Chapter Eight

Nuts.

Boozy samovar.

A small library all to themselves.

She tore open her paper bag of assorted nuts and legumes, and stared Hull in the eyes.

"It's party time."

Hull blinked slowly.

"It is not party time. Party time is when you're finished working or you want to distract yourself from working, it isn't done to accompany working."

Carza growled under her breath. She liked making noises like this. Growls, hisses... she was a very large cat, or maybe an agitated wasp piloting a human body like some sort of highly advanced steam locomotive. Usually she restrained herself, but she was a little drunk and barely gave a single, solitary hoot about her usual convictions. Well, some of them. Most of her convictions held true. She still had her robe on, still dressed in a prim and proper fashion, and still very much enjoyed The Ministerial Fellows - good clean comedy, that. Nothing vulgar. Nothing that Hull listened to.

"This is party time. We've got nuts and alcohol, and entertainment in the form of books. Just... would you serve nuts at a party?"

"Yes."

"Alcohol?"

"Definitely."

"Entertainment?"

"Most likely."

"Then, Mr va Trochi, I say that this is a party. And given that this is also a time, then this is party time. So tool up with some nuts and a hot toddy from the samovar, crack open the books and let's have ourselves a raucous and responsible evening."

"Founder, Carza... this isn't a party. This isn't party time. Stop calling it that. Please."

"Well, Mr va Trochi, I think that I shall not do as you suggest. Not at all. Being productive is fun. Being a hard worker is fun. This is like... constant positive reinforcement for both. Very healthy, very helpful. Served me well in my advancement to the rank of scholar."

She munched a handful of almonds. Study party. This was a study party, and she loved study parties.

"Sho there."

She'd learned how much she loved study parties from when she discovered the joy of eating massive piles of nuts and pickled eggs while working late at night. If she called it a party and not snacking-due-to-missing-all-prior-meals, then it was fun. And that was what life was all about - making fun out of things which weren't particularly fun. Like working late. Or coming up with research proposals. Or dying - everyone had a massive party after someone died, which felt like a very advanced coping mechanism to her. And now she had a mate to do it with. Hull gave her a look.

"Politely, Carza, but no. That's not how parties work. Parties are a couple of mates with enough booze to drown a whale, salty tidbits to make sure you're thirsty for more booze, and enough drinking games to really make the whole thing a cycle of increasing drunkenness until everyone staggers away. I personally enjoy ibble-dibble. I get drunk as hell while playing ibble-dibble."

Carza blinked.

"...but that doesn't involve being productive. That sounds like it'd kill brain cells, as opposed to strengthening them."

"Yes, Carza, that's the point."

"I prefer my sort of party, personally."

"I'm sure you do."

She crunched down on a slightly stubborn almond, shook her hands to remove any errant husks, and sat down once more. She had a hot toddy in front of her - really, the closest she got to a 'party' was the Founder's Day get-together among her father's secretaries, when Melqua mixed up an enormous bowl of hot toddy - tea with brandy and spices. Or mulled wine on one very, very decadent year, when they found a huge box of wine bottles her father had been accumulating as gifts for years, but had never drunk - he said it was basically vinegar. So they simmered it with brandy and a lot of spices, and that seemed to take care of the problem. The feeling was downright festive as she got back to work with Hull slurping greedily at his extra-fun tea.

Right. So. The Court of Horn's peace banner was... actually a topic of very little discussion. The Courts of Horn and Ivory had been on bad terms for a while in their early history, before both found a kind of camaraderie in trying to spite the Court of the Axe. And that meant that the most fruitful sorts of study hadn't occurred at the best possible time, and hadn't been engaged with afterwards as interests shifted and the Court of Horn rather became old hat. She could see some interesting topics here - looking at how cultures needed to change when they relocated from the apparatus of their culture, and she could draw cross-cultural comparisons with other cultures-in-exile. Hm. On second thought... no, no, she could do that. The issue was simply that... well, this all was very localised. ALD IOM and ALD IOM alone - not just that, but only one Court. And she could see the problems arising already. Hull had noticed them too. What she was doing was a glorified interview: 'good evening sir, we noticed something, could you clarify?' 'of course you devastatingly charming lady, let me explain in two minutes' 'oh crikey, now I need to stretch this into a book, and even my bullshit can't go so far' 'oh I'm sure you can manage by the way you have wonderful eyes it feels like I'm staring into burnished mahogany pools' 'thank you sir I grew them myself'.

She needed a smoke.

Point was, this was just a single interview - anything further would require an in-depth series of informants in the Court of Horn. And if there was one issue she immediately ran into... well, the books made it apparently. Anthropologists past a certain date tended to give good indexes of their informants - names changed to protect their privacy, and the documents in general bound up and sealed away in the Court of Ivory for no-one to find. Informants among the Court of... the Axe, for instance, were very diverse. One piece of ethnography she remembered used everyone - scullery maids, night watchmen, day watchmen, bureaucrats, secretaries, soldiers, washerwomen, even a handful of mildly bored nobles had been willing to talk. Or, some more recent stuff on New Trobalis - everyone from the colonial governor of the place, to the relevant authorities who represented the interests of the locals, to criminals, to police, to soldiers, to even a handful of vicious-sounding rebels.

But the Court of Slate provided no informants at all due to their strict secrecy measures... and the Court of Horn?

Drunks who didn't know who they were talking to. Children who didn't know they ought not to speak to outsiders. Exiles who were simply bitter at their old families and wanted to paint them in the worst possible light. The waters were, in short, hopelessly muddied by reams of biased, incomplete, or simple incorrect information. No chance of getting a good network of informants, in short. These ethnographies were done by skilled, seasoned anthropologists - she could tell from the small drawings of them found in some of the catalogues of old scholars. The seasoned anthropologists... well, they were a bit like sides of beef. Seasoned anthropologists were browned by the sun, a little bloody around the edges, tough in a way hard to put into words, and every so often bore the signs of a knife having entered them at some point. And these authors looked like coiled lengths of skirt steak with wry smiles and robes. She mentioned that to Hull, thinking it was a witty observation.

He told her that she was obviously hungry and ought to go out to get a sandwich, there was a perfectly good delicatessen-cum-sandwich shop out through the western portico.

She aggressively munched her latest bag of monkey nuts. Sandwiches made her feel full, and that made her sleepy, and that made this whole study party pointless.

Any. Way.

This narrowed her options down... just a little bit. Just a little. Courts were generally divided into multiple parts, with outer courts really just forming a population which could be taxed to service the functions of the inner court. The Court of Ivory, for instance, did technically have people it taxed, and who paid rent, but these properties were generally farming estates way out in the countryside. Whereas the Court of Salt was almost entirely an outer court, the inner court being comparatively tiny. The Court of Horn and the Court of Slate had decided to go one further - outer court, inner court, inner inner court, inner inner inner court, inner inner inner inner court and so on. They had so many secrets it was almost funny. Almost, because she wanted to learn some of these secrets so she could put them in a book and make a living out of it. Couldn't they just be exploitable like good honest civilians? Bah. Well, this was... irritating. She quizzed Hull on a few more points, developing a more concrete idea of his field of expertise.

So, he knew about the history of the Court of Horn - as told by outsiders, of course - and he knew how to read and write their language... but the bulk of his experience was elsewhere. Other Courts, and their responses to the invasion, the flourishing of art which followed as a result of very intensive cultural cross-pollination. He talked about how the Court of Horn brought with it some... interesting ideas. The notion of divine kingship largely originated in them - the idea of a ruler who was ordained by the heavens. The other Courts never quite caught on with the idea, but the symbolism had definitely made an impact. Images of scholars becoming less realistic and more figurative, exaggerating certain features and smoothing all facial expressions into calm, serene contemplation... and the Court of Salt had established their concept of the Great Ladder, at the top of which sat the directors of the Court, and at the bottom of which were their lowest debtors. The near-divine regard for the directors and their positions was very much influenced by the divine kingship of the invading horde. And for a time there was a habit of depicting important people in ALD IOM art with bloody orbs in their right hand - a symbol of rulership amongst the Court of Horn.

"Honestly, it was probably intended as a slightly cruel joke at their expense - for them, it was a sign of their kings. For the Courts, it could be given to anyone who was remotely admirable in any way."

"...what is it, exactly?"

"Hm?"

"I mean, it's... a little irregular, what is it?"

Hull blinked.

"...well, it's a... thing. You know. A thing."

"It bleeds."

"A bleeding thing, well-observed."

"Not many things bleed."

"Exactly, narrows it down."

"To what?"

Hull stretched his arms lazily, leant back with a pensive expression on his face, sipped at his moderately alcoholic tea, and hummed with the air of the deeply contemplative and effortlessly wise.

"No idea."

"Really. You studied for-"

"I studied poetry, and I was rather good at it. That doesn't mean I know about... well, some poems just call it the 'diadem mark'. Some scholars think that it's an actual object, others think that it might actually be a deliberately induced mutation. But that might've been slander. Or... libel, I suppose. Given that it was written down."

"Hm."

Carza leafed through a few pages until she found an image - an artistic depiction of an old scholar of the Court of Ivory, clutching a bloody red... thing in her right hand. It looked organic, that was for sure. It was irregular, and the red had a gradient to it - almost turning purple in some areas. It was too small to be a heart, but it was shedding enough blood to probably qualify as something similar... hm. A momentary thought - looking into the symbolic provenance of the diadem marks of the Court of Horn. There was a lacuna in knowledge there, and... dammit. Once again, that would come down to a basic interview. Focus on the peace banner, there was something useful there... and thus the search continued. Anyone that'd gotten here before them, anyone who'd researched the matter before. And so far... it was going terrifyingly well. There were works that discussed the Court of Horn's peace banner, of course. But only ever in passing, and only as a brief, factual note - the peace banner being left behind, and then nothing. A definite lacuna in knowledge, the kind which could be filled with fresh data. And there were basically two angles to approach this - to cultivate local informants (difficult, verging on impossible), or... look to the other major sources on the issue.

She had an idea.

And she didn't like it.

So, she came up with more ideas that might be of some better use.

"Any idea if the Court of Horn had any... satellite settlements? They invaded over the mountains, but did they just go straight here, or...?"

Hull hummed... then left abruptly, returning with a heavy book that he'd clearly thumbed through before. He muttered as he leafed through the thick pages, each one weighed down with copious quantities of ink. She peered over his shoulder, loudly chewing a monkey nut as she did so. He shot her a look... and she slowed down her chewing to mask the noise. Not spitting it out or anything, that would be vulgar. The book was an almanac of short articles written by a whole host of authors on a variety of points - they assembled these every once in a while, a way of clearing the shelves of the old journal back issues that they produced incessantly. Of course, mistakes were often made in transferring back issues to an almanac, so the back issues were kept around anyway, just to avoid any loss of vital information. Once upon a time, Carza would've settled for a position on the editorial board of one of these almanacs - going through back issues, filtering out the dross and finding what really deserved to be stored in such a great volume. But nowadays... well, almanacs were dying out. Printing presses meant that journals could be produced cheaply and efficiently, in greater and greater quantities. There was too much to filter through, and not enough time do it. Easier to just assemble catalogues of articles with relevant index numbers, and then let people have at it. Or outsource everything to a foreign agency which was used to dealing with this sort of thing, and was better at it than the Court of Ivory had ever been.

If you stumble upon this tale on Amazon, it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.

...Carza became much more hostile to foreigners, modernity, and the world in general when she found that nice, cushy jobs were being taken by people who were better at them than she'd ever be.

Not that she was lazy.

But she would've liked to cut her teeth on an almanac. Easier than the alternatives.

Anyway. Hull began to pull up a reference or two, and...

Oh, shag (vulgarity was acceptable in the confines of one's own skull, everyone knew that).

"...well. Yes. There are some settlements which were apparently left behind on the Court's advance into ALD IOM."

He paused.

"Were, really. Plague hit them... just over a century ago. Court of Horn called them their outer colonies, used to manage a good amount of trade with the rest of the world, but..."

He shrugged.

"Some were wiped out by the plague, and the rest were abandoned once they stopped being profitable. Rest of the world was coming down with that plague too, and it turned out that most of your population dying spontaneously was a pretty good disincentive for trading with other people. Nothing to trade when your miners are dead, your farmers are just struggling to feed what population you've got left, and everyone else is just being redirected to keep things running. No thought to trading with a backwater like this place."

Carza felt a certain amount of petty patriotism rising up in her.

"...we're not a backwater."

"No. Course not. But we're not... big."

"We're very large."

"By our standards, but we've got no colonies, no real resources outside this valley, and we've spent so long hating each other that we don't have much of a defence against the rest of the world. I mean, we've been using copyists for years, while the rest of the world had already invented typewriters, printing presses, using gas for lighting..."

"But we're not a backwater. Backwaters don't produce scholarship, or... have refined culture. We're a refined place. Dignified."

She wasn't sure why she was getting so defensive. Maybe... hm. Well, ALD IOM was her home. And as her life seemed more and more unstable, she found herself clutching for anything that seemed stable, enduring, resilient. And the city was... definitely that. The Court of Salt was rich as all hell, the Court of Slate still retained a slow, ponderous dignity... and if she took pride in the entire city, then she could almost claim that credit for herself. Within ALD IOM, she was a scholar with a non-existent reputation in Court struggling to adjust to the challenges and opportunities of the modern world, coping with the first real competition it'd faced in... generations. But when faced with the unfathomable vastness of the Other, then... her city became hers, and all its achievements and mystery were her own. And that, in a way, was a defence. A petty defence. But hers.

"...well. Yes. Sure. But, from the perspective of the outside world, we're not on most major trade routes. Easy to be cut off once it became irritating to ship anything out to us. The colonies, at that point, just... folded up. Plus... well, mutants."

A sudden shiver ran up Carza's spine. Remnants of old childhood nightmares.

When she was morose, she thought about her time on the streets. And she felt rather morose at this particular moment. Once, there'd been a... house, on the outskirts of this stretch of town. Old, decrepit, but tall and dry. No-one stayed in it, though. It would be ideal for urchins to live in, but none ever did. No-one opened the unlocked door, and no-one climbed through the windows so old that the glass had simply... fallen free as the frames softened into pulp. It had stood at the intersection of a territorial dispute, so no-one had come to burn it - but the mark lingered. The scratched mark of the purity brigades. And everyone knew that you never went near a place with that mark. Carza had strayed close, once. It had been a dry, hot day, and she wanted to rest for a while before moving on with her life. The house had been looming, its shadow had been long and cool... she'd stared at it for a few long moments. And she felt something wet around her feet. Glancing down, she'd seen... something foaming.

And in her heart of hearts, she could only imagine that it was bubbling, lukewarm saliva, spilling from the basement of the house.

She could see the walls breathing.

She saw something moving in the dark interior.

Houses needed to be burned. The mutants moved in, otherwise. The house developed a life of its own. A mad, lonely, broken life, which murmured to passers-by and tempted them to stay a while. To venture into basements filled with acid, to run their fingers over wallpaper the texture of tooth enamel... to sit in furniture which moaned and pulsed, purple as bruised fruit, and warm as entrails.

She'd run away.

They'd burned the house, eventually.

The screams could be heard across the entire neighbourhood.

The closing of the book ended her memories. Carza was no longer chewing. The tea in her cup was cold. She felt a little numb. She had had a few options - and they'd dwindled. The two of them were going to work together on this - she needed backup, needed someone who could reinforce her research proposal. And... in the end, Hull was her mate, and she didn't want to just leave him hanging up to dry while she scrabbled for work. The two of them had both graduated into redundancy, if they didn't work together they really weren't anything. And... well, he was her only mate, if she was being brutally honest. Which meant they had to do something with the Court of Horn. And that left three options: engage with them directly, engage with related colonies which might be easier to work with, or... well, the final alternative. The first was complicated by the Court's natural secrecy. The second was complicated by the fact that these colonies no longer existed. And the third...

She opened an atlas.

And pointed to a mountain pass.

"Now, this is all theoretical, but we could... maybe launch a research proposal. Go on an expedition over the mountains, through this pass - the same one the invaders came through all those years ago. You can read the language, I'm good at studying languages, we could help each other to develop lines of communication. There's an absolute lacuna in the data here - no-one's been over the mountains, at least, not since the discipline of anthropology was invented to begin with, and scholarly standards actually improved. We could go there, meet with locals, and gain information."

Hull looked warily at her.

"...how's this different from what my old tutor suggested?"

"It's specific, and it's ours. A single site. We can maybe muster some research beforehand, months of preparation, all fully-funded. Then, a long journey which occupies more time. And then back here to write up all our results, which should take even longer. That's a lot of time, and it's a big project - manageable, not like what your tutor suggested. We'd both end up with a possibly decent bit of work to our names, mounds of data we can publish piecemeal whenever the heating bills come in, and a reputation we can leverage to get nice, quiet work doing... editing, maybe. Whatever works."

He hummed.

"...true, true. But it's... a long journey."

Carza felt false optimism rising in her. This was her only option, she knew that. It went against all her instincts, but... she was good at working with grim inevitabilities, it was pointless unpleasantness that she disliked. If it was going to happen anyway, then it could be demurely accepted and worked around. And she honestly couldn't see a way out of this one. They needed the work, they needed the reputation, they needed the experience... and they needed to get it soon, before they ceased to be 'promising young scholars' and transformed into unemployed washouts.

"It's not too long. Look, there's a train connecting us to..."

She peered. Unfamiliar names from kingdoms and republics she barely knew.

"...Krodaw? Right, Krodaw. There's a train connecting us to that, and that's, like... most of the journey handled! Plus, the Court of Ivory has a mission down there, so we wouldn't even need to pay for lodging, and-"

"Carza, my primary worry isn't accommodation in Krodaw, it's the bloody huge mountain pass up there. And the massive stretch of steppe beyond it. I mean, what are we even meant to do then? Just... show up, poke some people, ask them about their culture?"

"...yes. That's ethnography."

"Alright, but keep in mind, the Court of Horn are the people who decided to stay in the nice place where there aren't that many mutants, and the weather is generally pretty good. Over the mountains are the people that decided this place was just too soft for them, and they wanted rolling plains of... nothing. And I'm happy to be nervous of it, because half of the people that left it stayed - which implies that it's nasty. And half of the people who left it went back - which implies that they're a bunch of lunatics."

Carza sat down heavily, scratching at her tattoo - still felt a bit raw.

"...I know. I know. But... a stint over there would give us enough data to mine for years, enough material for oodles of other research. There's a legitimate gap in the data here, and if we can find a way to fill it, then we'll have our foot in the door when it comes to academia. If you can find a better way of doing that, please, just tell me. Because as an anthropologist, sooner or later I'm either going to do some fieldwork, or I'm going to become a secretary. And as for you..."

Hull snorted.

"Either I find something original to research, write my own poetry, or I become a sought-after male prostitute who offers good conversation."

"Hull."

"Sorry, sorry. I see your point, really, I do. But there's risks involved - getting to the mountains, getting through the mountains, and then wandering around the steppe on the other side. We have very few maps of that region, and they're universally out-of-date."

"So we hire some guides."

"Carza, you're an anthropologist, you could probably find some work in other, safer corners. Why not do that? This is riotously dangerous, so..."

Carza blinked owlishly.

"You're my friend."

Hull blinked back. Well, he shouldn't be surprised. They're known each other for just over a month now, and as their colleagues had filtered off to their own work, they'd been hanging out more and more. Plus, Carza didn't have any other friends. She hadn't made any during her salad days as a student - when she was green and raw - and now she had fewer opportunities. And... she remembered her time as a young girl, just entered into the Court, and she knew that unless she stuck together with someone else, she was doomed. Melqua had helped her open up, become more of a person, more of a functional individual. Without her, Carza wouldn't have achieved anything. Without her father, Carza would've been out on the streets still. All she had achieved she had achieved through others - through teachers, family, Melqua... and she imagined this would be no different.

She was afraid of going out into the world alone. Out beyond the confines of the Court's sleepy golden void.

And she needed a friend to be at her side. Melqua was busy. And that left Hull.

"...and of course, if the two of us submit a research proposal together, then it's less of a gamble for the Court to invest in us - we've already convinced one other person that there's something in this line of research, after all. Not sending some lunatic off on a wild goose chase."

Hull coughed.

"Yes. Of course. That works."

Hesitantly, he reached out and patted Carza's sharp, bony shoulder.

"Thanks."

Carza stiffened. Didn't like contact usually. But it was... it was quite nice to be acknowledged.

"It's no problem, really. Just the rational thing to do. But if something easier presents itself..."

"...then we'll do that instead. Because if at all possible, I don't want to struggle through that pass up there."

"If we get our funding, we can hire a small army to protect us, and a small army of chefs to make sure we don't have to eat anything unpleasant."

"...you forget the large army of plumbers who can ensure proper toilet facilities no matter where we go."

"Oh goodness. Yes. Definitely."

The two lingered in silence, before Carza quietly admitted something.

"...we're both completely unready for this, aren't we?"

Hull laughed self-consciously.

"I'll take some more walks to prepare. And... we should probably learn how to ride a horse."

"Yes... yes, definitely. Oh, but I can look into buying some kind of... travelling suit!"

Hull perked up.

"That's a very good point. A very, very good point. New suits for both of us. Tough suits. Ready for the snow and the steppe, and to impress the people on the other side."

"I saw some wonderful reinforced tweeds recently - we could go get some tailored to us together!"

"Sounds like an excellent day out. And then we can get lunch, I know a few good places."

Carza, to her mild embarrassment, squeaked in excitement.

"In our new tweeds!"

"In our new tweeds, right on."

Another thought. Carza nodded firmly.

"And I will eat more beef sandwiches, to prepare myself for the road."

"That's wise. You need some insulating fat."

"And you don't, you have plenty already."

"I'm large, Carza, not fat. This is raw, concentrated brawn. The fat's just to protect me from falling from large heights. Makes me nice and bouncy."

And the tension seemed to break, and before long they were bickering like it was a normal day. But the decision had been made, and in the back of Carza's mind the sense of collision was increasing. And the lines on the atlas seemed to loom, each little dash becoming a yawning chasm. The mountains were jagged, a spinal column rising out of the landscape and sailing miles into the sky. The pass was just south of ALD IOM, they'd need to take a train to Krodaw, then it'd be an expedition into the foothills, then the mountains... the pass looked long and harsh. Might well be impassable in winter. Meaning they'd be committing to staying in the steppes for at least a year... this had started as just an idle thought, but the research potential was enormous. Treatises on language, on culture, on economy... studying the cultural heritage of the peace banner of the Court of Horn would be a remarkably lucrative line of work in itself, and it formed but a single part of the great body of data they were poised to mine. It would be dangerous. It would be risky. It would be ludicrously rewarding if it paid off. It was... really her only option, her only way of achieving advancement in a system which she'd specialised heavily in being ill-suited for. Modernity was marching onwards, and the best option was to crack into it, to make a niche, to settle and sleep. All the other niches had been taken. She had to make her own, with an ice pick and a heavy book to nail it home.

She'd need to buy a gun.

A revolver.

If she restructured her thoughts into the shape of myth and fiction, it all became easier. If she reframed herself as... as an adventurer, the kind that breezed through life with a pearl-handled pistol in hand and clothes artistically weathered rather than woefully stained... if she framed herself as that, then this all seemed more reasonable. And she could feel a path growing - could imagine little things, little insignificant things that when blown up enough helped disguise the terrifying uncertainties. She imagined saving the stubs of her train tickets in the mission down in Krodaw, where they could be collected on the return trip and given over to the treasury office for proper remuneration. Oh, and naturally any boots would need to be broken in before the trip started in earnest. And she'd heard of special travelling tea caddies which could protect the leaves from the cold and damp. Her eyes flicked over the pages in front of her, still trying to find the shape of her target in the steppes.

And she saw something interesting.

The Embolismic World. The way the people of the steppes conceived of the universe - or at least, the people who'd made it over to form the Court of Horn. It'd been an influential concept, before science had firmly debunked it. Never quite influential as a scientific model, but always as an imaginative conceit. She'd recalled it once before, when underground waiting for her tattoo to be done... the idea was that the world rested on a great pillar in the deep. Above was a cavern ceiling, so very far away that it could never truly be witnessed. The world was a clot in the artery of a great giant - so vast that its body made up the universe. To the people of the steppes, it explained earthquakes - blood flow pushing angrily against the earth which stopped its path. It explained the ocean. It validated a world-view which seemed faintly... nihilistic, in its own way. The world was a temporary accident, a mistake in creation, and in time the mistake would be rectified and all would be returned to the natural, pulsing flow of the universe. They said that the stars were ancestors who were trapped in the world - that the world needed to end for the stars to escape. And lineages had to be remembered, over and over again, so that the memory could endure in the aftermath of the world's collapse. The forgotten dead were condemned to nothingness.

No idea how widespread the belief was. So many 'beliefs' were just theological conceits held by a literate, introspective, bored centre, while the more diffuse peripheries might care very little for these conceits. Centre-periphery - standard anthropological model for cultures, a way of de-emphasising the antique reliance on stereotypes and 'this people believes' and 'this people does'. A way of getting closer to reality. Because, in the end, anthropology was about reality, about the ways that people shaped themselves to it, and shaped reality to accommodate them. It was a study of coping mechanisms for chaos and meaninglessness. For the natural gyrations of the human psyche. And books could only really begin to describe, in two dimensions, the operations of a four-dimensional series of coping mechanisms. A book would slice these practices into slides, paste them over a page, and give them a linear passage of explanation that would make it all terribly rational and wonderful. But fieldwork, as she understood it, was the only way of assembling those slides together, overlapping them until the entire image was formed, in all its complexity.

This was simply something she had to do.

And slowly, carefully, she hauled out her typewriter and began to click away. A research proposal. Hull helped her with some of the points - he had a better talent for writing than she did, but she had a better talent for sounding like a dispassionate academic. The proposal was simple - to mount an expedition over the mountains, into the steppes beyond, and to engage in an extended period of ethnographic participant observation, in the interest of utilising modern technology (always had to mention modern technology, it made the bigwigs feel cutting-edge) to explore previously unexplorable paths, and shed light on the culture of one of ALD IOM's most reclusive and secretive Courts, noting points of cultural drift and deviation. She felt a hint of petty spite rising up - that man with his steel-wool hair and his toughened, bark-like flesh, sitting at a bar while mocking her life choices. Her vocation. Well, this research proposal ought to shut him up. The possibilities of the proposal were outlined extensively and in lavish language. They could fill in a long-standing gap in their data, provide opportunities for future anthropologists and linguists to work with the steppe-peoples, update their records significantly...

And as for costs...

Equipment. Guards. Transport. Horses. Enough raw material wealth to use for bartering with the steppe-peoples, to use as gifts in whatever systems of exchange they found meaningful. Irritating that there was so little explored ground over the mountains, if there was, they could plan out specifically what would need bringing - she'd heard of some inland groups which regarded certain shells as the peak of decadent jewellery, and could be bought by the sackful on the coast. Easy for an anthropologist to make lots of friends in that particular case. But it was standard expedition fare. Expensive, but the potential rewards were substantial, and... well, if the Court of Ivory wasn't going to fund a promising expedition, then what was the point of this place? Just had to submit it to the right boards, and...

...and she still needed to buy a suit.

She needed to get her robe cleaned.

She needed to be functional.

An idea.

"We'll need hats for different conditions. The steppe and the mountains, really. And... generally."

Hull blinked.

"...why, yes, Miss vo Anka, I do think we ought to have hats. Should we include that in the list of potential expenses?"

"I think 'equipment' cover it."

"I've never bought a special-made hat."

"I think we ought to give it a go, Mr va Trochi. For the success of the expedition."

"For the success of the Trochi-Anka Venture."

"Anka-Trochi."

"Agree to disagree. We'll just alternate it randomly, that should annoy people. Now, hats..."

Carza liked having a friend. It was enjoyable to be... moronic from time to time. Yes, this was permissible idiocy. It was an opportunity for her to let out some of her accumulated air-headedness in order to refine herself for later. Vital catharsis, leaving her a wiser, more solemn individual in the moments which called for wisdom and solemnity. This was a reflection of her status as a mature person with full command of her mind and total knowledge of her own foibles - she was practically a supreme enlightened one. She munched a monkey nut. The supreme enlightened one masticated a delicate legume plucked from its tree-pulp-mesh delivery receptacle. Now, she needed a hat. The two of them needed hats. She could get a brown one for the mountains, large, with an animal tail hanging from the back to make her look especially rugged and adventurous. And for the steppes... well, maybe a wide-brimmed sun-hat that would shade everything but her mouth, giving her a frightfully intimidating grin that emerged from an otherwise faceless blackness.

And Hull could have an old-fashioned conical hat which would make him more intimidating to other horned animals, and maybe the occasional bear.

He could have antlers.

Carza was terrified of the future, but she was having a fairly good present.