Iziakbor

Body

The colour comes out of crystal layers in the hide that spread and close under the skin's own control, and the control is tied to the same nerves that carry fear, desire and pain, so it cannot be trained, suppressed or faked. A Hang Scale in a court gives a verdict on every witness whether or not anybody asked.

Their eyes move independently and each sends its own picture, which makes them the only Iziaka who can watch two doors, and which makes a conversation with one an unsettling experience. Alone among the strains they hold in any climate, which in a species built strain by strain for particular ground is the rarest thing about them after the hide.

Harvest

Iziakbor hide is sold by the hand's breadth and is why there are so few Iziakbor. It carries the same qualities as Squeesh hide, and it is the only Iziakan grade the price list does not measure against the scale law, because nobody buying it is counting rings.

The other trade in them is worse and is stated as plainly. Some are taken and kept for the colour itself, for the way the skin answers excitement, and the record says so without softening it. Among the Iziaka every panel sold is theft from a hide-book. Outside them it is a price per hand's breadth.

Regard

Among their own they are treated with enormous gentleness, which no other strain in the species receives and which the Iziaka do not explain. Everywhere else they are furniture.

A people that cannot lie in a world that buys and sells it has exactly one defence, which is being somewhere else, and the Iziakbor have been reduced by three thousand years of not being somewhere else in time.

Faith

The two moon sisters together, Zu'bor and Za'bor, the Turning Sisters, whose faces change as the Iziakbor's skin changes. The Hang Scales believe that the sisters wear their moods in the sky as the Iziakbor wear theirs, and that to be read is to be loved, which is the most that can be said for a body everybody else reads for profit.