all Broadcliff's architecture with its rounded, blue-gray stackstone and airy arches. A mast thrusting up from the Skeinry roof branched off a hundred haphazardly-angled poles. Each sprouted a dozen wyres with each wyre vanishing an arm's reach from its pole as it faded into the Vale.

A spiked, rust-flaked beam hung menacingly above the gate. Beside it lounged a Keen in marginally-less-tarnished armor, the woman's skin and hair faded to unhealthy gray by the power humming faintly from her heavy armored suit. All about the Keen, colors flattened from the wall's corroded steel and the street's bluish hue to dull gray.

Hassani idly wondered how long it would take for the color to return here if the Keens ever abandoned this post. Days? Decades? Ever?

A scattering of Kin, Verser agents, or merchants successful enough to do business cross-verse hustled past the bored Keen. Hassani returned the woman's coldly-superior look, raising her Inviolate Vial from the brass chain about her neck. The thick black air inside it hungrily consumed the light nearby. At sight of it, the Keen straightened to attention.

"Inviolate," the woman said in the flat, dead tone that passed for the Ink accent. Since visiting Ink, Hassani had found no other verse competing so strongly with the Black Court or Vale for bleakness.

Completely bypassing the civilian line shuffling slowly towards the message window fronting the first building, Hassani pulled open the worn door leading into the smaller, taller second building supporting the mast. Waiting for her eyes to adjust to the gloom, she tucked her cane under her arm and took in the busyness churning within the Skeinry's heart.

Layers of scrolls and thickly-stacked brailles spilled from small vestibules, heaped upon racks, and covered the mismatched desks whose stained, cracked wood seemed out of place against the wall's bleeding black-gray. Crumpled papers littered a floor scattered with tabby cats napping, grooming, or stalking the Stacks' ubiquitous lizards amid the mess.

The acidic reek of cat urine, wispy pipe-smoke trails, and ozone hints laced the air.

A few squint-eyed skeiners moved about, casting sharp looks in Hassani's direction before returning to work. Long pipes hung from their lips, veiling the room in a rank haze. No one had ever been able to tell her what it was that made all Skeiners dart and twitch like startled birds. The paper cuts on their fingers or wyre cuts on their lips needed less explanation.

An elevated platform rose at the room's center, spiraled by a wire-mesh stair. Hundreds of wyre ends dangled from the ceiling above, marked by wooden tags multivariate in shape and color all set dancing and clinking by the draft Hassani let in. Transmission rooms always made Hassani think of inverted, metal flower gardens. A gray-skinned, wild-haired woman wearing a many-pouched skeiner apron stood atop the platform, a wyre pressed tightly between scarred lips.

Hassani squinted in hopes of seeing the vibrations Skeiners read from the wyre, but whatever message it carried trembled too fine to see.

The woman jabbed pointed stylus into paper tacked to the board held in her other hand. When finished, she released the onion-skin-thin sheet to flutter down onto the heap overflowing the frazzled scribe's desk below.

As Hassani maneuvered through the room towards the man that looked to be in charge, the Skeiner on the platform released the first wyre. It recoiled upwards. Licking a fresh cut on her lip, the Skeiner snatched another tog with long tongs, pulling it down with one hand while digging into a frayed wicker basket for a blank sheet with the other.

Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

Hassani waved her Inviolate Vial at the head Skeiner to get his attention as he skimmed through a sheaf of tattered papers. Like most others she'd met from Ink, the gray-skinned man wore thin breeches and a shirt buttoned along the side. He also wore one of the floppy, small-brimmed hats passing for fashion in Ink.

"Inviolate." His tone indicated annoyance rather than the respect or awe she'd grown accustomed to. Skeiners were like that.

"Anything for Hassani Jaxekin?"

"Hmmm..." The hum continued as he perused a long wall pocked with cubbies, his fingers rubbing the worn braille below each. "Ah, yes."

Hassani's heart fell: they reserved black paper for brailles direct from the Black Court. Unfolding the dispatch revealed a short scatter of punched holes. Her heart fell further as her fingers glided across the faster, cruder form of brailling.

Even the bright blue skies and warm sunlight outside couldn't pierce her gloom as she left the Skeinry.

A few stacks and trolley transfers later, she stared unseeing at the World Spear stabbing endlessly up across the horizon. Once upon a time, the impossibly-tall stack filled her with wonder, but now she barely saw it as she mulled her orders. In its shadow, Jaxestack's slender spear looked tiny and fragile. Overhead, the linemen grunted and thumped as they strained to slow the carriage flying down the line towards the narrow stack. She didn't envy their work hauling the carriage back up the wire.

The Jaxekin's private stack gleamed like ivory thanks to the endless, thankless work of the whitewashing slave crews. Even the linehouse had earned a fresh coat since she'd departed, brightening up the previously-dingy space. She stood among the handful of other travelers as the trolley swayed to a stop. Numerous marks of Kin among the locals: black skin and an abundance of worn swords.

After gathering her things, she walked the familiar tunnels while nervous flutters jangled against an excited tingle. Winding the narrow halls and tight stairwells, she worked her way down to the apartments carved, like most dwellings in Stacks, out of the stack itself. At least Jaxestack's slenderness offered every home broad windows and cozy terraces opening to brilliant views drifting with cloud and glinting wtih sunny seas.

No lock adorned the polished cedar of their door. Jaxekins all supposedly supported each other; who would steal from family?

The door opened to a small entrance area, light beams piercing through holes bored strategically through interior walls. Her husband's fine robes, weathered jackets, and functional working aprons dominated the pegs near the door. Touching the brightly-woven overdresses and jackets scattered among his things brought tears to her eyes.

Had Avani gotten so big already?

"Is sommun here?" A tiny, pale face peeked around the corner. "Amma!"

Hassani shed bags and parcels, catching and spinning her porcelain-white three-year-old in her arms. They fell to the fringed entry rug laughing, crying, hugging, and kissing until the little girl squealed and tried to push away.

"Back already?" her husband said coolly from the foyer, an eyebrow quirking as he approached. A carving knife slid into his work apron's front pocket, wood shavings powdering his dark hands, forearms, and finely-tailored tunic sleeves.

"Don't worry, I won't be long." Hassani tucked Avani under her arm as she rose on tiptoe to peck him dutifully on each cheek. Avani broke from her grip, the girl's white hair flying in all directions as she roared ferociously and mock-mauled Hassani's leg.

"I never worry about you, my dear, not with the host of worries I manage on my own here while you're away." He disengaged smoothly, gliding towards the kitchen and wiping his hands on his apron. A gold glint caught the sunlight. He'd replaced the silver marriage earrings she'd given him at their wedding. "Refreshment?"

"Nothing, thank you." Hassani scooped Avani up again, tilting her head as the girl twirled Hassani's hair.

The apartment had changed in her absence: new sculptures in bland tones scattered on tables, gloomy paintings placed over overpriced, overstuffed furniture. He'd managed to make the once-cozy, whitewashed rooms drab and dreary as if to spite the blue skies and golden sunlight. "I see all my efforts to make it homey washed away in the last storm."

He poured water from a gleaming copper pitcher into a porcelain cup. They hadn't owned either when she'd last departed.

"It seems my new salary has also been busy here while I've been away."

"My currency is tied up in the fleets." He gestured towards the sitting room and the arched doorway opening to a balcony over the small harbor below. "We're finishing a new dipper that will harvest watter from much deeper than ever tried before. Consider this use of your funds an investment in our business here so we can finally entertain formally."

"Can I show you da skitter Adda gomme?" When Hassani nodded, Avani squirmed to the floor and ran towards the back rooms.

"Sure, honey." Hassani smiled. Her warmth faded as she turned back to her husband. "You got her a pet?"

"You know I can't say 'no' to her." He shrugged, walking into the sitting room. Only circles of elbow and face remained visible through the wall. "I figured it would keep her entertained and out of sight when I'm working. Besides, it was a gift from a Sect breeder we've begun supplying. Didn't cost us anything. Unnerving fellows, that Sect lot."

Hassani gathered up her belongings and heaped them near the door. Her cane rattled into the urn by the door holding her husband's dress sword among the accumulation of battered blades she'd accrued in the years since their marriage.

"I thought we said we were going to wait until she was older to get her anything?" Hassani followed him into the sitting room so only a high-backed chair remained between them. A glance into the dining room revealed the source of the wood shavings: a half-built ship model.

"Not 'we said.' You said." Her husband followed her gaze. "The dipper we just launched. If it works I need a model to show potential investors from other verses."

"Don't try to change the subject. 'I said' because depending on what type of skitter it is, they can bite or-"

"Lookit, Amma!" Avani wobbled in. A fat, furry, arm-length caterpillar curled up in the girl's arms. "Is a 'piller. See how sof' it is? Adda got it to protect me f'om mons'ers."

Hassani knelt down to pet it, long hairs tickling her palm. "It's very nice, dear. Have you fed it?"

"Oh no!" Avani eyes went wide. "Adda, where's the 'piller pail?"

"Its food lives in the cellar, remember, love?" Her husband's face broke into the smile he spared only for his daughter. "Watch the stairs. If you squish it you might not get another one."

"Ab'be careful, Adda." Avani weaved through the kitchen towards the cellar with all the concentration a child her age could muster.

"I can't believe it's been almost a year since her Nameday. She'll be four soon." Hassani stared after the girl, wonder tinged with guilt as she rubbed the braille on her arm.

"She must seem to grow faster when you see her so rarely." He leaned against the archway to the veranda, his clothing rustling in a breeze Hassani barely felt from where she stood. A long silence fell between them. Screeching birds, hissing lizards, and cursing sailors accompanied the rumbling crash of waves thundering against Jaxestack. Avani held a one-sided, sing-song conversation with her 'pillar in the cellar.

He approached the fireplace mantle, lifting a long pipe from a stand and stuffing the pipe bowl full with pungent herbs pinched from a small, engraved box.

"Something new again?" she said, searching for a neutral topic.

"Yes, fresh shipment from Tallmarket last week." He sprinkled iode into the pipe bowl and crushed the powder with a finger-length bronze rod to ignite it.

"Can you not smoke that in the house? It stinks up the place for weeks."

"Why should you care? Can't remember the last time you were here for weeks." He gazed out to sea as the breeze blew smoke across the sitting room. Hassani gritted her teeth and stormed away before she said something she'd regret. He'd like that.

In the entry, she spotted dark silk jutting from one of her parcels and remembered. Carrying it back into the sitting room, she untied a string and hurled the finery to him. "A gift for you."

Dark skin flakes fluttered from it as it flew. The tiniest flecks glinted like gold dust in the slanted afternoon sunlight. He caught the robe, held it up to examine it.

"Deai's stupid training finally pay off? You kill someone for these?" He shook it out, frowning at the fluttering skin scraps drifting to the gray throw rug. "Someone with a plague the Innocculists couldn't chant away perhaps? Attempting to be rid of me now?"

"A skin." She slumped down into one of the new chairs. It would have taken considerable work and creativity to make the seat less comfortable.

"A skin..." He thrust a finger into the hole punched through the robe, interest lighting in his eyes. "A skin as in a hollow?"

"Shed from a molt, yes. Serving a Dynast. They're real it would seem. It waited for me in the Vale with an offer."

"Waited? In the Vale? What offer could be worth that risk?"

She pressed her hand against a belt pouch, feeling the shape of the unlabeled 'nail she'd found in the molt's empty clothing. "It hinted at irregularities in the elevation of a new Dynast."

"That's not an offer."

"That's exactly what I said. I think it may have offered immortality in return for-"

"Don't be ridiculous. Marrying a Dynast's Kin doesn't give you Dynast's Blood."

"I know-"

"Besides, no one can Partake until their hundredth year. Even Avani knows that by now."

Smoke drifted into her face, acrid and bitter. Hassani stood, flushing at his patronizing tone. "I know all that, I'm just relaying what it said. How are you making its stupid idea my fault like you make everything my fault?"

He frowned. "You must have missed something."

"I missed nothing! Anything that happens and your first answer is always my incompetence. You forget I was the youngest-"

"Youngest Assessor the Stacks have seen." He bobbed his head and rolled his hand as he said the words in sync with her, his tone bored and tired. "Anything that happens and you bring that bit up as if it means anything aside from your ability to walk through the doors our marriage opened up."

"Of course! All my study, training, and effort has nothing to do with it. Thank you for reminding me again that your blood ties to Jaxe hold sole responsibly for my every success." In a few strides she reached him, snatched the pipe from his mouth and hurled it over the balcony.

"Damn!" She sucked on a scorched finger.

"Still the childish outbursts. I'd hoped your promotion might grow you out of those." He spoke blandly, walking to the railing to watch his pipe tumble to the waves. "I'll just get another."

"Great! Head to Tallmarket and buy more of this with my salary too." She snatched the boxes of iode powder and whatever he'd been smoking off the mantle, hurling both past him.

He could easily have caught either, but instead watched them sail by. "If only the Black Court could see you now."

"Amma, you're not gonna throw my 'pillar away, are you?" Avani wailed.

Hassani whirled and ran towards her, arms outstretched.. "Oh, honey, no! I would never-"

Avani pulled away, wailing and racing to her room as fast as her little legs would carry her. Ever since the girl had started walking, her timing proved consistently terrible.

"Good thing you came home," her husband said dryly. He twirled a smaller pipe, mocking her.

"You won't have to suffer me long." She stormed to the door, dug her weather-beaten cloak out from underneath layers of her husband's clothing piled over it in her absence, and snatched her cane. "Already have orders from the Skeinry."

"Oh? Where and what?"

"That's Black Court business, none of yours." She suppressed a smile as he ground his teeth.

He drifted over, failing to hide his curiosity. "If it affects our family business, then it surely is."

She shrugged into her cloak and patted his cheek. "I'll be sure to let you know if it does."

"At least tell me where you're going next in case I need to send you an emergency wyre," he said reasonably. Her husband was nothing if not reasonable.

"Libriam for a start." She cracked the door open. "Where after depends on what I find."

"You're not going to see that useless old man now, are you?"

She shook her head. "What makes you so sure she's a man?"

"What makes you think he isn't?"

"I'll be sure to let you know if I find out." She pecked his cheeks dutifully.

He minimally mirrored her motion. "You're just going to leave me with our daughter again after all this time gone?"

"I'd think you'd be used to it by now. Would you really rather I lived here again, go back to how things used to be?"

He regarded her flatly. "You really want me to answer that?"

"Me neither." She yanked the door open, stepped through, and slammed it in his face.

Shame stirred as she walked away. Not at the shambles of her marriage, or not entirely, but at the deep relief flooding through her as the door passed out of sight behind her.