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In a mucky inlet of the life-giving Erbad river, the sun beating on his sore-riddled scales, Nawaz the Poet limped from the bank.

This had been his every morning for the two years since his affliction began. Hakka's strong young hands gingerly supported his wiry arms, the boy careful not to open yet another gash in Nawaz' papery flesh. The first and deepest was the result of his apprentice's unpracticed carelessness, and now the boy moved with the cautious certainty that, should he let his master fall, it would be his own skin peeled from his bones in retribution.

"Claws, Hakka." He scolded, pushing himself off of his doting protégé once somewhat more solid earth was underfoot. "One would think you want even less of me."

"You might, the way you lope around, old man." He held out Nawaz' ashen staff. "I don't have new toes for you."

"It would be almost worth the flesh on my palm to smack you, child." He laughed a wheezing croak and Hakka returned his smile.

He thanked the First for both the rod and the boy. The water helped the pain, but walking was still a dangerous affair, and every step his disintegrating feet took risked another lesion. He needed Hakka. He'd grappled for an excuse to keep him from leaving, wondering if the admittedly extenuating issue of his own skin sliding from his flesh was a good enough reason. In the end, though, he couldn't deny Hakka the right of knowledge. Knowledge wanted to be shared.

Hakka guided him down the dirt streets of the quiet fishing village. An onlooker could be forgiven for mistaking the two for grandfather and grandson; Nawaz was far too old still to be teaching. Any sensible knower would have a replacement aligned and a retirement fixed twenty years prior. Just as Nawaz, being a sensible knower, had accomplished both in his brilliant, beautiful daughter.

May she drown.

She left the day she discovered what she was, a week before her own pilgrimage. It didn't feel right keeping it from her any longer. When word traveled that Nawaz of Masr was in need of a new successor, Hakka had been the first to respond, walking the week's trip from Jabura up the river.

The last signs of Hakka's female cycle still lingered in his plumage and on his chest. The tattoos that granted him the change were hidden on his back. They would fade with his next shed. A Knower had to live the breadth of that span, shifting through the genders once their apprenticeship began. Hakka had chosen to remain a male. Well and good-- Nawaz had also found manhood preferable to the body he'd hatched with. He had never loved it, not truly.

Kuzey had.

He shivered. Where had that thought come from?

Kuzey. They met in Sawarit on Nawaz' own pilgrimage, when it was still open to human traders. He was a horologist's son, eyes like cut crystal and skin like copper. The week they'd shared was the happiest of his life. Only the shock of his daughter undid that joy. When she came, Kuzey was nowhere to be found, and Nawaz had to flee Masr with a half-breed infant in tow, shameful, contraband. Maybe he was back home in Ottkhares, with children of his own. Part of Nawaz wanted to hope he had looked, too, for the Dahri girl with the red feathers he would meet by the light of Sawarit's crystal caverns.

He'd not been able to take a partner of his own kind after Kuzey.

They reached Nawaz' house mid-morning. Hakka made to open the door for him.

"Wait," Nawaz wheezed. "Sit with me a bit, will you?"

"I need to get ready for patients."

"No patients today. Not the day before your pilgrimage." Nawaz slid onto his stool, leaning against the wall. The shawl kept the coarse adobe from adding to the welts on his back. "Show me the words you made last night."

Dutifully, Hakka pulled from his pocket a fistful of wooden charms (the boy wasn't ready for skin) and offered them. Nawaz sifted through them, examining his apprentice's script with a practiced eye. Some still lacked grace. Most followed Nawaz' own form, but a few began to show signs of Hakka's own style. The yakshenin-- the holy words-- were funny things. You could prod them, inflect them, but there was always a point where they resisted. The Knower's art was in finding that point and teasing at it.

"Good." Nawaz said, distant. He rubbed his neck, feeling his own fragile skin threatening to tear. "You'll learn more when you leave. These are sufficient for most maladies." He lifted up a particularly curious one and read. The boy was experimenting. He could only pick out a few phrases from the attempt. Flesh, tie, whole.

"You're trying to find one to heal me."

Hakka cast his eyes down. "I could show what we have to other teachers. Someone might know a way to help you."

"No way to fix a malady of the soul when you don't know what's wrong, lad." He passed the charms back. "You're trying to solve a delicate problem with brute force. If there were a remedy, I'd have found it."

Hakka was silent for a while. They watched the day begin. Fishermen with mud crusted legs and tails, up since before the two of them, carried their hauls in from their canoes. Hatchlings scurried on the terraced rooftops. The ones too young to know their manners stared. Nawaz wrapped his shawl tighter, covering his wounds.

"I saw the new spot on your chest when you were bathing."

Hakka's voice surprised him. Nawaz placed a hand on the welt despite himself. His latest attempt at a tattoo to stitch himself back together. "What of it?"

"You need to stop trying, teacher. The more you worry at it..."

"I know what I'm doing. Who taught you the ink?"

"You're falling apart."

Nawaz scowled. It was true-- he had tried a new glyph on himself the night before. The tattoos wouldn't take on him like they would any other Dahri. His skin simply wouldn't heal. The only ink he laid anymore was on patients. And soon, the boy, when he blessed him to depart.

Nawaz ?a Jibri, the Poet of Masr, unable to write upon himself. He couldn't have thought up a crueler joke if he'd been given a lifetime to workshop it.

"You should go home." Nawaz waved him off. "Be with your sisters. You don't need to spend your last day in Masr with an old man."

"You'll join us for dinner?"

Another skill of Hakka's; hiding his excitement at a day off. Nawaz shook his head. "I want to stay in today. Something in the water felt... ill. I'm not sure what the day holds."

"Tomorrow, then?"

Nawaz nodded. "I'm excited for you, Hakka. The things you'll learn... the Knowers you'll meet. Ask questions," he punctuated with a raised finger, "never stop asking them questions. Knowledge--"

"--must be shared." Hakka gave a weary smile. "Yes, teacher."

"All things flow on." Nawaz rose. "Dawn. Not a minute after."

The sound of flitting paper woke him. He blinked his bleary eyes and jolted up, immediately regretting the swift movement when his chest throbbed with pain. All he could make out by the modest waning moonlight was a silhouette sitting in the corner of his bedroom. His heart flashed with adrenaline and rose to his throat.

"Hakka?" he croaked out. "Boy, is that you?"

"So that's his name." A book clicked shut. Something about the tone and cadence of that voice set off alarms in Nawaz' head.

The taper next to bed flickered to life with a spark. The gauze had all slipped from his chest, pus caked to the wound.

"Ooooh." The stranger crooned. A woman, by her voice, but she sat just in a shadow. "Such a dreadful shame."

"Who are you?"

Silence. "Do you not know," she asked in a quivering, happy whisper, "your own flesh?"

His blood froze. "Torze." His voice rose in stunned rage over her squeal of delight. "How dare you come back here, girl."

"Girl?" She gasped, feigning offense. "I suppose I have retained my sprightly appearance, haven't I? Are you envious, dear father?"

She had, and he was. Torze had hardly aged a day in two decades. Her skin was immaculate as a new shed, sapphire blue and flecked with gold like his own, but her feathers ran black. Coal black, like Kuzey's silky hair. He swallowed at the remembrance. She didn't deserve that beauty.

But... something wasn't right. Not only her youth-- she should be in her forties by now-- but a dark air which swam about her, unfamiliar, disconcerting.

"The house is warded." He scooted backwards as she rose, drifting towards his bedside. "How--"

"Do you think I've forgotten your hand, even after this long?" She sounded disinterested. "Getting in was trivial."

"And have you simply come to gloat?" He pressed the sheets to his wound as she sat on the foot of his cot. "Leave without a word, and then have the audacity--What if I had died before I found the boy?"

"The boy." She rolled her head. "Is he any good?"

"You were better." Nawaz said. "I won't lie. But he's a good man, Torze. He has the compassion you lacked."

"So a fool." She shrugged. "He'll serve Masr well."

"Why have you returned then? If it's so beneath you?"

"I thought you should know." She rose again, floating to the window. She wore a knee-length shawl, ghostly in the moonlight. "I found my father."

"Kuzey?" His heart jumped to his throat. "Where? How is he?"

The look she gave him curdled his spirit. Her hand wandered to the largest charm hanging on her neck, an oblong bone pendant. The words she'd burned into it were angular and stilted. He couldn't make out their meaning before she covered it with a thumb.

"He was with one of his own. A Ghurze woman. I wish you could have seen his face when I told him who I was, teacher. I disgusted him." Her hand dropped from the charm, and he could read it now, in the moonlight. A blood-binding, cut with Kuzey's name.

A fragment of his skull.

"No. No..." he whispered, stunned. "You--" he made to get up, but she turned on him with teeth bared. He sank back down, pathetic and small. "You're a beast." He whimpered.

"An abomination. He said so too. But who do you have to blame for that?" She turned to examine the rug that hung on his wall. Ghurze in make, with those distinctive threads of silver worked into the indigo wool. A gift from his first love. "You were content to study only what you were shown. I've walked the way, like you, but I've walked its inverse as well. I am twice the Knower you are, Nawaz. You weren't hungry enough. Knowledge. Must. Be. Shared."

"A witch." He nodded, his grief for Kuzey washing over him in waves. "You've walked the Bone Way. Oh, my daughter..."

"I thought I had learned all I needed from you." Her voice dropped and oozed like dark honey. "So I found other teachers. Stronger ones. It's a pity we stop moving about when we come of age, father-- there's much more to learn than one pilgrimage can contain."

"Then what could I have for you?" Nawaz whimpered. "Torze, leave me in peace. Please."

Her eyes seized him. "One limitation keeps me vexed."

He realized her meaning and began to laugh despite himself, a dry, bitter croak. "You need my blessing. Oh, you petulant child, you need me after all!" a fit of coughing racked him. Without his blessing, his own glyph, she would never be able to use the tales which were unique to him, or to truly comprehend his hand. It was the last gift a master gave a pupil. And she had left before he could give it.

She watched him spasm, unblinking. He continued to chuckle through the pain. "No. It belongs to Hakka. He's been faithful. A far better apprentice than you ever were."

"And one day he'll get to show me as much. But dear father--" she leaned in close. That darkness radiating from her prickled the feathers on his scalp and neck, turned his stomach. She rested the sharp tip of a claw on the papery skin of his forearm. "What if I had something to give you that he could not?"

A dull shiver ran up that arm. "There is nothing."

"Do you know when I visited Kuzey?" She asked sweetly. "Or why? Other than seeing dear old dad. It was springtide, two years ago."

A sharp prick bit his arm as her claw punched through his skin. "No!" He wailed, tugging away.

"He was bound to you," she continued, her eyes following the blood which dripped from his arm to the cot. "Part of you. And me. I... unstitched him from us. It would seem that affected you more than it did me, hm?"

"You..." he ground his teeth. Springtide. Two years. When his own scales began to betray him. "You did this."

"Obviously. My offer is simple, master. I will help you to shed again."

"And in return I bless you?" He growled. "Drown, Torze."

"Your blessing, and your next skin."

He froze. Whatever she'd learned, whatever Knowledge she was practicing now, it sickened him. The things a witch could do with another's skin... there were reasons one burned their own sheds. "Absolutely not."

She watched him for a moment, then sighed. "I couldn't have expected reason from you, old man. Very well." She turned abruptly to leave. "What is yours to give by right is mine to take from your boy. Hakka will feel your selfishness."

A bolt of shock enlivened him again. "Wait," he called, frantic. "Torze, you mustn't."

"Oh?" She laid a lazy arm on his door-post, looking over her shoulder.

Nawaz' jaw trembled. The town needed the boy. More than it needed a dying old man. "I... I will bless you."

"There's the wisdom of a Knower." Her smile crept up like a snake. "I will make the ink."

He rose, shaking, claws clicking on the cold floor. He fumbled in his cabinets for a crab-claw needle and a tapping hammer.

Forgive me, Hakka.

His daughter returned and set her candle down on his night table. Placing a bowl of blue-gray lampblack next to it, she knelt, inclining her neck upwards toward him.

"Pierce."

His hands shook. He could drive the claw into her jugular. It wouldn't take much strength. If he took a life, he would forfeit his connection to the Flow, and be unable to send Hakka on his journey.

"Remember," Torze whispered, her eyes pinpricks, "we are bound."

Tap.

She flinched.

Tap, tap, tap.

He had missed the subtle give of flesh beneath a needle. From her jaw to her clavicle, he wrote, marking her for what she was twenty years late. A Knower. His pupil. His child.

When he finished, he stepped back to see. It was a beautiful yakshe. He hadn't lost his touch.

Torze rose, holding the candle to his brass mirror. "You have always had a beautiful hand, father."

"It's done, then?" He croaked. "You'll leave Hakka be? You'll go?"

"Yes." She rolled her head. "It's done."

"You'll... return for my next skin?"

She set the candle dish down with a soft click, turning her eyes to him. They were suddenly quite sad. "Oh no, dear father." She dipped her fingers into the ink, reached up, and tore a jagged streak into the fresh tattoo with her own claw, perverting the word.

Before he could scream, he fell stiff. Frozen. Without his balance, he teetered forward, falling on his face.

Gentle hands rolled him over to face his first pupil. Torze placed a cold palm on his cheek. A cane-handle fishing knife glinted in her other hand.

She leaned in close to his terrified face and placed a soft kiss on his scabbed brow.

"Thank you, master."

By golden early light, Hakka entered his master's home to bid farewell. By that same light he found the old man, flayed, emasculated, back slit and spine taken. By noon's pitiful heat Masr's only Knower was carried to the riverside, defiled body covered by a lapis blue Ghurze rug, the only fine cloth that could be found in his home. His apprentice, standing in for the family Nawaz didn't have, lit the flame. By sunset's angry orange, Hakka watched the last ashes from Nawaz' pyre disappear on the western wind over the great Erbad's uncaring meander.

He had no master now. No teacher to bless him. But he would leave, regardless-- he would honor Nawaz by finishing his way. He would do everything in his power to find the monster who had brought this witchery to his home and taken from him the man he loved as a father. By night, not by dawn, he would leave on his last rite, Nawaz' ashen staff in his right hand, the only evidence of the killer in his left.

A yakshe, square, bone, cut from the old man's head and left for Hakka to find. On the front, a rune that mocked him in its angular complexity. On the reverse, a message, indelicately scrawled and insolent.

Knowledge must be shared.

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