3. Passing Cloud

  In the dim light of the houseboat's second room the shadow pulls seven boneless fingers from their hands.

  Left first. With the long, sharp nail of their thumb they nick the skin beneath the scars that run transverse across their metacarpals, draw a drop of blood. After years of conjuring they haven't got much skin left, but with practice, one drop is all you need. With the st two fingers of their right hand they smear the blood across the top of their left, the long keloid ridge where once were fingers. A handkerchief stuffed in their mouth against the pain; they should be stronger now.

  Pain doesn't make you stronger.

  The blood pools, the cut suddenly widening, even as the alum dust on their skin reacts to staunch its flow. Their teeth grind against the linen in their mouth, eyes narrowed to slits as they dig into the wound with thumb and little finger. Blood trickles down their palms and sptters in the bowl between them and the mirror.

  Come out. Come out easy this time, please.

  Slowly they begin to feel it. The phantom sense of a finger that isn't there, and then three more. They dig the palm of their right hand into their left as their focus narrows along the edge of the pain radiating from the open wound on their left hand's, as four boneless tendrils sprout, fungus pale, from the white tips of the metacarpals. Blood darkens back into their skin, the wound closing around the four regenerated fingers, the skin only a little lighter than theirs, translucent in the light from the houseboat's small, high windows. They raise their hand to a shaft of dusty light, watch it defuse through the boneless beauty of their fingers.

  Their righthand fingers are easy after that, the ghosts of their left parting the skin to draw them out. Thumb first—pain radiating up their arm as the thick digit splits the skin—then fore and middle. By now the tone of the phantom limbs is almost indistinguishable from the real, the shadow skin adjusting to the light with a mind of its own. Like the cuttlefish tentacles whorling down their back, the tattoo they've only seen twice since their confirmation, when the inkmaster's whaletooth pick cut grooves into their spine.

  They check their face in the looking gss; an easy job, after their hands. With a few strokes of their fingers they widen the jaw, then pinch their nose a little off—a broken nose does a lot to distract people from the rest of you, Ilsyn Tam taught them that. Then their eyes: hold down the lids, apply a little pressure from below as sepia-brown diffuses over green retinas. It used to hurt as bad as fingers, but now they barely feel it. As the color takes their skin shifts involuntarily, wide bands of iridescence strippling down their cheeks and brows. Passing cloud, as if the cuttlefish on their back was trying to catch a crab. As if their skin were hunting itself, preparing to betray them once again.

  With a little rubbing they draw fine dark hair from their upper lip—the hair of a boy just coming of age. Looking like a real man is too much work on a sunny day like this, as is conjuring real manhood, not that the thought doesn't cross their minds. But it's better to go without. Sprouting fingers is painful enough, and if they're caught—well, the guards at Penance House will rape anything that looks young enough, cock or no. And conjuring cock hasn't been profitable, tely.

  Whoring isn't going so well. Today, the shadow will be a thief again.

  They step outside. The Kanh An is a small houseboat for five people, but for now, at least, it's quiet—Ilsyn Rau's out whoring, and Rau's mother and their daughter are both still asleep in one of the hammocks, half a smile visible on the girl's face where they y with their head against baba's chest. Around them, the reed-blinds hung in the houseboat's open walls rustle gently in the wind coming off the sea. It hurts to look at them. They turn to Ilsyn Tam, Rau's sister by blood and theirs by oath, sitting with her back against one of the roof-posts, waiting for the tea kettle to boil.

  "Well aren't you handsome today?" says Ilsyn Tam. Only a little sneer to their voice. "Where are you going?"

  "The Prospekt."

  "And what are you going to get there, that you can't get in Tzaeltown?"

  "Oil. It'll be cheaper."

  For a minute they wonder if Ilsyn Tam will stop them. They didn't tell them what they were going to do, but Ilsyn Tam will have guessed it by now.

  "All right," Ilsyn Tam says, eventually. "Get me some Aretii snuff while you're there, too—this has too much saltpeter in it."

  Ilsyn Tam throws them a penny. "Be safe, Lho-lho."

  Lho. Not the name their mother gave them, or the sisters of the Iyansenixi, but it's the only name Lho cares to remember being called, living in Tzaeltown with Makara's nomads.

  "You be safe too," Lho says.

  Then they're climbing the dder to the pier, walking through the forest of houseboats and barges and canoes. High above them, the sails of clippers and windpumps fsh red and white against the autumn sky, and ahead of them, four golden characters shine on the walls of a temple-library, spelling out the Nomad's motto, which even an urchin like Lho can read: NO HOMELAND BUT THE OPEN SEA.

  They take the long route to the Prospekt, crossing from Tzaeltown to Makara proper by Haliune Bridge. A canoe would be faster but they haven't the money for it. A canoe is faster anywhere in Makara, the one hundred isnds of the city divided from each other mostly by canals, with only two set apart—Tzaeltown, on the marshy western shore of the Ake river, and Penance House, a windowless box of white marble perched atop an islet in Binder's Bay. From Haliune they can see clippers coming in to Tzua harbor, their sails fluttering like the wings of roosting birds as they approach the lighthouse and drydocks at the main isnd's north end, their polished hulls heavy with tea and cotton. All the treasure of the Innd Sea and the crown colonies beyond it gathered here at the heart-mind of the world, the capital of the Aretii empire.

  Some foreigners are here—traders from Svalkham and Amakash, looking at the Tower of Gss; the only part of the pace Lho can see from the bridge. They've learned not to notice it but they follow the foreigners' eyes all the same, catch the light fshing on its surface. A tower of silver-blue mirrors, as thin as a needle and as tall as the clouds, the almost-perfect ruin of the ship Lady Arahu used to bring them to these isnds, after the Queen of the Heaven cast her traitor father into the primeval sea. That is, if you believe what the sisters of the Iyansenixi say. Lho did believe them, once.

  They turn north as soon as they reach the other side of Haliune bridge; best to stay as far from the Pace as possible, with its swarming inspectors and and seething notice-walls, its white white bricks mortared with the ashes of ten thousand nomads. In the alleyway they turn down a freckled whore and a pamphlet flogger, tap their forehead to the nightsoil men, avert their eyes from the empties—bnk-eyed sailors, their teeth worn to dirty stubs by lethe—before finally stepping onto the Prospekt itself, into the river of sweating, bustling bodies.

  It's their clothes Lho pays the most attention to. Clothes tell you everything you need to know about a person: where from, how old, how much money. Old men are the best for picking—women are as likely to keep their money in their sleeves as in their pockets, or to hide their pockets under their skirts, and all the young men who can afford it have taken to keeping their money in pockets sewn in to the lining of their tight jackets (a clever novelty, sewn-in pockets—Lho wishes they could afford them). But an old man will always keep his money in a bag on his belt, and on a hot day like this he'll rarely bother to cover it with a coat or a jerkin. Best of all, he's probably too slow to catch you in the crowd.

  Really, it doesn't much matter where the money is—what matters is where the mark is looking. Lho sees him almost as soon as they cross the Prospekt, haggling with a nomad girl (Lho knows their own, even when they've got brown eyes) over the price of some sea urchins. From another kiosk, pretending to examine a smoking pipe, Lho watches the man lift a sliver of brilliant orange flesh to his tongue, watches him wipe his fingers clean and bend—oh, he thinks he's a wise one—to take a little purse from his boot.

  Lho watches while the nomad despines his urchins and packs them in a straw mat, lets him walk on a little ways before slipping after him, weaving ahead through the crowd. As he snts towards the edge of the Prospekt Lho bends to retie the thong of their sandal, clipping his thigh with their shoulder as they rise. Their fingers fsh and disappear into his shadow, stretching out invisibly to catch his trouser leg as he stumbles against them. Pinprick-pain dances across the ridge of their hand.

  "Oh! I'm so sorry, sir," they say, in perfect Aretii.

  The man grumbles as three boneless fingers thrust into his boot. "For heaven's sake, my boy—be careful! Someone will step on your head."

  He walks on, muttering to himself, as Lho slides their guilty hand through the deep colr of their tunic, tucking it into their binding. They can recognize the coins without even looking at them—enough to buy a day's food for the houseboat.

  They turn north towards the harbor, ducking into an alleyway as the bells of the Iyansenixi sound ahead of them. From the shadows they watch them striding south—tall women in long gray robes, heads wimpled and eyes veiled, their bodies unadorned but for the columns of red embroidery that indicates their standing. Twice-borns walk ahead and behind them, with spears and cnging iron-bells, and even high-born men, men who wear silk vests and swords on their hips, bnch and back away.

  Lho waits for them to pass, then takes the alleyways a half a mile north before stepping back onto the Prospekt. They reset their face as they go, pinching their nose and cheeks into different shapes with the help of a rich man's window.

  This close to the harbor the Prospekt is full of sailors: Svalkhami whalers with blue spirals tattooed under their thick red hair; cotton merchants from Otamafete and Wehowe with shaved pates and tiny cups of the undrinkable mud they call coffee; an Amakashka giant carrying a box of silk on her shoulder as if it weighed no more than a kickball; other nomads, permitted this close to the water to show the ink on their skin, the pitter-pat of Tzael creole a river of sense amid the sound of a dozen other nguages. The closest thing to a mother tongue a motherless waif like them will ever have.

  This close to the water men usually look pretty rough, but today there are a few actors here, probably doing a better job whoring than Lho ever could. They're dressed in men's clothing—a man would have to be very stupid, or very beautiful, to wear a dress in full view of the city's watchmen—but they catch Lho's eye all the same: their clothes an uproar of blue and red silk, their faces shaved audaciously smooth and lightly painted. One of them smiles at Lho and bats his eyeshes, and Lho suddenly has to look away. As luck would have it, even they've taken to wearing tight breeches, tely.

  Lho shakes their head, scans the crowd. The Amakashka have too many guards, and the Otamafetenese have that brilliant trick of using cotton paper instead of coins, worthless to anyone outside a bank; stealing from the sailors themselves is out of the question, since they're all too poor to bother stealing from. Then they spot Lyn Rue. Hard to forget a face like that, the tattoos on their cheeks riven with scars, light fshing in their eyes as they show off a pair of spectacles to Wehowean trader.

  The two of them stole together often enough that there's no need for words. All it takes is a smile from Lyn Rue, a tilt of the head towards their next customer, and Lho knows everything they need to know. A big woman approaches their stall—a Iyansenixi scribe, her hair only half-hidden by her bonnet—and Lho sidles into pce behind her, gncing left and right without moving their head. For once it helps to be so short; they're completely hidden from view by the bodies around them, everyone looking up and around and nobody looking down. They take their position right beside the woman, close enough that she'd never think they could her pockets, listening as Lyn Rue prattles in bad Aretii.

  "You're wearing the wrong kind," Lyn Rue says. "You buy yours from an Aretii grinder, yes? They don't curve it right. You see, this is better—biconcave lenses, much finer ground than that bottle gss you wear . . ."

  Lyn Rue bends across the stall-front to show the lenses to the woman and knocks over a bowl of coffee with their elbow, spilling dark liquid across the fabric of the stall front. "Oh! So sorry!"

  All the signal Lho needs. They catch the woman by the arm as she recoils, their boneless fingers stretching like spun sugar through the slit in the side of her skirt, curling around the heavy purse that bulges through the fabric.

  "Just what the devil do you think you're doing?"

  The man wrenches Lho's hand away so hard their arm almost tears from its socket. Their fingers fly out of the woman's pocket before they can change them back, and for a moment everyone can see them—the man, the scribe, Lyn Rue, the swarm of sudden onlookers, all staring as they flutter like jellyfish tendrils in the burning sun, Lho's skin passing cloud before they can will it to stop. Their fingers writhe and flicker and finally vanish into the nothing of scar tissue, blood bubbling out of leaking stumps, and the sun glimmers on nothing but the son of heaven's golden brooch.

  "A shadow?" he snarls, teeth fshing through his beard. "I thought Queen Arantisi finished you people off."

  "Perhaps a trick of the light, sir—" Lyn Rue stammers.

  "Shut up, you alien cunt. Unless you'd like to hang with this one."

  "Heaven have mercy," the scribe murmurs, hands cpped over her face. "Oh Great Mother—"

  Lho's mind races. They could still pull away, if they focused long enough to shapechange their arm and pull it boneless from the son's clenched hand. Hit him between the legs, run for the pier, back to the water. He might cut them down with his sword before they get two paces off but better that than Penance House. They should say something, at least. Protest. Expin. Beg. But all they can think of is another day, years before, another bearded face sneering at them while they y in the dirt, blood on their legs and in their mouth, watching the bearded one take a heavy woodsman's knife from his belt and kiss the base of Lho's thumb with its tip.

  Bad luck to kill you on a saint's day.

  They try to focus on the son of heaven's voice as he calls for his brothers, as the crowd draws back and Lyn Rue slips away.

  Maybe this will keep you from stealing.

  "Excuse me, sir"

  Another sister of the Iyansenixi approaches them, her wimple almost glowing in the sun, face veiled above her mouth. But Lho could recognize her by voice alone. They close their eyes, their terror turning to embarrassment as the jurist, dy Arahutama, steps out from behind the scribe.

  She smirks at Lho.

  "Well I never," she says. "Na-Iyan, release this young man, please."

  "He's a thief, your dyship—"

  "The gss merchant here, Lyn Roo-way, says my scribe stumbled and this young man caught her arm. Isn't that right, Saiu?"

  "I—I don't know what happened, my dy," the scribe stammers. "But he is a shadow—we saw it, we saw him shapechange—"

  Lho can't see dy Arahutama's eyes, but they can feel her gaze, fixing on the bloody, two-fingered club of their right hand with fascination and disgust.

  "As far as I am aware that kind of thing doesn't happen anymore, if it ever did at all," the dy says. "But let us assume he did change his shape—that, in itself, is not a crime. Not anymore. Na-Iyan, release him."

  "I know what I saw," the man says. The other sons have arrived now; they gather behind him, all in bck. "I follow the Law of Heaven, same as you do, your dyship."

  Lady Arahutama reaches into one of her sleeves and pulls out a metal card. Tarnished silver inset with characters of rose gold, the eagle of her rank perched atop the hieroglyphs.

  "You can't even read the Law, you stupid man. Let him go. Do you see anyone here who outranks me?"

  The man blushes though his beard. His grip on Lho's wrist tightens for a moment, then he lets them go, cursing under his breath as he stalks away. The other sons follow, gncing back at the magistrate as they do, angry and abashed. Lady Arahutama ughs: "You'd think they really were the sons of the queen, what with how stuck-up they are. Oh, my dear—it's been so long! I thought I might never see you again. Saiu, I don't believe you've ever been introduced—this is my dear friend, Eel-syn Lo."

  Her ability to pronounce Lho's name has not improved, but being a whore and a nomad both will teach you not to wince at that. Lho taps their forehead in greeting, trying not to notice the look of astonishment on Saiu's face. They wonder if they've met Saiu before; somehow, they can't remember.

  "I need to be on my way—" Lho says.

  "Saiu," says Lady Arahutama. "Why don't you let Lyn Rue help you get a better pair of gsses—Lho and I have something important to discuss."

  Lho opens their mouth to object, but the dy has already bent towards them, the veil drawn back from her eyes, her crow's feet deepening as she smiles. She whispers in their ear: "I think I've earned it now, wouldn't you agree?"

  *

  It doesn't take them long to reach the inn—the Blue Cat—but even before they get there dy Arahutama can barely contain herself, whispering foul things in Lho's ear and tracing the top of their spine in the dark of the alleyway. As bad as any man, really. But then, if she hadn't had the opportunity to py the hero she'd probably have gone on keeping her nose turned up at them, the way she was doing before she sailed for the continent.

  In their room overlooking the east bank of the river she presses a gss of wine into Lho's hand—a sweet wine, very dark and cold—and peels the wimple from her head. Lho doesn't undress. They sit by the window, the wine half-drunk on the sill, staring across the east river at the polders and reedbeds on the other side, a vast floodpin interrupted only by the sparse pinpricks of the windmills. They look at their hands. As soon as they got here Arahutama mopped the blood from their right, but they haven't been able to conjure the first three fingers back yet; their fourth and fifth fingers rest atop their thigh, the rest of the hand a bandaged lump.

  You can still hold a spoon with it. You can still pet a cat. It's not completely useless—

  The dy's hand touches their cheek.

  "Drink up," she says. "Why are you so sad, dear? Is this because I didn't pay you enough st time."

  "You didn't pay me at all, st time."

  "Oh, don't be so ungrateful!"

  She scowls at them, but only for a moment. "My dear boy, I'm sorry . . . of course I'll pay you. I've been so lonely these past months . . . when I was on the continent I went out uncovered once, in Kyrzyq, I couldn't resist . . . I wanted to be pretty, for once, but hardly anyone noticed. It feels so terrible to be unwanted. You wouldn't know. You're young. So young. So soft."

  They'd like to keep putting it off but you can't put a rich woman off forever. She bends to kiss them, her hair hanging nk around her face, and they cup her cheek in their left hand and push their tongue into her mouth, rising to their feet and shoving her onto the bed. One of the fasteners of her robe tears free as they fumble it open, but she only ughs, crushing their head to her chest as they palm the wide nipple of her breast and catch its tip between their teeth, biting until she cries out—"Oh, you little beast!" They crush her cries back into her mouth with their right hand, and as her teeth sink in their bandaged palm Lho finally feels wet between their own legs. They untie her girdle, nipping at her throat as they slide their hand between her thighs.

  "Stop," she breathes. "Stop biting! You hurt too much."

  What they'd like to say is: I'll stop when you pay me, you miserly cow. Instead, they stop biting, pressing an inane, soppy kiss to her ear as they push a finger into her body. A real finger, the fourth on their right hand. They wonder how many shes they'd get on the pace threshold, helping dy Arahutama break her vows like this.

  Maybe it doesn't count with shadows.

  "Get on top of me," the dy breathes, catching their wrist. "I want you inside."

  "Let me use my fingers," Lho says. "I'm better with them anyway."

  "Please, Lo. Please—make me feel like a woman—"

  Like anyone ever told you you aren't one.

  They push themself off her, rolling onto their back, and stare at the ceiling as she undoes their breeches, gather her hair in their hands as she takes them in her mouth, her lips sealing around the nub of their clit. She pushes her face against them, her nose digging into their pubic mound, and a stinging pain wells in their cunt. Their stomach churns. They close their eyes in frustration—come out, come out so we can finish this—their legs locked rigid over the older woman's shoulders as they grind and thrust against her, the pain growing until it nces deep into their stomach and spine. Under her tongue, the lips of their cunt begin to close, folding in like a billows, and their clit swells, balloons with blood. The dy's lips close around the base of the shaft as it sprouts between Lho's legs, a final gasp of nauseous, blinding pain breaking their lips. They swallow vomit. Blood trickles down the creases of their thighs, bubbles from the tip of the organ pushing between them. Before they can recover dy Arahutama is on her back, pulling them between her legs.

  Pretend she's one of the actors. That haughty one in pink. Pretend she'd let you hurt her.

  "Fuck me," the dy breathes. "Be a good boy and fuck me like I'm the only woman in the world."

  They do as they're told.

  *

  Afterward—after they've made her come twice, once from the front and then again like a dog, faking their own as she begins to compin she's getting sore—they sit against the headboard, watching dy Arahutama recover her breathing, her breasts sloping down the sides of her gently swelling ribs.

  "If only you could get a child on me," she murmurs. "I tried with quite a few men, you know. Before I joined the Iyansenixi. My husband didn't mind. He gave his permission."

  Lho nods, barely caring. They've heard this story before—how the other sisters sneer at dy Arahutama behind her back, how they always ask her if her former husband has remarried, how they whisper, she's only here because she's barren. Really, Lho has heard this story from a dozen rich women, including more than a few who've paid them for fucking. No children. No clever daughters to send to school or marry off, no brawny boys to plow the fields and kill for the sons of heaven. Everywhere in the empire households compin of a want of children, and the noble houses compin loudest of all.

  "I wanted a son," the dy murmurs. "All my sisters say it's better to have a girl. Women are wiser, and even the gentlest men are so violent . . . But I wanted a son. Maybe a child like you would be best. Someone who can be both."

  Lho shrugs. "I fuck for a living. Being both is only work. Anyway, I can't have children."

  Another lie, but only just. They remember Ilsyn Tam holding their hand on the abortionist's floor, their brow pressed against Lho's temple as the curette went in.

  They dismiss the memory. Five years on, it's getting easier.

  Outside, they can hear the bells tolling four o'clock. Lady Arahutama levers herself off the bed and puts on a light robe.

  "I need to bathe. Here—your money."

  She presses a silver lira into Lho's hand. Lho gres.

  "You owe me three times that."

  The dy smiles. "I think we can excuse my debts a little longer, considering what I did for you. Next time, dear. And no more thieving. I'd hate to think what would happen to you in Penance House."

  She leaves. Lho waits a few minutes as her footsteps fade away, then rams their right hand into their mouth and screams into the scars.

  They finish cursing dy Arahutama and stand to put on their clothes. As they pull up their breeches they notice her gray robe, discarded at the foot of the bed. The heavy silver card is visible, in outline, through the bottom of one sleeve.

  I could sell that ugly robe and everything in it. Her name-card would buy us a new boat.

  But then they'd have no friends. No voice to speak up for them. Instead dy Arahutama would be the one ordering the Queen to add their name to the list of wanted criminals pasted to the pace walls.

  You'd hang. Ilsyn Tam wouldn't even be allowed to burn you.

  Llo turns out the sleeves. Nothing in the left but the tag and a nacre snuff box, but in the right—a letter, still sealed, the sign of a wolf's head and a sword pressed into the red wax. Lho can't recognize it, but they know an important letter when they see one.

  They take the snuff box to sell, and the letter out of spite. They'll make her pay for once.