Chapter Fifty One

The steppe was... beautiful. Carza had to admit that. With the sun coming up, she could see just how boundless it was, the plains rolling away into the interminable distance with not a wisp of fog to disguise it. She greeted the sunrise with Kani at her side, the two of them coming down from a fairly spectacular Horn of the Ancestors. With the rain stopping, they'd elected to get some fresh air, mostly for the sheer hell of it, but also because... well, the Horn of the Ancestors was a powerful thing. Very powerful. It was also rancid in terms of smell. It smelled like something charred to a crisp, something like rotting plants and something simply pungent... well, she found it hard to describe, but it soaked into the tent, her clothes, her skin and hair. And she started to see why these people used it for bathing. It was impossible to tell if she was filthy or not, nothing could really be detected past the haze she was now surrounded by. Some of their practices, she rather liked. Hospitality. Drinking. Regular consumption of meat. Active living. An approach to life which minimised violence and was generally quite polite. A superstitious element she didn't find overly irritating, and did have a basic appeal to it - very appealing for the paranoid neurotics like her, to fixate on luck in all its awful forms. But this... this type of smell was something she could live without. Definitely.

Kani shuffled. And Carza remembered another thing she liked about this place. She was wrapped up in a blanket, Kani at her side, the two of them sitting on the slightly damp grass while watching the sun come up. Nothing interrupted it - nothing but the curvature of the earth. No trees, no mountains off in the distance, no rising hills... nothing at all. They could see it perfectly, could see the way the earth swayed off at the edges. She felt like she was on the edge of existence, the place where things simply... stopped. An old model of the world had implied that the world extended infinitely outwards, was a smooth and perpetual disk set upon... something. Maybe a very large bull, who could say. And if you went out too far, you would find a vast ocean. Beyond that, seas of mud, extending as far as the eye could see. Beyond that, forests, mountains, the world losing coherency and simply repeating the same features over and over and over. That was one component of the belief, actually - the world was the perfect mixture by some unfathomably vast deity, and beyond them lay the storehouse of that tremendous god. The place where it kept all the spares. All the water it'd need, all the mountains, the forests, the earth... if something went wrong, it could build more.

Nonsense, naturally. But... looking at this infinite plain of grass, she wondered if someone had seen it before writing that little theory down. It wasn't hard to imagine it going on forever, until maybe it met some great ocean.

Well.

Might as well.

"What's out there?"

"Hm?"

Kani was curled up under the blanket, knees huddled against her chest as the blanket wrapped lightly around her shoulders.

"What's out there? Beyond the plains, I mean."

"Desert."

Carza blinked.

"Oh. You just-"

"Yes, desert. My brother's fighting there now, actually. They call it... uh... it has a silly name... I can't quite remember, but there's palaces made of solid gold out there, in the desert. They worship stars. Trap the light in crystals and then pray to them. Swallow pieces of crystal so they can birth stars for themselves. At least, that's what I've heard. It sounds awful. Too much sun, and no grass... this place is alive, but a desert sounds like nothing but a massive graveyard. No good life can survive there, no horses, no sheep... nothing. And no solid ground to build your tents on."

She shivered.

"I hope he's doing alright."

"...yeah. Me too. Sounds terrible. It's... very hot on the other side of the mountains, too. It's forest, and it just gets... hot. And sticky. Humid."

Another shiver from Kani.

"That sounds ghastly. Why would anyone live there?"

"I've was there for a few weeks, and I never stopped asking myself that. It's just too hot to think. And... yeah, it's pretty insane. Lots of death, most of it for petty reasons."

Kani hummed, and snuggled a little closer to Carza, who stiffened up instinctually. Come on, she'd promised not to get attached. If she did, she'd just wind up hurting herself more. She'd lost an expedition, she was safer alone. If she retained some sort of distance, she wouldn't be hurt when the people around her died, that was just the way of things now. She could've interrogated the others more, learned about their pasts, their dreams, their ways of thinking. At some point she ought to, but... not for her host family. She'd try and carve out some sort of independence, then she's wander off to interview other groups. Build up a proper corpus of literature to draw from when she got back. But this family... she could see herself liking them. Kani especially. And with how precarious the world was, with how a single slip could send them all spiralling away into the dark... well. It felt ludicrous to get attached. Setting herself up for failure, really.

But Kani... Kani had come along at the right time with the right intoxicants. And now Carza was started to feel a little attached.

"...so, there's desert if you go west. A lot of desert. I have no idea what lies beyond that... an ocean, maybe. South, the Scabrous live. And north, more plains, more plains... salt marshes, I think. But folk up that way are strange."

Her voice dropped to a whisper.

"They have three nipples. All of them."

Another species? How many were- oh, no, she meant they were all inbred. Well, it was nice to know that some stereotypes never changed. Actually, it was nice, it fuelled one of her pet anthropological theories, that in the end, stereotypes emerged as a way of just making the world make some semblance of sense, a mnemonic for the grand panoply of humanity. Groups being: inbred, untrustworthy, 'weird', violent, or simply odd seemed to be a common refrain. Point was... how vulgar. How utterly vulgar. Urgh. No, wait, this could be a bonding experience. Useful for anthropological analysis.

"Back home, we say that the Court of Slate all have three nipples. And worse."

"...go on?"

"The Court of Slate are a necrocracy, apparently. Ruled by the dead. Their apparent rulers are just apprentices, their real rulers are mummified corpses they keep in huge towers, where the current rulers can meditate and receive insights from on high. People know about it, but it's rude to bring it up. They find it offensive that we know any of their secrets."

Kani stared at her in horror.

"...that's obscene. Why would they do that?"

"Well-"

"The dead ought to be forgotten. That's the way of it."

She settled back with a huff... then seemed to realise what she'd said. And her face went stiff.

"Forget I said that."

"No, no, you can-"

"Unlucky to talk about that sort of thing. I'm not even shrouded in rags, the sun's coming up, and you're a full-grown adult. It's unlucky. And we need some luck in our lives."

"...alright, alright."

Now this was good. She desperately wanted her typewriter. The dead ought to be forgotten... the funerary practices of this lot were still broadly unknown to her, something she found moderately irritating. How could you know how a culture lived if you didn't know how they died? How did they confront death, rationalise it, comfort themselves in the face of it? It was clearly important, the idea that someone might be dead was significant enough to warrant a state of half-mourning, and as a consequence Carza didn't even know Kani's mother's name. But... it had to be taboo to talk about death outside of very specific circumstances which weren't very convenient for her. So she probably needed to go and find a child to intimidate into telling her everything. Maybe that was it - they only taught children, children were stupid and forgot things, and they kept the practice going because an adult would realise that their parents... really didn't know what was what. Underground suns? Whales? Iron Halls? Didn't that sound like something half-remembered, the kinds of impressive names that would be very selectively recalled by a very easily impressed child?

Underground suns. Whales. Iron Halls as a kind of afterlife. Whales descending downwards to the Iron Halls, while leaving behind 'carapaces' that became what Carza called contamination, and what Lirana had called Godsblood. And a threat for the raiders had been 'your whale will forget you'. And an emphasis on being forgotten, rather than remembered, which seemed to work against that last point... it was interesting. Very interesting. Most cultures preferred to remember, but these people... forgot? It made sense for mourning purposes, but was still very unusual. And... well, if she thought...

She was feeling anthropological.

"What do your clan-hearts do?"

Kani yawned slightly, but didn't complain.

"They make rites. Attract followers. Perform deeds. Grow."

"...like a warband, then?"

"...I suppose. Yes. They do go to war, fairly often. War with other clans, war with the deserts to the west, war with all sorts."

"You said they make rites. Do they... invent them? Why?"

Kani leaned backwards, voice growing a little more muffled by the blanket.

"Why would you join someone saying the same things as everyone else? If you don't experiment, how else are we meant to find new, better ways of attracting luck? The Ciduqul clan are large and powerful, their luck is splendid, and they achieve this because their clan-heart learned that the knucklebones of sheep can be cast in a copper bowl to repel bad luck - the things under the earth love bones, and will gladly gnaw them, but this allows the copper to enter them - which kills them. They're large and successful, proving that most of their techniques work. Makes sense, no?"

...that did make... sense? Maybe? It made perfect sense, but at the same time, very little se

"Are they whales?"

"I'm not bringing bad luck down on my family, Carza."

"...come on, just this once?"

"You're making this moment more significant by placing emphasis on it. That magnifies the amount of bad luck this would create, you know that, right? Stop asking."

"...fine. Fine."

Kani snuggled further under the blanket. And Carza watched the sun come up with someone she found herself liking whether she liked it or not. Kani had helped her out. Saved her, really. Then waited by her bedside for her to recover, helped feed her, provided the bulk of her anthropological interviews, and was just... nice. Not distant and courteous, but legitimately kind. After so much... it simultaneously made her happy and sad. The happiness came from the fact that thus far everything had been so very, very... grim. The Sleepless were lunatics. Krodaw's colonial authorities were depressed and just wanted to leave, and may've been responsible for a series of atrocities in the countryside, or not responsible but... oh, and one of them was hooked on cocaine. The Court of Ivory had been interested in gaining a leg-up on the other Courts, and used her as an agent, poisoning her against their 'enemies' in order to satisfy some lunatic idea of advancing themselves while hurting the others, and assuming that wouldn't just hurt the entire damn city. Throughout her journey, though, she'd always been struck by... little acts of humanity, she supposed. And grander acts. Miss vo Larima being shockingly decent. The local girl in the patrol being legitimately helpful on some occasions. Her companions showing themselves to be decent folk, one and all. She was willing to extend that even to Cam, given that Egg trusted him, and she owed her life to Egg strapping bullets to himself and throwing himself in the way of that creature...

And Hull.

Sadness came over her when she thought about the fact that Kani was being so pleasant, and that Carza liked her. Liked how unambiguous she was, how tough, and how genuinely decent. Carza didn't want to like her, she wanted this to be a relationship of pure professionalism. She wanted to be disconnected, and yet a part of her longed for connection at all costs. Longed for something to fill the tiny shrieking part of her that had once contained Hull. And now he was gone, it seemed large enough to swallow the world up. Sometimes, in the middle of the night, it did. And for a moment, she could feel... feel a presence. Nothing to fill it, she doubted anything would do that, but she... could imagine it being warmed. A hint of something. Kani's general decency providing that first flutter of connection she'd had in this strange place. If she'd been robbed out there on the steppe, she imagined that gap in herself would've widened beyond any hope of management. Never to heal. But... she'd been in need. She'd been wounded, maybe even dying if she hadn't found warmth and kindness. No reason to expect warmth and kindness, no reason at all, but nonetheless she found both in ample quantities.

She had no reason to be faithful, and she'd been rewarded nonetheless. Wasted all her luck on surviving this far.

And she'd been extended a final miraculous quantity of luck, just to hold on a little longer. To taste success a little keener.

She'd wanted to be isolated. And yet she cried out for companionship.

And Kani had provided it.

She stared off into the distance. Irresponsible. She ought to abandon such things for now. For now, she was in anthropology mode, she had no time for things like common socialisation. What she wanted was to labour away for as long as she possibly could, maybe longer than a few years - she was working alone, which reduced the amount of data that could be extracted from the cultures here. Work away, busy herself, and then... go back home. At all bloody costs. Already she had enough to fill up a decent-sized book, part of it reality, part of it speculation and theorisation and all manner of inference. Now she needed to do so more, and she might have a damn tome on her hands. Which was, to be honest, exactly what she damn well wanted.

No arm to wrap around Kani's shoulder. But the blanket served the purpose.

Ought to move on.

* * *

The days passed quickly. Even with their horses, with their speed, things were slow. Kani insisted on teaching her how to ride properly - they had a different style out here. Hard to describe, but she felt like she was getting more used to it. Preferred to ride behind others, but... the basic gist was coming to her now. How to direct the horse, how to make it move beneath her, how to make it speed up or slow down... every so often she felt her control slipping, reminded that the creature under her was entirely alive and completely possessed of its own will - which might not be inclined towards the bony thing riding around like an idiot. What helped was that the horses were small. Sturdy, yes, but they weren't the sorts of towering warhorses she feared. But... well, she supposed that was for the best. A warhorse would eat up a whole damn field if it could, these things could just keep on trotting and munching throughout the day with placid acceptance. Long-distance horses, endurance-based. Not trained to haul ploughs or carriages - the heaviest things they carried were the tents, and those had been deconstructed and placed into either small carts, where the rest of the stuff was stored, or were hefted to the side of the sturdier horses. But the point was, they weren't carrying knights. They were carrying her, and nomads made wiry by their environment.

Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road.

Made them fairly placid, too.

Wooden saddle chafed like hell.

And she'd been surprised by Kani wrapping a length of cloth around her midriff - bright red, reminding her uncomfortably of the sword-cloths the raiders had used. Carza had asked if it was a luck thing, like everything else out here. Kani had given her a sardonic look, and replied: 'no, of course not, it's to stop your organs from moving around when you ride. Stops you getting nauseous'. The red colour, then? Surely that had some kind of symbolism? 'It looks pretty, you wear too many drab colours'.

So that was nice. And infuriating. She was an anthropologist, everything had to mean something or she'd be out of a job soon enough. Things couldn't just be, dammit. That was just... wrong.

They rode during the day, settled in the evening with makeshift tents, ate food around a fire... there was a sense of tension amongst them. All of them. They were working hard, and Carza was struggling to help where she could. Sewing was good, but hardly integral while on the road - and when it was, no-one was going to trust it to a complete novice like her. Herding was beyond her - she could barely even ride. In the end, she helped with preparing food, helped with washing up, helped with unpacking and packing and setting things up... broadly, she was working towards self-sufficiency. If she could make her existence here less of a burden, that would be good. If she could help them, that would be ideal, if only for her own conscience. Tobok had a grim look on his face when he ate, spearing chunks of meat with his knife before eating from the knife itself, something the others also did, but... anyway. Still uncomfortable to watch. The weather was growing colder. The steppe rolled on, unchanging, broken only by trickling rivers was broadened on the horizon. But where they were, so close to the mountains... melted snow, and it was cold as ice, not remotely warmed by the earth. Painful to touch, painful to drink.

Dog kept shooting her unpleasant looks. Not sure what was up with that, but... she kept her distance. Maybe he was just irritated at how little she was working. She hadn't annoyed him with an interview, at least... maybe he was insulted at not being interviewed? No, definitely lot, he was far too taciturn for that. He spent more time in the camp than before - the herd was easier to tend now it had shrunk. Those raiders had been... it was still eerie to think about them just strolling in, taking half the herd, scattering the rest, and leaving. If they hadn't been fast enough, their herd could've just... died, and the family could've perished from hunger. Was that considered a better death than the sword? The Court of Horn had once had a taboo against spilling blood, maybe that had some inheritor here - content with killing, but not direct killing. That would involve spilling blood, and would incur bad luck. The best thing to do was to let people starve to death, or wander off in exile to die alone. That incurred no bad luck - out of sight, out of mind, and removed to some dim point in the future.

...maybe that was more a comment on humans. If she was feeling misanthropic, that was.

And she wasn't.

Night came. Night ended. Another day of riding. Multiple days, more interviews... at the moment she was developing a sense for food taboos, which was rather interesting indeed. Cauldrons were centres of luck for a tent, and when they were set up and the water first brought to a boil, the cauldron had to be stirred clockwise to invite luck in, dragged into a whirlpool, and then the first ingredients could be added. Vegetables should never be added first to the communal pot for the evening's meal - vegetables could be loaded with the corruptions from under the earth, and if they were added first, the cauldron woud need to be emptied. Still not good, the corruption would seep into the soil... safest route then was to simply decamp and reassemble somewhere else. Not that anyone was idiotic enough to require that. Bones were first, bones were safe, and pure. Bones contained the first-life of an animal, before it could be corroded or changed. And so, they needed to go first, if that was the way of things. Everything was about luck, and minimising bad luck - extending to the food, to the construction of the cauldron, to the way it was filled. The cauldrons had to be filled with certain prepared vessels, ideally a vessel could be heated over a fire, boiling the water. The first vessel's water would be hot, to 'prepare the cauldron properly, like dipping your toes in water before you go swimming'. The right vessel... never use the same one twice in a row for a cauldron, never allow a vessel to fill two separate cauldrons at once, and never leave a vessel unused for more than a week unless you wanted the thing to soak up poor luck.

It was bizarre, but interesting. Filled up her notes. She might even need to get some more paper, if she was able... or more realistically, start writing in a more efficient way. She had a technique - write on the back of a sheet, extend the margins outwards and upwards, and if pushed, write between the lines. Ideally, do this part in such a way that if you turned the paper one way, you'd read one set of notes, the other side, and you'd see the alternative. It made her notes look like they were written by a madwoman, but they worked, and that was enough for her. Ink ribbons were plentiful, at least. Small enough for her to have piles of the stuff.

Night. Day. Night again. Day again. And Carza found herself becoming more and more fond of Kani - who insisted on helping her with her tasks, who insisted on staying in the same tent, who insisted on keeping a general eye on her. Not in a doting way, just... well, she made ordinary conversation. Never craved attention, just talked like a normal person. Maybe she legitimately wanted a friend out here, maybe she saw Carza as a lost kitten in need of help...

No bloody idea.

But it was really very nice to have a friend. The others were too absorbed with tension. Getting to the valley, heading south through all available dangers, bunkering down for the winter without starving to death. Sounded reasonable to her, but it did tend to kill conversation in its cradle. Tobok was busy tending to his herd, one hand on his sabre at all times. Mrs. Cauldron was busy keeping the camp together, supervising all domestic duties with only a little help from her two 'assistants', Carza and Kani. And Dog was... well, he was being worked like a dog. Running her and there, up and down, left and right, across the steppe, over the steppe, fishing, hunting... Tobok was running himself ragged, and he needed a loyal Dog by his side to make it all work. When the evening came half of them were too exhausted to speak, and their silence consumed the noise the others might've made.

Feh.

And many nights later, when Carza had lost count due to the sameness of the days - wake, eat, make notes, help, more notes, more notes, eat, sleep - something shifted.

Something big.

* * *

Everything was ordinary until the night. Morning had passed in a quiet rhythm of breakfast, riding... not a pause for lunch, they needed to make a good pace, so they ate this half-rancid milk paste stuff which Carza was honestly alarmed by, but which did fill her with energy. The energy to get back to another camp so she could eat something else to wash the damn taste out of her mouth. Did manage to snatch some conversation with Tobok on the topic of the proper placement of banners over a hearth... not much, but she could put it in an appendix. An evening of clattering quietly on her typewriter, lit by firelight, just to get her notes ready for when she forgot everything she'd heard on the ride. She wrote a small attempt at a commemoration for Hull. A little letter to him. Irritated that she hadn't asked him for a hundred little things... what was his favourite brandy? What was his favourite pub? She wanted to find places that smelled of him, sounded like him, felt like him. Otherwise, she'd need to go on long, rambling hunts, gradually forgetting everything she was looking for... for once in her life, she hoped Hull would have a filthy office. Maybe he'd have old glass bottles, with brands she could trace, tastes she could imitate...

She wanted to rebuild Hull, in the world around her. Maybe it was childish and petty, maybe it was just grief-stricken, or maybe it was a legitimate attempt to commemorate him properly.

Night fell.

Kani slept across from her, wrapped up in blankets. They both stank of horses and the wild... not a scrap of herb. Carza hadn't dared. Surfeits of emotion felt poor out here.

She found it hard to sleep. But she tried it nonetheless. Had to. Exhaustion made her want to sleep, and memories made her eager to sleep... but nonetheless everything conspired to keep her awake. Something was crawling on the tent. A beetle of some description, climbing slowly and carefully up the side of the tent, hungry for something it wouldn't find. It found a structure, thought it ought to resemble all the little rocks of the steppe which usually had something good to eat, and clambered up. Wouldn't find anything but hide, the inedible sort too. It might never find a human again... or a demigod. It might never feel anything but breeze, hear nothing but the murmur of insects. Know nothing. Nothing at all... but here she was regardless, and here it was. And ne'er the two shall meet again. She focused on it. On that shadow on the wall. The slow clambering to a peak as pointless as the slopes, as if something should have more reward to it just because it was higher.

Her stumps were itching. Wanted a brandy more than anything, no more milk...

Wanted to type, but not sure what she was meant to type.

Head was empty, thoughts were dry... and her eyes were so very heavy...

She started to pretend to snore, just to convince her brain that was time to sleep, yes. Or was she convincing her body? Point was, she wanted to sleep, some part of her wanted to, another part didn't, and she wanted the latter to shut the hell up and stop.

Slowly, the latter was losing... the former was winning... her excitement at the thought of sleeping revitalised her, making her more awake, and... bah. Bah.

Maybe a walk...

She opened her eyes...

And saw something gleaming.

A knife in the dark. Poking through the fabric of the tent.

A slice downwards, a gash in the skin of her shelter... the moon was swallowed up by a dark figure standing beyond.

A figure with flat, dead eyes that somehow burned simultaneously with frantic, raging energy.

She knew that figure. It was the maniac from the raiding party, the one who'd killed the two slaves out of petty fury. Who'd been interested in seeing Kani's face... suspected something.

Done more than suspect.

The figure lunged inwards. Hadn't seen Carza's eyes open - his form blocked the moon, the one thing that might've given her away by reflecting from her staring eyes. All he saw were two bodies. And one of them had a sheen visible even without the light of the moon... she heard him breathing. Heavily. His beard was wild and terrible, ornamented with tiny bones, hair forming a mad ruff around his head... a sabre at his belt. And a knife in his hand. He moved through the gash. Stepped lightly on the ground.

He had a scent of neglect about him. Madness. Obsession.

She had a sudden image.

A hunched, dark figure on a small horse, prowling through the wilderness. Hidden in the tall grass. Stalking them. A figure mad enough to kill two slaves out of spite, who wore bones in his beard like his fellows, but did it without thought or reason. In the instant she saw him, she painted him a personality. Unbelieving and cold, driven by his own desires and very little else. Not an animal. Just a human who found it more convenient to his habits to live as a beast, dispensing of responsibilities. She imagined the figure stalking along, keeping a healthy distance, eating scarcely, watching. First, a testing probe - just looking to see if they were lying. Seeing Carza act sane. And seeing the raggedy woman take off her robes to show someone in the flush of youth, engaged to someone. Not the useless widow that he'd overlooked in the first raid.

And then keeping going.

Obsession over the one that got away?

Maybe.

She didn't know him. He hadn't introduced himself. Didn't even know his name. He was the man with a flat, mad stare, and a maroon-stained cloth at his belt where he cleaned his sabre. He didn't explain his motives clearly, like Kralat had. He wasn't obviously an animal, like the mutant. He was closest to the creatures in the mountains, the ancestors, but at least they had some kind of... mystery to them. In front of her was someone petty. Small.

Obsessed.

He reached.

And she drew back the hammer of her gun with a click

.

"Stay very still."

The figure froze.

"Why did you come here?"

"I'm a friend, I promise. Don't do anything silly."

Carza's finger found the trigger.

"Are you?"

"I am a friend. I'm not your enemy. And I have proof."

His hand was reaching for his sabre.

"I've come to warn you of something. Something terrible coming your way. You ought to listen. A sane person would listen."

She saw his fingers wrapping around the hilt, his other hand preparing to throw a knife.

"Leave the tent and we'll talk."

Loaded. A single pull, and... the figure hummed, affecting being casual. But his face was invisible, all that lingered was his frame - and that was tense as piano wire. His grip on the knife tightened.

He moved.

She moved faster.

The explosion of a gunshot roared in the night, rolling over the steppes like thunder. The figure was thrown backwards - off-balance from crawling in a too-small tent, and surprised by the sound. The last emotion the man had felt was surprise. Shouts rose up - Dog and Tobok, Mrs Cauldron and Kani. Four of them and Carza, flooding to see what the problem was. Carza felt numb. Her wrist was sore. Her stumps were burning. The gun didn't clatter to the ground like she was stunned dame in one of her bad novels, it just... lingered, loose in her hand. A lank, limp limb dangling, a strange and unnatural extremity. Beyond the hand. Superior to the hand. The barrel was smoking, and she could see it rising clearly in the moonlight.

Kani was dragging her upright, hauling her to her feet... saying something. Asking questions. What had happened? Carza stumbled out of the tent with Kani's help, saying nothing, staring dead ahead.

She'd killed before. The man in the river, the Sleepless that she'd brutalised until he fell away from her and could be shot - killed him as surely as if she pulled the trigger. Killed Kralat by stabbing him in the crotch and distracting him for Lirana to finish off. Killed that ancestor in the mountains, the Female who'd gored Hull to death. She knew this shouldn't hurt. She knew this should just be standard practice for her, that a numbness ought to exist in her heart towards necessary killing. But...

His eyes had felt something before he died. She could see it. Surprise. Fear. Maybe a hint of regret. Shouldn't hurt, but it did.

A pure human. No mutations. And nothing else. He'd threatened Kani, and Carza could've remained where she was. Asleep. Maybe the man would've tried to kill her, but she doubted it. She hadn't even thought, just... lunged for her pistol, said a few things, and shot him. Mrs Cauldron was looking at the body now - she was always laden with bad luck through her ambiguous mourning, it was safer for her to be around the dead. The others were muttering, but Kani was just hugging Carza - when had she done that?

Carza hadn't thought. She'd just fired to protect her.

She'd become attached.

Mistake.

Damn mistake.

But here she was.

That encounter could've gone on for longer, she thought. Maybe he'd... move faster, take Kani away, and Carza would've had to chase her down. Had a long day of conflict over the issue - stay, go, what? Maybe she could've learned more about his motives, instead of just meeting him at his most monstrous. Found out that he had a starving family... no, a sick child who could only be cured with the flesh and blood of a demigod, and in fact he was a tragic hero, and maybe he had genuine beliefs, and... no. She'd just shot him. Hadn't thought or delayed, hadn't abided by the patterns instructed by her bad novels. She'd just acted to defend Kani.

Mrs Cauldron was hugging her now.

And Tobok had gripped her around her shoulders. Saying something. She barely heard a thing. Kani was drawing her away now... Dog shot her a murderous look, which was... a little odd. Made sense, but it was still odd. Saying something like 'she's exhausted, just let her go for a moment, she needs to recover'. Part of her was yelling at her weakness to shut the hell up - stiffen her back, and become stronger. Don't just rely on others. And the part Hull had taken with him when he died... it just said that she was weak, she was afraid, and she needed someone to lean on. Kani was... maybe a substitute for that person. Maybe a temporary replacement.

Maybe.

"Carza? Are you alright?"

Her voice broke through the haze. Carza realised she was still holding her gun. Wasn't letting it go, though. Even after the realisation.

"...I'm... uh, fine. Are you alright, he was-"

"I was asleep for the whole thing... mother said it was that person from the raiding party, the one who killed our-"

"Yeah, it was him."

"And he-"

"I think he wanted you. I don't know why. But he had a knife, and... I wasn't sure if he was going to kidnap you, kill you, whatever. I was awake at the time, had to act. He'd planned it out well... if I wasn't awake, he'd have come and gone in silence."

"...ancestors, that's... he's been stalking us?"

"I think he must've. He came when we were all asleep. We didn't even know he was here."

Her voice was flat.

"...you saved me, then."

"I was awake, that's all. If he grabbed you, I'm sure you'd have woken up, screamed a storm, brought the camp-"

"And he'd have likely cut my throat to keep me quiet. I'm sure he had a plan. Listen, you..."

She paused.

"Father is preparing a rite."

Carza snapped.

"A rite? I don't need a rite. I'm fine. Just-"

"You need to remove the impurity of killing. He's dead. You... shot part of his heart. Completely gone. And if you don't purify yourself, you'll be a centre for bad luck, and..."

Carza sagged down to the ground, staring off into the distance.

"Yes, yes, I get it. It's fine. I'm sorry for being loud."

She started opening up the gun, checking it. One bullet expended. Very efficient of her. Kani was moving from foot to foot, shifting and shuffling, incapable of remaining in one place for long. Tobok strode over, his footsteps shaking the earth very slightly. Carza looked up from her work - making sure nothing had been damaged, just like Anthan had taught her. He was large enough to block out the moon and stars, and his dark eyes glittered as he looked over to his daughter.

"Is she well?"

"She's talking. But... she seems a little..."

A little what? No time to think - her shoulders were grabbed, she was hauled up, and she felt... a kiss on each cheek. Firm. Strident. Confident. And... grateful. Reality pulsed back, riding on a wave of embarrassment. Typical. She fell to the ground with a thump, but Tobok wasn't quite letting her go. His eyebrows drew together, furrowing, and his hair seemed to twitch like a living thing - almost was, and certainly would be once he became an ancestor. Again, she saw the beginnings of tusks, of extra arms, of monstrous size... his voice was a rumble low enough to shake her bones.

"You saved my daughter from some... honourless maniac. You did well for that. My hearth is your hearth, and my home your home, for as long as you desire to have it. Now, you look strained. Death sits heavy on someone, I know that well enough. Killed before. And there's no shame in doing it to protect other people, or to bring proper respect to your family. And you've brought plenty of respect to your own."

He glanced to his daughter, then back at Carza.

"So, you can consider this... my own decree. You're a member of our family. I promise that. And we'll shelter you like one of our own, until you decide to leave - and then you can come back whenever you like. You might need time to recover from this. And that's... completely acceptable. Take as much time as you need. We'll be here to give you food and shelter."

He clapped her on the shoulders again, and coughed awkwardly.

"...now get some fermented milk into you. You'll feel better in the morning. Alright?"

Carza nodded dumbly. And Kani squeezed her hand - when had she taken her hand? Founder, she was out of it. Just felt numb, barely even felt guilty, just... emptied out. Resigned. Tobok clapped her on the shoulders one more time, seemingly his equivalent for beginning a conversation, punctuating it, and ending it without the awkwardness of a proper goodbye. Kani, though... remained when her father left. Wrapped Carza up in yet another hug, and a damn tight one at that.

"Thank you. And if you're part of this family..."

A small smile crossed her crystalline face.

"Would you like to be my aunt, my sister, my cousin?"

Carza blinked. Aunt felt immediately wrong. Melqua was an aunt, and one of the most wonderful people Carza knew - no-one was allowed to be an aunt but her. Sister felt too intimate and permanent, plus, it would mean that she was symbolically Tobok's daughter, and... she didn't dislike him, but she was content with her current father. Content... no, resigned. That was the right word.

"Let's go for cousin."

A weak smile accompanied this little admission.

"Very well then. Cousin Carza."

Another hug.

"Thank you. Really. If there's anything I can do to help..."

"...a cigarillo would be nice."

"Stay here. I'll fetch them for you."

And with that, Carza was left alone. Under the flawless sky, unblemished by clouds. Stars wheeling overhead, tiny twinkling points she could lose herself in. She'd killed someone. Ended a human life, and... and that was it. Other anthropologists had definitely done the same, no doubt about it, but... it still felt like she'd done something wrong. Even when she knew it was the right thing to do... she remembered the Court of Horn. Blood was wicked, even an enemy's blood. Spilling it was impure. A culture from a place where people were scarce, and killing was always a poor decision. Made sense their culture would orient itself around blood being impure, too impure to be shed easily. Always had a burden tied to it. Even the most righteous killing was still a killing, and still impure. Still a magnet for bad luck. Carza sighed.

She'd spilled blood on the steppe, then.

And for all of her numbness...

She couldn't say she felt sad. Just... drained. Lost. Like she'd severed some vital taproot in herself, connecting to something indescribable and utterly human. And by losing it... she'd lost some part of herself.

The expedition had taken her companions. Her best friend.

Now it was taking her, too. Savouring the final morsel.

One bite at a time.