For these serious changes, the word was taken from the Ragamoll. It was that Ragamoll word that filled Tanner’s mouth.

He brought his eyes back to the man behind the desk, patiently waiting.

"I need you to help me," Tanner said, faltering. "I want to be Remade."

Tanner had thought about it for a long time.

His coming to terms with the sea felt like a long, drawn-out birth. Every day he spent more time below, and the water felt better against him. His new limbs had adapted completely, were as strong and almost as prehensile as his arms and hands.

He had seen with envy how Bastard John the dolphin policed his watch, passing through the brine with unique motion (as he swept in to punish some slacking worker with a brutal butting); and had watched as cray from their half-sunk ships (suspended at the point of being lost, pickled in time) or the unclear menfish from Bask riding launched themselves into the water, uncontained by harnessing or chains.

When he left the sea, Tanner felt his tentacles hang heavy and uncomfortable. But when he was below, in his harness, his leather and brass, he felt tethered and constrained. He wanted to swim free, across and up into the light and even, yes, even down, into the cold and silent darkness.

There was only one thing he could do. He had considered asking the docks to subsidize him, as they surely would, gaining an infinitely more efficient worker to do their bidding. But as the days went on and his resolution grew, he had dispensed with that plan, and had begun to hoard his eyes and flags.

That morning, with Shekel away and the clear sky blowing salt air into him, he realized, suddenly, that this was truly and completely what he wanted to do. And with a great happiness he understood that it was not because he was ashamed that he would not ask for money, nor because he was proud, but only because the process and the decision were, completely and uniquely and without confusion, his own.

When he was not with Angevine (times that stayed in his head like dreams), Shekel was in the library, moving through the towers of children’s books.

He had made his way through The Courageous Egg. The first time it had taken him hours. He had gone back over it again and again, picking up his pace as much as he could, copying the words that he couldn’t at first read and making the sounds slowly out loud, in order, until meaning wrestled its way through the separated shapes.