Hassani knelt, laughing, and swooped Avani into her arms, spinning amid the flowers. Her pale little darling pecked her cheeks with dozens of kisses. The soft hairs of the 'pillar about the girl's neck tickled Hassani. She didn't care.

  Adonissian surprised them both by enveloping them in a hug. The sweet, masculine scent of the beautiful young man pushed Hassani towards delighted delirium. When Avani ran off to play amid the bright, flower-rich meadow, Hassani and Adonissian held each other first tenderly, then passionately. Collapsing to the soft, fragrant bed of the meadow, they lost hours to passion.

  “I always knew this is what you did while you were gone.” Denault's voice carried no anger, merely disappointment. Hassani clutched for clothes to cover her nakedness but her fingers scrabbled on cold, bare stone. Denault loomed over her, garbed his finest robes as he stared pitilessly down at her. Blood welled through the rich cloth. His face wore a thick layers of swelling and bruise.

  “I didn't. I swear Denault. He's a Phero and I-”

  “Doesn't matter now.” Denault turned away, taking Avani's hand as the little girl turned and cast a doubtful look at Hassani.

  Avani looked up at Denault. “Amma a bad pers'n?”

  “She killed me,” Denault said, leading them towards the edge of the cliff they walked towards unseeing. “She killed your 'pillar too and she'll kill you if she finds you.”

  “Denault, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to!” Hassani cried. She tried to stand, but shivers overcame her and no amount of effort could get her even to her knees. “Denault, there's a cliff there!”

  “I won' let Amma kill me! I'll hide an' Amma won' ever find me.” Avani lifted her face with childish resolution and confidence.

  “Hate me if you want, but don't step off the edge!” Hassani cried, her voice breaking and cracking in her thirst. “Wait. Don't!”

  The cliff began to rock and tilt as she clawed her way after her family. She tried to scream as her husband and daughter walked hand-in-hand off the cliff, but it came out a bare croak.

  Hassani awoke to gentle swaying. Heat radiated on her face. Hard wooden poles barely padded by a thin blanket pressed painfully against her hips and back. Groans, cries, shouts, and catcalls echoed off stone, distorted by gusting winds. Crustiness sealed her eyes and it took a moment to scrape it away before she could see.

  Sheer red cliff walls striated white and pale green. A ribbon of brilliant blue sky high above spilling warm golden sunlight. A foul sewer scent wafting up on the breeze. Wooden cages dangling on ropes, most containing a slave or three. A hundred cages. A thousand. More.

  “Berujat,” she croaked, relieved and despairing both. “Avani.”

  Naked but for the thin blanket, she lay in a cage barely big enough for her to stretch fully across the diagonal. She'd lost weight and hard-earned muscle. Blisters spotted her sunburnt skin. Her hair hung in densely-matted tangles. A long, crusted scar ran down from her right eye and others traced her forehead, jaw, arms, and chest. Scabs and discolored spots dotted her arms and face, many of them tender. A hundred splinters. It took several minutes before she remembered where all the wounds came from.

  Ziggurat. The Aze blade. Flying chunks of shattered gate, splintered weapons, bone shards from Legionnaires ripped to shreds with a single swing. She'd only used it once, but longing to use it again tugged at her. If only she had it now!

  A sudden frantic search of her cage set it swaying. She clutched the bars as nausea churned her guts. Pressing her eyes closed kept her from throwing up until the feeling passed. The physical unease faded but mental disquiet swelled. She'd lost everything: Avani. Denault. Deia's gift of the Aze blade, her Inviolate vial, her 'nails, her echoseers. Clothing, dignity, freedom. Family. Duty. Everything.

  Her entire world shrank to a single blanket, a cracked clay bowl swarming with flies, and the wooden bars of her cage. And a tender mass of swelling and scar tissue on her shoulder. An owner's brand, its exact shape untraceable in the puckered flesh. A sudden longing for Adonissian made her want hurl herself at the bars.

  “Move more like that, been covered by that blanket too much,” a hoarse voice croaked from somewhere above her.

  Shielding her eyes from the sun with one hand, she squinted up. A heavily-tanned, filthy, naked, bearded man squatted in a cage a ways off and above her. Staring at her greedily. Hand down near...

  Hassani darted her eyes anywhere else, flushed, and wrapped her blanket tighter about her.

  “Naw, naw, don't do that! Hey!”

  Hassani turned her back to him. “You should be ashamed of yourself, watching a sick, naked woman sleep.”

  “Hmph. Looked better when you got here anyway even with all the blood was all over you.”

  “Sorry to disappoint.” Hassani huddled down, staring out at the horrible canyon packed with dangling human flesh for the Small Master's Market and the Shackle Pens. She'd heard of the Canyon of Cages and even walked the Market once, but never could she have imagined this.

  The dangling cells ranged in size from tiny containers barely big enough to hold children to heavy constructions capable of holding an extended family. Each hung on ropes affixed to a heavy wooden beam. Each beam anchored to the cliff via a brass-hinged mechanism allowing someone to swing the arm in towards the cave mouths and stony ledges carved out of the rocky escarpment. The foul smell rose from the drizzle and patter of excrement raining down from the cages or sluicing down ravines from the city above to cake the canyon floor far below in endlessly-oozing filth that overwhelmed the shallow river below.

  Offhand remarks overheard on her previous visit as to the shape of the Canyon of Cages now it made sense. One cliff face angled out such that the canyon's profile narrowed at the top rather than the bottom, the angle allowing placement of lower cages out of the direct downward path of higher. Hassani estimated that she hung two-thirds of the way up; she couldn't imagine the smell for inhabitants of the cages barely off the canyon floor.

  She squinted, then recoiled in horror. A series of cages jutted from the canyon floor itself, the slow river of waste flowing through the bars. Tiny figures clung to the roof bars. Just imagining a minute in those cells made her gag. Much less hours... days. A fate worse than death in full view of ten-thousand slaves dangling above it.

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  The man above her blew his nose and hollered at her. “I'm done now, no thanks to you. Hope you're more a talker than the two above me. Old woman been there longer 'an me and went blind. Other lost his tongue for somethin'. Easier work for the Feralers if they send him that route, eh? Probably won't bother since he's too old.”

  Hassani didn't dignify the man with a response. She pulled her thin, grimy blanket tighter and dug deep for some nugget of hope or will or determination to see her through this.

  “Avani's out there, could be in one of those cages right now,” she muttered, squinting and scanning cage after cage. Surely with Avani's unique coloration, she'd be easy to spot. As bad as Hassani's sunburns were, she couldn't imagine how Avani would be faring here. The thought broke her heart.

  “Whacha lookin' for?” the man chirped. “If ya got anything snuck away up somewhere could trade it up the line see if we can't find it.”

  She ignored his endless stream of questions and chatter for what felt like an hour, the man pressing on until the futility of such an effort finally became clear to him.

  “Sorry iff'n my handlin' myself at yer expense rubbed wrong, no play at word intended. Not much to do 'round here might have noticed.” He stood up as much as he could and bowed his legs wide. “Fair's fair iff'n you wanna use my visage to help yerself at it.”

  “You are a vile creature.”

  “Hey, you're talking to me!” He turned and looked up the curled bundle of an old woman in a cage above him, the woman's long gray hair fluttering in the warm breeze. “Hey, crone! She's talking to me.”

  The crone stared off into the distance with her blind eyes, mumbling to herself and clutching what looked like a ragged doll.

  “What did you mean 'up the line'?”

  “What I get if I tell you?'

  “What do you get?” Hassani looked about her incredulously. “I have nothing. Even if I did I couldn't get it to you and even then I wouldn't.”

  “I'm Johine, by the way if manners somethin' to ya,” he said, reaching his hands through the bars palms down before laughing and waving them around like a madman. “And you got two things at least, both worth somethin' here.”

  “I'm not showing you my body again.”

  He snorted a laugh. “Quick one, you are. Good thing you got a second thing then.”

  She sighed and shifted, hunting vainly for a more comfortable position in the too-small cage.

  “Do I want to know? Please don't smile like that, I can smell your teeth rotting from here even over the stink from down there.” Her emphatic downward gesture sent him into rolling paroxysms of laughter.

  When he recovered, he wiped his eyes and nodded. “You sound like some one too fancy fer a cage. Maybe why you got a perch so high up here. I just got lucky.”

  “My name is Hass...” she trailed off, realizing mid-word how dangerous a name could be if Rega still sought her. She doubted it, but she'd heard enough rumors of Rega's relentless, rigid attention to detail to maintain vigilance.

  “Hass? Short like a Dynast, eh? Must come from pretty 'toity stock. No worries of runnin' into one of thems here so guess it's safe. Maybe you know more than most folk here then.” He stuck his head between the bars to let his beard and hair flutter in the breeze. “Calms come now and again, can hear better and pick some words outta the wind, but rest of the time it's just me, Crone, and Mutey here 'till you come along.”

  “How long have you been here?” she said, shuddering at a claustrophobic feeling like the cage was shrinking. Deep breaths helped her find calm. Barely. “How do you get out?”

  “I been here for more Calms than I gots fingers and toes. Three floods. And you get out when the Masters decide whether you're worth most as slavant or Feral and hopefully before you're a rotter. Get luckier, they keep you a slave. Let you haul rock, clean strider stables, or dig trenches for the Legions. Best case, you get contract with a Master needing someone just so to 'petuate their Lineage. Worst case, you ain't even worth slavanting and some gonist plucks out your freshest bits. 'till they makes up their minds, we're just a tally in their counts to be swapped about by their Skinscribes as Small Masters trade flesh for flesh. ”

  “How long have I been here? You must know.” She tried to keep the desperation out of her voice as she rubbed Avani's braille on her arm.

  “Two Calms. Then all fingers and this many toes worth of sleeps.”

  Hassani counted his splayed toes, heart sinking. “That long?”

  “Not as long as this,” he said, waggling his shriveled member in her direction.

  “That would work better if I couldn't actually see it," she said, looking away to avoid doing so. "The people who put me here, did they say anything?”

  He scratched vigorously between his toes, his face scrunching. “Windy that night, only caught bits. They was worried enough they stuck you right in. Mighty disappointing on my end since they didn't do their usual-"

  “I don't even want to know what the 'usual' might be. Please, tell me. What were they worried about?”

  "You're property now, not a person, so they'll do whatever they want with you."

  "Johine, please!"

  “Hear that Mutey?” Johine crowed. “She used my name now! Even said 'please'.”

  Mutey cast him a dark look, then turned back to feeling the point of a long, narrow splinter he'd pried from a cage bar.

  “Johine!”

  “You really wanna know?” The smile on his face as he turned back to her gave her a sick feeling. "I suppose I might iff'n you..."

  “I'll tell you what's going on in the Book,” she blurted, hoping to forestall whatever debauchery might drift through his mind. “I know more than you'd think.”

  Disappointment and curiosity warred on his face.

  “Inro's rogue Legions. The Wretch Plague. The war that's had to have started by now. Secrets of the Black Court. I'll tell you anything you want to hear.”

  Wind picked up, carrying garbled snatches of words, songs, wails, sobs from up the canyon. The cage's endless pendulum sway grew noticeably larger.

  “Gimme a taste if you know so much as you say,” he said finally, doubtfully.

  “I left Jadeye in riots and fire, saw the Mother of Exiles from a distance.”

  “Everywhere's riots and fire. If you saw the Mother, where's she at then? Everyone thought before the last flood she'd be sweepin' in with her army of Paragons and settin' us all free.”

  Hassani blinked at that. “I don't know. I do know that Rega and Baka staged a coup to take control of the Legions for the Ancients before the Fraction and Isolates could do the same."

  “Dynasts is Dynasts, who cares which of 'em tells the Legions which of us to kill?”

  “I know that Inro's not really gone rogue, that it's all a story made to cover Rega's coup.”

  Johine laughed and waved a dismissive hand at her. “Pah, ridiculous. Everyone know he's already killed every living thing in two whole verses. They say Inro's taken some ancient weapon from Sunset. He's even killing gods now.”

  “Gods?”

  “See, you're gettin' more from me than I'm gettin'. You don't really know-”

  “I know how Deia the swordmaster killed the Paragon swordsman.”

  A long pause, the wind whistling and moaning through the canyon.

  “How?”

  “Tell me why they were worried first.”

  “Hmph, fine. But your story better be good. They were worried that Fatma was playing a dangerous game. Thought it might get them all killed or something.”

  “Who is Fatma?”

  Johine recoiled violently enough to set his cage swinging, cowering under his blanket at the far corner of his cage.

  A woman's voice spoke coldly from behind Hassani. “I am.”

  Next chapter: Sect Anticores arrive with an unexpected offer and an instantly-rejected request

  Adonissian: a Phero who poses as a traveling musician. Died of the Wretch Plague in Heaven's Tread.

  Aida: MC. Mother of Exiles. "Ender of Verses?" "Savior of Dynasties?"

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

  Aliasara: servant at Ocyl's villa who befriends Aida

  Arca: chief of the tribe that "adopted" Inro

  Avani: Hassani's daughter, an albino

  Baka: Dynast of Ziggurat. Huge, massively strong. Tertius.

  "Braid"; a thug who accosted Aida in Jadeye. His face gifted to Aida by Ocyl.

  Broadaxe: large, axe-and-shield-wielding Feral protecting Aida. Killed by Jaxe in Jadeye

  Cairin: Arca's sister, slinger

  Das: Rega's Immanent

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

  Denault: Hassani's husband. Shipwright, Kin.

  Eonora: a Legion officer in Ziggurat

  Eth: a young Imminent

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

  Ghulen: Rega's "pet monster", an Inviolate

  Goboro: a fat, amiable scribe friend of Hassani's in Libriam

  Fallon: Aida's Seneschal. Died killing the Inviolate Rasofi in Jadeye

  Fatma: slaver?

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

  Fetriene: Ocyl's soresearer

  Goldilocks: twitchy, spear-and-javelin carrying Feral guarding Aida. Died burning a Wicker Way in Jadeye.

  Hassani: Inviolate agent of the Black Court, sent by Fractious Fraction

  Hue: Vibrant accompanying Simon

  Huspara: minor bureaucrat in Libriam

  Inro: Dynast formerly ruling Sunset

  Izbali: a silent tribal shaman

  Janali: Ocyl's elegant Seneschal

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

  Johine: crude slave

  Kass/Kassenia: mercenary attached to Adonissian. Died of Wretch Plague?

  Maxem: High Parser from Ink, ambassador to Jadeye

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

  Parathas: Aida's skinscribe. Also a mountaineer.

  "Professor, The": leader of Aida's Wretches

  Rasofi: Inviolate killed by Fallon in Jadeye

  Reck: Dynast of Chalk, "not witty enough to be clever and takes himself too seriously to be ironic". Paranoid, Fractious Fraction. Tertius. Died to a mob of menials in Jadeye.

  Rega: Inro's sister, Dynast of Monopolis. Septemius

  Riccaro: majordomo of Ocyl's estate. Hung by a looting mob in Heaven's Tread.

  Rustrovan/"Rusty": Eth's old, gap-toothed skinscribe

  Ryk: "the most beautiful man Aida had ever seen", a Paragon

  Sava: Dynast of Libriam

  Savalius: Grand Quartermaster of the Legions

  Semon "Goldtongue": white-haired, one-eyed master of cults. First Disciple of the Mother.

  Stiller: serving boy at Ocyl's estate. Rendered mute by psychological or head-trauma

  "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".

  Vanyen: A crippled young woman who created the Cult of the Mother. Martyred Prophet of the Mother. Murdered by Semon Dynastic Assassins.

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

  Wake: Dynast of Graves, marries even though they all die. Quintus. Isolate.

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

  Adventures of Bubo, The: popular kids story

  All, The: All the verses, even those beyond The Book.

  Ancients: a major Dynastic Chapter, an "elite number", "own Ziggurat" and "run the great bank that is Monopolis"

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

  Annalis compound: sprawling complex in Libriam, heart of The Book's bureaucracy. Arrivals 'Dirt' home to new dispatches, Archives 'Dust' storage for old material. Paths and Ways storage for 'nails.

  Anticore: Sect creature which "wears convincing human skins" with "swarming insects... beneath the skin"

  Arborian: gardeners from Groves?

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

  Assessor: census-taker

  Audits/"Diggers": Libriam internal affairs

  Autumn: verse rich in gold?

  Aze: swordmaker?

  Berujat: "fleshmarkets"; primary seat of slave trade and home of most Lineage Masters, owned by Fraction.

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

  Black Court Tribunal: localized Black Court authority?

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

  Book of Verses, The: the 1,000 verses ruled by the Dynasty. "The Kiloverse"

  Broadcliff, Tallmarket: cities in Stacks

  Calms: periods when ever-blowing winds die down in Berujat

  Canyon of Cages: cliff where slaves are held in Berujat

  Cave Dwellers: tribes that live in the underground in Origin, keep others out until "the Return"

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

  Cerebrist: creator of slavants

  Chalk/"Vistas": verse entirely made of chalky cliff, belongs to Reck

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

  Chant of Inoculation: chant supposed to protect against disease, "Mudra of Cleansing"

  Chapters: power groupings among the Dynasts of the Book: predominantly The Ancients, the Fractious Fraction, and Isolates.

  Circular Sea: an ocean abutting the Jadeye segment of Heaven's Tread

  Clock Priest: priests from Gears who track and tell time religiously

  Commu: chewed drug/herb?

  ConMach: convoy? courier? "ConMach drains the very life from the Directory's verses". Supply "ConMach machines"

  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? "harder than currence"? "Solid current forms currence." Currence melts to watter.

  Currency: money, gold coins once held currence inside to give value, now debased

  Current: some form of energy that powers "artifices"? "Solid current forms currence."

  Directory: "the Directory to Ink is like the Dynasty to the Book", dominating rulers of Ink

  Donative, The: Black Court taxes, taken by Legion if not offered. Don't pay, no Partaking every century.

  Dusa: people with manipulable hair of silver wire, from Gears

  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.

  Dynast's Tower: a massive tower at the peak of Ziggurat.

  Dynasty: the Dynasts who rule the Book

  Ebon: founder of the Dynasty and Black Court

  Ebon Saga: the tale of Ebon's foundation of The Book and Dynasty

  Ebonese: the language of the Book

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

  El: semi-insubstantial snake/remora-like creatures that follow gods (and sometimes Dynasts) around

  "Emperor of Everything": popular kids story about Inro turning down becoming emperor, then crushing those who elevated a different Dynast

  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"

  Fetalist: Imminent faction who believe the future is unchangeable

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

  Fractious Fraction/"DissatisFaction"/"The Renewal": a major Dynastic Chapter who "hate everyone including each other", "entice every freemancer and Lineage Master" ... "to Berujat". For those with "verses deficient in maor ways."

  Gates, The: Inter-verse travel method created by Ebon. Opened with Limn

  God, A: unique, "undying" creatures of immense size, The First Ones

  God's Rote: child's first memorization, what gods are

  God-dwellers: "monks" who live on a god

  God-touched: those who have physically touched a god (and lived)

  Gonist: organ dealers and traders

  Gons: self-sustaining organs capable of living outside a host

  Graves: a verse "Made of the dead by the dead for the dead".

  Groves: a forest verse

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

  High Parser: officials from Ink

  Imminent: seers advising Dynasts and shaping course of The Book

  Imminent Prophecy: something about a barbarian Dynast, Ender of Verses and/or Savior of Dynasties?

  Inevitables; faction of Imminent who believe it is their sacred duty to ensure the future comes to pass as seen

  Ink: home verse of the Skeinry, Keens, Directory, and "the Faded People"

  Innoculist: doctors who teach chants "brought from Logos" to cure disease

  Inviolate: agents of the black court who "serve the Black Court, protect the Dynasty, uphold the Chant, root out corruption" with "unlimited, undisclosed, and untraceable budgets"

  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

  Isolates: a major Dynastic Chapter with a "unified stand for independence", "cheat the Donative, stockpil[e] currence and watter" "hire Keen mercenaries" "raise own private Legions in secret"

  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

  Jar: Name of a "gold" coin now made of brass. Once held currence within.

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

  Jaxestack: a whitewashed stack on Stacks home to Jaxekin

  Jutland Reach: a verse with guns?

  Green People: tribes that live in the jungles of Origin

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

  Kin: descendants of a Dynast, most desperately trying to reach 100 so they can Partake

  Kiss, The: disease that wiped out "hundreds of verses", also name for the time period when Aj became active last and destroyed 100s of verses before halting in Sunset

  Lambent ram: animal whose wool glows?

  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

  Libwe: tribe possessing the "holy" Limn clay bed.

  Limn: "infused clay" bearing some sort of internal power, used by Ebon to found the Dynasty

  Lineage: a line of mancers taught by a Master

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

  Lizard Hunters: Arca's people, walkers of the wastes of Origin

  Logos: "the thought realm"

  Machine Curse: something that stops machines from working between verses?

  Mancers: "no mancers arc (could) affect it", people with abilities beyond human normal, usually trained/implanted by a Master.

  Master's Markets: primary slave market in the Book

  Menial: common folk

  Molt: person able to shed skins (see skins)

  Mon, The: "the Outsiders". "exist only to destroy the Book" with their "demonic and monstrous children" from "the Hells beyond"

  Monopolis: the "City of Currency", bank verse ruled by Rega

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

  Mune: someone from the Collective on Dost?

  Nameday: when children are named

  Ocyl's Preserve: a garden "beyond the Circular Sea" in Heaven's Tread?

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

  One Tribe, The: Arca's new tribe incorporating the Libwe and whomever else is conquered or enticed to join.

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

  Optomime: gadgeteer

  Origin: the First Verse, from which Ebon originated, containing the "Cities Below". The "first page of The Book"

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

  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.

  Phero: Lineage whose scent creates overwhelming attraction

  'pillar: fuzzy Sect-bred giant caterpillar pet

  Porcelain Guard: Ocyl's white-masked Ferals

  Pure Priest of the Ascen/Blind Priests: priests praising the Ascen and back the Black Court

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

  Reconquest: time four-hundred years ago when Inro "drove [tribals] back into civilization's fold at spear point"

  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

  Seericide: seers capable of Knowing everything as they die

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

  Shale: a verse famous for its expensive stone

  Shore Striders: tribes that live along the oceans of Caves

  Shackle Pens: pens near Master's Market in Berujat?

  Shrineway: religious section of Jadeye "brailled prayers along the walls ... [and] cobblestones"

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

  Sixth Tier Rebellion: last major uprising, in Ziggurat a century ago when "half the legions rose up". Put down by Baka

  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

  Skinlife: living tattoos

  Skinscribe: individuals brailled with lore, walking libraries

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

  Soresearer: individuals capable of "healing" by cauterizing wounds with their hands

  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

  Stone Walkers: tribes that live in the cold of Origin

  Subterrane, The: inter-verse travel route accessed by Ebon via Limn

  Sunset: the verse where Aj was 'contained', formerly protected by Dynast Inro. The "Prison of Prisons" holds mad Dynasts, monsters and demons... vaults of dangerous relics.

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

  Surgon: person able to remove organs

  Syphon: machine ConMach uses to "drain the very life" and color from a verse to "fuel... machinery"

  Tangle, The: the jungles of the One-Eighth

  Terminus: "Gates End", 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

  Tribunal: group of three Dynasts coming together to make ruling or pass judgment

  Twine: "one soul threaded through two bodies"

  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.

  Vale Walkers: discoverers of verses

  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

  Venger: muscle man?

  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

  Vibrant: color-changing individuals from Ink?

  Watter: an energetic liquid. "Currence melts to watter. Watter's current dissipates over time, leaving water."

  Weeping Falls: Jadeye Iris flowing with waterfalls

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

  Wiz of Berujat: multi-minded?

  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"

  Wretch Plague/Dynast's Plague: the flu. A horrific disease spread by Wretches.

  Wyres: lines run through the Vale between verses that allow communication between. A giant Ziggurat