"What do you think that is about?"  Sagatti pondered, leaning out one of the open windows on the side of the carriage, watching with wonder as he saw a handful of feathered men in long, white leather coats.  They were consulting a roll of paper.

"Filthy business."  Coinach said, eyes still unfocused, hand folding around in the air as they continued to tug on the threads of magic.  "Hmm..."

"What do you mean?"  He asked, sitting back on the padded seat-- the cart was rumbling faster now, but the stags had reached their limit of speed. It jostled a little over the stones. 

"They are seeking those who would have found freedom.  They're Deserai-- wind sprites, who gave up their ability to change their form for stagnant, boring, homogeneity."

Sagatti made a retching noise in his throat.  

"Hush, you.  They are Deserai, they are fools, pay them no mind and close the window.  I need to focus."  

He closed the window and sighed, snapping the latch shut, and casting them into wildly colored darkness as faint light filtered through the stained glass. Coinach pulled on the threads of magic that trailed behind their quarry.

A scroll, similar to the other, manifested, though this one was set on an elegant ivory roller. "How beautiful."  Coinach murmured, opening it to see elegant paintings. "Far more elegant than his husband's."

"Oh...."  Sagatti leaned forward, to see a painting of an ivory Ameryu man in positions with partners that would have made the sensual artists of the Summer Court envious. Coinach cleared their throat and tapped the tip of Sagatti's nose.

"If it's going to arouse you so, I shan't read it aloud.

Sagatti shrugged, "No, no, I want to hear it."

Coinach cleared his throat and began to read.

The child had been born in hopes of a daughter.  His siblings had been all male, all worthless to the house of a sorceress of little means. She had no daughter to carry her name, or to start a trade enterprise. She needed a daughter, and yet, she gave birth to a son who was born already in funerary colors. His father had little desire to train up yet another young warrior, especially not one who would be considered  bad luck.

Yet, he did start training the boy with the sword, in honor and bravery, but his mother also trained him-- illegally in magic, in hopes of saving him.  He could go to a monastery, he could join the clergy as an offering to Ameiaa.  But, if he was a boy gifted in magic, he could have a place there, she knew, and so he was trained. But, it was to no end, there were rumors, and there were whispers among the society that she was perhaps encouraging this blasphemy.  

She gave up on the training, on sending him away to a monastic existence, his grasp of magic was not so strong as to be innate.  He was not one who might be considered too powerful to be silenced, and yet too blasphemous to exist in normal society.  He was just a boy.

His father returned from the capital, in the company of a sorceress.  He had made arrangements for the unwanted, albino child-- she had paid his worth, his mother bowed her head to the severe looking woman with the icy blue scales. It was more than she could have hoped.  Her sin of training his magic would be forgotten, he would not be sent to war to die alone because of his strange coloration, he would have a comfortable life.

At least, that's what he was told.  His training now was in entertainment, conversation, dance, music.  And when he was barely old enough: sex. He was taught to keep his opinions quiet, to serve, physically and emotionally, to take the abuse that was given by those who paid enough.  And he was trapped in a cage of silks and silver.  His usual patrons were wealthy women who lacked husbands, or their husbands were at war, or they simply wanted more pleasure than their husbands could provide. He played music, recited poetry, had pleasant conversations. 

But, most saw him as nothing more than a gilded whore, to be bought, used, and discarded once the evening's amusements had ended. He was glad to have kept up with his magic, particularly healing, since many clients, whether delicate ladies or stoic samurai, were sadists.  They abused men and women both in their pleasures, and Katsuo had cared for each wound and comforted those others trapped in this cage with him.  

Then, one evening, a samurai arrived.  Katsuo marked him as one of the brutes-- his build was well muscled, tall, his hair a tangle of raven black, spilling freely from its tie in rebellion to manners, his skin tanned and weathered, even though he was not all that old.  His jaw was straight, and his silver eyes were hard.  He wore a rather simple, but fine kimono of dark red, and the badge--Katsuo was surprised by this-- of a dragon's companion.  The man's black scales made him look even more severe as he sat with his military comrades, and Katsuo made his way to him, prepared to take what abuse this brute would give, rather than allow one of the others to do so.

And yet, this man was timid, and kind.  He'd never been to the floating world, to indulge in the flesh.  He could not help but stare in wonder as this giant was so taken with him, this master of sword and dragon curled into his lap as eagerly as some young lover, wrapped up in fresh affections--not a battle scarred samurai who willingly paid dearly for each hour of his time.

Asahi returned nightly, and Katsuo found himself eager to join his company.  Nightly entertaining the giant of a man, finding him a bright and amusing companion, and an enthusiastic lover-- he barely had to do any work on nights with him. Some weeks, he came to visit him once or twice, and then...

And then war.  His beloved had been stripped from him, pulled away to defend the Northern Colonies against the incursion of one of the machine wielding human  kingdoms, fighting over mines and farm land, and all manner of things that did not matter to Katsuo, who only thought of his samurai on the fields of battle.

He had given up hope, and his mood betrayed him.  His mistress, the woman who had bought him years ago, punished him into smiling obedience.  How he loathed her, and her touch, the way she used him for her amusements still-- but, he had no means of escape.  He was her property, he belonged to this grim house of pleasures, and over the years of the war, he did his duties with a pleasant enough demeanor.  But, no client could compare to that man who had become his companion, and he would never see sweet-hearted samurai smile at the sight of him.  He would never feel his arms again.

Then, the war was over, and there he was. Stepping through the door, his black hair shot through with silver, his face marked with new scars. But his silver eyes crinkled up with his smile, and Katsuo rushed to him as much as his garments and dignity would allow.

But, it could not last, not like this... the attack, the fight... the flight.  His own crime of merely healing... The dusty 'city' of Nirase, barely more than a town built up on the ancient white ruins of the ancient empire that had at one time ruled this land with an iron fist. And, now were naught but bones and dust. He looked at the dusty streets and wooden facades with a grim resignation.  He doubted his skills in poetry, conversation, or music would sell as well as his body, but he could perhaps save the dignity of his beloved from manual labor.

Asahi had been set on it, though.  He would go to the mines, he would plow a field, he would contract his beloved Sayomi to the desert caravans, to have her gleaming scales dulled by rough harness straps. Katsuo had scoffed.  What a pair they made!  Neither of them wanting to let the other debase himself in this brutal frontier city. 

It was luck, then, that the sheriff had died before their arrival, and the Governor of this province of the Independent Lands, upon hearing a great violet and black war-bred dragon and her rider had alighted in his city had sent for Asahi.  And, immediately named him a replacement for the late Sheriff. 

And that beloved, foolish samurai of his accepted without a second thought. But, it meant they had a house, and they were married, in a beautiful ceremony, with the stark red desert as their shrine, and they could dream of a peaceful life.  Except, Asahi came home with injuries, once a bullet nearly took his life, and he spent weeks recovering as Sayomi and his deputies did his duties. 

It was a simple thing, and Katsuo still did his work entertaining clients, but now he could be choosy.  He gained a reputation not as a whore, but as a companion of the highest regard, as easily taken on an arm to Nirase's gaudy theater as he was taken to bed. And, he started training a few others, keeping them under his wing, and his protection as high class companions who made it plain to clients that they were friends of the new Sheriff, and the Sheriff's dragon.  It was a good life, for both of them, a quiet life that both men thought they could grow old in.

And, then... the Cynri came.  Katsuo had never seen anything more strange, as if a tiger and a wolf had a child with a bullock, and it decided to stand on hind legs, and sing.  They were huge, shaggy with soft fur and sharp horns, wearing colorful kilts of woven wool, with sashes and thick belts, and carrying swords and bows no mortal could hope to wield.  And they sang.

By Ameiaa, how they sang.  All their magic was woven of song, and it was elegant beyond measure. And these strange, elegant, otherworldly brutes came to Asahi to find their stolen clanmate... an Ameryu of uncertain gender, of uncertain origins, who had a name they had barely learned to pronounce, for Misaki was not their true name.  It was merely a pleasant sound they thought fit Misaki's native tongue.

He had been so worried when Asahi tore off on this path with a crew of deputies. And, then he returned with this broken blasphemy.  Male and Female, in one body, and Katsuo felt an odd kinship with them.  And, though his affection for them was not as swift as Asahi's, he found himself growing very fond of them, even if they were awful at conversation, and struggled in all manners of entertainment.... save for song.

Oh, how Misaki could sing.

He found them in a fallow garden behind the house, singing to the soil, and he saw it turn gray, and crumble, and then darken, and then beautiful ivory shoots pushed through the soil and turned to broad caps, that they plucked free, before bowing low to the earth.  He stopped them in the door, and looked at the mushrooms in their hand.

"The soil was barren because nothing was eating the dead grass." They answered, plainly.  "So I sang it here."

"You sang to mushrooms?" He had asked incredulous, his scales tingling with the sense of some strange and powerful magic that poured from those accursed tattoos. "Why are you doing something like that?"

"To the rot, to call it here... So the land could be reborn.  I would like to grow vegetables in the garden, but they cannot grow where there is no decay. Veliesin said it is... that I am... natural, just like that." They answered plain, but shaking in front of Katsuo. And, he scooped them up, and held them.  It must have seemed an interrogation, and they were so trained by the people who had cruelly marked them to fear such a thing, as it often came with pain.

And, then he loved them.  He took them to bed with him along with Asahi, and they soon were with child, despite everything he had expected of someone of dual-body.  He forgave their manners and quiet, and learned to enjoy the strange silence of their presence, their tingle of painful magic soothing now instead of frightening.

He could not dream that their house, with all it's rooms, would be the same without Misaki, without that silent shadow of a thin figure stalking the halls, and singing under the sun and moon alike. He encouraged them to write, to catalogue, and to record the world in a way that suited their mind.  

And, Asahi got them a job as a surveyor, their strange magic could probe deeper into the stones, search out ruins and seams of spiritstone as easily as spotting cattle in a field.  They were invaluable to the Governor, and as such, a treasure of Nirase.  Which only made their family grow in more standing. Katuso worried that the Empire might take note of them, but Asahi had set his eyes to the West and bared his teeth, as if to reassure him that he was not to be trifled with-- the brute of a samurai had made his loyalty plain.

"By the Summer King." Sagatti said, leaned back, enraptured by the story, "A proper romance that. A kidnapping, a daring rescue, sin and virtue... sex and violence and then a mysterious third--"

"The godhunter... sings."  Coinach rubbed above some of their many brows with fingers that had too many joints.  "This is trouble."

"Why?"

"The power, it's developing, and yet the host has not gone mad.  They should not have been capable of doing this."  They tapped long fingers on the scroll that they rolled up again. "But, then again, we've never seen such an entity housed in one of their kind."

"You really think--"  Sagatti started, and stopped himself, knowing that even this far, words could be picked up by their enemies.  He winced, and felt something-- a cold wave of something painfully familiar.

"I do, and I think we are not the only ones in pursuit. Not the only ones at all."