“I went as far as I could.” Half-Face Mirian lay against a metal cage in a hidden hallway he’d found by listening to the movement of air. His arm, flayed by the tall woman’s talons, lay slowly bleeding in his lap.
It had only taken Amo a few minutes to find him, and they now said, “You’ve lost a lot of blood. Are you going to die?” as they looked at them from across the room.
“Only if you kill me,” Mirian answered, glaring into the shadows at Amo. To Mirian, Amo appeared as a thin and unremarkable person, but Mirian had also seen Amo battered and captured and even impaled, and none of this seemed to stick. Mirian also remembered a tortured figure strung up above the street, begging for death in Amo’s wake. “What dark magic do you wield, southlander? What secret sorcery has Pharaul saved for these latter days?”
“Don’t read too much into it. Pharaul doesn’t have magic. It just so happens that my mom’s a Mythspinner and she’s got my health in mind. Keeps me going when I shouldn’t be. But what about you? You’re used to having magic run through you, too, right?”
“Benefit of rank,” Mirian said. “Northland sorcerers keep us healthy.”
“Well, they can’t reach you here. Their magic won’t work in this place.” Amo finally approached. “So now that we’ve confirmed you’re at my mercy, we’re going to get you inside this cage and keep you alive. Sound good?”
Mirian growled. “Come one step closer and I’ll show you what a cornered soldier can do.”
Pausing to shrug, Amo smirked and ran at Mirian. The man was actually ill-prepared for Amo to mercilessly drive a heel into his temple and kick him into a cage.
* * *
“I will tell you a tale of an ancient time, an ancient field near the shore far from here, of a warren where the first bloodline of rabbits still lived without knowledge of hunters or predators.”
“They were no mere rabbits,” Sethian Skin muttered in offense.
“In the myth they were rabbits.” Sgathaich chided, then went on. “At this time no person in all Sof Sator had ever skinned an animal. Leather had not yet been invented, nor had anyone ever seen in the fur of an animal the solution to their chill. The rabbits of this warren trusted the nearby peoples completely, and ran happily among them, adored and treasured as beautiful and innocent creatures.”
“The way you’re telling this story is so reductive. I’m not an animal. I feel reduced.”
“Be quiet or I’ll stop.” Sgathaich paused for a long moment, and then went on, weaving magic out of her words as she went. Like she would summon a phantasm of a beast by telling its tale, or like she would infuse Amo with health by telling a story of Amo’s success, so she spoke life into Sethian Skin by speaking his myth. “One among the rabbits had a coat of incredible black fur, soft and shining, and it was adored by all of the people it ran past. So when the first winter came and people saw how it sat comfortably and beautifully warm in the snow, a hunter first realized that he could steal an animal’s warmth by stealing its fur.”
“I don’t like this story very much,” muttered Sethian Skin, growing more quiet. He continued to weaken even as the magic moved over him.
* * *
Amo returned to the Maniaque’s main room to find that Sgathaich had laid Sethian Skin upon the table in the center of the room. Though she spoke over him, Sethian Skin seemed to have wilted around his own bones, becoming something strangely shaped. It was like the skin had lost coherence, instead becoming a heavy mat of black leather draped stiffly over the bones it contained. The fine clothes that Sethian Skin wore held him only slightly together, and the sight of his sagging body made Amo nauseous. Not just because it was ugly, but because Amo felt like they weren’t supposed to see him like that.
By then, Sgathaich was already closing in on the end of the story. Her hands wove ancient script in the singing air above the dark body, saying, “The rabbits of the warren were afraid of the narrow, dark body, not recognizing the skin of their slaughtered sibling as it now rode upon the bones of his murderer. But in this form -- the shape of a man in a guise of midnight -- the skinned rabbit placed racks in front of the warren: racks of coats he’d made from the skins of men. He retreated out of sight to watch his innocent siblings emerge and find the coats. The rabbits did not understand tanned leather, but they loved the warm coats, and wore them happily through the winter.”
Amo approached her. “I’ve never heard this story.”
She responded, “I try not to tell stories of beings that I might accidentally empower. I know many, many stories of awful things that I dare not speak.”
“I guess that means the child-stealer of Revan doesn’t actually exist? Cause you told that story a few times.”
“Or I just don’t care about the fates of the children of Revan.”
Amo chuckled at the joke of it. “Is the story over, then?”
“Over enough. He should have more than he needs. But, since you’re listening.” Sgathaich flexed her fingers to send a pulse of magic into Sethian Skin’s horrid body. “It ends like this: the hunter who killed the rabbit is still wearing the skin he won, but the hunter is merely a skeleton inside of it now. The Sethian Skin goes on seeking man-skin to weave into fine coats for the hunted beings it pities.”
“Hah.” Amo sat down on the pedestal of a fallen mannequin. “So it’s a cautionary myth about not killing rabbits?”
“It’s a stupid myth with no allegory,” Sgathaich sighed. “Did you handle the loose end?”
“Kicked it in the head a few times and locked it in a cage.”
“Fine. If you’re gifting the man to the Sethian Skin, don’t wear any coats that he happens to offer you in the near future.” Sgathaich turned her back on the dark body. “You and I need to talk, but the Wandering House is listening to us. We’ll need to exit, which I assume we can only do after nightfall.”
“That’s how he explained it to me,” Amo nodded.
Sgathaich pivoted to gesture to the room full of dead men. “Then perhaps we should do our malevolent host the favor of tidying up while he rests.”
