58 – Fresh Skin

A trip across the sea to the east was hardly what Iago would have considered a fun time. Really, being entirely honest, even a brief trip on a lake boat was too much for his liking, and that was child’s play compared to the weeks spent cramped aboard a stinking hulk.

But what was he to do?

When the Emperor of Novosia gives you a task, you do it. Especially if you’re one of his preferred skinchangers. He’d endured it as best he could, subsisting on the meagre rations available on the ship, and devoted as much time as he could toward meditation and reading.

Anything, really, to distract himself and keep him from going mad.

Eventually, after what felt like an eternity, the captain had entered his cabin to tell him they’d arrived at the Tsukian port of Tonntai. Iago had thanked him and spent just a few more moments doing a final examination of himself in the mirror.

Eastern features were particular, he found. Getting the right angle and shape for the eyes, the correct skin tone, the correct texture of the hair. Skinchanging was a particular art, one that only a small number in the Emperor’s employ had survived the transformation process of. And while one imbued with the power could change their features rather quickly, only a true master of the craft understood the importance of the minor details.

You wanted to leave nothing to chance, to give people no reason to suspect you were anything other than what you presented yourself to be.

His reflection, the newly sculpted face looking back at him, was a lean Tsukian man with a faint tan, a topknot of glossy black hair. A man utterly unremarkable, a dark-eyed face in the crowd. Anyone who saw him would struggle to name any meaningful features about him. But, even so, if he were to run into trouble... he could change his features yet further, even his gender, and once more become completely anonymous.

Of course, Iago had a Babel stone. And a spare, just in case anything happened to the first. But he’d also been thoroughly coached in speaking Cathayan and Tsukian, just in case he lost both or encountered some magicka distortion that blocked the stone. His accent would be... odd, if it came to that, but what could you do?

He could change his skin, but even great mummers had trouble with accents.

He made his way from his cabin, the great pack of his luggage hitched to his back. And, just for caution’s sake, he kept a short eastern blade sheathed on his left hip. Beyond the gangplank loomed Tonntai, one of the larger ports on the island.

A vast city dominated primarily by squat stone buildings, but at the heart of it loomed several massive pagodas, with gleaming golden slates that shone in the faint afternoon sunlight. Below, at the docks themselves, he quickly lost count of how many stalls and roaming traders were passing too and fro, hawking their wares and demanding the attention of anyone within earshot.

Iago sighed. Already so damn loud... to say nothing for the stink of fish in the air.

This was a waste of time, he knew. Being sent across the sea, looking for any trace of a man who just about everyone else knew to be dead.

But, well, when the Emperor of Novosia made the request, what could he do but agree?

Olette had told him, simply, to spend a few months in Tsukio. To roam some of the larger settlements and give his reports through the speaking stone in his pack. And when he inevitably found nothing, as he and Olette quietly agreed would be the case, he was free to come home.

He could think of it as... a sabbatical. A break from all the cloak and dagger killing in Rhonde, of which he’d been working tirelessly at for... far too long.

He made his way down the gangplank and started through the throngs of people, ever vigilant for cutpurses and pickpockets. Tsukio, same as anywhere else he’d been stationed, was no stranger to such crimes.

“So this is the east,” he muttered to himself. He’d gotten glimpses through a scrying stone, but... it seemed markedly more imposing in person. He pressed on, hawkish eyes peering into every shadow and alleyway, while searching for any hint of trouble.

People, conversely, paid him no mind. The tiny handful of westerners and southerners among the crowds certainly stood out, turning heads wherever they went, while Iago was a ghost. And there was no higher praise for a skinchanger than to be totally anonymous.

His pace brought him past the food stalls, hawking ramen and sushi to anyone willing to pony up for their exorbitant prices. He passed opium dens, their windows hissing pale clouds of sweet smelling smoke. A few of the customers lolled about on the steps, eyes glazed and ignorant to the wider world.

He supposed there were bound to be some things worth enjoying out here in the east.

Eventually, leaving the docks behind, he entered into the city of Tonntai proper. And, as he did so, his pace brought him to the market square. His plan, initially, was to leave the city and take a wagon further eastward. A day’s trip could bring him to the town of Talamma, and from there... well, he’d decide where he needed to go. Or, wanted to go. So long as it looked like he was roaming far and wide, Emperor Novos would have nothing to complain about.

On one street corner he spied a boy, the same type of urchin Iago had seen in every city he’d ever been, selling broadsheets in exchange for silver coins. “Read all about it!” the scrawny boy cried. “Yokai army slain in mountaintop brawl! Tiode spared from ravenous horde!”

Iago paused, cocking his head to the side.

He reached into the pouch of coins on his belt, lifting a single gin from it. “Here, boy,” he said, flicking it over in exchange for the long sheet. It was a cleanly printed sheet of paper, a long scroll containing all manner of major news stories brought in from across Tsukio.

And there, at the very top, was the story the boy had been hawking. Along with an artist’s rendition of a mountain that had had the top of itself blasted inward. Some unremarkable hovel on the southernmost end of the island.

“Hm.” Iago worked his jaw. “Tiode, huh.”

Here endeth Volume One.