[Pinstripes] To Rest
Title: To Rest
Story/Character: Pinstripes / Seth, Caleb (the Spider), Samuel (the Shaman), Oscar (Wilson)
Rating: PG-13
word count: 2,759
Mostly stand-alone bit of an ongoing story. Seth previously seen in Reborn and Wolf, the Shaman and Oscar in Wishes. Prior bits not really needed at all, just supplied in case you want to know. ^_^
* * * * *
On the sixth day of the month of Paoni, Elijah Benson was officially declared dead and his appointed successor, Elizabeth Ashley, gave her first press conference as the head of the Labor Union. That evening, Seth asked for tea.
It was green leaf, imported at expense from his own homeland, and the pale celadon brew looked sadly out of place in the fluted teacup it was served in. It was bitter and harsh and only barely drinkable, over-brewed in water that was far too hot, but Seth didn't care. The scent of it, cupped between his hands, was familiar and aching all at once, like a breath of lush green and warm air that was everything Lawson City's lackluster spring was not.
There was a tray as well, a covered bowl of rice and thin sliced vegetables, liberally seasoned with a generous hand in spices both local and from abroad. It wasn't, exactly, one of his own people's dishes, but it was as close as the eastern bastardized kitchens made. Seth appreciated the gesture, even if he had less than no appetite for it.
It had, he thought, been a reasonable bargain. Complicity and silence, in exchange for what comfort they could give him. He had played his part and said his lines, covering for Elijah's death for a month after the fact until Elizabeth could be brought up to speed and groomed for the role. It had been the easier part of it all, really. There was no one left to contest his word and they all knew him for Elijah's man, through to the core.
In return, the Shaman and the Spider had been as good as their word. True, the Spider's guards stood outside his door, but that was only to be expected. Inside the walls it might have been a well-to-do apartment on the upper side of town, rather than the prison cell it was. Clothes, furnishings, all provided, no less in quality than what Elijah had given him. Food and drink, whatever reasonable provisions he asked for, and as the days had marched into weeks even a physician, the services of which, Seth assured them after the first visit, were unnecessary. The doctor hadn't returned, but if the Shaman sometimes left a dark glass bottle of neqedd syrup on the table as he left then none of them remarked on it, and Seth had appreciated that gesture as well because medicated sleep was better than none at all.
They came to him that evening, with the tea he had asked for and the meal he had not, and with a report, first hand, of how the changeover had gone. He listened, teacup cradled between his fingers where the warmth of it could seep into his palms, and watched the disintegrating bits of leaf swirl gently through the brew with every tremor that he couldn't keep from his hands.
"It's done, then," he said afterwards, and when the Spider nodded he found that he could breath again, something tight in his chest loosening. "So."
His first impression of the man the streets named Spider had been one of sharp edges and sharper teeth and the month since hadn't appreciably blunted this. But he was, for all of that, a man of his word, and if the frown never truly left his brow when he was in Seth's proximity it wasn't a detail Seth really cared about either way. "You carried it off alright. How do you want to wrap this?"
There were four of them in the little room - the Spider, the Shaman, the Shaman's man, and Seth. The Spider's Puppeteer had come less often over time and Seth thought he could guess the reason why although he never asked. It was enough that it crawled beneath his own skin, gnawing at hollowed bone and chilled blood. He couldn't ever stop shivering any more, not even in the scraps of sleep or with his chair pulled close to the side of the little furnace. The bitter, eternal cold was the price he had paid for his flames, and he wondered what price a man who could slip inside another man's skin paid, when he returned to his own.
He had, until that point, done everything they asked without protest. Now, given the choice to orchestrate the steps himself, he found it didn't matter as much as he had thought it might. "There are things I will need to write," he admitted, nodding towards the Shaman's man. Wilson was a man of pen and number first, gun second, and Seth would trust him with his personal matters. Had to, as there was no one else, but Wilson's reputation was watertight. "After which..." He shrugged slightly. "You don't need to stand witness... Though I would ask the Shaman to stay."
It startled them - or startled the Spider, at least, who looked as though he had swallowed something unpleasant. "Like hell," he started, but the Shaman was already waving him down, the rings on the man's fingers chiming softly as he held up a forestalling hand.
"If that's what you want," he said mildly, and the Shaman was much harder to pinpoint than the Spider was. Wind, Seth had thought him once, but a wind could be anything from a warm spring breeze to the biting ice of winter that froze flesh to bone, and the Shaman was all of that, wrapped behind a pleasant smile and polite manners.
"Sir," his man protested, and the Spider was there as well, jaw set and teeth bared. "Like hell, Samuel. You're not staying in here with him by yourself!"
There were charms braided through the Shaman's hair, gold on gold, that clinked when he tilted his head. "It'll be fine," he said, and then, with a small sigh, "honestly, Caleb. I'll be fine."
The Spider's lips were thin and sharp. "Have that on record, do you?"
"Do you think I wouldn't?" The Shaman smiled briefly, but it didn't reach his eyes. "Nothing will happen. Believe me - this is a long way from where it ends." He spread his hands, palms up. "And even if you were here, what then? He could turn on you just as easily as me."
The look the Spider shot Seth had the venom of his namesake. "He could try."
"No," Seth replied quietly, tugging the heavy down of the quilt he had wrapped around his shoulders closer, "I couldn't."
The Shaman brought his hands together in a soft clap. "There. You see? It'll be fine." The other man still looked rebellious and the Shaman waved him off again with the flick of his fingers. "It will be downright boring, and I'm sure Hattie has two dozen other things for you to be doing."
The Spider huffed a sharp breath. "You're sure," he ground out.
"Positive," the Shaman replied. The Spider hesitated, then nodded slowly and turned to retrieve his coat. He didn't bother saying anything to Seth, the threat hanging unspoken in the air well after the door had closed behind him.
There was paper and a pen set in the small rolltop desk; Wilson, at a gesture from the Shaman, brought them to where Seth sat. It was hard to put the cup down, harder still to take up pen and carefully, slowly, sort his way through the square blocks of the western language letters. "I can write dictation, if you'd rather," Wilson suggested quietly.
Seth shivered, the motion dragging out the line of a letter into a jagged scrawl that made him press his lips tighter together and set the pen tip to draw the next letter with better care. "No," he told the other man. "Thank you." He didn't say, because there was no reason to state the obvious, that the language and letters both came difficult to him, and he didn't say because he would not share it that it had been Elijah who had taught him the shape of them, patiently, and that it was the other man's voice he could still hear, telling him the sound and the formation of each letter as he wrote it.
He kept the note brief, business-like and to the point, and put his mark at the bottom, both the loops of the letters that Elijah had taught him made up his adopted name, and beneath that the shorter, sharper strokes which spelled out his true name. Putting the pen down, he folded the paper and handed it into Wilson's grasp. "There is... a girl," he told the man, and both Wilson and the Shaman hid their startlement badly. It brought a genuine smile to Seth, though the amusement was short lived. "A little girl, and the woman who looks after her. Elijah's personal accounts will go to a trust for her. I would have my own do the same." He shrugged, reaching for his discarded tea cup again. "Everything I own is his coin, after all."
He could hear the crinkle of the paper as Wilson opened the note and hear the tone of surprise in the other man's voice. "Grace Benson?"
"She is his daughter," Seth clarified, tucking his fingers back around the ceramic of the cup. Steam still rose from the surface in thin curls but he couldn't feel the heat any more. "She has... no idea that her father was anything but a man of the Union."
The Shaman cleared his throat softly. "Oscar will see that it's done," he said. Wilson rose and Seth didn't watch, though he could hear the pregnant pause as the man hesitated before getting his coat. When the door shut quietly Seth closed his eyes, inhaling the scent of tea and heat that he couldn't feel as he shivered.
A soft noise from the Shaman made him open his eyes once more, and two more beats after that to realize that the teacup between his hands was licked by pale gold flames that slipped under and around his fingers, dancing over tea and porcelain alike. The tea was boiling, bubbles roiling through the liquid, and Seth watched for a long moment as the tips of his own fingers burned red before he mustered the strength to call the flames back. "...my apologies."
The Shaman said nothing for a long moment, lips pressed thin. He was seated as far from Seth as politeness would allow - not, Seth thought, for fear, but because Seth's own place next to the furnace was the warmest in the little room. The Shaman had already discarded his coat and rolled the cuffs of his shirt sleeves up past his elbows, sweat dampening the other man's hair into dark gold tendrils at his temples and along his loosened collar. Despite the heat the other man sat with every appearance of comfortableness, one ankle hooked across the other knee as he regarded Seth. "You can't feel it at all any more, can you?"
"No," Seth agreed. He forced the fingers of one hand to uncurl, displaying fast-rising blisters over reddened flesh. "It feels like holding ice." He breathed out through his mouth, breath moving brittle across his tongue. "I expect to see my breath." He shrugged, tugging the quilt back into place, for all the good that the thick folds of it, or the blanket beneath, or the layers of clothing under that, could do against the chill that had eaten him from the inside out. It chased him, waking or sleeping, a cold so harsh that it hurt, and he couldn't remember what it was to be warm any more. Couldn't remember what it felt like not to clench his teeth against the chatter of them, or not to shake with the chills. He drew a breath - cold and dry in his lungs, even as he watched the Shaman sweat - and made himself relax. "You brought it?"
In answer the other man reached into the pocket of his jacket, where it was draped across the back of his chair, and produced a small glass vial that winked red in the light. Standing, he brought it across the little room, dropping it carefully into the hand Seth held out. It was small, no larger than Seth's thumb, unmarked glass with a plain cork stopper. "You really are a soft people," Seth mused quietly. The Shaman's mouth twisted in something like a smile.
"You don't look as though you could use a knife."
"No, probably not," Seth replied. He tested his thumb weakly against the small cork, then laughed sharply, extending it back to the other man. "In fact, I am afraid I have to ask you to be executioner instead of witness."
The Shaman said nothing, only took the vial from him, popping the cork free easily, and handed it back. "You can take it in the tea, if you want. Or there's scotch."
Seth considered the vial for a moment, scratching his thumbnail across the glass. "Does it have a taste?"
The Shaman cocked his head. "Not that I know of."
Seth raised his eyes, meeting the other man's gaze, but whatever was there was beyond his ability to read. "What will you pick?" he asked, impulsively. "Seer, they name you. I've seen that. What will you pick, when the time comes? When you can't tell real from vision, the day of the year, or who is at your side or the world around you? Will it be this?"
But the Shaman was already shaking his head, his smile slow and private as though he shared a joke, the telling of which Seth had missed. "No. I won't reach that point."
"Ah," Seth sighed. "The seer's advantage, to know." He held the vial up, turning it between his fingers. "So." Tilting his head back he upended the glass, a bare mouthful swallowed in one motion.
He sucked in a breath afterwards, pulling air in across tongue and teeth in distaste. "It tastes of snow," he told the other man, swallowing again. "I think I would appreciate that scotch."
A heavier glass tumbler was pressed into his grasp a few moments later, half full of amber. Seth drew in another breath and swallowed that down as well, two gulps, and for one glorious moment it blazed across his tongue like fire, hot and burning and he treasured the feel of it all the way down, even as it forced a cough from his lungs. "Thank you," he managed when he could speak again.
"You're welcome," the Shaman said simply, resettling himself in his chair.
Seth tucked the empty vial within the tumbler and set it and the teacup aside, huddling beneath the blankets in what had become reflex. "Will it hurt?" he asked, not really caring if the other man answered.
"No."
"Soft," Seth repeated quietly, scoffing.
"Safe," the Shaman corrected. "There's a strong sedative in it. I thought it would be... safer, that way."
"Prudent," Seth agreed. He was tired, but he was always tired; the cold wouldn't let him sleep, wouldn't give him rest, sapped strength and heat and life until every moment was another one spent crawling through the aching cold. He closed his eyes. "This will work?"
"It's the strongest there is," the Shaman replied, faintly amused.
"Good," Seth replied. "I would be very disappointed to wake afterwards."
"I've no reason to lie," the Shaman told him, "and I keep my word."
Seth opened eyes that felt heavy, forcing himself to stir and sit upright. "I need you to witness," he said. "You don't have to repeat. Just witness."
The Shaman leaned forwards, elbows braced across his knees. "I'm listening," he replied solemnly.
Seth nodded, once, then closed his eyes again. When he spoke again the liquid syllables of his birth tongue no longer felt easy in his mouth, too long unused in foreign lands. "My name is Xian Seon Man. I have been named Dashi. I have been named Chujong. I have been named for death." He drew a deep breath and let it out again slowly. "Gods of my Ancestors, I do not regret."
When he opened his eyes again the Shaman nodded, once, deeply. "Witnessed," the other man said, and Seth nodded in turn, grateful. In the quiet of the room the little furnace hissed softly to itself, and Seth thought he could feel the faintest trace of its warmth, like the crackle of fire against frostbitten flesh. He shut his eyes and tipped his head back, limbs heavy and limp, and let himself sink gratefully into the phantom trickle of a heat he barely remembered.
Story/Character: Pinstripes / Seth, Caleb (the Spider), Samuel (the Shaman), Oscar (Wilson)
Rating: PG-13
word count: 2,759
Mostly stand-alone bit of an ongoing story. Seth previously seen in Reborn and Wolf, the Shaman and Oscar in Wishes. Prior bits not really needed at all, just supplied in case you want to know. ^_^
* * * * *
On the sixth day of the month of Paoni, Elijah Benson was officially declared dead and his appointed successor, Elizabeth Ashley, gave her first press conference as the head of the Labor Union. That evening, Seth asked for tea.
It was green leaf, imported at expense from his own homeland, and the pale celadon brew looked sadly out of place in the fluted teacup it was served in. It was bitter and harsh and only barely drinkable, over-brewed in water that was far too hot, but Seth didn't care. The scent of it, cupped between his hands, was familiar and aching all at once, like a breath of lush green and warm air that was everything Lawson City's lackluster spring was not.
There was a tray as well, a covered bowl of rice and thin sliced vegetables, liberally seasoned with a generous hand in spices both local and from abroad. It wasn't, exactly, one of his own people's dishes, but it was as close as the eastern bastardized kitchens made. Seth appreciated the gesture, even if he had less than no appetite for it.
It had, he thought, been a reasonable bargain. Complicity and silence, in exchange for what comfort they could give him. He had played his part and said his lines, covering for Elijah's death for a month after the fact until Elizabeth could be brought up to speed and groomed for the role. It had been the easier part of it all, really. There was no one left to contest his word and they all knew him for Elijah's man, through to the core.
In return, the Shaman and the Spider had been as good as their word. True, the Spider's guards stood outside his door, but that was only to be expected. Inside the walls it might have been a well-to-do apartment on the upper side of town, rather than the prison cell it was. Clothes, furnishings, all provided, no less in quality than what Elijah had given him. Food and drink, whatever reasonable provisions he asked for, and as the days had marched into weeks even a physician, the services of which, Seth assured them after the first visit, were unnecessary. The doctor hadn't returned, but if the Shaman sometimes left a dark glass bottle of neqedd syrup on the table as he left then none of them remarked on it, and Seth had appreciated that gesture as well because medicated sleep was better than none at all.
They came to him that evening, with the tea he had asked for and the meal he had not, and with a report, first hand, of how the changeover had gone. He listened, teacup cradled between his fingers where the warmth of it could seep into his palms, and watched the disintegrating bits of leaf swirl gently through the brew with every tremor that he couldn't keep from his hands.
"It's done, then," he said afterwards, and when the Spider nodded he found that he could breath again, something tight in his chest loosening. "So."
His first impression of the man the streets named Spider had been one of sharp edges and sharper teeth and the month since hadn't appreciably blunted this. But he was, for all of that, a man of his word, and if the frown never truly left his brow when he was in Seth's proximity it wasn't a detail Seth really cared about either way. "You carried it off alright. How do you want to wrap this?"
There were four of them in the little room - the Spider, the Shaman, the Shaman's man, and Seth. The Spider's Puppeteer had come less often over time and Seth thought he could guess the reason why although he never asked. It was enough that it crawled beneath his own skin, gnawing at hollowed bone and chilled blood. He couldn't ever stop shivering any more, not even in the scraps of sleep or with his chair pulled close to the side of the little furnace. The bitter, eternal cold was the price he had paid for his flames, and he wondered what price a man who could slip inside another man's skin paid, when he returned to his own.
He had, until that point, done everything they asked without protest. Now, given the choice to orchestrate the steps himself, he found it didn't matter as much as he had thought it might. "There are things I will need to write," he admitted, nodding towards the Shaman's man. Wilson was a man of pen and number first, gun second, and Seth would trust him with his personal matters. Had to, as there was no one else, but Wilson's reputation was watertight. "After which..." He shrugged slightly. "You don't need to stand witness... Though I would ask the Shaman to stay."
It startled them - or startled the Spider, at least, who looked as though he had swallowed something unpleasant. "Like hell," he started, but the Shaman was already waving him down, the rings on the man's fingers chiming softly as he held up a forestalling hand.
"If that's what you want," he said mildly, and the Shaman was much harder to pinpoint than the Spider was. Wind, Seth had thought him once, but a wind could be anything from a warm spring breeze to the biting ice of winter that froze flesh to bone, and the Shaman was all of that, wrapped behind a pleasant smile and polite manners.
"Sir," his man protested, and the Spider was there as well, jaw set and teeth bared. "Like hell, Samuel. You're not staying in here with him by yourself!"
There were charms braided through the Shaman's hair, gold on gold, that clinked when he tilted his head. "It'll be fine," he said, and then, with a small sigh, "honestly, Caleb. I'll be fine."
The Spider's lips were thin and sharp. "Have that on record, do you?"
"Do you think I wouldn't?" The Shaman smiled briefly, but it didn't reach his eyes. "Nothing will happen. Believe me - this is a long way from where it ends." He spread his hands, palms up. "And even if you were here, what then? He could turn on you just as easily as me."
The look the Spider shot Seth had the venom of his namesake. "He could try."
"No," Seth replied quietly, tugging the heavy down of the quilt he had wrapped around his shoulders closer, "I couldn't."
The Shaman brought his hands together in a soft clap. "There. You see? It'll be fine." The other man still looked rebellious and the Shaman waved him off again with the flick of his fingers. "It will be downright boring, and I'm sure Hattie has two dozen other things for you to be doing."
The Spider huffed a sharp breath. "You're sure," he ground out.
"Positive," the Shaman replied. The Spider hesitated, then nodded slowly and turned to retrieve his coat. He didn't bother saying anything to Seth, the threat hanging unspoken in the air well after the door had closed behind him.
There was paper and a pen set in the small rolltop desk; Wilson, at a gesture from the Shaman, brought them to where Seth sat. It was hard to put the cup down, harder still to take up pen and carefully, slowly, sort his way through the square blocks of the western language letters. "I can write dictation, if you'd rather," Wilson suggested quietly.
Seth shivered, the motion dragging out the line of a letter into a jagged scrawl that made him press his lips tighter together and set the pen tip to draw the next letter with better care. "No," he told the other man. "Thank you." He didn't say, because there was no reason to state the obvious, that the language and letters both came difficult to him, and he didn't say because he would not share it that it had been Elijah who had taught him the shape of them, patiently, and that it was the other man's voice he could still hear, telling him the sound and the formation of each letter as he wrote it.
He kept the note brief, business-like and to the point, and put his mark at the bottom, both the loops of the letters that Elijah had taught him made up his adopted name, and beneath that the shorter, sharper strokes which spelled out his true name. Putting the pen down, he folded the paper and handed it into Wilson's grasp. "There is... a girl," he told the man, and both Wilson and the Shaman hid their startlement badly. It brought a genuine smile to Seth, though the amusement was short lived. "A little girl, and the woman who looks after her. Elijah's personal accounts will go to a trust for her. I would have my own do the same." He shrugged, reaching for his discarded tea cup again. "Everything I own is his coin, after all."
He could hear the crinkle of the paper as Wilson opened the note and hear the tone of surprise in the other man's voice. "Grace Benson?"
"She is his daughter," Seth clarified, tucking his fingers back around the ceramic of the cup. Steam still rose from the surface in thin curls but he couldn't feel the heat any more. "She has... no idea that her father was anything but a man of the Union."
The Shaman cleared his throat softly. "Oscar will see that it's done," he said. Wilson rose and Seth didn't watch, though he could hear the pregnant pause as the man hesitated before getting his coat. When the door shut quietly Seth closed his eyes, inhaling the scent of tea and heat that he couldn't feel as he shivered.
A soft noise from the Shaman made him open his eyes once more, and two more beats after that to realize that the teacup between his hands was licked by pale gold flames that slipped under and around his fingers, dancing over tea and porcelain alike. The tea was boiling, bubbles roiling through the liquid, and Seth watched for a long moment as the tips of his own fingers burned red before he mustered the strength to call the flames back. "...my apologies."
The Shaman said nothing for a long moment, lips pressed thin. He was seated as far from Seth as politeness would allow - not, Seth thought, for fear, but because Seth's own place next to the furnace was the warmest in the little room. The Shaman had already discarded his coat and rolled the cuffs of his shirt sleeves up past his elbows, sweat dampening the other man's hair into dark gold tendrils at his temples and along his loosened collar. Despite the heat the other man sat with every appearance of comfortableness, one ankle hooked across the other knee as he regarded Seth. "You can't feel it at all any more, can you?"
"No," Seth agreed. He forced the fingers of one hand to uncurl, displaying fast-rising blisters over reddened flesh. "It feels like holding ice." He breathed out through his mouth, breath moving brittle across his tongue. "I expect to see my breath." He shrugged, tugging the quilt back into place, for all the good that the thick folds of it, or the blanket beneath, or the layers of clothing under that, could do against the chill that had eaten him from the inside out. It chased him, waking or sleeping, a cold so harsh that it hurt, and he couldn't remember what it was to be warm any more. Couldn't remember what it felt like not to clench his teeth against the chatter of them, or not to shake with the chills. He drew a breath - cold and dry in his lungs, even as he watched the Shaman sweat - and made himself relax. "You brought it?"
In answer the other man reached into the pocket of his jacket, where it was draped across the back of his chair, and produced a small glass vial that winked red in the light. Standing, he brought it across the little room, dropping it carefully into the hand Seth held out. It was small, no larger than Seth's thumb, unmarked glass with a plain cork stopper. "You really are a soft people," Seth mused quietly. The Shaman's mouth twisted in something like a smile.
"You don't look as though you could use a knife."
"No, probably not," Seth replied. He tested his thumb weakly against the small cork, then laughed sharply, extending it back to the other man. "In fact, I am afraid I have to ask you to be executioner instead of witness."
The Shaman said nothing, only took the vial from him, popping the cork free easily, and handed it back. "You can take it in the tea, if you want. Or there's scotch."
Seth considered the vial for a moment, scratching his thumbnail across the glass. "Does it have a taste?"
The Shaman cocked his head. "Not that I know of."
Seth raised his eyes, meeting the other man's gaze, but whatever was there was beyond his ability to read. "What will you pick?" he asked, impulsively. "Seer, they name you. I've seen that. What will you pick, when the time comes? When you can't tell real from vision, the day of the year, or who is at your side or the world around you? Will it be this?"
But the Shaman was already shaking his head, his smile slow and private as though he shared a joke, the telling of which Seth had missed. "No. I won't reach that point."
"Ah," Seth sighed. "The seer's advantage, to know." He held the vial up, turning it between his fingers. "So." Tilting his head back he upended the glass, a bare mouthful swallowed in one motion.
He sucked in a breath afterwards, pulling air in across tongue and teeth in distaste. "It tastes of snow," he told the other man, swallowing again. "I think I would appreciate that scotch."
A heavier glass tumbler was pressed into his grasp a few moments later, half full of amber. Seth drew in another breath and swallowed that down as well, two gulps, and for one glorious moment it blazed across his tongue like fire, hot and burning and he treasured the feel of it all the way down, even as it forced a cough from his lungs. "Thank you," he managed when he could speak again.
"You're welcome," the Shaman said simply, resettling himself in his chair.
Seth tucked the empty vial within the tumbler and set it and the teacup aside, huddling beneath the blankets in what had become reflex. "Will it hurt?" he asked, not really caring if the other man answered.
"No."
"Soft," Seth repeated quietly, scoffing.
"Safe," the Shaman corrected. "There's a strong sedative in it. I thought it would be... safer, that way."
"Prudent," Seth agreed. He was tired, but he was always tired; the cold wouldn't let him sleep, wouldn't give him rest, sapped strength and heat and life until every moment was another one spent crawling through the aching cold. He closed his eyes. "This will work?"
"It's the strongest there is," the Shaman replied, faintly amused.
"Good," Seth replied. "I would be very disappointed to wake afterwards."
"I've no reason to lie," the Shaman told him, "and I keep my word."
Seth opened eyes that felt heavy, forcing himself to stir and sit upright. "I need you to witness," he said. "You don't have to repeat. Just witness."
The Shaman leaned forwards, elbows braced across his knees. "I'm listening," he replied solemnly.
Seth nodded, once, then closed his eyes again. When he spoke again the liquid syllables of his birth tongue no longer felt easy in his mouth, too long unused in foreign lands. "My name is Xian Seon Man. I have been named Dashi. I have been named Chujong. I have been named for death." He drew a deep breath and let it out again slowly. "Gods of my Ancestors, I do not regret."
When he opened his eyes again the Shaman nodded, once, deeply. "Witnessed," the other man said, and Seth nodded in turn, grateful. In the quiet of the room the little furnace hissed softly to itself, and Seth thought he could feel the faintest trace of its warmth, like the crackle of fire against frostbitten flesh. He shut his eyes and tipped his head back, limbs heavy and limp, and let himself sink gratefully into the phantom trickle of a heat he barely remembered.