"Hey, Hass," Johine called again. "It's a Calm! If you want to find out where that daughter of yers is, this'll be the time. Hey. Hey!"

Hassani lay on her side, wrapped in her blanket and staring at the dawn's light casting slowly-drifting shadows across the stone cliff face. At some level, she knew there was a way out of this, a way she'd somehow get Avani back, but she was just too tired to listen to it.

"Go away, Johine. It's over," she groaned.

Without the constant wind snatching away her words, he unfortunately heard her. "Hah, go away! Ha ha! Where 'xactly am I supposed to go, Hass? Oh, what am I doin' in this cage all this time. Should'a left here ages ago. Ha! Ha ha!"

"You know what I mean. It's all pointless. Find someone else to bother."

"Yeah, who? Mutey or the Crone? Ain't no botherin' goin' on there. They jus' ignore me."

"I wonder why. Leave me alone."

"Jus' tryin' to help and yer bein' all rude," Johine said, humphing. By the way his words muffled, he turned his back on her. "Fine. I'll just sit here alone more. Not helpin' anyone. Just wastin' away until they get tired of feedin' me."

She almost felt bad at the hurt in his voice. Almost. For what felt like hours, she lay there, the calls of slaves trading news, asking the whereabouts of family or friends, and the like drifted past her like wind.

Lost. That summed up everything. She was lost. She'd lost Avani, lost her when she was so close. Fatma would never let her go, would keep her daughter dangling just out of reach to keep Hassani as her violence puppet forever. She'd lost Avani and Denault. Her whole little family. Even lost her way as an Inviolate. There was nothing left.

"Hassani," a voice whispered, barely audible.

"Shut it, Johine. For real, I don't care about-"

"Hassani," it came again. This time she sat up, realizing Johine never got her full name.

She looked around for the source of the voice. Only when her eyes traced the cave mouth near the wooden framework holding her cage did she see it.

"By the Ascen," she whispered, the mutter half a prayer.

The skin, or what was left of it. It must have followed her from Ziggurat, somehow survived all this time since. It had shed its fine clothing, its attempt to wave at her weak as a scrap of paper caught in the wind. Tatters of skin raveled up from its broken-off right hand. Where it's head already had been torn before, it now barely held together at all. It's legs ended at mid-shin. Just a brittle husk of dark skin now, yet somehow it still whispered to her.

"How are you still alive?"

"Not. But here. Help," it managed.

"Okay, see that lever over there? Pull it."

It drifted where she pointed, every movement painfully slow. Its body sagged and dragged. It wrapped itself around the lever, but her heart sank when she saw they'd shoved a heavy locking peg into place to keep the arm from swinging in. The skin would never be strong enough to pull it out.

"Hey, Hass!" Johine said, his voice soft for once. "What's that?"

"Skin. From a Molt. But it doesn't matter," she slumped down against the bars, the bleakness even worse after the sharp jolt of hope. "It's not strong enough."

"They never put my peg in last time," Johine said, pointing towards the base of the arm supporting his cage. "Hole's bored wrong size and never got around to gettin' a right-sized peg, just stuck a stick in it. A toddler could pull it out. If that thing can get it out and work the winch, it could free me and then I could free you."

"Even if it could find its way to you and unpeg it, it never would have the strength to work the winch."

"Ha! See what you know," Johine shouted before looking about sheepishly and dropping to a conspiratorial, loud whisper she could barely understand over the background chatter. "Its old, an ancient pen they put Johine in. If I swung myself in my cage at the right time, I could help move the bar too."

Unauthorized use: this story is on Amazon without permission from the author. Report any sightings.

To demonstrate, he lurched in his cage, timing the movements to make it swing just slightly further on each end of the chaotic pendulum motion he created. "See, see?"

Hassani pointed to the ledge abutting Johine's cage and the cave that opened to it. "Skin. Can you make it there? Could you try? It might be our only shot."

If it spoke, she missed it. The hollow just slumped down and dragged itself slowly back into the cave mouth.

And then they sat. Waiting. For hours. Hassani prayed to any Ascen that might be listening that the Calm would stay as even the mildest of breezes might rip the skin from the cave mouth when it got there and hurl it away. And with it, her only hope of getting out and having any sort of advantage over Fatma.

The sun crept up the wall and the noise of the other slaves grew, rising to almost deafening.

"What's going on?" she finally snapped at Johine, trying to decipher the commotion.

He squinted his eyes and tilted his head to present an ear towards the heart of the commotion somewhere above them and seemingly around a jutting thrust of rock. They both scanned distant cages. She couldn't make out much, but they seemed to be pulling in cages by the dozen, leading the slaves within off into the tunnel network.

"Somethin' about the Slave Legion I think. Preparing for an attack by the Ancients or to attack the Ancients or somethin'. Don't make no sense to me but they're takin' most everyone somewheres."

"Come on, skin," Hassani hissed. The slavers could come for her or Johine next. Who knew how long the skin could stay animated or when the next Calm might be when it could move without risking being ripped to tatters or tumbled to the filth river below?

Just as she was about to despair about him making it at all, Johine started jumping up and down in his cage. The skin crawled over to the winch basing Johine's cage and hefted the stick free from the peg hole as though it were a heavy metal bar. It leveraged all its flimsy mass against the winch and heaved. The winch didn't move.

It tried again, sometimes pushing, sometimes pulling. Only by placing what was left of its legs against the cliff face and pushing with all of whatever force propelled it did it finally get it turning. Gradually, painfully, it turned the arm and inched Johine's cage closer. Johine began to lurch in his cage, building momentum. The skin proved smart enough to time its movements with the maximum swing to augment its efforts. Then, when Johine's cage swung to a person-length from the ledge, the skin pulled and its arms ripped completely free from its torso, shredding apart with the force of its exertions.

Johine jimmied open the bar holding his cage shut - a feat designed to be difficult for the slaves inside the cage, but slaves had nothing but time to mess with such things - and lurched about to expand the pendulum swing to dangerous spans.

When the motion reached its apex, he visibly steeled himself then hurled himself across the gap. The force of his launch threw the cage back in a spin, skewing the arc of his jump. He crashed hard against the ledge's lip and clung to it half-on, half-off, scrabbling for anything that might grant him a hold and keep him from plummeting to his death.

Finally, he found a crumbling handhold and hauled himself up to lay there panting.

"Johine, there's no time to rest!" Hassani called, hearing voices almost directly above them. The beam supporting Mutey's cage began to move and come in towards the cliff face. From what she'd managed to gather in her last trip with Fatma, the tunnel network leading to Mutey's cage also connected with hers and Johine's.

They made eye contact. Though she'd never really communicated with the silent, shaggy slave, something passed between them. Perhaps she somehow relayed her desperation. Perhaps the mutual understanding and shared misery of fellow slaves said something to him. Whatever it was, Mutey nodded and slid the long, pinky-thick, hand-long sliver of wood he'd peeled from one of his bars along his forearm. He swung out of sight. She heard the cage's wooden bar slide free. Stern orders called out and a whip cracked.

A burst of surprised hollers and screams. A jailer hurtled off the ledge, clutching his bloody neck and screaming. He sailed out towards the hard stone and meager river below. More shouting. Then Mutey fell past, another guard wrapped in his bear hug.

"Johine!" she called, peering upwards towards his ledge. He and the skin were both gone. "Damn you! Come let me out."

Her cage lurched and she clung to the bars, startled.

"Damn me? You want me to stop rescuing you?" He actually stopped cranking the winch and stared at her.

"Don't stop. Mutey sacrificing himself might have delayed them, but they'll just send more guards with the next group. Don't know how much time we have. Keep going!"

Grumbling to himself, he complied. It seemed to take another hour before he'd winched her in, opened her cage, and she pulled her out. As her foot touched stone, it was as though the world beyond the wooden bars suddenly pulled itself into sharper resolution. If she was free, then Fatma was hers. A faint movement in the shadows drew her attention.

What was left of the skin wormed its way into the light.

She knelt beside it, feeling bizarrely sad as she knelt beside it. "Thank you. I don't know what I could have done if you hadn't come along. I probably would have been Fatma's slave for life and Avani kept alive only to keep me under her thumb. You saved me. Saved us."

"You would... have found... way," it whispered, barely audible even with her ear almost touching the shreds of its lips. "Go... daughter... then find... Terminus."

"Find what on Terminus? What else is there to find after Avani? My daughter is all that matters in the entire Book right now."

It didn't answer. Its rustling ceased as whatever life force its Molt imparted to it finally ran out. With a reverence born out of gratitude, she carefully scooped up its negligible weight, walked to the mouth of the cave, and released it into the canyon. Its body fluttered and twisted as it floated down. Then it fell into shadow, and was gone.