Chapter Five

Carza stared ahead. Quietly, and carefully, she removed her special cigarillo, then a box of matches... newfangled ones. Odd, but they worked pretty damn well. Small glass capsule with an indigo-coloured substance, coated with more strange chemicals, and wrapped in rolls of paper. She had a tiny pair of pliers for the job, crushing the glass capsule, allowing a rush of odd-coloured fire to bloom out like a tiny flower, consuming the paper. She waited for a moment. The material in the capsule was a... little pungent, and if used too quickly it would affect the taste of the tobacco. Needed to be allowed to burn down to the wood - she marked its passage with near-religious fervour. A tutor had once enthused about these things. Barr, that had been his name... he'd engaged with her briefly on the topic of applying anthropological methods to military ends. Interesting, but... well, if she wanted to go out of the Court to slog through the mud with a bunch of soldiers, she'd have become a bloody soldier, or would've studied military strategy with some of the weirder scholars.

Anyway, Barr had been enthusiastic about cigars, and he'd loved talking about this stuff he obtained from a city to the south of ALD IOM. New Trobalis. that was it. Mostly known for the toxin beds it was built over, the city above swaying on metal stilts that apparently groaned so loudly that new visitors usually plugged their ears with wax... and sailors had a grand old time. The pitching surface beneath them was similar to a ship lost at sea. Anyway. She marked the passage of the flame, noting the shattered glass capsule. A little flammable liquid compound inside, then coated with some other ghastly by-product of New Trobalis's toxin industry... she'd heard about friction matches, which were less expensive, but that could've just been a story. Honestly, she usually lit her cigarillos using a candle she had to use anyway to melt wax for sealing documents. But she just wanted to smoke at the moment. And that meant shattering the glass, igniting the paper, and then lighting up.

Which she did.

A wave of glorious, numbing fog entered her mouth, tickled the back of her throat...

A knot of tension in her lower back dissolved, and she let out an involuntary sigh.

"...I don't even smoke that much, but seeing you is making me reconsider. You look like you're having a bloody whale of a time."

Carza's eyes snapped open.

Reality crashed back.

Founder, her forehead ached. Right, yeah. Sitting in a cafe. With Hull. The guy she'd just met, and who nonetheless qualified as one of her closest acquaintances. They'd even held hands - the scandal. That was facetious, incidentally. Holding hands was a perfectly ordinary thing which had been done due to stress, claustrophobia, and an incoming panic attack. It was only rendered special by the fact that the last time she'd held hands with someone had been when her pseudo-aunt was dragging her to see a bizarre contraption imported from the outside world. Which didn't count. Anyway. Right. Cafe. Both of them looking thoroughly burned out, her smoking, him drinking tea, both of them with white bandanas wrapped around their heads. The tattoos were still sore. Founder, were the dark tunnel and the hours of waiting strictly necessary? Was it all mandated by the Founder? Well, maybe it was, maybe it wasn't, but given that most of the foundational documents were in a language she was forbidden to learn, the elders might've just made it all up to get some use out of a weird room in the basement. Founder, distance really gave her some snark back - and... uh...

Oh.

She was outside the Court of Ivory.

She blinked.

...that was... that should've been a bigger deal. But she was so burned out by hours of waiting underground that just getting some fresh air was wonderful, regardless of the context of that fresh air. She straightened up in her chair, pulling robes slightly tighter around herself. Quiet cafe. But still crowded with non-scholarly strangers, on a street which had a lot of people in it... how had she... right, her tattoo had been completed, she'd been pushed out unceremoniously, and given seven tokens. Seven metal coins which still weighed heavily in her pocket - ill-shaped and oddly carved, coins from a time when they had to be made partially by hand, and would endure a hell of a lot of abuse throughout their long, long lifetimes. She'd barely even noticed them, too busy trying not to squeak as a tight bandana was wound around the still-sore marking now adorning her forehead. A stylised third eye - no pupil, no iris, just a horizontal diamond with two corners filled in. Elation warred against nervousness warred against exhaustion. She wanted a nap. Anyway, deposited through a side-door into the world beyond, where she'd hovered nervously until Hull had emerged scratching at his new forehead adornment.

She really just wanted someone else to be around. Couldn't see any other students. Needed some damn company.

And now she had it.

She had a seat in a cafe.

...today had been quick.

"Oh. Uh. Yes. I... like smoking."

"I can tell."

Her eyes narrowed immediately, trying to detect some kind of insult... no, nothing. Hull was already sipping at his tea again, discretely wiping dried sweat from his brow using a slightly dirtied handkerchief. He was an odd sort. Still wearing those slippers, which had barely held up on the journey to the cafe... and she noticed belatedly that there was a cobblers across the street. Oh. Alright.

"...do you... like smoking?"

Crud, he'd already said he didn't smoke, why had-

"I mean, once. Just, well... I like to have a small number of vices. Expensive vices, at least. And I already drink, amongst other things. So I either stopped smoking or stopped drinking, and being a teetotaller sounds miserable."

It did. Being smoke-free sounded miserable as well.

"...maybe it would be easier to just do things to moderation, then. Then you could do anything you wanted."

Hull gave her a look.

"Yeah, but that wouldn't be fun. If you can't do something to excess, then why bother doing it in the first place?"

"...that... is not very good logic."

"Well, it's been years since I did the trivium, so I feel pretty content with forgetting how logic works."

He tilted his head to one side.

"...again, can't believe we've not talked before, I thought I was familiar with... just about everyone, honestly. At least in our cohort."

Carza grimaced, hiding it behind another puff of smoke.

"I'm quiet."

"...yeah, not joking there. Thanks for letting me lean on you, by the way."

"...and thank you for the advice. Helped."

"Freaky bunch. Wouldn't think it from all the... well, you'd never think the types that continuously fail to mark our work would manage to maintain something like that for longer than ten minutes without major structural collapse. But here we are."

"Here we are."

"...anthropology, then?"

"Yes. Anthropology and linguistics."

"Specialisation?"

"...none, really. I wrote my thesis on a dead people - historical anthropology is a legitimate field and don't let anyone tell you otherwise. Court of the Spear, looking at their religious practices."

She paused, saw that he wasn't interrupting, and soldiered on, warming to her theme a little. She liked talking about her subject. More than she enjoyed talking about most things. No, everything. Probably ought to break that particular habit. Might as well start now. Baby steps.

"...I was mostly looking at how it reflects an earlier stage of development. The Court of the Axe syncretised fairly heavily with the beliefs of those it conquered, but the Court of the Spear died out before it could syncretise, so... it wound up representing how things were, given that both courts invaded ALD IOM simultaneously, even if the Spear died out before it could really solidify its control. Both have an emphasis on sacrificial monarchs, both place a strong emphasis on bulls... but the Court of the Axe wrapped up its belief in the mystery cultic forms of the Court of Slate, while the Spear was more open in its practices. Seemed to have a belief in sacrificing bulls and kings as a repetition of an earlier sacrificial hero figure. And then there's something interesting in just repeating the act over and over, which raises questions of what it was meant to achieve - was it some renewal of a divine covenant, maybe a way of encouraging fertility and abundance...? But the Court of the Axe sacrifices its monarchs as a punishment for bad years, which makes it seem reactive rather than proactive, but then there's issues of comparison..."

She shrugged.

"I spent half of my thesis just talking about why I can't come to very many conclusions. 'In restricting myself to this seemingly narrow compass...' etc. etc."

Honestly, it'd been rational. The alternative was going out into the field. Which she didn't want to do. So, she'd picked a dead culture whose only living relative was a culture that was painfully insular and rejected any outside observers as a matter of principle. And that meant no-one could begrudge her staying in the Court and living in a library for a while, digging through painfully slim volumes and extracting an even slimmer thesis. She liked to think that it was elegant... but honestly, she knew that once she had years to do whatever work she wanted as an accredited scholar, then she could flourish. It was odd, but... she practised anthropology in the same way that some people practised medicine or engineering. She thought that she'd have a nice little anthropology office in which she sat down, writing odd things, reading odder things, and generally churning out product. That was what she wanted. Repetitive, comforting product, around which she could build a little world of passions and hobbies and minor interests.

Hull nodded solidly.

"Classic. Nice. Love it. Worked for me."

"...you studied..."

"Horn-era Studies, yeah. Interesting stuff - looking at pre-invasion, mid-invasion, post-invasion... enough to get lost in for a lifetime."

"Is that what you intend to do?"

He blinked.

"Hm?"

"Get lost in it for a lifetime."

"Hopefully. Hopefully. I suppose I want to just read things I like and write down my long, rambling thoughts. But when you're young and stupid, your rambling thoughts are likewise stupid, and more than that, they're not respected. I need to get a proper level of gravelly craggle about my features before my rambling thoughts start getting held up as wondrous wisdom. Ergo, drinking, vices, etc. etc. I want to get that craggle as soon as possible, you know?"

Carza understood more than she wanted to admit.

"...well, yes, I do. But I'd go mad if I just read books constantly, I need some kind of repetitive output to keep myself sane and keep people from bothering me."

"Trick is to teach. The studium's a bit crap, but if you can wrangle a position as a tutor, you can just ramble to people younger and smarter than you, who think that your age makes you worth listening to, and then ride that all the way to the stage where you can ramble for all eternity. And teaching means you get a pass on some of the demands for ouput."

He shrugged.

"These days, though... I don't know, feels like things are nervous. Court of Ivory's getting more dynamic, they said. Getting some new advisors in from the outside - saw them having lunch a few days ago. Weird lot. But they're from places that don't undestand that good scholarship is done while half-full of wine, half-full of excellent food, and after a pleasant summertime nap. It requires slow digestion of material before it can be painted onto a page in long, meandering strokes."

Carza blinked.

"Good scholarship sounds like it'd make you fat."

"Well, who gives a damn, we're all pledged to celibacy anyway. I'm considering growing mutton chops for that exact reason - look at all the ladies I'm missing out on by having awful facial hair."

He cut himself off, and coughed awkwardly.

"Sorry. Bit rude."

Carza waved her hands dismissively. Oh, she was being apologised to, she was part of the gang, she had a mate. This was easily enough to distract from the new tattoo on her forehead or the darkness of that tunnel.

"No, no, quite alright. I don't mind."

"...again, how have we not hung out."

"I'm very quiet."

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Their chattering continued. And it was real, genuine chatter. They were academics, they were used to rambling about their own thoughts and getting lost in their own worlds. Their conversation was weird as a consequence - one of them would ramble, the other would ponder other things, a non-sequitur would occur, a brief exchange of mild observations, and then back to one-sided ramblings. It was like playing tennis, but both players weren't really aiming at each other at all, any rally was more of a pleasant surprise than anything else, and every so often the players paused for slurps of tea. The noise of the cafe faded away, the street beyond might as well have been on a different planet... everything declined. Carza felt genuine happiness creeping up her spine. She was a scholar, she had a mate that she could chat to now and again, they barely talked but they were good at making noise in one another's presences, which in her eyes was the foundation of a good friendship. It was chatter without the burden of sustaining a real conversation.

It was ideal.

Hull va Trochi had just become her next best (first) (only) friend. Not counting Melqua. But she wasn't going to say that her pseudo-aunt was her first and best friend, because that would be a little sad.

And Carza was not sad. She was, in fact, in a very, very good mood indeed.

* * *

The good mood had expired.

Hull had bought himself a pair of shoes. Which felt wasteful. And he'd decided to stick with her, just to get this whole walk over with. He wanted to get back to his room and collapse with the curtains drawn and a bottle of wine next to his bed just in case he felt like soothing his pains and aches and assorted maladies. And that meant no parties. Her social life had been enhanced by the demise in someone else's. Maybe if she sabotaged more people's lives, destroying their ability to interact with others, then she could possibly accumulate a larger circle of friends. She was coming to realise that she stood at the bottom of the hierarchy of sociability in the Court of Ivory, and the solutions were either to raise herself to a higher rung (difficult/hard/time-consuming) or to drag others down to her level (easy/enjoyable/cathartic/something that clearly worked and had empirical evidence backing it up).

Hopefully this just reflected her ability to have odd thoughts and not some deeper social malady.

Anyway.

She was fairly sure that Hull was decent enough to walk with. But even so, just in case, she had one of her newfangled matches at the ready to throw in his face. The thing was faintly acidic if she remembered correctly, so that ought to burn him a little. There, now they could really walk together, because she not only mildly enjoyed his company, but was also able to wound him severely if the situation demanded. He had boots, both of them were full of tea (her and Hull, not the boots), and they began to walk. Seven courts to pay respects to. Seven to deliver tokens to in adherence to an old covenant. And she was already breathing faster. Too many people. She didn't like crowds. Loathed them. Didn't like being somewhere full of strangers, too, it made her itch. She tried to steer around them... and Hull seemed to recognise what she was trying to do, and politely shuffled beside her until they had escaped the main thoroughfare. She felt a few beads of sweat along the edge of her hairline, little pearls marking her out as unusual. Founder, she was useless. Didn't want to handle a crowd, no reason to have a breakdown.

No, not having a breakdown at all.

Just keep moving.

The crowds would ease up.

The two stopped talking as they weaved through the crowd, sometimes separating when a scrum of people became too much, then getting shoved together. Odd voices were crying out occasionally - odd languages, odd accents, odd syntax that suggested a lack of familiarity with any language of ALD IOM. The buildings around her were a mix of old construction and new builds, each one bustling - they were in a boom town right now. Theatrophones wailed out the opening music to a whole host of laughies and weepies that she barely recognised - new companies. New subscriptions. She'd had one subscription and never really moved on from it... but there was so many now. The world was racing forwards, faster and faster, and she'd lost her grip a while back. Now she just wondered when it was all going to stop so she could pick through the wreckage and figure out what was worth keeping. Signs marked out the divisions of territory - the Court of Ivory sat in a broader packet of land managed by other Courts. It was something she liked about her chosen home - it was widespread without being diffuse. Ivory held surprisingly little land, but made the most of what it had, and supplied so many vital services to the other Courts that it could more or less hold itself high and mighty despite lacking a huge amount in the way of real, physical power or territory. This place was... technically under the domain of the Court of Salt, but it was small and so cramped by other packets of land that it was never quite turned into a metropolis.

And as time went on, they passed into the older, older corners - where new builds were scarce, and everything was built with the kind of fine-tuned attention that suggested dedicated craftsmen with very little to occupy their time with beyond ornamentation. The crowds began to silence. The first on the list was... the Court of Chalk. It was a nothing-court. Very little power, very little land... Hull and Carza weren't going to wander to any of the main headquarters, that would take days, but for Chalk they made an exception - they had no outposts anywhere else, after all. Only a headquarters, and nothing besides. It was a low building, set within a large compound built in the days when space was more abundant. It looked like a country estate, really. High, whitewashed walls, a rigid iron gate, and within, a sprawling one-storey complex with a faded red roof that extended outwards to create shady paths. Not too necessary - trees had grown up everywhere, shrubs had multiplied, kudzu had clambered up the walls and halfway consumed some parts of the building. Red veins like strips of candy draped over walls painted white to cover up the stains left by rain and moss. The sky didn't help - bruised-yellow. A south wind had blown, carrying up sand and dust from distant, drier countries where the heat made matter give up and collapse, to be blown north like migrating geese seeking more moderate climates.

Most of the people who milled around had slightly bleary, bewildered looks about themselves. Unsure of how things had wound up this way. The only real concentration of noise in the whole silent place was in a small yard with multiple low tables with sprawling couches set around it, in which beleaguered bureaucrats slumped and enjoyed the heat while talking loudly about things of no consequence. The Court of Chalk was hell for the young and ambitious who wanted to make good, and heaven for the burned-out. It was a court shaped into a retirement home, and the air hung with pollen that would never take root. The Court of Ivory was drenched in dust, relics of the work they did, the intensity with which they attended to it - it was layers and layers of compacted research. But she saw listless workers sweeping up huge piles of pollen, yellow as a desert cat's stomach, and she thought that there was something there. Clear it away. Let it be consigned to the cracked soil. People worked, people did their jobs, but the entire place felt listless and depressed. It knew the end was coming, when it was folded into another rising Court. And to its credit, that fate had been accepted completely, if tacitly. But nothing was done sustainably. Pollen was swept off paths, the lawn was trimmed, the gate was polished... but the whitewash was peeling, weeds were growing around the edges, and the pollen was rising like mountains of sand, the final job of disposal long-neglected.

She disliked it here.

Made her feel fearful of the future.

With a click, her token was deposited. A subsequent click told her that Hull had done the same. She glanced... and saw that the bureaucrats were looking over at them suspiciously... before giving curt nods. A large man with an untamed beard roared over, wearing a foreign-styled white suit darkened by sweat stains.

"Good luck, scholars! Good luck, courts! Good luck, city! We loved you!"

He laughed throatily... and Hull smiled awkwardly over at him.

And that was all. No confirmations to grab, nothing to prove they'd done what they were meant to. But Carza was going to do this right. Not starting her scholarly career with cheating.

"...that's one, then?"

Her tone was questioning, for reasons even she couldn't articulate.

"That's one."

Hull confirmed in a low voice.

They left without saying another word.

* * *

Hull talked as they walked, and he was marginally more open as time went on. Less talk about drink and more talk about himself. He liked his work, apparently. Liked being a scholar. Was clearly intelligent, but was also a... little self-indulgent. He seemed to be of a similar mind to her - he thought that being a scholar was simply a role one slotted into after studying for long enough. It didn't require some sort of special treatment, it was a natural evolution. And Carza thought much the same... but both of them were self-aware enough to call that what it was - laziness. But what else were they meant to do? She realised, as they talked, that Hull was a different brand of hopeless, but he was just as hopeless as she was. Both of them were at the age when opportunities were dwindling, inspiring panic... but the range of choices was still so huge that it drowned the panic in uncertainty. It was claustrophobia and agoraphobia all at once. And each day that went by felt like another opportunity withering on the vine. Areas she hadn't studied, avenues he hadn't taken...

They were both paralysed with youth and age at the same time. War on two fronts. Hull had a ruder way of saying it, but bit down before it could escape his mouth.

She wondered if he was what she'd look like if she was better with people.

Whatever the case. They walked onwards, talking lightly, down older, cobbled streets where the smell of horse manure was still pronounced... and there were no crowds. Good. Court of Chalk had been easy. The Court of Flint had been easier - their ancestral home was miles off, and they had outposts scattered in a few places. Once, they'd sat on some of the richest mines in ALD IOM... now they were a glorified aristocratic family with attendant families keeping an eye on them. Never as well-heeled as some, never as debased and corrupt as others... but terrifyingly competent theurgists. The theurgist who'd marked her forehead was probably part of this court, and evidently Ivory was on good terms with Flint - happy to make things a little easier. A small cafe on a quiet street corner was open to them, and inside sat a man with his hat pulled down over his eyes. He was tall and thin, almost stretched - like the heat had evaporated the remains of a much larger man, and now this was what remained. His hollow cheeks, sunken eyes, drooping skin and ill-fitting grey suit all contributed to this. And suits... so many suits these days. She distinctly recalled when they were more unusual. Anyway. He had a mound of tokens in front of him, stacked high and wide like poker chips, or the towers of some strange fortress built without mortar or much structural stability. The wall guarded him, and she thought he ight be asleep... but for the steaming cup of coffee at his elbow.

His eyes slowly opened, revealing a pair of watery irises and pupils which swam like frogspawn. He had a small defect around his left eyebrow, she noticed - a tag of discoloured flesh that had eaten through part of the hair. Mutation, then. Unsightly, but at least it hadn't gotten to the brain. He pulled his hat down self-consciously, and gestured carefully for them to set their tokens down before him, offers before a fairly unimpressive emperor.

"Names?"

His fingers had flicked with surprising speed to a pen and paper, already marked with dozens of names.

"Carza vo Anka."

"Hull va Trochi."

"Thank k'you."

Odd accent. Out-of-towner.

"You may leave."

He sounded bored... but she imagined he was having a good time. Sitting in quiet cafe, all his refreshments likely subsidised by his own court... there were definitely worse ways to spend a day like this. But as he glanced over them one last time, wetting his lips with a small, pink tongue... she saw that the mutation above his eyebrow was deeper than she thought. The stain of discoloured flesh had crept downwards, into his eye socket... and one of his miniscule damp pupils seemed to be slowly dividing in two. In a few more years, he might have to have the entire eye taken out. Ought to just have an eyepatch... but she couldn't judge. Mutation was a bastard. Crept through flesh, altered it, reshaped it... and by the end, if it reached the brain or something truly vulnerable, there was nothing to do but head up into the hills to a nice sanitarium where peace could be... not found, but anticipated in mild comfort and relative safety. Hull had probably suffered a little as well - his cheek had an ugly whorl in it that stretched his mouth and eye very slightly.

But that was really the difficulty: when did mutation end, and when did natural birth defects begin?

Hard to tell if you weren't the one suffering from it.

And rude to ask.

* * *

Two down. Five to go. And they were odd. Flint and Chalk were both declined Courts, one day they'd be swallowed up by their fellows or by some new upstart. Or they'd slide into easy retirement, and the rhyme she'd learned as a child: Ivory, Slate, Salt and Axe / Chalk, Flint, Horn and Wax, would be a charming antique irrelevancy, reflecting a world long-since erased. The Court of the Axe was next, and this one she not only knew by reputation, she'd studied - as much as she was able to. But it was with a sense of embarassment that she looked at the looming, ugly structure which made up their outpost in this part of the city. The real scope of ALD IOM was huge, the true Court of the Axe was located days away on foot, or a brief-yet-expensive jaunt on the trains. But they had an outpost here to monitor their investments... and she realised that the version of the court she'd researched and the version she saw before her were completely different places. She had, in her imagination, a place of dark, shadowy corridors stained with pagan iconography and hung heavy with barbarous weapons. The Courts of the Axe and Spear had invaded ALD IOM centuries ago, the latter perishing in the process, the former establishing itself as the de jure rulers of the city.

But the city had been invaded before.

And it knew how to consume invaders. Once, the Court of the Axe had a different name - its own name. But that had been taken away in the early days - a concession to their subjects. A concession to integration. And then it'd begun. Saddled with more and more duties, looked down on by older Courts... it was one thing to rule as conquerors, but once they had to rule as rulers... they realised just how messy it all was. They went native. Slate gave them rituals and culture, Ivory began to raise their children, Salt bought them out piece by piece, Flint starved them of metal with each passing year, Wax piled their own estates high with Spear artefacts... plunder from the time a tiny, insignificant Court had somehow destroyed a whole army of invaders. Chalk was a friend to them - but the sort of friend that made you prefer your enemies because at least they were honest about loathing you. And Horn... they'd been the last round of invaders. And they watched sadly from their pastures as the Court of Axe was strangled by the history of a place they thought simple, and were dragged down into being... just another Court.

Their ruler was still a King. But no-one bowed to him or recognised his power. The Court of Axe was a monument to why you didn't attack ALD IOM. Either you lost... or you were eaten alive.

And this outpost looked like a palace - if a palace was crammed between two larger buildings on each side, and had to squeeze all of its monuments and decorations into an area so very tiny that it looked like the punchline to a joke. A stone axe stood outside on an ornate pedestal - edges dripping with green moss and stained by rainfall. A young woman stood beside it in a faintly ridiculous uniform - ill-fitting robes that cut off around the elbows and knees, exposing pale, sun-starved flesh. Dyed with many colours... and each one was the cheapest possible pigment. A metal headdress with more dents than Carza could count, and visible red flesh where it chafed uncomfortably against the girl beneath, who looked only a year or so older than Carza. A heavy metal axe was slung over her shoulder... then the other shoulder... then back to the first as she struggled to find a better position.

Hull glanced at Carza.

"...we should get a drink."

"Should we?"

"We should. She looks like she's about to pass out."

The girl was looking through the crowd with the embarrassed desperation of someone waiting at a train station to be picked up - feeling like a lost child no matter one's age, feeling alone, exposed, and unaccounted for. The crowds filtered around her, looking away automatically like she was a street performer asking for money.

"...we really should, yes."

And so, with some chilled tea in hand, they approached the girl... whose eyes widened, adn whose slightly nasal voice projected out in a hoarse bellow:

"Halt! By what right do two scholars of Ivory come before... before..."

Her eyes were fixed on the tea. Carza silently offered it.

"...by the fucking axe, thank you."

She drank it in two seconds, most of it missing her mouth and spilling down to stain her multicoloured clothes yet another silly colour. Hull shuffled...and then offered the tea he'd bought for himself. It was a hot day, they were practically livng from cafe to cafe at this point, buying drinks and sipping them before moving on. She accepted the refill, and chugged it very slightly slower.

"...sorry, sorry, sorry, we should... start again, just... fucking axe, that was the best thing I've had all day. Anyway. Sorry. Uh... halt, by what rights, etcetera etcetera, before the most esteemed and highly refined Court of the Hallowed Axe, the Kingeater, the Drinker of Sorrow and Weeper of Fortune, the edge on which ALD IOM is balanced at all times and in all eras, under whose shadow labour all lesser Courts and nations?"

"We have tokens."

"Bag."

She swung her ax around, revealing a small leather bag tied loosely around the haft of it - already bulging with tiny tokens. She smiled self-consciously, revealing a mouth of slightly crooked teeth. She looked a bit... unformed, for lack of a better word. No part of her seemed to have settled on what it wanted to be, despite being practically grown at this point, and even a little older than Carza. Her teeth were too large for her mouth, her nose was too small for her face, her green eyes were very slightly asymmetrical, one higher and larger, the other lower and smaller... and her hair was a muddle of brown and ginger muddling into a single messy stew, barely visible under her absurd headdress. Even the green of her eyes was still unresolved on its colour - streaks of faint brown lined her irises. And if that wasn't a visual metaphor for her entire Court... then Carza would pin it on her lack of literature education and call it a day. Hull hummed.

"How long have you been out here?"

The girl grinned wider, exposing yet more crooked, crowded teeth.

"All day, mate. All fucking day."

"That's rough."

"It is. It really fucking is. I'm Tanner, by the way. Nice to meet you. Thanks again for that tea... don't suppose you'd be willing to crawl back into your mum and get reborn as one of us, maybe take this axe off my hands for a bit?"

"Don't think I'd fit anymore."

"Pity, this thing weighs a shit-ton."

Carza coughed, feeling slightly awkward. Vulgarity made her uncomfortable, was all. Tanner glanced over, eyebrows rising.

"Oh, wotcher. Thanks to you too...?"

"Carza."

"Feel like crawling back into your mum's clunge to get reborn as someone who's allowed to take this fucking axe?"

"...not really an option."

"...oh, shit, I'm sorry. Blame the dehydration and exhaustion for me being a rude cunt. Anyway, best of luck with your... scholarly stuff, I suppose."

Carza nodded.

"Best of luck with the axe business."

Hull grinned.

"Keep chopping away at it. Hull, by the way."

"Make any puns and I'll chop off your nose. Or smash it, this thing is blunt as all hell."

"Do you like being here?"

Carza's voice was quiet, but Tanner snapped to face her like it was a barked command.

"...deep question."

"Does it have a deep answer?"

"...nah. I like it here. Ridiculous, but it's home and family. Hard to leave those behind, I s'pose. Even if they make you carry a stupid axe in public like a fucking lunatic, what're you gonna do?"

"I... suppose so, yes."

"I mean, your lot made you get some ink on your foreheads and wear those poncey robes. Ours not to reason why, ours but to stumble and try, eh? Suffer the young what they must and... uh, that's all the pretentious quotes I might have for this particular scenario. You two boffins know any others?"

Hull shrugged.

"Life is like a sewer, you get out of it what you put into it?"

Carza shrugged as well.

"Life is being a sparrow flying through a bright hall, feeling heat, smelling food, hearing voices, and then flying back out into the cold, dark beyond, from which there is no return?"

Tanner barked out a quick laugh.

"And that's why I like my Court, we're pretentious shits, but we don't come up with depressing crap like that."

And Carza, once more, was thoroughly reminded of why she liked being in the Court of Ivory. She tugged her robe tighter around herself, feeling distinctly... on edge. Too many crowds. Too much modernity. And too many signs of decline in the world beyond. She liked her own comforting bundle of rituals and eccentricity, seeing others with their own strangeness, it... made her feel oddly strained. Maybe Tanner liked her role as part of the Court of the Axe, maybe she liked her lack of glamour and enjoyed wearing those silly clothes... but seeing such silly clothes, and knowing they were silly, made Carza remember just how unusual she was here. No-one in the crowd behind her had robes, beyond the occasional person who was meant to wear them. No-one her age, beyond Hull. No-one at all. Seeing someone like Tanner was making Carza feel like she was silly too. And she hated feeling silly. Loathed it, really.

A random thought struck her. She... she wanted to make more friends, yes? And... and honestly, she needed to get out more. A part of her wondered if she'd tainted herself amongst her cohort, if maybe... just maybe she'd established an image as a painful unremarkable and a bit of an antisocial wretch. And... recklessness. Recklessness and high emotion and her forehead was still aching.

"Would you like to meet up at a later point?"

Hull and Tanner stared at her. Tanner blinked.

"...uh?"

"I mean, you seem agreeable. And I imagine you'd like some... rest after all this."

She was being outgoing! She was fun! She was sociable! She wasn't overreacting to fears of being alone and useless... and fears of the future, with everything strange it held. And she didn't remotely see part of herself in Tanner, and didn't remotely feel that she wanted to know the girl better.

...this had been a mistake.

"...eh, don't know. I'm pretty busy."

Calculated deflection. A way out. Wonderful.

"Of course. I, too, am busy."

"Cracking. So, uh... piss off?"

She said this mildly, without any insult intended. Her axe swung alarmingly as it switched shoulders once again... and Carza shivered, pulling her robe tighter still.

Chalk, Flint, and Axe. Four remaining. Horn, Wax, Slate, and Salt. The Courts of the pastures, the hives, the rites, and the purse.

Her tattoo no longer ached.