as Mindfang and Spades’ stories run in parallel to each other, Aranea’s delivery of a cane to Horuss seems to prefigure Slick’s delivery of English’s cane to the new session; Darkleer’s lair is a Void to be filled just as the Alpha session is a Void one awaiting surrogate material.
Slick’s cane represents his new leadership of the Felt; and with Aranea’s cane delivery (which takes on a quite blunt phallic connotation here) also representing the transfer of English from one host to the next, this seems to lend support to the idea that the Felt embody Lord English’s genetic material. in this sense, both Slick and the Alpha Jack are acting as “vessels” for English; the Alpha in the more blatant sense, but Slick still playing the part of the Lord’s courier, transporting his essence to where it needs to be.
(not getting any updates on where the cane ends up after Slick gets blown to bits, we can only assume that it fell into the black hole and ended up on Caliborn’s world; making Slick’s trip literally a delivery of the cane into English’s hands. its semblance to the Green Sun also evokes Dave and Rose’s “delivery” in Cascade; what they thought would be a weapon against English only turned out to be playing right into his grand scheme.)