Amo looked at their hands, warm with the quiet song of Sgathaich’s magic. Ancient words pulled Amo’s broken bones back into place, sealed the torn skin with supernatural quickness. Where the manacles had torn strips of flesh cleanly away, Amo saw that even Sgathaic’s magic couldn’t perfectly renew the harm that had been done. For the first time in their life, Amo would have scars. “I freaked out a little bit earlier, when I felt your magic go away. I guess I’m a little too used to it.”
“Stay used to it.” Sgathaic said tiredly, rubbing at her face. Her bleeding had finally slowed, but she wouldn’t spin up a myth about her own health. She didn’t use her magic for herself like that. “You know your health is the story I’ll never stop telling.”
Around them lay the strewn bodies of the Watch soldiers that had chased Amo into the Maniaque. None of them had survived, seven soldiers beheaded, drained of fluid and marrow and cast aside. Nymir’s body lay among them, sharing the fate of those he’d chosen to side with. At the back of the room, Sethian Skin struggled to stand, muttering, “Too bad we couldn’t salvage any for materials. Useless now. A shame.” He stopped to breathe and wilted weakly forward. “It would help to have some fresh power to work with right now.”
“Where’s their spymaster?” Amo looked around the room. “The Maniaque didn’t get him, and he can’t leave. He’s still in here somewhere. And he entered willingly, like you said, so we can use him. Right?”
“Amo,” Sgathaic snapped. “I don’t like how you’re talking. Don’t speak like this accursed thing speaks.”
“We made a deal, mom.” Amo spoke without apology. Though Sgathaic crouched, she was so tall that Amo still had to look up into her lofty eyes. “Sethian Skin is going to give me the weapons these people are using against Pharaul, and all I have to do is bring him enough Gray Watch soldiers. People I’d be killing anyway.”
“You can’t trust deals with creatures like this!” Sgathaic slowly straightened her spine, lifting her head to an intimidating height that was only half her potential. “I’ve told you enough stories about these kinds of monsters, haven’t I? And we have more important things to do than run Pharaul’s errands!”
“More important? No, we don’t.” Amo gestured in frustration. “This isn’t the time for you to start talking historic purposes again! We’re ending a war, saving our home! That’s the most important thing I’m doing here.”
The mannequin Sethian Skin leaned against toppled, its wide dress expanding across the floor. Sethian Skin collapsed upon it, his legs stretched in front of him as he propped his head and shoulders against the mannequin’s pedestal. He muttered lowly, “Such a hypocrite, I am. Don’t break our deal by dying, I say, and now look at me.”
Amo hurried to stand over Sethian Skin. “What are you talking about? If you die, you break the deal. You can’t do that.”
Sethian Skin waved a limp hand. “Yes, as I just acknowledged. Apt of you. And yet, here I lay. Iron is such a loathsome thing.”
“For the best,” Sgathaic grumbled. “The Wandering House will be less prone to do harm without a master to serve.”
“Mom.” Amo eyed the tall woman. “You could heal him.”
“Have you not paid attention to what he is?” Sgathaic shook her head. “Were I to preserve him, I would be complicit in the death of every future victim. His demise saves lives and frees you from a deal you never should have made.”
“And if it dooms Pharaul?” Though Amo’s dress was in tatters and their body wet with blood, Sgathaich’s magic – now that the Maniaque seemed to be permitting it – filled Amo with enough health and energy to shout and gesture forcefully. “Let him eat a hundred northlanders if it means I can save our home and end the Thousand-Year War before it runs another thousand years.”
“Wars are not ours to end. You and I have other goals to see to in this land.”
Amo shook their head forcefully. “No. I took an oath to Pharaul! I’ve compatriots who still need me.”
“You will listen to me, child.” Sgathaich lifted a hand toward Amo and spoke in a voice of power: “Bedlam-o-Amon, by this-”
Leaping to get enough height, Amo struck Sgathaich’s long-fingered hand aside and shouted at her, “Do not invoke that name!”
Even seeming to slowly die, Sethian Skin lifted his head and exhaled a shaky, curious hum.
Amo stomped toward Sgathaic. “If I help you, Mom, it should be out of love and loyalty, not because you’ve compelled me with your sorcery. But those are the same things holding me to my duty to Pharaul. I didn’t become a spy of Pharaul just out of convenience. I believe in it, the place, the people. You know I do! You said so in your sorcery. You spoke it as part of my tale!”
Sgathaic made a clicking sound in her beak and turned to look away, but she was silent to that.
Glaring at the tall woman in silence, Amo eventually huffed. “Sethian Skin, if I find whatever hole the spymaster’s crawled into and drag him back here, will that be enough material for you to save yourself?”
Sethian Skin hummed and muttered incoherently. He tried to push himself to sit upright, but ended up wilting forward over his own lap. His great hat almost fell off. “Getting a slight bit late for such things.”
Amo crouched in front of Sethian Skin, staring mostly at the top of his huge hat. After a few seconds of hesitation, Amo grabbed the hat and pulled it off. Amo expected some horrible, hideous visage beneath, but it was just a head. Long black hair hung as thin and light as spiderweb over sleek, sharp features, half-parted eyes that were like perfect red marbles filling out his sockets. The greatest oddity wasn’t even frightening: an absurd pair of long, black rabbit ears. They looked at first like something worn as a joke but were, on closer inspection, definitely anchored to the man’s head. Frowning, Amo couldn’t help but ask, “What’s with the ears?”
“Not unexpected,” Sgathaic sighed, watching unhappily, “For a rabbit spirit.”
“He’s a rabbit spirit?”
Sethian Skin managed to breathe, “I am the rabbit spirit. First of the art,” but he said it in the quiet voice of one too lost to their weakness to really understand what they were saying.
“I don’t believe it,” Amo said, and tried to put the man’s hat back on. Frustratingly, the ears now got in the way, and Amo couldn’t figure out how the hat had ever fit in the first place. “No. He’s too horrible for that. I don’t believe it at all.”
Sgathaic stood and stepped over to loom above Amo and the Sethian Skin. “Many of the most terrifying things in this world began as harmless or even lovely things. I know this creature’s story well, and it is as bloody and heart-curdling as any I’ve ever told. It’s a myth I’ll have to conjure with if I’m to save this creature’s life on your behalf.”
“You’ll do it?”
“Go find the spymaster and make sure he can’t cause any more trouble. I will reinforce this monster’s myth so that its existence endures.” She bent down, her long arm extending to tear the iron bolt from Sethian Skin’s side and ignoring his shout. “But if it does not fulfill everything it said it would for you, I will kill it. That is my deal to you, Amo, understand?”
