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The wo me as if for some bizarre suit of armor “She’s skinny and the hair will have to coment

Bags rolled his eyes “She needs to know about your thrice-da And I can’t stay We cannot keep the Papess waiting”

At this the woman’s brusque expression softened and she dropped an elephantine arm around my shoulders

“No, no, of course You go—I trust it ell, or you wouldn’t be back We all… appreciate what you’ve done, you know, Bagsy I’ll tell skin-and-bones what she needs to know”

Bags’s eyes filled with tears—but he hid it well, like a thief slipping a ring into his pocket He huggeda tree for fruit, his furry face buried in o I reached out to stop him

“Wait, Bags! When I asked to coe to the others, so from The Book of Carrion What was it? Tell me!”

Bags grinned, looking ier aside his nose

“And the wolf shall lead her astray, unto the edge of the sea, and there she will find the City of the Lost, where her skin will fall away, and the Beast will s her whole Prophecy, love Best hope it’s not you”

When he had gone, the bald woestured with a tattooed hand that I ought to sit beside her

“He’s only teasing That Book of Carrion is full of gibberish and dog-speak Pay no attention—itwind I’ll tell you the way of things I’reat Lady, in her honor I don’t care in the least what your narid if you want to sail with us, anyhow Listen to this old deckhand, and I’ll tell you the tale of the Great Navigator…”

IN THE NAME OF THE MOTHER, AND THE MONSTER, and the Mast, Amen

In the fifteenth year of the Second Caliphate, a child was born in the Blessed City of Ajanabh to a faers se stayed in the port of Ajanabh for many years, but they were not native to the city that witnessed the birth of the Saint Where they came from in truth is lost to us now Indeed, Ajanabh see of Heaven, and tried reat in number as flocks of sparrows in the autu that the faht disease and sloth with them from notorious lands

The child was christened Sigrid, and she was a great beauty even as a girl, with rich brown skin and thick hair the color of all her family’s spice stores old and red, and eyes the color of a lion’s paw But she had been born with a strange deforht a secret shame onto the backs of her parents Her father wept and accused herwith a deainst thehter with harpy blood

For Sigrid was possessed of three breasts, and as she grew, this strangeness becahter to the spice h cloth Each rid’s cheek and stifled tears as she wound the fabric

When she beca her small but plainly monstrous chest beneath straps of leather and buckles of lead