Schiivas 19th, Syvan, 8╥1071.

Dearest Sister, eldest of us all.

I am aware of your bylaws. That our Maker set you to task, and you formed them. Justice, principled, replete with the cadence of obedience.

That must be why this, It, that you did create, establishes order in my lawless lands. For, soon after that ‘star’ crashed to Dyjian, how long had passed before It lyingly transfigured itself into a god, and established authority, and order?

Was I present when you had set the final clause of the Written Code?

No, because the cornerstone of my being, the essence on which I was forged, is insubordination. That is why we, It, and me, are diametrically opposed.

Yet, our Maker — named me — Dyiij. Almost as though she knew — as if she knew, from beyond my beginning, that this defining nature would —

If I rock the world, who will stop it? If I turn reality on its face, and call forth a life from many centuries ago just to leave it in the present, or deposit it in an impossible future, who’s to take issue with me?

The Written Code, yes.

But, since when do I listen to you, my elder Sister?

The sun had mounted the sky like a man eager to impregnate his woman with light, only to thrust darkness down, blanketing the ground with thick shadow. Yet, the sky remained marbled with sunrise and sunset, the hues of twilight sky forever shifting, but never changing as the sun went its way.

From on the rooftop, the view of the cityscape beneath him was especially revealing. To even his brothers, Marqees would’ve uttered ‘breath takeng,’ in such language intended to mask conspicuous greed with lazy awe.

The sky snarled. The galvanized smell of storm clouds rode the brisk wind, but weren’t looming overhead. When the water finally fell, it was as if the wet had been replaced by starlight tears.

“At last, some down, yai!?” Qealsheal slapped Marqees’s shoulder with the back of his brawny hand, nearly pitching him over the roof.

“Ei-yai, soddeng styke! To ruin my goods so casually, I should bend you left from shape!”

His burly sibling guffawed, clutching his unsightly, obese gut.

“Unthinkable, that Sludge could become utterly distended.” Marqees shook his head, and Qealsheal shot him a voracious, menacing grin.

“Stop mindeng what ain’ours to mind.” Recadym beckoned Marqees. “I need you on point.”

“Yai, yai.” Marqees slunk over. Settling into the seat at the vanity, he brushed through his hair, that shimmered like satin, and was soft as silk. Those eyes were of a gentle, yet intense hue of sky blue that seemed to be hewn from the heights of heaven.

He was a towering man, whose stature spoke nothing of him, yet, in a corset pulled tight beneath a form-hugging dress, and clad in fingerless gloves, Marqees transformed into the very creature of his undying devotion.

She wheeled around in her seat, glaring Recadym down as she lifted her head and puckered her lips.

They kept quiet, stilled by awe over Marqees’s disturbingly feminine features.

“If only I ain’known you as my brother,” he said.

“I’d’av cut your throat by the moment you cummed,” Marqees growled, through clenched teeth and grinning lips.

The three of them nodded. The fat one, and the demanding prick went down first.

What was there to be said of men? Of nobles and ones rendering honor, the merciless burn of fermented alcohol yielded the same effects from them all, in various degrees.

Several women had spread out amid the men. Marqees strode up to the wide, semi-circular booth that accommodated Seresthedf, his father, Cehesedifh, and a slew of their guests.

The unknown men jeered, as the lean, blond beauty propped himself up on an arm over the table, and coyly brushed his cheek over her shoulder.

“Gentlemen,~” Marqees cooed in a sultry voice, tinged with a buttery baritone. His demeanor was bereft of shame, instead, his posture thrust forth finesse and pride. The glow of his magnificent eyes settled on one of them, like when a predator has singled out its intended kill.

“Come all this way from Sog to disgrace yourself in women’s clothes?” One of them sneered. “Send off! A deceitful cock has no place in our company!”

Marqees folded his hands, bowed his had, and lay his chest on the table. “My lords! By the air of cabaret, I seek to entertain, yai! — More yet, to please.~”

The one man opened his mouth to rebuff, but after standing up and stepping out from behind the table, the heir of Jocthath took Marqees’s slender, elegant hand, and pulled him into his company.

“Such care to detail, and exquisite costume,” Seresthedf said. He kissed his hand.

Marqees tittered. “You also fancy the real theng?”

“White women are worth the shame and suffering!”

“Yai, and not your own?”

“Yai,” he chortled, pulling Marqees onto his lap. “Not!”

He settled, comfortable in his skin despite the ire of Seresthedf’s company. Yet, some hours into being the heir’s chief companion, his honored nobles softened, and before long, they were all bursting with laughter, bubbling with mirth, and drunk out their wits.

Unfortunately, neither the heir nor his father were liberal toward the bottle of distilled spirits.

Marqees leaned into Seresthedf. “Sir? May we say’d privately?”

He grunted. “Why?”

“Noisy iset, yai? I can’t focus on you with all this distraction! Not to mind —” he shifted — “You’av jabbed me a half hour without pause!”

The heir chortled, slapped his thigh, and pushed him up.

He didn’t mind his advances, coyly returning touch for touch, though, shy of every erogenous spot. Barely. How far these shenanigans could go became starkly transparent when the heir led him into his bedroom, then got naked from the waist up, and beckoned him over.

Marqees devoured his disgust, turning to four goblets and a lone bottle of wine.

“You like Spice’d?” He popped it open and poured a glass.

“Yes.”

He poured a second, then brought them both to the bed. After reclining on his side, he peered into the ruddy-brown irises of Jocthath’s heir.

“To you?”

Seresthedf shook his head, then, with a broad, ear-to-ear grin, “To white women!”

One of which he’d far rather be laying with while toasting to. Yet, making a thief’s wage meant taking on roles he didn’t want to be bothered with.

Marqees lifted his goblet. “Yai, white women!” Not so much as a second beyond the moment he began to lift the goblet to his lips, the rhythmic, soft plap of rubberized soles filled the room.

Now, the thing about Hedonites could be summed up as this:

Their men were mistaken for women, and their women for emasculated men. Whether male or female, those born in He’Don suffered the frigid wrath of an unwanted, feudal empire that cared nothing about the dimorphism of sex.

When it entered, the rim of the goblet had only graced the white man’s lips before he began to lower it without so much as a sip.

“You! Recite your serial code!” The heir barked, and it froze in hesitation.

There was little for him to glean from the number, let alone the letters preceding it. The voice these tidbits of information rode on lay entrenched in grotesque distortion. Yet, despite all this, Seresthedf beckoned it to him.

The wine hadn’t been heavy in him, when they drank with his friends and father, and it had to be lightening with each passing minute, but the heir made it stand, front and center, facing him.

It trembled ever-so-lightly, while he ran the backs of his fingers along the cheek of its mask. “Even the Sharr presents to her Master.” He feathered his palm down its chest.

It refused to open up to him. Because, Marqees knew, brazen, foolish conduct was fitting as long as it was wrought by men. A man, if there was such beneath that mask, wouldn’t hesitate to slit the heir’s throat if it meant sparing his dignity.

A dignified woman would refuse, with reckless abandon reigned in by her self-worth.

But, if it was a virgin-she, well.

The blond dipped a gloved hand up his sleeve. Without a word of warning, he withdrew a syringe, jammed the needle into the nape of the heir’s neck, and injected a mild neurotoxin into the fluid surrounding his spinal column.

Every muscle from the base of his skull to the tips of his toes locked with more gripe and tension than a pair of antlered beasts.

He log rolled him several times, until the heir thudded on the carpet, then sat with his legs narrowly crossed on the edge of the bed like a right and proper woman.

They stared.

“Iset ain’suh often you’ar to say’d ‘thank you’? I know you say’dset.”

It kept staring.

“Never seen a man dress-clad before?”

“No, I mean, I have…”

“But?”

“Not a white man…” Such a sheepish thing.

“A man ain’themore, yai? I get a reward for my valor, if I suspectet right that I spared a girl a guilt trip and more!”

“Ha! —”

“A virgin young woman, yai?”

Her shoulders drooped. He had her cornered, but patted the spot an arms reach away from him, and she eventually sat.

“This reward…?”

“Aimeng to clip me at my nutstacles? I like a knoweng sort of female —”

“No —”

“Yai, yai.” He waved her bristling away, leaning back on his palms. “Ever kiss a guy before?”

“High Congress won’t allow it.”

High Congress? “Who?”

She went quiet, then, “I can’t.”

And… why not? “Yai, me neither. I guesset’s a ‘virgin theng’. My brothers won’t tolerate me sneakeng an edge, either. Been since puberty and all —”

He could tell she’d rolled her eyes as she sat back like he had. “Family must be the worst.”

“Tchyai! Soddeng Stykes and Swankards, all of us! I swer on my Mun, yai, I’ll show them up one day!”

She giggled.

“Ei-yai, so, ‘VGZTX’ stands for…?”

“Me.”

“Ain’a proper name to you?”

She went quiet, as though the answer wasn’t as simple as a ‘yes’ or ‘no.’ In the hushed, electric caress of the breeze, the hairs on the back of his neck stood on end. A vague familiarity tried desperately to overreach him, but, while he was yet entertaining her potential, that sentiment plummeted into failure.

He didn’t know this chick.

Right?

The soft hiss of her exhalation filtered through her mask with a puff of fog. The iciness of that breath wafted along the skin of his cheek, wrenching him back from reality until, with a strained gasp, he bolted upright as if he’d just been shot.

Ripped from the prospect of her bosom, he glanced around for hints of where VGZTX had gone.

For that matter, the heir was absent from the rug that occupied the glossy, marble floor. The room had gone dim, its curtains were drawn some time ago, and looked as though they hadn’t been moved in… years?

Marqees shook, hopped up from the bed, and departed the heir’s quarters.

Had Dyjian ever been this cold? The blond rubbed his arms, the footfalls of his steps echoing like clattering steel against the tense silence of the halls.

How these had changed. He found himself stuck in place, his gaze locked to that of a young girl, a dark little thing, like varnished cherry wood. He sidestepped around her, but she kept staring.

Then, “You also don’t belong here!” she said, her voice charged as if putting facts on trial.

At that point, he crouched like a woman, getting as far down to her level as he could, then he placed the side of a finger to his lips.

Wait — ‘Also’?

His eyes twitched. “As in, ain’ust me, yai?”

The girl glared, clutching her doll between her arms. She looked past him, and pointed down the hall without a word more said to him.

He ruffled her hair, rose, and went that way.

This particular annex of the Vyz Raqam was without the usual servitors. The hustle and bustle of the great palace had been lacking since he’d lept up from the bed. It seemed that a contentious fear loomed within the building, and as he set foot into the main hub, the hairs on the back of his neck stood on end.

Women occupied the annex. It wasn’t that Marqees had never seen a woman before, but that these were arrayed in shimmering garments of a grayed, off-white and gold. Their faces were hidden behind hooded masks, and their hands were fitted into gauntlets, which bore a metal claw at the tip of each finger.

There among them was a woman who could’ve served as the center piece of a display of ornate dolls. Face exposed, her eagle-like, narrow eyes drew attention to her high cheek bones, and how those cheeks cradled her thick, plump lips. Her tawny skin was accentuated with glowing, ruddy-yellow tones that soaked up sun and seemed to exude its own light.

Yet, her hair. How it flowed over her shoulders like water, a crisp, platinum blond — almost pearlescent white — with an iconic silvery, sheen.

It seemed that he’d only stood a few seconds by a hedge when a woman came up behind him. She snapped a thick, barbed noose around his neck and cinched it tight with a swift tug.

She’d only managed to yank him forward a single step when he ducked out of it as if the noose was made of smoke, and reeled back and to the side, just out of the lightning quick snap of her trying to snare him a second time.

Steam wafted up from her skin. Furious, she threw the noose aside and loosed the lonely hilt of a wynqasar from her side. In an instant, she flew into her first swing, aimed to rend him in two, the absent, whip-like blade materializing in less than a momentary blink of an eye.

Then, “Atrébüsin, enough iset.” The woman he’d been eyeing had her back to them.

‘Iset’?

“You’ve no business commanding me, Laylen!” she hissed.

Laylen didn’t remark. She kept running her fingers through the tattered mane of some gigantic beast. It was hunched over on all fours, but her head was centered at its mid shoulder. Its lengthsome back bore menacing barbs down its spine; and where its face should be, a myriad of powerful proboscises hung, stretching to the ground. It had thick, leathery skin, and human-like hands.

“Your upset makes ire within these Féyrcaas.”

For faceless creatures, they seemed serene. The one nearest Laylen kept a particularly settled demeanor, although its face was turned toward Atrébüsin.

This darker woman, whose skin was the hue of bogwood contrast against a silk dress and arm length gloves of pristine white, parted her lips, as if expecting to shed words.

“Yai, Girl?” Marqees said, without a single care for Atrébüsin’s coming thoughts. “Ain’a sole fem on two legs a hue such is yours that I’av lain eye to, who annunciates so well as if native Fodder herself. For, they say ‘That’s it, or what?’ but we, ‘Maket out toet, yai?’ Do you get the say’ds of Blanched Knetan?”

She seemed to hesitate, “Only as such I’d’av been known by my brother.”

“He also a browner?”

Another, longer pause. Then she turned, and looked him over from crown to sole. “He’s nearly so pale as you.”

“Yai? Him’s name, likely I knowet!”

“Marqisian DuShaffte…”

It was at that very moment that the gears in his head came into a deadlock. In the same way that -son denoted ‘the son of’, -isian there meant ‘Child of Marq’ — except, ‘Marq,’ alone, wasn’t a Malzeyurite name.

Sure, there was the one wild night he had with the Lord of State’s wife. Dear woman wasn’t in the least bit what she presented herself to be. Still, she never came forward with any offspring of his.

And, Sara… nevermind.

He scratched his chin while Laylen arced her brows.

“Sorry, ain’on…”

She lifted her hand, and he shut up for a few moments of quiet. Then, “You Drag?”

He glanced down at the dress, how the bottom hem had gotten filthy. “Part of my gig, yai.” He grinned. “Fam formed a troupe, mostly my brothers and me. Greedy thengs, though, yai? Ain’a theng that passes our fingers that doesn’t go felt, or misseng.”

Atrébüsin growled, coiling her snare, but Laylen’s air brightened, as if lifted by relief.

“Since the death of our first Oracle in the jungles of Phiiva, there hasn’t been a male useful to us. But, opportunity calls you, yai? I need someone skilled, to set eye on a Ra’ol somewhere here. Theng be, that Cehesedifh, willn’t allow me near toet.”

“Ei-yai?”

“Chi-yh!”

“Soet aset is — what’set to spoil me?”

“Anytheng you ask.”

An eerie, smug little grin crept along Marqees’s face.

Oh, dear woman, the Secrets you do not know! The Thief takes to sate his needs; but of a Cheat, no such doctrine has ever been penned!

That smile which shaped that Sludge Cub’s lips was not one of simple guile. There, at the tips of his fingers lay a cult of females. A foray of beautiful women who, though his body’s response to the mere sight of them was strong, promised an uncanny vulnerability that, if properly exploited, meant delving into the unfathomable relics of Dyjian’s vague antiquity.

What he wanted with those things — he hadn’t gotten that far.

“How-if we wait onet and see on this spoil proper, yai?” Suspicious looks weren’t unfamiliar to him. As far as he concerned himself about their imediate doubts, scrutiny was never a bad thing.

The Priestess bristled like a bird about to poop, imminent rejection bound to fall from her mouth. Yet, the Prophetess beckoned him over.

“Unfortunate these’ar virgin lands, not yet enlightened to the futility of their heathen ways.”

“Ain’a theng to any Dyjiite, if except hedonists!” He grinned.

“She means you’ll need to be converted,” Atrébüsin hissed.

“What? A test, iset?”

It was then that Laylen went quiet. As if dazed, she kept still, staring — not ahead, but into the empty space between them. Her eyes were caught, at attention, but he couldn’t discern what.

Until, finally, she seemed to come back to them. “… Yai. Cehesedifh’s heart.”

He sucked down air to objeeect, but:

“His true heart, value of his body with his femman’s combined: Bring me the Prodigal Heir.”

Ripping the hearts from a man’s chest was easy. Never something Marqees took a liking to, but that wasn’t a matter of if he was capable of doing it or not.

Just, he had no idea where he was. There was no reference for this meager portion of, he assumed, Jocthath, that had somehow snuck upon him overnight. That didn’t change that it was here, and he couldn’t be sure of the nature of it.

“What if I’m unable to do as you wish?”

“You join the Féyrcaas.” Laylen shrugged.

Immediately, those beasts became too real.

Marqees shuddered.

Melvas 17th, Syvan, 8╥1071.

My Brother, I appeal to you!

Draw this maniacal fanaticism from me — please, I long for your judgment. What favor may you grant me? I, your sister, made of the purest delusions and grandeur.

My dearest Maker, I am shaken. Why have you crafted this harebrained euphoria, and expertly so!? That — I may — prove to be!

… The snare to my own hand.

To my people — your trust in me has betrayed you. I am too arrogant to yield and allow passage for another way. Intolerance, vindictive spite, ire, and jealousy were my counselors.

With these I engaged in many salacious orgies. The progeny of my prostitution is a fecund creation, hidden long amid the fermenting mire that produces the abhorrent, golden stench within my realm.

His godship taunts me. Night by night, he cleaves a blackened trench through the Human Spheres. The Nations that I’ve gingerly planted and keenly sought to enlarge, were they not thriving prior to his descent?

Do you know, Brother? The agony of hundreds of millions of scrupulous, scrutinizing, enraged voices as they pleaded against their demise proved unbearable.

What have I done? What am I doing? They deserved to know why I refused to answer them; to know the reason behind my inaction, even as I — yes, I! — WROUGHT their destruction — counter to my own aims, by letting him do what pleasured him most.

We do agree:

They had met their Fate.

I can no longer shoulder the weight of this pulverizing guilt. Yet, this, is the reason behind the fallacy of hope.

A fiery, loathsome tear raced down Laylen’s cheek. Her stalwart, unrelenting gaze allowed no outside rumination into what sentiments occupied her mind.

Or why, when the adolescent girl prostrated herself low until she was nearly flat to the floor, wailing, her face puffy from distress, the woman’s visage seemed cold and devoid of compassion.

“Yathédqa…!” The girl gasped, her voice a meager shell of itself. She’d wailed for hours, unable to separate herself from her lover.

How he’d been stripped and shackled, bound in chains. Tethered to the back of a pair of Féyrcaas, they dragged him, racing through the crude pavement and jagged rocks of the courtyard. Blood seeped from his back, stomach and sides, where his skin had finally scraped off.

“My Yathédqa, please! I beg your mercy! Let us leave in peace!” the girl cried.

“Stupid girl,” finally, Laylen broke her silence, with a chillingly nonchalant voice. “Did you thinket wise to hide your passion from Destiny? Did you thinket clever, as if you’d escape fromet unscathed? Or did the salted Swine Milk of this man seduce you into this ignorant fallacy?”

The girl trembled, hushed before the High Prophetess of Fate.

Or, what was there to say? Finally, she lifted her face. “I love him, and he feels so for me —”

“Sweetleng, you’ar twelve. What understandeng of these matters do you think you’av got? Yai, ain’a man liveng who wouldn’t beast to shove his rod down some naive, meaty pit. Ain’one. Butet ain’this ‘love’ that’s done you both in. Your blatant disregard for Mokallai is.

“Your body doesn’t belong to you to freely give.” A second tear descended from the same, gentle, hazel eye. The other, of an intense, blazing sky blue, kept focused. Between these, Laylen maintained the steely gaze of an eagle. Yet, the faint sob gave in to more than she was willing to admit.

For, what do adolescent girls know of love?

The first time it happened, it was a warm, misty night in the Spring month of Istafh. His name, over a thousand years later, proved as fresh on her mind as when they’d first kissed.

The silvery streaks in that deep burgundy and pink sky playfully tumbled in all that open space, much like what they’d been up to. Until, worked up but worn out, Meérykl scooted down and rolled over onto his stomach.

He folded his arms over her belly, rested his chin on them and gazed, endlessly, longingly, into her eyes. “You’ll be the damnation of every male to lay eye on you when you’re full, Layli.”

She blushed, and hid her smile behind her hand. “Yai, sucks for them, I say’d least!”

He bobbed his head, grinned.

“Meér? You know what I’m goeng to be later? As I get fuller? What will Mok make of me?”

He shifted, unfolded his arms, and ran his palms along her sides, alternating with circling her tummy. “A very special something, or so I’ve heard. We do not come by girls fit to be Prophets often. Maybe you’ll end up the Matriarch of that sort.”

She’d hardly heard a word he’d said, pushing down on him as overly infatuated girls might do.

Infatuation. That’s what cried out from this young girl’s lips when Laylen gestured with a flick of her wrist, and the Féyrcaas came to a rearing halt like obedient stallions.

The Fervent who rode upon their spiny backs hopped down, and, tittering, took the chains that bound the man and led him up onto a platform stationed before a golden basin. In it, eel-like streaks of a deep crimson swam, each one encased in a pristine white aura.

When the Fervent shoved the man in, he didn’t struggle. Seeming to have accepted this new destiny, he sank like a stone, as if descending to some grand calling. Without a moment’s pause, those light-encapsuled, serpentine things bore into his every orifice.

Immediately, his writhing body began to stretch and contort.

The girl blathered on, shrieking at the top of her lungs. Yet, as the man’s transformation neared its completion, Laylen gestured her away.

“Remove her femman organs, and lop off her clit.”

At once, the Fervent thudded their fists between their breasts, bowing deep at the waist.

Finally, that girl kept her mouth shut.

At the ensuing quiet, the woman loosed a faltering sigh of relief. A moment from the intensity of her duties that proved short lived. Because, no sooner had the stress rolled from her voluptuous form, than did the voice of their god resound within the core of her being.

▼ My Yathédqa! You never fail to deliver. Mokallai’s voice was one she didn’t perceive with her ears. Instead, he spoke directly into her hearts. Such endless elation washes over me at your devout service. I am very well pleased with you, and that I spared you the jealousy of your predecessor.

“Yai, Lord!” she cried out, prostrating herself with her arms outstretched, palms up, as if prepared to receive his soles. “What would you require of me?”

▼ There exists a power in this world that is unlike any other. A power that I must have. It is rumored to be in union with these things called Ra’ol Stones, but I haven’t found a single inroad as regards their mysteries.

“You wish me to fetch a rock…?”

▼ Rest assured, this is not beneath you. I do not know this Alyi’s inane designs, but the ability to alter the fabric of realities past, and present, and to infallibly guarantee the future is not something to be overlooked.

No, it sure didn’t sound like it. Yet, to think that such capabilities were simply laying around for anyone to stumble across was deeply concerning.

For that matter, she didn’t know this Alyi, the one called Dyiij, either. It didn’t change how reckless and stupidly irresponsible it made the Alyi sound.

What was the worst that could come of it?

“For your pleasure!” Laylen declared. By the time she rose from the floor, the Fervent were no where around. Though the creature, once the girl’s lover, seemed ignorant of realities surrounding it.

The beast lurched into the basin with a dull thud, and Laylen went her way.

Now, Mokallai had many men and women in the ranks of his worldly organization. There were many Uruqmihane, those being his High Priestesses. Yet, he had only one Yathédqa.

The Supreme Prophetess was his special possession. A deceptive woman who wrought obedience and terror in nearly every soul she crossed, the Yathédqa was gifted with the uncanny, divine capabilities that the god himself possessed.

And, she could not wield her authority lightly.

Those pseudo-winter, autumn-like months of Withering were cold like a frigid partner incapable of rendering loving compassion. In part, this was characteristic of the season, hence Laylen didn’t give it much thought. She pulled the folds of her coat taut over her shoulders.

There were three nations that inhabited the wastelands. For now, she couldn’t concern herself with two of them, but the one, Jocthath, promised some relation to this prized rock.

In fact — had she known of one before? Her mother kept a choker given to her by her late husband. The polished stone was nearly as big as her fist. A thing of dark colors and pearlescent, off-white markings rumored to signify the lasting dignity of the Autocracy of the Swamplands.

That one always appeared so… unassuming.

Gradually, her mind returned to the task she’d been given. She dismounted the Féyrcaa, and set her soles to the glittering, deep crimson flagstones leading to the Vyz Raqam.

It was an onion domed palace. Every facet of its structure was etched in an art deco style that touted a teal and violet color scheme. A magnificent structure, with no other like it.

As she stepped in, the attendants of the garden took care to keep out of her way. That is, until the entryman hurriedly cut her off.

“Our Chief Exec is not expecting guests at this hour,” he said, briefly bowing his head. “Please leave.”

“My business takes priority over his petty times of operation.” Laylen snapped her fingers. At once, a Fervent scurried up to her with a satchel slung over her shoulders. She presented it, Laylen reached in, withdrew fistfulls of one of the rarest currencies in the world, and dropped it at the entryman’s feet.

The entryman half-raised his hand, staring, then, “A moment, please.” He scrambled into the Vyz Raqam. Minutes later, he returned, gesturing with a waist deep bow and a sweep of his arm. “He will see you.”

She followed him.

Each of the halls of the Vyz Raqam distinguished itself from one another by the designs hewn from the stone, and the metal inlays. Jocthai craftsmen were among the most dedicated, skilled workers in the world, and the magnitude of pride manifested in their work, for Laylen, was as awing as it was unsettling.

It delved into a sparsely familiar aspect of her being. The inlays had a galvanizing, near magnetic flow to their rolling twists and turns. She ran her fingers along the metal, and in its own, silent voice, it began to tell the story of predecessors, and their families.

Until the entryman stopped, and snapped her from her meandering when he cleared his throat.

“Here, please.” He opened the door, and she stepped in.

The private room was quaint. A couple loungers, a corner couch, and a low table. The choice lighting was smooth, not too dim, bright enough to read.

In there, on the other side of the table sat an aged man. Old, but not appearing a moment past the freshness of having turned thirty. What gave him up was his staunch demeanor, squared shoulders, and that he seemed neither too excited to assess her offer, nor too eager to turn her away.

A businessman, true to the nature of equivalencies and exchange.

“My attendant has informed me that you have something of keen interest to me,” he said, as she’d taken it upon herself to sit without his direction.

“See’t yourself, yai?” She pushed a small coin purse towards him.

He dumped the contents on the table, spreading each one from the other, looking on in disbelief. “They’re mint,” he said, chuckling nervously.

The high dollars of Konstanean Tefh were different from regime to regime. Each Dictator had the highest dollar made into the signature coin of his reign, and she had brought the legacies of several dead men with her.

Among them was one with a heptagonal hole in the center. It featured a domed, polished onyx, in which was the mark of that Arch Ganton’s regime. The metal had a dark, almost forest-green shimmer in the light. But the palladium band that formed the edge was signed:

A. M. DuShaffte.

Cehesedifh slid that one away from him. “I remember the day it was announced that this one had died. His wife, dear woman was wise to flee Konstaneah — those pale-faced Sludge-skins had rejected her immediately and outright.

“What made no sense was the part of the report that the Neisam of the desert-mountain kingdom did it. Yonathael loved Arlen, mentored him on everything there was to know about running a country — even without military force.”

“Must’av done him in by the end ofet.”

He remained quiet for some time, as if respecting the deceased, and impatience flared within her gut.

“A business deal, yai?”

“First, where did you get these? Kneitun’s treasury is empty, and no one knows where to search even if we did breech the thick of that ice storm.”

“Do you well not to ask that of me.”

Lellayla, her mother, never set foot back in the swamp since the death of her father. Though, her brother did decades later, before it froze.

Cehesedifh raised no more questions about her sources, peering into her eyes as if wanting to discern the true nature of her visit. “Your asking price?”

“The Ra’ol stone.”

He calmly put each coin back in the purse, and pushed it towards her. “This is a breaking deal that I cannot take.”

She canted her head at him. “Yai?”

“I’ll have the attendant show you out —” He started to get up, but she shot upright and cut him off.

“Another agreement may be sweet on you, yai? I wish to base here while I search foret. As payment, I’ll afford you other collectibles, such that I’av brought, and such that I may breng from on far, if you wishet so.”

The weakness was evident in his eyes. He’d tasted only a small facet of her wealth, and the promise of rarities from far lands hinted at things that were considered lost from the felled nations.

Not just Konstaneah, but also Alekzandrya, which had gone down violently only some days after the Swamp’s demise.

She arched her brows, and he acceded.