Identifying the shop proved little challenge even without Fallon. The thruming single string on a huge harp announced the place by ear alone, the gleaming brass instrument affixed on the roof of a tarnished green bronze-and-glass domed structure plunked at the heart of a circular turnabout where Europeans might put a fountain. Aida's royal strider knelt among a dozen-odd of its kin, though none nearly so large or so ornate.

  Only when Aida climbed from the carriage did she realize how utterly useless she was without Fallon. While the driver and servant boy stared at her, she stood in the street surrounded by Ghillie and a ring of strider Spartans. People stopped, stared, and pointed, trying to ruin her first buzz in decades. After what felt like an hour, Fallon arrived as passenger on a military strider.

  Aida looked up from peering through the smokey glass at the obscure clockwork devices within as Fallon stormed up to them.

  "Oh good, my people have arrived." She raised a shotglass from the carriage in salute. "What took you so long? I could have walked here in the time it took you. Did you stop to drink your sorrows away on the way? Drop an exposé to the paparazzi about the barbarian Dynast whoever 'they' is forced you to work for?"

  He ignored her completely, opening the door, stepping in, and pulling it closed behind him.

  "Don't mind him, he's a bit grouchy since I said you were people, too," she told Ghillie as the girl scanned passersby.

  Ghillie, of course, said nothing. Aida followed Fallon inside.

  The heat inside the glass dome hit hard as a greenhouse or dry sauna. Whoever ran the operation took full advantage: the scratched and scratched brass shelving reaching towards the glass overhead absolutely overflowed with plants. By the aroma, herbs represented heavily among them. A scattering of bright flowers served as pleasant accompaniment.

  Sharp contrast with the verdant green growth: strange gadgets gleamed on glass-domed marble pedestals while cheaper contraptions heaped brass racks around the periphery. Finely-dressed individuals strolled through in clusters, their kimono-analogs hanging open to allow frilly lace waterfalls to spill out almost to the floor. Most kimonos bore tails or trains dragging on the clean, worn tile of the floor, shepherded by servant boy swarms all uniformed in long tunics and sandals. Their masters examined the gadgets, huffed from ornate snuff boxes, and raised their noses in that superior air few outside nobility could match.

  Parties intersected, gathered to exchange gossip, passed by one another with snide remarks at the others' expense, or drifted past busy studiously ignoring one another. None approached Aida and her small coterie. Her bloodstained dress and bandaged fingers earned skeptical looks and remarks most likely to the tune of "the people they let in here nowadays." Maybe the alcohol hit harder than she thought, but it took considerable restraint to repress her giggles at their disdain and avoid making faces or attempting a few cartwheels to really shock their sensibilities.

  The overwhelming majority of those she labeled "nobles" were black or at least dark-skinned. Their serving boys, in contrast, trended pale to tan at darkest. Something clicked in her mind as Aida realized she'd seen similar patterns on the streets without realizing. She felt uncomfortable about it all even if it seemed to be in her favor here. One of her favorite Martin Luther King Jr. quotations came to her: "I have a dream that one day little black boys and girls will be holding hands with little white boys and girls."

  "In more universes than one apparently, brother," she mumbled to herself. "That shit's not going to fly in my goddamn verse."

  Fallon escorted a four-foot-nothing, besmocked, balding fellow her way. The man regarded her with those broadly-spaced eyes that gave their owners constantly-surprised looks. Bushy eyebrows, a minimal gray-white fringe around his bald pate, greasy fingers, and a seemingly-unconscious worry of teeth against his lip rounded out the image.

  "Dynast," Fallon said with absolutely no affect, staring at her hips as he spoke. "The proprietor, Optomime Venner."

  She wondered whether Optomime was first name, title, or occupation. Given Fallon's mood at the moment, she decided against asking.

  The man placed his hands out, palms down. She only had to stare for a few seconds before she remembered to put her hands atop his. As their hands separated, he nodded and talked excitedly, plucking at his eyebrow with one hand as the walked and pointed at various devices with the other.

  They trailed along behind, Fallon ignoring her glances during Venner's rare pauses for breath. She was finally about to order Fallon to translate when he spoke to the man, shaking his head repeatedly as Venner gestured around. Aida didn't need a translation for this. "Just the strings, thanks," repeated until the man stomped off.

  He stopped next to a human-head-sized glass sphere adorned with the world's thinnest crown of twined silver and copper. Or some slightly-off color cousins of silver and copper anyway. A thin chain dangled from the crown, ending in a pinky-tip-sized waxy glob. A smaller sphere beside it sported a choker featuring a coin-sized ring densely crisscrossed by thin harp strings; like Fallon's but in necklace not implant form.

  Another long discussion followed, terminating only when Fallon pointed out the window at their royal strider, their escorts, and the First Thread circling Aida's brow.

  Venner finally snatched the circlet off the globe, the dangling chain swinging and tangling. He stood before Aida impatiently, finally kicking her in the shin and motioning downward when she didn't read his mind.

  "Ow." She dropped to one knee to avoid further such prompting. A strange coronation followed in a similar brusque pattern with Venner jamming the circlet onto her head and driving the waxy bit painfully into her ear then clamping a bit of supporting wire to her earlobe. He unclasped and dropped her crescent necklace then struggled with getting the choker to clasp until she almost strangled. Only when she physically fought him off did he relent, tinker some length out of it, and clasp it again. Still tight, but she'd survive.

  "Not much of a people person is he?" Aida found her old necklace and re-clasped it. It dangled just below the choker's ring.

  Face scrunched and squinting, Venner examined his handiwork. Once satisfied, he babbled at her, then Fallon, then marched off with a throwing gesture over his shoulder.

  Fallon stared after him. "He is the Grandmaster of Optomimes, best in the entire Book. Most have to be slavanted to do a fraction of what he does."

  A panicked moth trapped against Aida's eardrum fluttered desperately to escape. She toppled over clutching her head and only Fallon's restraining hands prevented her from yanking the waxy bit out by the chain. With her hand clasped over it, sounds still set it off, but the sensation gradually muted from utterly-insufferable to merely-maddening.

  "Jesus Christ on a stick," she muttered when he finally let go. "How do you handle it?"

  Compared to the ear bit, the coin-sized ring pressed against her throat with its harp-like strings barely tickled as it resonated with her words.

  Fallon appraised the ring critically. "They take a while to work fully but we will have you out of this dismal language and into something more civilized in no time. Best to wait here a while where it is quieter before we go out into the din. Would not do to have the barbarian Dynast of One-Eighth Shithole embarrassing herself in the street."

  This time the vibration felt merely strange. Either her body adapted quickly or the thingamajig he'd stuffed against her eardrum modulated itself somehow. At her throat, the ring shook at every slight sound she made and other times randomly besides.

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  "What's it doing?" she said when she trusted herself to stand.

  He snorted. "I look like an Optomime to you? How should I know how it works?"

  That answered that question anyway.

  "Speak, um, whatever the other language is so we can see if it's working."

  "Ebonese. I suppose we might justify further delay. It would hardly make a good impression if Ocyl met you whilst I still had to translate all your idiocy and nonsense into the civilized tongue. At least this way if you are going to be an embarrassment you can do it on your own."

  "Gee, don't hold back on my account, tell me what you really think."

  Hesitant at first, then growing in speed and volume, he complied. As they walked about the shop-cum-greenhouse, Aida entertained herself imagining up purposes for the myriad devices scattered all about. The tickle against her ear shifted to a flutter, then a throb. Without meaning to, she daydreamed as they meandered among the wealthy shop patrons. Eventually she moved to people watching, then into reveries of the last time her body looked this good.

  The days after World War II, recently widowed, a young child to care for, an America booming and optimistic yet still riddled with racism, inequality. A time in her life packed with hope and hardship both, when she-

  "-and I end up stuck with some useless, ignorant Wretch like you. All that work and family piety, gone. One little indiscretion and they assume my future is full of such. They bring in some secretive cerebrist to slavant your ugly language into me, banish me to hold the hand of a hundred-year-old idiot who can barely-"

  "Hey, I'm listening you know." At her throat, the ring thrummed like Gloria's cellphone on vibrate. "Hey, I'm listening. I understand!"

  "Good. It seems to be working finally. Maybe now I can permanently stop verbalizing your hideous language, find someone to get it out and put my memories back." Fallon walked quickly towards the doors.

  "They slavanted you? Like the Valeer?" She hustled to catch up. The Valeer staring into her eyes as they made Vale transitions flashed in her mind unbidden, staggering her into a metal rack. Her throat caught, eyes watering.

  Fallon ignored her, calling to the green-silk-clad driver who lounged against the royal strider's long neck, busy smoking a pipe and chatting with one of their Spartan bodyguards. The beast seemed to be napping. The woman glanced at them, said something that made the Spartan laugh as he jogged away towards his own mount. She climbed the knotted rope leading to her saddle astride the royal strider's neck. As Aida, Fallon, and Ghillie reached the carriage, the beast stirred awake. It snorted and scratched its chin on the paving stones, ignoring the driver's curses and thwacks with her long pole.

  This time Fallon didn't give her the opportunity for her to turn him down, scrambling up the carriage stairs and throwing himself into the back corner in a frantic rush. Aida climbed up as ghost-like Ghillie took a position on the brass railing. The boy shoved the stair-door closed behind her.

  As the beast groaned, staggered to its feet, and began to walk, Aida pulled back the velvety curtains, slid the wooden shutters open, and tried to listen. She focused hard to resolve the streets' clamor into language. Fallon hunched in the back corner, gripping the cushions as though preparing to resist an attempt to bodily evict him. She thought about it. Poured another drink instead.

  "What can I expect from this Ocyl person? I saw Nixon once at a distance when I visited DC, but I've never actually met anyone more powerful than a mayor."

  She sighed as he hunkered down into a cross-armed sulk. "We both know I can order you."

  "If I disobey will you discharge me from your service?"

  "I'll track down that cerebrist you mentioned and have him slavant you into believing you're my pet hamster," she snapped back, glancing out the window at a giant, weather-worn statue of an ugly woman suckling a lizard at one naked breast. A fierce-looking bird of prey held the other. An incense haze rose over fruit bowls and flower bouquets on its pedestal. She wondered if it was a god or saint or something else entirely.

  She involuntarily covered her breasts just thinking about exposing her nipples to an eagle's beak or lizard's teeth. Nursing two infants was painful enough, thanks.

  Below, a pack of people clothed in filthy rags scurried about a parked wagon, unloading it at a market stall while a portly man in embroidered robes rushed about shouting and swinging a cudgel. They ran on all fours like animals. By their smooth gaits such was their usual means of travel.

  When she turned to ask about them she found Fallon wide-eyed. When she remembered what she'd said last, she smothered a smile. She doubted he even knew what a hamster was.

  "Those people in rags running around on all fours, who are they?"

  The ring at her throat shook violently, startling her.

  He didn't notice, his words rushing out as if to wash her hamster-slavanting threat away in a wordy flood.

  "Wretches are the scum building up in a garden pond, the garbage piling up at the city's edge." Distaste coated his words as if even talking about the subject made him ill. "They are the human refuse that cleans up the literal waste piles. An unfortunate necessity."

  "Gosh, they sound terrible. Doing useful work no one else wants to do? Why don't we just kill them all?"

  Fallon nodded sagely, missing her irony completely. "It's been tried, but they always come back. I suppose they have their uses: collecting unwanted babies, absorbing useless cripples, the diseased, and the maimed into their fetid ranks, handling corpses, sewage, and other unsavory jobs no one else will do."

  "Bet it helps keep the menial's chins up too," Aida said bitterly. "Might be ignorant, inbred, impoverished rednecks that everyone else kicks around, but at least they ain't no niggers."

  This time Fallon understood her tone if not her words. After a moment staring at her, he shook his head. "Amazing how often understanding the language still imparts no understanding of what someone else is saying."

  "You and me both, kid." Aida refilled her drink. "You were saying before about Ocyl?"

  "I am no child, thank you very much," Fallon said primly, crossing his hands on his lap. "But yes, Ocyl commands one of the wealthiest and most powerful verses in the Book. Only Monopolis, Ziggurat, Sunset in a round-about way, Libriam due to its function if not power, and maybe the Master's Markets of Berujat can match Heaven's Tread for preeminence. Most of those-"

  "Wait, wait. Hold on a sec." She spilled her drink as she swung it to cut him off. "How many verses are we talking about exactly? In the Book, in total. A dozen?"

  "Exactly is challenging." He looked up, squinting, lips pursed. As she watched, he toggled from grumpy malcontent to haughty pedant, a change she never thought she'd look forward to. "The number grows on occasion as the Vale Walkers uncover new verses while on even rarer occasions some catastrophe cuts off a verse or-"

  "Guesstimate."

  A long pause. "A thousand."

  "A thousand? One, zero, zero, zero?"

  He nodded.

  "It's a not just a Book of Verses, it's a Kiloverse." She waited for him to appreciate her cleverness. Her second husband would've laughed. As an engineer rebuilding Europe after the War under the Marshall Plan, his zeal in converting her to metric dwarfed even her third husband's evangelical strivings to reform her to Southern Baptist.

  Leaning back against the stiff cushions, a strange, simultaneous sensation of vastness and smallness sank in. A thousand different universes? She'd only been to three, four counting Earth or five if you counted the Vale. Even 'only' dozens would've stretched her brain, but over a thousand?

  When she tuned back in, he'd shifted to some talk of Assessors, Inviolates, Versers, and other things that drowned her comprehension in a jargony sea. She waved him off, earning a disgruntled look. Glancing outside, they neared the massive base of the gleaming, faceted obsidian tower twisting up to pierce the emerald spheroid.

  "I don't think that's all relevant now. We're getting close to his Spire thing so back to Ocyl."

  "As you wish." He bowed at the waist stiffly. "You will be hard pressed to find a Dynast as ancient, powerful, connected, or independent-"

  "That doesn't sound too bad."

  "-nor one so capricious, frivolous, unpredictable, and narcissistic."

  "Oh."

  Outside, some sort of tumult began, growing gradually until it reached cacophonous proportions: shouts and cries in the street. Dogs barking. People falling over themselves trying to run away. Others laughing at them. Everyone looking up at something she couldn't see. She almost fell out the window attempting to peer up around the strider's body.

  "What the hell's going on out there?" She glanced back at Fallon but his selective hearing ratcheted all the way up as he studied the cup he'd barely sipped at. She rolled her eyes. "Sulk on your own time. Tell them to stop this thing so I can see what everyone's all worked up about."

  He glanced at the window incuriously, but that at least acknowledged he heard her. With aggravating slowness, he reached towards a small panel she noticed only as he opened it, undid a latch, and pulled several times on the golden cord dangling within.

  Swaying slowed, then ceased as the creature drew to a halt, groaning as it lowered itself towards the crossroads beneath it. By the traffic working its way around them, royal striders held the right of way. By the angry curses, shouts, and a stray bits of garbage lobbed their way, few agreed it should be so.

  Outside, the boy scrambled for the door, but she shocked him again by figuring out the release mechanism and shoving it open herself. She patted him on the head as she climbed out to dispel his worried look then slipped into the crowd with Ghillie instantly by her side in a hyper-vigilant state not inappropriate considering the recent drastic reduction in Aida's Feral count.

  "Oh my god. That's... amazing." Aida arched back, shielding her eyes against a sun plaza blazing opposite them. At her throat, the ring vibrated even after she stopped talking.

  Fallon climbed out next to her, shading his eyes with one hand as he looked up. "Ah, I see."

  "What is it?"

  "You are correct. That..." He breathed deeply. "...is a god."

  want to be in her place.

  Next chapter: Hassani digs into the mystery of 15,000 spears.

  Characters and terms

  Characters (alphabetical)

  Aida: MC.

  Aj: a long-slumbering, powerful being which annihilated Inro's Sunset Legions. Also "almost destroyed the Dynasty single-handedly six-and-some centuries ago"

  Avani: Hassani's daughter, an albino

  "Braid"; a thug who accosted Aida in Jadeye

  Deai: Hassani's swordmaster, renowned for killing a Paragon

  Denault: Hassani's husband. Shipwright, Kin.

  Ghillie: a 3rd Feral who wears a primitive Ghillie suit. Carries cross between kunai and acupuncture needles

  Fallon: Aida's Seneschal

  Hassani: Inviolate agent of the Black Court

  Inro: Dynast formerly ruling Sunset

  Jaxe: Dynast of Stacks. "Young", wealthy. Also has "the Pale" (an Albino)

  Ocyl: Dynast of Heaven's Tread, powerful and unpredictable

  Parathas: Aida's skinscribe. Also a mountaineer.

  Venner: Grandmaster of Optimimes in Jadeye, "best in the entire Book"

  Rega: Inro's sister

  The Fallen

  Feral: a bone-masked woman of violence (Feral) in Aida's service. Knife wielder. Killed by Ghillie in Jadeye.

  "Toothy": leader of a group of thugs who accosted Aida in Heaven's Tread. Killed by Feral in Jadeye

  Valeer: a mentally challenged, unkempt individual able to manipulate Thorns. Died in Jadeye to "Braid".

  White Spiral: an older Feral in Aida's service. Archer. Died protecting Aida in Jadeye

  Terms (alphabetical)

  All, The: ?

  Anchorites: individuals capable of creating anchor points affixed to nothing.

  Annalis compound: sprawling complex in Libriam, heart of The Book's bureaucracy

  Ascen, The/The Ascendant: divinities "watching over every verse"?

  Assessor: census-taker

  Aze: swordmaker?

  Black Court: a realm of pure darkness. Also, those who rule there. Where Partaking happens.

  Blood, The: imbibed at Partaking, transforms one into a Dynast if they survive

  Book of Verses, The: the1,000 verses ruled by the Dynasty. "Kiloverse"

  Broadcliff, Tallmarket: cities in Stacks

  Century Thread: additional threads appearing elsewhere on the body every century a Dynast lives

  Cerebrist: creator of slavants

  Chant, The: some sort of law in the Dynasty?

  Chant of Innoculation: chant supposed to protect against disease

  Crowmen: buy corpses to return them to life and service as rotters

  Cupola Thorn: the main Thorn in the city Jadeye in Heaven's Tread, a stone dome built over it

  Currence: something valuable inside old coins?

  Current: some form of energy that powers "artifices"?

  Dynast: individual given rule of a verse if they survive Partaking. Ageless and hard to kill. Regenerative. Sustained by "the Blood"; no food or water necessary.

  Dynasty: the Dynasts who rule the Book

  Ebon: founder of the Dynasty and Black Court

  Ebonese: the language of the Book

  Echoseer shells: devices to allow one to "see" in the Black Court

  Feral: bone-masked bodyguards who require the essence of their master to survive. "Damned to Ferals" as a form of capital punishment. "the damned", "damned to a Feral"

  First Thread/Primus: a fresh Dynast/the first luminescent silver thread etched into their foreheads.

  Gates, The: ?

  God, A: ?

  Gonist: organ dealers and traders

  Heaven's Tread: a verse "inside a hollow rolling pin", host to Jadeye, the largest city in the Book

  Ink: home verse of the Skeinry and Keens

  Innoculist: doctors?

  Inviolate: agents of the black court who "serve the Black Court, protect the Dynasty, uphold the Chant, root out corruption."

  Inviolate Vial: carried by Inviolates as badge of office

  Iode: substance that ignites when crushed

  Iris: the giant portals leading between one cylinder of Heaven's Tread to the next

  Jade Eye, The: the "giant emerald" at the middle of Ocyl's Spire in Jadeye

  Jadeye: the largest city in the Book and major trade hub, in Heaven's Trade

  Jaxeday: holiday in Stacks with boat carvings, feasts, games of Fishhead, dances, and storytelling

  Jaxestack: a whitewashed stack on Stacks home to Jaxekin

  Keen: Ink warriors wearing impossibly-heavy iron armor whose power source drains color from the area about it.

  Kin: descendants of a Dynast

  Kiss, The: ?

  Letch: sect bred leech-like creature designed to stop bleeding on wounds

  Libriam: a swampy verse home to the Annalis, heart of The Book's bureaucracy

  Lineage: ?

  Linemen: workers on the Stacks trolleys who pull the cars along the lines

  Logos: ?

  Mancers: ?

  Menial: common folk

  Molt: person able to shed skins (see skins)

  Mon, The: ?

  Mourne, The: something dangerous that lurks in the Vale, "the why we do not tarry"

  Nameday: when children are named

  Ocyl's Spire: the tower home to the court of Ocyl, Dyanst of Heaven's Tread

  One-Eighth Shithole: Aida's verse. Unfortunately. A desolate place home to volcanoes and a giant dead turtle

  Optomime: gadgeteer?

  Pale, The: light-skinned people, conquered by Ebon during the founding of the Dynasty

  Paragon: warrior who can see the future

  Partaking: the ritual that creates Dynasts (or kills those who try). Performed by some unknown, large creature in the Black Court.

  'pillar: fuzzy Sect-bred giant caterpillar pet

  Reachers: massive, Sect-bred creatures that direct traffic and rescue unfortunates in the Sighted Path in Jadeye

  Rotters: sack-clothed, crudely-masked 'zombies' uses as pack-beasts and simple laborers. Created/sold by Crowmen.

  Royal Strider: giant striders which carry carriages of the wealthy slung underneath them

  Sect, The: breeders of useful insectoid- and/or sauroid-like creatures

  Seneschal: chief servant of a Dynast, bear permanent strings allowing them to speak and understand any language

  Sighted Path: the zero-g road down the center of Heaven's Tread

  Skeinry: iron-plated communication centers where Skeiners translate vibrations sent by wyre from other verses

  Skin/Hollow: animate skin of a molt able to move, talk, and share snatches of its experience with its molt

  Skinscribe: individuals brailled with lore, walking libraries

  Slavant: an individual who "loses much" to be implanted with an ability

  Soresearer: ?

  Stacks: An ocean verse comprised of tall pillars jutting up from the seas. Trolleys run on long ropes between them "affixed by Anchorites to airy nothing"

  Striders: "stilt-legged gray-skinned insect-lizard"s used as fast mounts, large enough to carry several riders

  Strings: worn or implanted wire devices that translate speech

  Subterrane, The: ?

  Sunset: the verse where Aj was 'contained', formerly protected by Dynast Inro

  Sunset Legions: Inro's Legions, wiped out by Aj in Sunset

  Surgon: person able to remove organs

  Terminus:a verse?

  Thorn: huge, curling thorns which Valeers can use as gateways to the Vale, doorways between verses. Grow into verses over centuries

  Thrum: guide in the Black Court

  Unkillable Swordsman: a Paragon killed by Deia long ago

  Vale: "The Place Between". A realm of high-contrast black and white full of thorns and Thorns.

  Valeer: people capable of activating Thorns, barely functional of anything else

  Valeer's 'nail: crystals containing wafers that allow travel within the Vale to specific verses without a Valeer

  Verse: a pocket universe or world

  Verser Lord/Lady: agents of an individual Dynast who rule part of a verse at the whim of their Dynast

  Watter: an energetic liquid

  Wicker Way: towers of stone, wood, and rope that connect opposite far sides of Jadeye

  World Spear: an immense stack on Stacks

  Wretch: untouchables forced to walk on all fours, "the human refuse that cleans up the literal waste piles"

  Wyres: lines run through the Vale between verses that allow communication between