To think that they were traveling next to The Patriarch of The Fawn Cities. This was the person who had caused Ysan’s mother to do all those terrible things! Well, perhaps not directly, but the debt Xiun owed to Zaz must have been some factor for her pilfering of silk along the Wish River of Serpent’s Ramble.

  To think that someone so young had influenced Hazahnahkah so much. The sword had several questions, but Zaz’s own compatriots were already asking them. It seemed Knife had gathered many people with many secrets, for no person knew who it really was that traveled with them. None of their questions were answered.

  Zaz’s mouth opened. He nodded curtly and almost shook her hand, but then thought better and took two steps back, chin lifted. “I didn’t know Yurreth was expecting me.”

  “No more than anyone else, Patriarch Zalaster Azayume,” Freyja said. “I am heartened to have the opportunity to welcome you to Yurreth’s home. From what I understand of Yurreth’s emissaries, you had placed sanctions, embargoes, and tolls along the sky island paths flanking The River’s waters which border your Fawn Cities. Are these still in place?”

  Zalaster stiffened. Hazahnahkah didn’t know anything about economics, but all those words were only used when ties between towns were tense. He hadn’t known that The Fawn Cities were in communication with any civilizations outside of themselves, much less squabbling with them.

  “I didn’t know Yurreth was even a real person until I spoke to you,” Zalaster eventually managed. “Am I a hostage now?”

  “Oh no. Yurreth welcomes you and your company! I’ll tour you through her harbors in the Red Pavilion first. How is that? I am sorry there weren’t any petals or parades upon your arrival… We stress equality here. All for Yurreth and Yurreth for all. I would have welcomed you myself, but as you can see my schedule was lagging.” Freyja rubbed her shoulder, peeled up the strap of her vest, and exposed a fresh and glistening scarlet rake of a wound. It didn’t seem to bother her. “Bankanzaku’s work.”

  “You actually killed him?”

  “No. He made a mockery of us. And he continues to attack our shipments, botanists, and those who live in the chasm beneath the city. Furthermore, the current Wielder of Seven Seasons—Nazaki—has joined an expedition with the Orphanspawn we’re housing. We plan to kill the Rapscallion for good. We understand your concern for the security of The Fawn Cities, Osayn, and the One True Hazahnahkah. If you are successful Yurreth would happily pledge to respect the sovereignty of the Azayume name, the lineage and right of land by the people of Osayn. Why, we’ll even assist in whatever way you wish.”

  Is it really so hard to kill one naked man? Hazahnahkah did not quite grasp it. His first fight with Bankanzaku was interesting, but nothing compared to his Three Terrors. These things also weren’t Freyja’s to promise away. Zalaster seemed to understand this.

  “I’d like to hear all that from Yurreth herself.”

  “The Woman Painted White prefers results to introductions,” Freyja said.

  The young Patriarch accepted this brazen jab with silence. It was now clear Hazahnahkah and his company were not considered important enough for Yurreth to open up her schedule. At least until their jobs were finished. The skin between Zalaster’s nose and eye twitched. He sniffed. “Very well.”

  “And the One True Hazahnahkah—” Galfarys said. “Yurreth told you of it?”

  “Oh, we aren’t allowed to speak on that are we?” Freyja smiled dryly. “Yes Galfarys, we know of the dreams…”

  Yurreth’s Right Hand of Pleasure ushered them deeper into the pavilion. Contrary to the name, it was anything but red. It was green. The density of Placenta’s metropolis thinned and revealed a much larger city below. From its center flourished a tree, older than the islands that it claimed, its trunk so vast that districts clung to it like barnacles to a god’s bone. Roots as broad as avenues broke stone and drank from a ringed river, which encircled the island in a slow coil, crossed by bridges worn thin by centuries of passage and prayer. Rambletides guided the water body through the sky, looping the realm and the tree before spilling away where the horizon broke into mountains. All around, monoliths of luminous stone rose from the earth or hovered in the air. Nests of chimes and bells sang within their hollow nooks and ridges, but these were a whisper eclipsed by the cacophony now surrounding Hazahnahkah.

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  The land itself had leaned inward to witness the tree’s claim and never looked away again—there was no way Yurreth had built all of this. This wasn’t any river—it was The River that surrounded that tree. Hazahnahkah knew its bends, dips, and turnbacks well. He had been down there, long ago, carried by its currents. But back then the waterwheels had spun, and now it was nearly still water. If this was the original city of Elba, then it had been reduced to only a shadow to the pavilions above.

  And then it became clear why one was known as red. It was busy with chaos: meat markets, copper brothels, chocolate shoppes, theater stages, and opium dens. So many opium dens. They were so great in number that it quickly no longer felt like the highest place in all of Placenta. Every turn leading into another den, another hit, another reason to forget the world outside. The bulbous shapes they saw when they drew close to the city were now obvious. They were blimps. The harbor in the leafed sky formed like an awning over a gilded cage, and it was clear that the cage’s chief exports were pleasures of the flesh.

  “Rambles thrive on pleasure. Our powers evolve to what we desire most. That’s why we make sure the city runs on it. Yurreth believes the more powerful your Ramble, the more likely you are to be given the dreams.”

  “Why does Yurreth want the dreams?” Hwayoung asked.

  “Oh, she already has them. Many of Yurreth’s do. That's why we moved her cities here, why we moved the entire region.”

  Zalaster didn’t say anything. No one did. It was surely incomprehensible that a region could be moved. Freyja continued touring them about the Red Pavilion. People were using their Rambles to do incredible things: enhancing opium poppies, molecularly altering sugar, and converting animal biomass. It all resulted in more opium. Hazahnahkah could see this easily, but he saw no poppy fields. Very strange.

  Galfarys was breathless. “You were able to train specific Rambles?”

  “As I said, the city runs on pleasure, and are Rambles not derived from what pleases us most?”

  “Pleasure,” Zalaster said. “Is that not a subjective condition?”

  “Not at all. In life there are things we want and things we don’t. Our most basic pleasures are derived from our needs for surviving. The more a feeling is associated with survival of the self, the more capable their Ramble.”

  Zalaster’s face was sharp with skepticism, but no one challenged Freyja, probably because no one really knew exactly for themselves. Hazahnahkah hadn’t known what Rambles even were until Hwayoung told him. He didn’t exactly see how any of his Three Terrors had to do with any kind of pleasure. Much less with survival.

  Even the blimps were controlled and managed by people with Rambles, and later the next evening, a circuit took them in and out of a fairly large opium den. It was reminiscent of the caverns at Serpent’s Tail, redecorated with velvet curtains, tents of silk, carpets of gold embroidered linen. They were high on the outskirts of Placenta now—and in the distance—a clear view of a tall glistening monolith at the other side of the horizon, too small to make out. Everyone stopped, open-mouthed.

  Even Dalagun looked stupid at it. He took two steps forward, then two steps back. He looked around, loud. Then, he stepped to the right.

  This somehow annoyed Zalaster greatly, as most things did. “Gods, what are you doing?”

  “The monolith. It was here, where the dream led us—”

  Zalaster cut him off. “Forget the riverdamned dream!”

  Dalagun spun at that, eyes filled with hideous anger. Hazahnahkah was afraid he’d reach for his hammer once again. Zalaster was glaring right back.

  “I knew it,” Dalagun said. “You’re a liar. You… you probably all are. Do any of you care for obeying the dreams at all?”

  Zalaster scoffed. “I walk a red carpet to assess its teeth for my countrymen, and you call me a liar? You know not the pressures of a patriarch. Nor do which emissaries I have sent here and which emissaries have been eaten alive. I came to see if Yurreth’s empire was an occupier in waiting or a disaster already loose. I practiced the ways of a Swordpriest so that I may find a way to deter her. Why are you here? By all standards you’re worth less than that slave, droning for someone else’s dream.” He raised his chin towards Lazul, his crude insult did not hide the pity in his eyes.

  Lazul shugged this off. Dalagun did not. The giant reached for his hammer. Hazahnahkah wondered if he had ever killed the same man twice before.

  A one-armed figure paced up to them quickly. Dalagun, Lamina, and Galfarys saluted, but Zalaster wasn’t allowed to. The figure hugged him tightly, then nodded.

  “How did you know I would be here?”

  It was a woman’s voice. A familiar voice.

  Zalaster’s eyes widened. “I didn’t…”

  Freyja smiled. “We travel by nightfall. I’m told Fawn City trackers are the best that there are. If so, we’ll have Bankanzaku’s body hanging at our gates by morning.”

  The very puzzling exchange affected Hazahnahkah more than anyone else. He realized the dreams Knife had been giving these people weren’t about Nazaki.

  They were about Ysan.

  And she was…

  … older.

  “You think we didn’t know? That you traded places with one gifted the dream? Zalaster, you should know so much better than that.”