Chapter Fifty Two

It was... odd, being 'part of the family'. Something had shifted after she'd shot someone through the heart. This wasn't, in itself, unusual. She'd be more disturbed if nothing had changed after shooting a man through the heart. But as it was... the camp had been disassembled, and rapidly. Fleeing the spiritual impurity left behind by a corpse. The body wasn't buried - instead, they simply set up a small mound of earth, then laid the body on top of the mound - like a castle surrounded by a ditch, the refuse from that ditch forming a grave-mound not unlike a cairn or a barrow. Carza had asked, politely, what it meant. Even as an honorary member of the family, she still wasn't entitled to explanations of death, what it meant, how it was treated... but Kani was kind enough to murmur a little.

"To the honoured dead, the earth. To the shameful dead, the sky."

...ah. Sky burial. She'd read about that - about burials where a body was exposed to the elements for the birds to consume. But when she'd heard of it, it was usually a good thing - reflective of some appreciation for nature. The Court of Wax did that, offering their corpses to the peaks of the hills they called home, allowing the birds and the insects to feast. Sky burial meant no grave goods, meant no monuments... and given the rot that would quickly seep in, it meant no approaching the grave site for some time. Mourning had to occur at a distance. It was an unusual practice, but she'd heard of it... and yet, for these people, sky burial was shameful. Idly, she remembered the clan-hearts, how they introduced new rites to their people in order to distinguish themselves from others. Maybe one clan had developed sky burial, but had promptly suffered some catastrophic loss, and thus the rite was considered to invite bad luck. Or maybe it was a... wait, the Iron Halls, the underground suns... it sounded like their afterlife was underground, not in the sky. And once more, confusion wrapped around her mind. They wanted to forget the dead. Fine. But surely having a corpse taken up into the sky (symbolically) was the purest form of forgetting. No grave marker, encouragement to remain distant from a body, no grave goods, nothing.

Like most problems in anthropology, the answer seemed to be 'all the above'. A clan-heart blundering in some way, a belief system which could incorporate paradoxes... hell, it made sense that their belief system could include paradoxes, if they were so intent on conflict prevention, so eager to add new rites to their worship, then they'd have to be willing to overlook some logical inconsistencies. She was approaching this with her own logic, not their logic.

One issue she had to confront was that she was dealing with a family, not a priestly caste. A strain of anthropological thought suggested that cultures were divided into two broad parts - the great tradition and the little tradition. The former being theologically rigorous, reflective and introspective, generally reserved to those with the time and inclination to focus on this sort of thing. City-folk, elites, priestly castes... places where this sort of thing mattered. The little tradition being the preserve of the unreflective many, those who were more concerned with practical things, not precise interpretations of doctrinal religion. The great tradition might be concerned with cosmology - the little tradition might be concerned with luck. Of course, the little tradition covered most of a society, so...

The point was, she was focusing on anthropology to make life easier for herself. And to avoid thinking about the birds tearing at the body she'd made.

Sometimes she could still feel it. The gun in her hand. The kick from the recoil. The heat of the barrel. The way the body had simply fallen, strings cut, heart ripped into too many pieces to ever function again. Dead in a matter of moments.

Because of her. And now he was being surrendered to the sky.

The steppe didn't swallow the body, not exactly. The rolling plains meant that for a long, long while, she could still see the dark shape on the horizon. Could see the birds slowly descending downwards, wondering if this was some sort of trap, if some predator was lying in wait. She could almost hear their happy cries as they realised there was no trick - they had a body all for themselves. To glut themselves with as they pleased.

And when she imagined the greasy necks of vultures growing shiny with gore... she found it hard to focus on the great tradition, the little tradition... but she couldn't say she felt sick. Numbed. She'd seen too much violence already, participated in enough, had already blown the skull off an ancestor. Adopted into a family she'd quite possibly removed a member from. She'd killed before, and she was alarmed by how quickly it became... part of her. Civilisation was something that existed only ALD IOM, outside of it all the rules relaxed, everything became that little bit stranger. And murder became... just something that happened. Sometimes she thought of herself as an island of normality surrounded by oceans of strangeness, and her duty was to return to her homeland, to reunite. To no longer be isolated. The gnawing in her stomach was low, constant, and sharp. Just get back home, remove herself from this mad place, and...

And she knew that was a lazy way out. It just turned the world beyond her home into a mad dream which she could one day wake up from. And when she did, nothing here would've happened at all. It was a barrier she found hard to breach, like her mind was instinctually erecting a defence to stop itself from fragmenting. This wasn't real. That man wasn't real. This was all just another page in a long, discursive ethnography. This was a twist of her delirium. None of this had happened. The gnawing in her stomach insisted on creating that barrier, and it refused to let it come down. It was necessary for her survival, and right now, she was pushed to survive, on a razor's edge between disappearing forever and returning home.

Weak.

But she couldn't see another way of coping. Sleep wasn't an escape - she could barely sleep at all since that night.

The days passed quietly. Something had shifted, though. Tobok was more open with her, willing to talk loudly about various rites... Mrs Cauldron was downright affectionate, in a way. Kept making sure she was finding the saddle comfortable, and she mumbled that it was improper for her to ride in that coat of hers - she ought to have a proper robe, like the rest of them. Kept giving her little pieces of dried meat, too. Her expression never changed when she did this, though. Stayed deadpan and stern. And despite being nice, she still hadn't revealed her name. An idle thought occurred to Carza - what would happen if she showed them that document with Lirana's name, her life story, all of it written by someone about to die? Would it be ludicrously taboo? Would it shatter her relationship with them, turn her into a nexus of bad luck, something to be shunned if the family was going to survive? Sue her, she was feeling neurotic. If she was given something good, her first thought was how it could broken. Analyse it for weaknesses, then be paranoid of them. If she knew the things that could ruin everything around her, then she could avoid them, right?

Right.

Dog kept her on her toes, though. He kept looking at her strangely. Did he see the gnawing in her? Did he see how she couldn't sleep? Did he see how her hands were always curling around an imaginary gun? Or was it something else, something pettier. His glares made her glad to be an insomniac.

Kani was...

Kani was her friend.

As much as she'd tried to resist it, Kani had become her friend.

...wasn't too worked up about that, at least.

The weather was growing colder, and when she woke up in the morning she saw great silver banks of fog sliding over the landscape like the dust trails of mobile armies. Ghostly cavalries pursuing them... anything could exist in those clouds. Sometimes she saw horses, or spears, or glaring eyes. Sometimes animals, shapeless and chaotic - mutated and twisted. No wonder people here were so superstitious. This was the sort of place where things lived, forgotten. She wondered if anyone had walked over these fields in the last hundred years... quite possibly not. There was more than enough steppe for everyone else. And if a place could be untrodden for that long... well, who could say what might grow, out of sight and mind, on the borders of human experience?

Crumbs. That was a good line. Need to use it in the ethnography.

"Kani?"

"Hm?"

"How does this line sound: 'who can say what might grow here, out of sight and mind, on the borders of human experience?'"

"...I'm not human."

"Yes, I... look, does it sound like a good line for the ethnography?"

Kani shrugged carelessly, tilted her head to one side, then the other, then the other, humming all the while... that was a habit she needed to record, because she'd seen Kani, her mother, and her father all doing the same gesture. It seemed like they were trying to fill up any kind of silence, anything to stop an awkward atmosphere developing. So they hummed, and they shuffled. If they kept moving, the eye was distracted, the mind was soothed... idly, she wondered if that might be a joke worth making. In other countries, they'd talk about the landscape or the weather. But out here, there was no ambiguity. 'How's the land?' 'Flat.' 'How's the weather?' 'Clear and cold.' The weather's changes were always visible on the horizon, nothing to conceal them. So they had to make a form of small talk which involved no talking at all. Thus, humming and shuffling.

"It makes this place sound very mysterious."

"Isn't it?"

"What's so mysterious about this place? It's flat in all directions, and most of it is grass. Oh, my, yes, what could grow without human eyes, without human experience? I can tell you. Grass. Lots of it."

"But what could be living in the grass?"

"Marmots. Small rodents. Horses. Sheep. A bird or two, if they feel like roosting."

"...but you understand that to me, it can seem very mysterious, and I want to convey that to the people reading my ethnography."

"But this place isn't mysterious. If you know it, it becomes very simple. No, what's mysterious is underground. That's a great unknown, that's mysterious to us as well. I'm sure you could focus on that. Don't make grass mysterious, people will start thinking we're a country of witches..."

Carza's eyes narrowed.

"You have witches?"

"Of course we have witches. Witches aren't taboo, witches are just stupid. They're idiots who invoke bad luck and call it good luck. When you keep talking about... death, I start to think of calling you a witch. Like a child who sees a fire and keeps sticking her finger into it. But that would be rude. So I do not. But don't make us seem like that, please. It would be very rude of you, and as I'm being so polite, I feel I should receive similar treatment. It's only fair."

"...uh-huh. Sure. I won't use the line."

"You can use it if you like. But please, don't make us seem like barbarians. No matter what those raiders did, the maniac pursuing us was an exception, not a rule."

"Don't worry, I'm not intending on making you seem like... that."

She sighed.

"Honestly, I'm wondering how to just... put it all together. I can put together a list of your practices now, a huge list. Clothing, cooking, the rites associated with tents and cauldrons, the ways of inviting good luck and banishing bad luck, witches, raiding, conflict avoidance, clan-hearts... but it feels like... I don't know, like there's a puzzle piece I'm missing."

"...we're not puzzles. We're just people."

"I know, I know, but for an ethnography, it's helpful to have some... bones to build the study around. Some basic tenets. Luck, that's obvious. I can use that."

"That's... fair, but I don't like being reduced to that."

Carza shrugged.

"It's the problem with ethnography. Doing a perfect ethnography... well, that'd involve opening a book and spontaneously being dumped into this place, to explore and perceive properly. Or it would involve just... writing something endless. Disorganised. Ethnography is translation. Sometimes it's easy - we dress this way, you dress that way. You eat this food, we eat that food. You sleep in such a bed, we sleep in such a bed. And sometimes it's hard. You have an idea of luck, but there are subtleties which can't translate over. I see luck as two separate forces - good luck and bad luck. Do you?"

"...well... it's hard to say..."

She hummed.

"...maybe? It's... like a cat. Stroke it one way, you get a happy purr. Stroke it another way, and you get tufty fur and a furious hiss. But it's the same cat."

"So it's one force... like a coin with two sides, or..."

"That's a little too separate."

"But you see what I mean? That's hard to translate over. The subtleties are difficult. Ethnography has to deal with that, and a million other little things. I'm translating a massive culture into a couple of books, there's going to be less-than-ideal parts. Can you say you've thought about luck like this before? Or did you learn about it from... well, context? Is there a place where your family has defined luck?"

"Definitely not. Why would we define something so obvious?"

"There you go. It's the most obvious things which are hardest to define, and hardest to translate. None of us think about things that way. You see?"

"...I see. I see. It's a hard duty your faith foists on you."

"...better than some."

"Hm."

And silence returned in a crashing wave. The two were comfortable in one another's presence - it was nice, talking about anthropology this frankly. Discussing it, analysing it... maybe that was an idea. Some point of fieldwork. Why do anthropology yourself, when you can teach someone in the host culture how to perform anthropology for themselves, and by doing so, to provide you with an intimately familiar ethnography? More efficient, that was for sure. Made translation easier. Maybe that was it - anthropology as collaboration between the anthropologist and their subject. One analysing themselves, the other serving as an impartial observer to make sure the translations were accurate, and the analyses were coherent. It was an exercise in translation, education, collaboration, and eventually... publication. She could see Kani thinking over the problems, struggling through the ideas of how to take a four-dimensional culture and press it into two dimensions of ink and paper. A weak facsimile, pale and drained of life. But...

She thought that maybe there was something in that. Some vision of culture.

An infinite ocean brimming with towering banks of fog, each one containing an iceberg of indeterminate size and shape and colour. And sometimes, the icebergs could come close. A slam, and the icebergs made contact. Uncertainty resolved. Shapeless fog became ice, an infinite set of possibilities resolved down into a solid, three-dimensional shape. And that was it. Then the contact ceased, and the iceberg floated away. And what remained was a ghostly half-image, a memory of contact, of collision, of exchange. A culture in isolation was nothing, it was shapeless and meaningless. But when it came into contact with an observer from outside - an anthropologist, another culture, or simply a local who felt disconnected from their home - then it became real. Only then. Distilled to a snapshot, an ideal form which might end up becoming the ideal for both observers... and the culture itself. Because unlike the reality of culture - shapeless and formless - it was real. It was known. Reality was a knife, culture was fog, and the knife was easier to focus on than the endlessly changing shapes.

Anthropology had helped her think about her own culture more distantly. Hull had helped, too. His ideas of how knowing who you are without knowing who you're not being like the sound of one hand clapping. A sequence of ideal forms flipping by like an album of daguerrotypes, none of them quite getting to the core of things. Because there was no core. There was no central tenet. And that absence became obvious only once observed.

...that felt a little more accurate. Something she could ramble about.

She felt a small surge of gratitude for Kani. Carza was a person who had lived alone for a long while, and yet her thoughts were... well, they needed someone to complete them. Without someone to talk to, to confide in, she became... like one hand clapping. Needed someone to react to. Hull had been that person for months. And now... Kani seemed to be a substitute.

This book is hosted on another platform. Read the official version and support the author's work.

...Founder, Carza just needed a damn friend.

But she had to construct an elaborate anthropological theory to justify it.

If Hull was around, he'd have called her a squrirelly little neurotic scholar who needed to get drunk.

Well, what did he know. She wasn't totally sealed off from reality. She'd even kissed someone! A kiss she initiated!

...with Hull. Right before he died.

She moved a little faster.

Hated her brain.

* * *

When they set down for dinner that night, a good few days after the Incident, two odd things occurred. Both of them very odd indeed, and something Carza would record extensively. She was walking around, stretching her legs a little - she didn't like sitting down immediately after riding, or her legs itched and she felt the urge to keep on going, just out of habit. Needed to cool down. And as she walked, her boot was interrupted by a stone. Not unusual. Stones weren't, as a rule, weird. And this one wasn't even that remarkable, it was just... a rock. But when she glanced down to look at it, she saw that there were rocks on either side - and on either side of those rocks, and so on and so on until... a whole line of shining stones, gleaming faintly in the light of the setting sun. Slowly, she followed them along, the grass damp from melting frost, enough that every step was accompanied by... no sound at all, not a single rustle. The line of stones extended onwards, into the far, far distance. None of them were very large, really, but... there were hundreds, and if she looked out over the steppe, she could sometimes see more - little white heads cresting the grass, teeth sticking out from green, mossy gums...

It was weird. And she couldn't see much rhyme or reason to it. The lines of the stones curved gracefully, sometimes veered off at strange angles, but nothing else. The lines never grew thicker, and the stones never grew larger or smaller. All were basically the same size, spaced equidistant from one another, and all composed of the same gleaming white material. Made her think of... hm. Well... that made it harder to tell how old they were. Foundation stone, most likely. Or stone heavily laced with root-dust. The point was, this stuff wouldn't gather moss, rain wouldn't erode it easily... they could have been here for a week, a month, a year, or a hundred years - there'd be no way of telling. And she couldn't see why the lines were changing, why they swerved and curved... she couldn't even say the two lines she could see were running parallel, they often separated and vanished from sight, or came so close together that they almost fused. She tried to figure it out... then had an idea. She dragged out a notebook from her pocket and started scribbling with a half-destroyed pencil, squinting to see the paper properly in the gathering gloom.

A row of dots... another row... it was hard to manage, she didn't have very good spatial skills, but... she was getting somewhere.

A vague shape. But it was just wavy nonsense, nothing she could recognise. But... gah. She'd never heard of anything like this before, or... maybe they were standing stones? But who would make this sort, spread over so wide an area using this type of stone, with seemingly no purpose behind it? Most standing stones were in... well, circles, or fairly small areas. Furthermore, they weren't using stones barely larger than her hand, they used things which would require dozens of people to haul. So... who would do this? And why? Was this part of some rite which had been deemed unlucky as the years went by, or was it something simply... outdated? Forgotten? Maybe this was a rite from the ancestors - they were, conceivably, hundreds and hundreds of years old, maybe older if they weren't being actively hunted and killed. Their culture could be radically different from anything on the steppe - they made huge murals in caves, they wore furs, they used odd abstract methods to depict anything besides themselves, and she'd seen none of that among this family.

She stumped back to the camp as the light dimmed, eyebrows furrowed. She had so many questions to ask, maybe this could form another chapter - put it right after tent architecture. From temporary to permanent, from common to uncommon. Felt like a smooth progression. But... the camp was in uproar. She'd only been gone for under an hour, when had...

Tobok was growling to himself, and his hair twitched angrily.

"...bastards. More insults. Damn them. Hundred years of bad luck on their heads..."

Mrs Cauldron patted his shoulder reassuringly, but her face was heavy with stress.

"I doubt they're here to do... anything untowards, if they were, they'd have come by now. Unannounced."

Dog was shuffling from place to place, face drawn into a deep scowl.

"I say we ignore them. Pack up and leave. If they want us gone, they want us gone."

Carza spoke up, keeping her voice low.

"...what's happening, exactly?"

Tobok looked over, taking a moment to process her presence.

"Oh. Right. Those bastards from earlier, the ones who raided us, took part of our herd..."

Carza's heart sank.

"They're back. And what's more, they aren't even attacking. Just... rode close, bold as brass, set up a peace banner and left."

Carza looked where he pointed - and she saw a small standard sitting in the middle of the steppe, fluttering gently. It looked like a patch of decorated tent canvas, she could see where it'd been cut out, where the rest of the pattern ought to go. Interesting. Mentally, she noted it down for future reference. The rest of her brain was busy panicking, of course. Because they were back. The same people who'd let that maniac in, the same... dammit.

"What does it mean?"

"They want to talk. If we leave now, it'll be an insult. Might provoke them. Might be what they want. We take them in, and we'll be letting them in to see all of us. Rude to send your people away during parley."

Rudeness, luck, insults... damn superstition.

"I agree with Dog. We ought to run."

Tobok glanced... and hummed contemplatively. Dog snarled.

"Oh, when she suggests it, it becomes reasonable?"

Tobok's face turned dark.

"Don't speak out of turn, Dog."

"But you agree. We ought to run. We ought to turn tail, and accept whatever shame comes our way. Damn them. Attacking us. Almost kidnapping Kani. They deserve nothing but-"

"And it was a lone attacker, that Carza killed. Not some full-on attack. If they wanted to attack in the night to kidnap a few of us, they'd have attacked en masse. Not alone."

At the reminder that Carza had killed the man, Dog seemed cowed a little. His anger remained, but caution masked some of it. Kept it hot, but kept it quiet as well. Which suited Tobok just fine. He said nothing, of course. Wouldn't give Tobok the satisfaction of a retort. Wouldn't shame himself by hungering for the last word.

The banner lingered, a dark shadow at the edge of her sight. A shadowy, ragged thing which... confused her. Why would they want to parley? A part of her thought it was some act of revenge. They'd come into the camp, then demand blood-price for their fallen kinsman. She couldn't even see the raiders themselves, they were staying well out of sight. Probably moving to surround them on all sides, probably sharpening their sabres for combat. Invite themselves in, bully them, steal their things, then butcher them all once they felt like they'd had enough fun. Monsters. The lot of them. She had no charitable thoughts to spare for their sort. But the others were... taking the banner seriously. And Carza found herself confronting the fundamental issue for any ethnographer - when is a berk a berk? Yes, sometimes things were just based on different cultural logics, sometimes things were wrapped up in context she simply failed to understand at this precise moment. And sometimes, sometimes, people were just stupid. No culture was immune to stupidity. A berk was a berk was a berk, didn't matter if they lived in the steppe the desert the city or the middle of the damn ocean.

Berks were berks.

And she needed to figure out if she was questioning a vital cultural imperative, or if she was just being the lone voice of reason in the proverbial room.

"They raided us once, I killed one of them, I feel like there's a good reason for them to cause us more trouble. Can we afford to lose any more of the herd?"

She tried to sound reasonable. Conciliatory. Barely concealed her rising panic. Kani stepped out from her own tent, hands and face shining where she'd washed them. Something to distract herself, probably. Best she could manage without drinking or some of her finest herb.

"For my part, I'd be happy leaving. Sod them. Each and every one."

Mrs Cauldron shot her a look.

"Don't be coarse. If they set up a peace banner and then violate the peace, they're inviting generations of bad luck. Could ruin a clan with that sort of violation."

Tobok grumbled, a wordly look in his deep beetle-black eyes.

"...but madmen and monsters don't tend to pay much mind to luck, they're not anticipating living long anyway. I've seen rabid sorts like that before. No mind for anything civilised and old..."

He shivered slightly.

"People that see the Scabrous and see something to emulate. Some people are immune to reason."

Mrs Cauldron tsk-ed.

"And if they were so skirting of tradition, they wouldn't have raided as they did. And I was the one to offer that body to the birds, remember? If I'm allowed to touch the dead, then I'm allowed to speak of them. His charms were broken. His face was filthy. He was a savage, a barbarian. Clanless, most likely. Some dog who became too rabid for his handlers, and ran off ahead to do some monstrousness."

Carza hummed.

"A rabid dog can infect other dogs, though."

Mrs Cauldron slapped her leg, a sharp crack which echoed like a whip.

"You're part of the family, girl, but don't think yourself too clever. I loathe them as much as anyone else here, but if they wanted us dead they'd have attacked by now. If they had no mind for luck, they'd have let their rabid dog bite us all down to the bone when they first raided. If they wanted our herd, they could do it and we'd either die protecting it or sit back watching like cuckolds."

Tobok shot her a scandalised look.

"Woman. Must you be so-"

"I hear paranoid voices which are so paranoid they've forgotten how reality works. If we were going to die, we'd be dead, and there's not a thing we could do to prevent it. Why would they invite bad luck if they just wanted us dead or robbed? Why not just do it the normal way? What stops them?"

Carza remembered Kralat. Sometimes logic could mask madness.

"Maybe they want to have some fun with us. Be invited in, act like sadists."

"And if they're that mad they'd hunt us if we ran. If they were intending on killing us, they'd have surrounded us before the banner was set up. Now, I suggest one of us goes out to claim that banner. Bring it into the camp and accept the request for parley."

She paused.

"...I dislike this as much as everyone else here, but I'm too long in the tooth to be naive about my distaste. Now, unless you want someone half-mourning to touch a peace banner…"

Tobok stood up with a grunt of irritation.

"Woman, you henpeck me too much. Be quiet."

"Bad luck to insult someone in half-mourning. Now go on, you silly man, and get that damned banner."

She huffed through her nose.

"And I am going to get something ready for them. Kani, fetch a sheep, one of the younger ones, we don't have time to properly stew anything older. And Carza, you get that weapon of yours and keep it close. Start slicing up some of the steppe-garlic, too, the stew will need some flavour if we haven't time to develop some over the course of hours."

Tobok leaned down, gripped her by her shoulders, and... nuzzled her. Rubbed his nose against her nose. Carza saw a tiny smile creep over the corners of her mouth.

"Don't be so romantic, you old flirt. Go on."

"Of course, woman."

Kani had covered her face with her hands, and Carza could sympathise. There was nothing more humiliating in all the world than seeing one's parents being... romantic. Carza had never experienced it exactly, but she'd seen her mother with... other men, and it turned out, the process was deeply unpleasant. Sometimes she wished humans just reproduced via mitosis, splitting in two and creating two distinct entities. Would it be disturbing? Yes. But at least it'd be clean, and there'd be none of this... nuzzling business. How...

No, wait, this was better than kissing. Nuzzling was significantly less vulgar than a messy old kiss.

No idea what Kani was complaining about, then.

Tobok stalked off over the steppes, heavy-shouldered and his hair stiff as wire, unmoving in the wind. More like another limb than anything else. Carza checked her gun. Ready. Operational. And a minute later, Tobok came back with the banner held up carefully. Not letting it touch the ground from the moment he picked it up, making sure that it was kept at a very healthy height. Even when he reached the centre of the camp, when Carza was busy with mashing the garlic into a pungent mass at the bottom of her mortar, he didn't let it touch the ground. Instead, Kani presented him with a small wooden stand, like the sort of thing an umbrella might be kept in. With adjustable joints to fit snugly around the banner. It was attached... and kept aloft. Fluttering uneasily. It did look like a segment of tent canvas, and quite new tent canvas. Interesting rite.

She mashed hard. Easier than focusing on the potential danger heading their way.

It was barely half an hour before the sound of horses echoed over the steppe, hooves like drumbeats on a stretched skin. They were coming. Barely any time to think. They ought to have a wall, a gate... this was why people built cities and castles, because it was nice to have barriers. Barriers were nice. Barriers were safe. She built barriers all the time - walls of books around her office, walls of knick-knacks on her desk, walls in her mind to stop her having a series of painful mental breakdowns... and right now she had a solid wall of lead in her pocket ready to deploy at a moment's notice. High-velocity lead, too.

Ugh.

The figures came closer, starkly silhouetted against the setting sun. Was that intentional? Put the sun in the eyes of their enemies? If so, it was a bad idea - the sun was going down, probably be gone by the time they arrived. Morons. Savages. Founder, she was being judgemental today... well, she had every reason to be. They approached, closer, closer, closer... Kani was nervous, brushing down her dress, clearly wondering if she ought to wrap herself up in more rags. Dog was scurrying from place to place, getting small stools out for the guests... and Carza reached over to squeeze Kani's arm, something that Dog noticed, and clearly disliked.

"If anything happens, stick close. I might not win, but I can distract them for a bit. Hard to focus on anything else when someone's shooting."

Kani cracked a small smile... then her face resumed a placid expression which only meant one thing.

"My hero. What would I do without you?"

"Shut up. Don't be silly."

"I am a very funny person."

"You're not. Deadpan humour doesn't work, it just makes people feel uncomfortable."

"...what on earth is deadpan? Why would a pan be dead?"

Kani shook her head wearily.

"Your home is strange."

"Oh, shut up, you know exactly what I mean."

"How could I. I am but an unsophisticated nomadic rube."

She bowed deeply.

"Thank you for choosing to enlighten us with your presence."

Carza glared. And Kani's face remained utterly stiff. Carza was being honest, she was losing patience with deadpan humour. It was just... cowardly humour. Some comedians laughed at their own jokes, but deadpan humour, in ordinary conversation, was just a way of hiding one's own joke behind a layer of irony. Deadpan humour was ironic humour, and ironic humour was cowardly snarking at the expense of good, innocent scholars like herself. Stuff and nonsense.

Feh.

She mashed her garlic with potent vigour... but had to cut herself short. The stiff expression had shifted from deadpan to consciously stoic - Kani was holding herself together with all her might, now. The horses were silent. The figures were here. Tobok strode out, hands on his hips, eyes hidden beneath bushy eyebrows, face locked into a rictus of irritation. Mrs Cauldron wasn't much better, she looked at the new arrivals like they were something she'd recently stepped in. And Dog... Dog was keeping a hand on his sword. Carza looked up from her work, trying to stay calm, to stop from reaching for her gun. They'd almost kidnapped her. And she'd been acting insane that time. She had specific orders to stay calm, and normal. No point doing it when they were extending the banner of peace - deception under that banner was shameful, and hinted at greater deceptions just under the surface. In short: bad.

The raiders were here. All of them bearded. Only five this time, all men... and behind them, she could see other horses, with other riders. Too far into the dark for her to determine anything else. They were just... shapes, really. Outnumbered, but they'd always been outnumbered. Just... if she was going to hazard a guess, there were almost a dozen here, with five in the camp, and seven outside. Maybe. Could be more. Wouldn't be less. The worst sort of uncertainty - not the kind that had any prospects of harmlessness, the kind which was just gradients of awful.

The leader in the front bowed his head. He was short, she realised. Last time she'd been sitting cross-legged, not much of a chance to gauge heights accurately. But he was actually a full head shorter than her, but his wild hair made up for most of the difference. Made him look like a spiky sea urchin, now she thought about it. Bones in his hair and beard, most of them carved, most from small animals... to his credit, he wasn't wearing any of the bells he'd plundered from them. He wore the same coat-robe as everyone else, no armour in case of a surprise attack. Interesting. No, he could still be wearing thick layers underneath, not like tough fabric would clatter when he moved like a proper suit of armour. Was he plump, or concealing armour under his coat? No grin on his face, not even a smile. Just a... look of regret.

He bowed slightly, and she saw that all five of them had the hands displayed at their sides. No gloves. Fingers splayed. Palms open. Sleeves hauled up slightly to reveal most of their forearms. If they were hiding knives there, they'd have to be above the elbow - not particularly convenient, had to be said. No, they could have knives in their boots, or hidden in their robes. Plenty of places. Purely symbolic.

"I come to you under the watch of a peace-banner. I mean no arm, and nor do those bound to me by blood and promise."

His voice was low and rumbling. Regretful.

"I come to you to apologise, on behalf of the clan of Yekere, of whom we form a cadet branch."

He paused.

"...we found the shaded imprint of an atrocity by one who was tied to us. And for that... we place at throats at your boots. His behaviour was incorrect, and beyond the bounds of courtesy. We seek to dissolve the bonds of spite which he has formed, and to make amends for his breach of custom. Is our parley acceptable to you?"

Tobok strode forwards, robe flapping in the gathering wind. His face was stormy.

"Your man assaulted my daughter in the night. He crept up on us like a rat, to bring no acclaim to his clan. For his trespass, he was sent to the sky, for him to feast on white and black no longer, to live toothless and rotten in the dark and cold. He has gone to the cliffs. We have the right to form a grudge over this. To lay down curses upon you. And to haunt you with generations of bad luck for the ruin you've cultivated."

His voice became a growl.

"We've every reason to snap your banner and send you away. To live in uncertainty."

Carza needed to write this down. All of it. She was getting some damn good stuff.

No, wait, be nervous and angry and frightened. And violent. Restrain that part, but keep the boiling potential of brutality.

"...daughter. What's your opinion?"

The bearded leader's back stiffened. Ah. Good. A thrill of vengeful spite ran through her. Kani stepped forward, hands clasped behind her back. Carza could see they were shivering slightly. Her face, though, was stoic as she could possibly manage - carved from solid glass, not just appearing that way.

"Was he your man when he left?"

Her voice was strained. Only someone who knew her could tell, of course. To the leader, she likely sounded firm, decisive. And powerful. Good. Very good.

"He... was. He had not severed his bonds from us. But we have severed our bonds from his - once we found out what he was doing, and where he was going. Raiding twice in a row... there's no goodness in that. if we did that, there'd be no-one left to raid."

Kani's voice was low and dangerous now.

"A parasite needs to keep its host alive."

"...a shepherd needs to keep his flock healthy, too."

"Are we your flock?"

"I mean no offence."

He was tense. He didn't believe the raid was wrong, but he thought his man going after them twice, for something entirely self-interested, was shameful. That was all. It was bizarre to her. This was... a cultural spat. And they'd been intending to kidnap Kani anyway, if she was their sort. If they'd found her out during the raid, she'd have been dragged off just as quickly as if that maniac had managed to kill Carza before she could shatter his heart with a bullet. They weren't opposed to the act, they were opposed to the context of the act, and the aim of the act. There was something utterly strange there, and she found herself feeling... culture shock. Like being dropped into cold water. This was a string of logic she simply failed to follow and call moral. She could see the looks the others were giving, and thought that they were... understanding him. Nodding along. Yes, this was all natural. Yes, this was how it worked. They may dislike the leader, dislike him passionately, but they weren't disputing a whole host of what he did. Kani seemed the only one who disliked it on every level. Her and Carza. No wonder the two got along - Kani had perspective.

She'd make a good anthropologist, honestly.

"We have every right to break your banner and send you away."

"Quite right. So you do. And we'll accept your verdict. Your boot at our throat."

Kani looked like she wanted to have her actual boot on his actual throat. No metaphors here. She glanced around, taking in the mood. Mrs Cauldron was furious, yes, but... she was also someone who wanted to keep her family intact. The fewer grudges, the better. Bodok seemed willing to scrap - he had a simplicity to him. If he was allowed to scrap, he would. But if custom demanded otherwise, he wouldn't ruin things just to satisfy his own desire to fight. Dog... Dog was hanging back. She wondered if he'd fight if a fight broke out. If he'd do anything. Or just snap around the edges like one of the laughing-dogs she'd seen on the other side of the mountain. Carza didn't know what she wanted. Fight? She disliked fighting. Forgive? She felt they didn't deserve forgiveness. The gnawing in her stomach was low and dim as a glowing coal - the sort which looked cool and was certainly not. Ready to burst into sparks.

She kept her hand ready for her pistol.

Kani swallowed.

"...I accept you severed your ties from that man. And if you make proper tribute, I have no reason to pursue a further grudge. But keep your distance from us."

...how shockingly decent of her. Even if she looked like she wanted to spit out every other word. The leader nodded graciously, having the courtesy not to smile in relief.

"I understand. And I thank you for your noble nature. On the topic of tribute..."

He snapped his fingers. And two things were brought forward.

The first was a pouch of tiny bells. The ones they'd stolen. No sight of the rations, the scraps of gold, the animals...

And second...

Oh.

"The worst grudges are washed away by the best feasts. And we insist on providing one to those possessed of such nobility. In recognition of the grievous injury that our man visited onto you."

...that was a lot of food.

That was a lot of drink.

Goodness.