Amo watched the flex of their new gloves as they bent their fingers, listening to the leather’s quiet keen. Seamless leather, without stitches, without clasps, as though Amo had slid their hand into the hollowed paw of an animal. Where had the leather come from? Amo hadn’t seen any leather supply in Sethian Skin’s stock, and all his clothes looked so soft and silky. Dyed black, darkened by heat or chemical: the tight black leather of these clothes, these boots that looked almost like polished bare feet, this whole-body coating that now encased Amo, might be the skin of the Gray Watch garrison. Had Nymir’s skin been stripped and prepared for this purpose?
Did Amo care if that was the case?
Someone moved behind them. “What are you writing?”
“Notes.” Amo closed two books: one a journal, the other a book of southland ciphers. In the gray light through the tower’s fogged window, this dusty little room seemed so flat, so empty, the dilapidated wooden crates piled under cobwebs seeming somehow like impressions on the walls. Nothing had definition, depth, or weight, like nothing in this room really existed. It suited spies well enough. “And what, Indirk, are you looking at?”
The dark woman, gray-haired with age, gray leathers like the gray city, smirked. “You, apparently.” If not for the gleam of her hazel eyes, the vital shine on her dark cheeks, she’d seem as ghostly as everything else. Indirk hadn’t been on the quay for Nymir’s betrayal. She’d blown her cover days before and fled to this tower on the edge of the city; when Amo and the other spies had gone to fallback positions, she’d already been here waiting for them. She said, “Curious about what you’re taking notes on. Curious about where you come from. How you seem so good at this whole spy thing.”
“I’m not good at it.”
“You’re the only one who escaped after getting caught. Edner was eavesdropping on the Watch earlier. There’s rumors about you. Magic illusions. Torturing civilians to death, hanging them up in demonic ritual.”
Amo deadpanned, “Sounds like someone I’d want on our side. If such a person existed. Let me think, please.” Amo turned back to their book of questions, their code, writing strange symbols that only southlanders with the proper cipher could read. These weren’t spy reports, though. Amo wrote about Sethian Skin. Amo wrote about Sgathaich.
How did Sgathaich come to Gray Watch, and why did she remain? If Sgathaich loved the southlands so dearly – and Amo had thought that she did – why did she hold her own purpose so much higher than those of the spies? Such that she would command Amo to abandon Pharaul’s goals, and even turn the spies from their purpose? What did Sgathaich seek here? Amo had once, naively, though the spell Sgathaic had meant to seek was the same as the weapons used against Pharaul, but now it was clearly something else. What was it, then? What could be so important that Sgathaich, after decades of perfect trust, suddenly seemed so secretive?
* * *
Sgathaich had taken to sitting beneath the quay, where the cool sand shifted around her, the sea rumbled and sang, the clouds curled, and curious people cast her side-long gazes as they picked through driftwood and refuse. Sgathaich had adorned herself in salt-bleached rags, so that she seemed a strange, narrow figure bent in the shadows. People stayed away from her. This was fine. It had been so long since she’d felt wind that was less than a frigid razor, since she’d smelled salt in the air, since she’d gazed upon the sea. She wanted to watch and listen. She wanted to feel for magic on the air.
It never changed. The lighthouse was a warmth above all the city’s energies, the song above the singing. A whole city of monsters, and none of them seemed to notice. Or maybe they did. Sgathaic had asked Sethian Skin about the place, and though he treated the lighthouse and its unspeakable inhabitants as casually as any other client of his, the old rodent’s words were perhaps as intricately woven as any stitch or pattern in his boutique.
His actions made no sense. Why make such a deal with Amo? Why care so much about the veiled night? Why such focus on an insignificant thrall like Norgash, and for that matter, why no mention of the greater being which Norgash must serve? How did a simple animal spirit like the Sethian Skin come by such power, and become so deeply bound to a thing like the Maniaque?
Eyes gleamed in the shadows beneath the pier to Sgathaich’s side. She eyed the movement of small bodies, so small compared to her, and smiled beneath her rags. “Hello, children.” The urchins couldn’t see more of her than her eyes behind the rags, so she lifted a hand and showed her long fingers, beckoning slightly. “Would you like me to tell you a story? Do you and your friends like scary stories, maybe?”
* * *
Sethian Skin stood in his workshop, in a circle of dressforms wearing new designs of black leather and darkly colored wool. He was quiet. He listened to a grinding sound in the Maniaque’s walls. It liked to chew the bones clean. It would be awhile until Sethian Skin could pry the empty meat from its unseen teeth. “I’ve made curious acquaintances lately,” Sethian Skin said to the Maniaque. “Have you noticed? Surely you have! You’ve a soft spot for the bird woman, haven’t you?” The walls did not reply, too preoccupied with the dregs of its feast.
So Sethian Skin paced and waited, pondering Amo. The more things happened, the more it seemed that they didn’t care about Norgash or the veiled night. In fact, Sethian Skin suspected that Amo wasn’t even really a southlander spy, that it was simply another cover. Amo’s connection with the mythspinner Sgathaich was a surprise; why did such a powerful sorcerer teach Amo so little magic, if they were as close as they seemed?
But then, why did Sgathaich come alone when a mythspinner should be surrounded by summoned figments to do their bidding? Sethian Skin had felt an aura of great but foreign power around Sgathaich – Norgash had a similar aura, that of one who borrowed power from a greater being – so Sethian Skin wondered if Sgathaich did someone else’s bidding. She had spoken a name to Amo, Bedlam-o-Amon, which Amo had taken offense at. Was this just a mother invoking their child’s full name, or did it hold actual power?
Sethian Skin paused in his pacing and asked the Maniaque, “What is Bedlam-o-Amon?”
No answer came.
The real question was, of course, a question much more important than identity or ability. The most important questions were always the simplest. What did they want, these two? “Actually, forget the bird woman,” Sethian Skin said in a chuckle to the Maniaque. “You and I both know who I’m really interested in. Amo, this southlander spy, this magnificent thing that might even be named Bedlam-o-Amon: what do they really want out of all this?”
* * *
Amo closed their cipher and listened to Indirk moving around behind them, seeming to come closer second by second, seeming to want something. They sighed in some annoyance, closed their book and cipher, but kept on pondering: What do you want, Sgathaich? Why won’t you just tell me?
* * *
“But it all left her with one question,” Sgathaich said to the one child who hadn’t either fled or gotten bored and wandered off. “What does the evil spirit want from them? Will they figure it out in time? But then,” she lifted a long, narrow finger, eyes smiling beneath her rags. “She will remember that she is deathly sure: nothing is getting in her way. Nothing is going to stop her from unmaking the history of the Mountains.”
* * *
Indirk’s hand fell on Amo’s shoulder. “You’re really brooding. It’s scary. You okay?”
Feeling tense beneath Indirk’s hand, Amo nodded. “Yeah. I’m fine. I’m figuring this out. We’ll save the southlands yet.”
* * *
Sethian Skin bound a leather collar tight around a mannequin’s neck, so tight it would strangle. “We’ve only got a week until the Veiled Night, but I’m so distracted. How unlike me! Yet, oh my Maniaque, they are such an interesting pair. I think I’m going to have a lot of fun with them.”
