“I will tell you a tale of power that strikes like a snake out of the air.” Sgathaich hissed her words and wove them in the air with her fingers. While the Sethian Skin danced away from the power and mocked it, Sgathaich finished in whispers, “Not to bite to coil, how the power grows when you struggle.” She lifted her hands, fingertips humming with whispering song, and watched as a haze of serpentine coils encircled the arms of the Sethian Skin. She pulled on the coils, used them to pull herself behind him like she’d leashed herself to the fleeing creature.

“I will tell you a story of an eagle’s speedy dive and outstretched claws.” At this, the air around her howled, wind eddying up beneath her. She had no wings, but the tale bore her into the air. She wrote the words of the story in the air with her hands, and the magic ran down to her feet. Where moments ago her limbs had ached with the sleeplessness of war and the weakness of her age, suddenly the felt powerful, her claws sharper and longer. “How it dives!”

The Sethian Skin dove into a wooden doorway just as she fell, and her empowered talons cut through snow and ice and left gouges in the paving stones where he’d been standing. She heard him laughing as he vanished into a warm, red hallway, and huffed in aggravation. Sgathaich took a moment to glance behind her, watching the light of northland weaponry tear through the city. She said, “In Pharaul the children get home safely; clever and stubborn, the children stay close to one another and evade both the bite and terror of war.” She wrote these words in the light and song of magic, words of ancient script shivering in the air, and then she sent it away into the city.

The summoned serpent returned to her; no longer able to hold onto the Sethian Skin, it coiled about her arm. The summoned eagle lit upon her shoulder. These were ephemeral shapes, as invisible as eddies of wind in the snow.

Sgathaich leaned down and followed the Sethian Skin into the tiny open door, out of the chill snow of Pharaul and into the warm air of whatever cursed place he’d fled to. As she stepped in, the serpent and the eagle vanished, and the weary pains of her body returned suddenly. Crouching in the narrow hallway, she still had to bend her head to crouch in the low place, shoulders brushing red cloth hanging on the ceiling.

“Please don’t touch the fabric if you aren’t going to purchase it.” The Sethian Skin stood, narrow and small but for the broad hat he hid beneath. Beneath the hat, he smiled with onyx-black teeth.

She leaned forward onto her knees, prepared to chase him beastlike through this tunnel if she had to. “I’ll tell a tale…” She began, but couldn’t feel the magic in her voice or in her hand. She watched the walls covered in purple and red cloth, how they shivered in the wind. “What is this place?”

“My warren,” answered the Sethian Skin. “If you’ve told my tale, you know what that means.”

“A wandering house.” Sgathaich tore her coat off and cast it out the door she’d stepped through, its metal buckles in the snow. She was narrow beneath it, wrapped tight in white rags that imperfectly concealed tufts of feathers. From pouches about her waist, she tossed metal and wooden tools, pens and blades, coins of silver and bronze, all back into Pharaul. She divested herself of all her wood, metal, and earth.

“That’s the idea. You might just survive.” The Sethian Skin lifted his hands, skin on his fingers splitting to show the bone beneath. “Or you would, but I’ve an understanding with the Maniaque, and my magic works just fine.” A slam came from down the hallway, the echoing bang of breaking wood, and it came with the shout of many men. It was enough to make the Sethian Skin look over his shoulder in surprise. “Who would dare-?”

Sgathaich pounced, shouldering into the dark man hard. More than double his size, she sent him rolling, then pivoted around to grab at his face with her taloned foot. Fast as a rodent, he squirmed from side to side away from her claws. For just a moment, the two looked like an eagle and its black-furred prey, talons snapping at a writhing body, and then the Sethian Skin bolted away.

*

Hands still manacled behind them, Amo still wore the broad smile of mischief as northland soldiers charged through the Maniaque’s doors, blades high, eyes vengeful beneath their helms. Amo dodged away from a blade and gave a surprisingly strong barefoot kick to a soldier’s knee. Amo ignored the pain of the metal joints cutting into their feet, satisfied by the soldier’s pained shout and how they crumbled. The next soldier, Amo simply fled, jumping up on a display and kicking a well-dressed mannequin down at them.

Nymir grabbed the swinging tail of Amo’s dress and pulled them down, tossing them to the floor and driving a knee into their gut to pin them. Amo hit hard, head bouncing off the bloodstained tile where they’d already died once. Shaking the daze from their eyes, Amo watched Nymir lift his knife and hissed, “What a fucking joke.”

Hesitating just slightly, Nymir said, “Just shut up. You’re already dead. This is how I survive. One of us has to.” But before he could bring down his knife, claws grabbed his face and lifted him up, throwing him back at the soldiers behind him. He landed hard, but armored fists grabbed his arms and got him up to his feet right away, so he was quickly looking up at the last person he expected to see.

Towering in the showroom, absurdly tall and narrow, the shape of her concealed beak now plain beneath rags that gave generous glimpses of feathers, Sgathaich glared at green-clad soldiers before her. But she fixed her gaze on one man in particular. “Nymir. I warned Amo you’d turncoat the second things got tense, but they didn’t believe me.”

“Sgathaich?” He glanced at the confused faces around him, the man with the leather shroud wrapped around his face and the seven armored northlanders that had made it in before the door closed. Shaking his head, Nymir hissed, “Freakish crone from the orphans’ house. Old hag of tall tales.”

Rolling to their feet, Amo stared up in shock. “Mom?”

Sgathaich bent down and swept one long, narrow arm to push Amo behind her. “We’ll talk in a moment, dear Amo. I need to kill these men.”

“The Manaique will take care of it!” Sethian Skin spoke in a loud, carrying voice. It was accompanied by a groan in the walls and in the floor, the creaking of the ceiling overhead. Everyone looked at him, and he smirked at the attention. “Hello. Welcome to my boutique. I always appreciate when my materials deliver themselves. But, oh, Amo. Get their metal and stone off their bodies before the Maniaque gets to them, or they’ll be useless to us.” The green-clad soldiers were too busy staring at the strange, dark man to notice the wall panels behind them creaking just slightly open.