Tools bit into my cocoon, splitting it open while it was still thick and heavy, strong with my memories. Then…’ He became perplexed. ‘They threw my soul out onto the cold stone. It died there. But the memories remained, trapped in the layers of the cocoon. They sawed me into planks and from them created a new body. They made me anew in their own image, gouging away until they had shaped me a face and head and body such as they wear. And they drenched me in their own memories, until one day I awoke as someone else. Ringsgold they named me, and so I became. A liveship. A slave.’
