Skinner wove his way through the streets. Small agitated crowds roamed and chanted for food and the rights of workers and those who could not. They became more numerous and rowdy as he went toward the Guts. The repeater found himself in the midst of a gathering riot. He could smell burning and smoke tinted the air. Seeking the least populated path, Skinner turned a corner to find himself in the face of another Diluvian patrol, this one three strong. Their draconic swords and helms looked as if they might bite. Unlike the others, these were no saviors. "Your papers," the head tinhead demanded. Skinner dug in his trickbag and produced the false documents that Church had given him. As he handed them over he realized he had forgotten the alias provided him. He'd committed it to memory before but now his mind was blank. Had it been the blow to his head that knocked the moniker loose? Too much on his mind? What was the damned name? 'Meeks?' 'Leeks?' Panic set in. If the officers were to ask and Skinner could not give them his own fucking handle, he was cooked. Please don't ask, hardstick. Please don't ask. Glass broke nearby. A store window shattered by a rock. The riots were spilling into this street now. The officer shoved Skinner's papers into his chest and Skinner was forgotten. The troops moved toward the ruckus. Earlier the Diluvians had saved him from hellraisers and now the reverse had come to pass. It was becoming difficult to tell friend from foe anymore.

— • —

Tusk tumbled and splashed into warm water and great hands lifted him out into the cool dry air and wrapped his body in a warm towel of soft wool. He heard crying and then realized the wails came from his own mouth. He could still hear Aoh's chanting and laughing around him, louder now, echoing from the walls of his father's old cabin. Tusk realized he had just experienced his birth—a true rebirth—and then felt an excruciating burning sensation upon his tender back. He was put into the arms of his mother who was now recovering in a bloody tub from the birthing. Tusk sunk into her soft bosom and the cradle of her arms and looked at his own hands. They quickly grew into the fists of a man before his eyes. Still covered in blood, so much blood. He found himself alone in the dirty pink water now, too big for the basin, knees drawn to his chest. His mother gone. The water had turned cold in a thunderclap. Tusk got to his feet, wet and dripping and trembling, and went to the privy door. He put his fingers to the handle and hesitated, fearing what he would see in the space opposite. Would his eyes land on his family slain there again on the floor, throats cut from lobe to lobe, the place ransacked? Tusk summoned his courage and pushed the door open. The bodies were there (oh the sheer horror, their wide pink grins) but Tusk forced himself not to look at them directly, as if they were catoblepas or gorgons whose gaze could kill. Instead, he looked ahead at the front door that swung in the wind, left ajar by his parents' fleeing murderers who went uncaught. Beyond the portal's frame the beautiful forest beckoned, breezy and chirping. Simon's childhood playground. He kept his eyes straight ahead and stepped over the bodies. The corpses of his kin stared from the periphery, their eyes glazed with death. Tusk's foot slipped in the pool of blood on the floor and he fell toward the door. He fumbled for the jamb but felt no purchase. Tusk plunged headlong through the opening into an astral space beyond all mortal experience, an infinite well of pure happiness and contentment unfettered by worry or pain. Tusk's body was stripped away like a ragged cloak, his naked soul exposed and burned to its core in the glorious forge. The colossal fear of death that had consumed the Reaper from the time he first ever became aware of his own mortality was delightfully and profoundly singed away. So, too, was his omnipresent guilt. He felt another naked presence in that light and knew it to be his soul-twin Aoh. Thanks to the contents of that miraculous psychedelic flower and his lover's calming presence, Tusk would never again dream of those relentless hobgoblin tormentors who had chased him through the restless nights. In that blessed moment those tenacious ghosts were cleansed from his weary mind.

— • —

It had to be done. The aberrant tooth must go. It was beginning to grow too large, pushing apart Amarant's other teeth. It raked against the theorist's inner lip, causing a sore and making it difficult to talk or eat. Further, the growth distracted him from his work. Despite his new affliction he burned to understand how the God Eye could be taking in so many new souls so quickly. If the arcanist could at least complete his measurements and calculations, he could perhaps die or surrender to the Pits knowing that he had at least first made a notable discovery, a meaningful contribution of some kind.

Alone in his quarters, Amarant looped a string around the intrusive tooth. He closed his eyes and braced himself for the pain and yanked the unwelcome molar from his mouth. A bloody and grueling ordeal. He fell back into his bed with a gory wad of salve-soaked cloth in his mouth. His jaw thrummed as the medicines did their work to calm his aching nerves. Despite his agony physical and mental, Amarant's thoughts again returned to the God Eye, his blinding obsession. The puzzle of its recent shift in activity transfixed him. It had become busier with souls. What could it mean? Was there danger? Trouble beset his cracked mind as Amarant ran his finger over the bloody extracted tooth in the palm of his hand.

— • —

Sleep was no sleep. Though Tusk had just dispensed with his own, another soldier still struggled with such visions. Merek's hobgoblin tormentors were always there in his skull, waiting for his eyes to close so they might come out to play. The rune man got his only true rest during the daytime, when his eyes were half-open and he could look out through the window to the empty plain and wide open skies while in a lazy trance from the harbor of his soft bed. The long-timers and the women who sometimes came to assist them had treated Merek well in that farmhouse room. He had fallen in love with Jone, the matron of the place. Her husband was still and lifeless, his eyes white and unseeing, all his limbs flaccid. Widowed by that radioactive mine in matrimonial spirit if not in body, Jone stirred for companionship and her maternal attentions turned into something else. Merek cared not that her skin was wrinkled or her hair was grey. He'd spent too long in waster captivity to ever again find any human face unsightly, despite the tolls of age or accident or illness. Nor would he find any human touch unwelcome if it ever came from a place of love. Merek had been given another turn of the hourglass by escaping his evil captors, a new ream of virtual parchment for the penning of his life's tale. Though he had never been coronated thanks to his capture by the sandmen, Merek thought he was perhaps still a true Reaper in spirit, for the commandos were said to have nine lives instead of one. Despite those nightly visions of the things he suffered while in that bone-crowded pit, he knew he was truly free of those miseries and if given more time the dragons would quiet down. Hidden away and cared for and given love, Merek wanted to stay forever cozy in that quiet room, lost in its seductive and hazy tranquility. Regrettably, the rune man knew it was not to last. His eyes often wandered to the horizon when gazing through those windowpanes, expectant of the figures that would someday come. Whoever they would be, he only hoped they would have friendly intentions.

"Merek." Jone gently shook his arm, stirring him awake. His eyes shot open. Dark and ominous figures ringed his bed, hovering over his secret lover, their faces etched with candlelight. For a moment Merek thought he saw teeth and tusks ringing those jaws. Feared his escape and recovery had all been a dream and he was still in that filthy pit. If that were so, his heart would die and his body would soon find a way to follow. He could never do it again. Merek gasped and shrank from the crowding apparitions. No, they weren't sandmen. But who? Death's grim handmen come to ferry him away?

"Merek, dear," Jove said, "your countrymen have come to see you home."

Merek's mind fully surfaced from tarry sleep and he then knew who these visitors were. They were Reapers. One held out a hand and Merek took it. They clasped arms. It was an instructor he remembered from training. "Jasha," Merek said with a smile.

"Those painsick fucks," Jasha said as he noted the crisscrossing scars that covered Merek's body. "Glad to see you safe. What of Barnibus?"

Merek shook his head. "I'm sorry. Wasters got him when they captured me and Addison. We lost Osred too, when his glider crashed. As for the other, that coward—"

And then Merek saw with astonishment the very man he had just been about to name: Blacwin, in the flesh, at the foot of his bed like a revenant come to keep his secrets unspoken. The wiry Reaper had his hand on the hilt of his curved dagger. It was unclear if this was meant to be a warning, a sign that Merek should hold his tongue, but Blacwin did look intimidating indeed in his sable garb and war-touched eyes. Merek swallowed.

"Merek," said Blacwin, his tone flat. "Strange Fate."

"Fickle indeed, that bitch," said Merek. "Uh, 'that coward-killer,' I was going to say. A man who kills cowards, you understand."

"I see," Blacwin said. He drummed his fingers on the handle of his blade.

Merek's eyes went to the weapon on Blacwin's belt and noticed its detail. "Is that...?"

"The Blade of Bloodied Palms itself," Blacwin said. "Barda gifted it to me upon my return."

"Get your scythe-and-snake yet?" Merek pointed to the spot on his arm where Reapers typically had their emblem inked.

"Guess I've had other things on my mind," Blacwin said.

"I could ink it for you," Merek said. "Still think my hand's steady enough."

Blacwin nodded and lowered his own hand from his dagger. "Perhaps." It seemed they had reached a silent understanding. Grendyll had taught his student that intimidation had power, and he was quickly learning how to best exploit it. If the angry world was determined to force Blacwin to operate by unforgiving rules, he would play and use them as best he could. The reality was that some people only understood fear, and nothing else.

"You girls can chit-chat later," said Nail. "I got questions. The other trainee still alive, then? This man Addison?"

"Yeah, the sandmen still have him," Merek said. "They moved us around a great deal. One such time I got a chance to slip and scramble. Addison, though, he couldn't get out of his bonds. I had to leave him behind. But I can show you where they last had us."

"Were there any other captives?" Nail said.

"No, unless you count other gobs," said Merek. "The wasters talked about ultimately sending me and Addison to a place called the Pain Factory or somesuch, but that never came to pass. This wicked waster sorceress came with a couple imperial strongmen and took over the warcamp. They all shifted their attention to some other project. Made us help dig with some slaves they'd rounded up from other local gob tribes."

"Dig?" asked Riddle. "Do you know what for?"

"Mostly bones. Big, old, heavy bones. No idea why."

The Reapers looked at one another with concern. First the roads, now these mysterious excavations. The enemy was tirelessly busy with their wicked designs. It seemed the Reapers would never dry of work to do.

— • —