Chapter Forty Seven

There was no easy way to put it - recovery was boring, lengthy, painful, and it didn't really entail improvement. Carza was spending days in a cot, passing in and out of consciousness, eating bowl after bowl of various meats, drinking far too much of that... alcoholic milk that was eerily addictive after a point, and she was doing it all to achieve the resumption of normal functions. She wouldn't come out of this stronger, she'd come out of it back to normal. Which, for her, meant being skinny, fairly weak, mildly uncoordinated... that was a thought. She'd shot at that creature six times. Out of those six, five were either grazes, light wounds, or complete misses. Only one had actually made a difference by putting the creature down for good. She checked her fingers... still had the right ones for firing a gun. Her bullets weren't plentiful, but... she promised herself that she'd get better at shooting. If she'd been better, she'd have saved Hull and he'd be here with her, making mild jokes about the food, and generally being... Hull. Alive. If she'd hit her damn target, then he'd have survived. Sometimes she'd spend hours staring at the ceiling while berating herself for her own failures. Noting how any of the others surviving would've given Hull a better chance of living - Anthan wouldn't have missed, Egg would've been a more potent distraction, Lirana... well, she was tough. Very tough. Hull had been unlucky by ending up with her.

But she couldn't dwell on that for every hour of every day. It was addictive doing so, but... it would just be an insult to Hull's memory. Did she blame herself? Yes. Did that mean she could sit around blaming herself while doing nothing else? Never. She had to improve, finish the job, get back home and make sure that the expedition's members were commemorated. If she didn't, then her own thoughts were right - she was a failure, a pile of bones that had survived due to being useless and beneath notice, and her life was owed to the lives of others who were better than her. She'd learn how to shoot. She'd toughen up. She'd... she'd write an account of the language here, a whole dictionary if possible, she'd establish contacts for later expeditions, she'd create a lengthy ethnography of the local culture, she'd work.

Purposeless recovery was miserable.

But now she had some purpose to work towards. And that made things damn tolerable.

Mostly.

The tent was basically stationary, and she got the feeling that she was being given some form of luxury by staying in it. Sometimes she heard horses outside, and... yeah, that made sense. Food consisted mostly of meat, dairy, and occasional fish - plus some wild-looking plants scavenged from the surrounding area, none of them seemed to be farmed. Nomadic, right. Not too acquainted with nomadic economies, but she could picture a group getting by on the animals they herded. Not like this place was lacking in terms of grass, after all. Thus far, she'd only seen the older woman and the younger woman, who were... definitely cautious. Worried. Some terms really didn't seem to translate. Scholar was... evidently not an easy title. Maybe they didn't have the concept? Maybe they thought she was a poet, or a wise-woman, or a healer, or something which predated the concept of the scholar... hm. Well, Carza remembered reading that in other cities, 'scholars' were usually just theurgists, tutors, or priests, with the roles sometimes wrapped up into one messy bundle. A city up north was - maybe still was - known for blending the three, with their 'tower-makers' who were simultaneously messengers from their strange gods, tutors to the nobility of most surrounding areas, and also accomplished theurgists... plus, polyglots, scientists, poets, etc. etc. Though she recalled there being some debate on...

No, no, focus. Point was, they might think she was a priestess of some kind, or something unnatural. Thus far, they weren't treating her differently, just... keeping a distance. Sometimes she heard others outside, but with the whole... profound exhaustion, frostbite, all that good stuff, she was finding it a little hard to focus. More than two people here. But only two people visited her. Did nomads have prisons, or did they just put someone in a tent? What were they going to do, run? Find all the wonderful cities in the steppe where they could find shelter, run and hide in the endless plain? Run when their enemies would be riding horses, faster than any human, enough horses to change frequently and thus keep up a constant, furious pace...

Maybe the entire steppe was a prison, and this tent wasn't a cell, it was a blanket. A concession to shelter and humanity.

...but if she was a prisoner, she couldn't see a purpose. Ransom? Not a chance. Labour? Yes, with all her spectacular muscles she'd be a great labourer.

The younger girl came in, clothes slightly dirty from... something. Looked like dirt, not blood. Good. Very good. Carza sat up uneasily in the cot, yawning. Feeling much better now, she had to say. It'd been a few days at least since she arrived, maybe... one or two days since she first woke up in this tent and demanded her typewriter. Since then, everything had been quiet. The people tending to her were generally busy with other things, and Carza was finding it hard to sustain a conversation when sleep beckoned constantly. Frostbite, mostly. Body was busy just repairing itself, and with all the stress of the journey over her body had politely told her brain to shut down while it did its work.

"Hello?"

And now she was going to reject her body's advice, and engage regardless. Feeling a hell of a lot more fit. And she had work to do. The girl shot her a look, brushed her hands off on her legs, and walked carefully over with a bowl of the milk stuff. She had an enormous hat over her crystalline head, and her hands looked... worn? Maybe? Hard to tell, with their bizarre texture.

"Hm?"

Carza coughed slightly.

"I was... wondering if I could get up. Walk around."

She blinked owlishly.

"Walk?"

"Walk, yes."

"...hm."

The girl hesitated, shifting her weight from foot to foot... then she reached out and roughly hauled Carza to her feet. The girl... it was hard to say it politely. She smelled. She smelled of horse, of grass, of mud, and just... of labour. The earthy scent of someone who spent all their time outdoors, and kept themselves clean, but made no use of soap, and didn't really bathe all that frequently. Not filthy, just... noticeable. Not that Carza could judge, she felt unpleasantly gritty from too long in bed with no washing opportunities. She was still wearing her clothes from the mountains, for crying out loud, they're just rolled them up to get to the frostbitten parts. The girl grunted slightly, but handled Carza with ease. Good thing, too. Carza's feet touched the ground, and... she almost fell over. Still weak. Still recovering. The girl held her steady for a few moments... then a few more... a good few more, and Carza found herself feeling more confident with standing upright. Bit wobbly. But workable. And that was as good as she was going to get, honestly. The girl mumbled something in her own language which... wasn't really part of Tralkic. Made sense, no-one used peasant colloquialisms in their epic poetry...

The girl helped her walk, and as she did, Carza asked her questions.

"My name is Carza vo Anka. What's yours?"

The girl blinked. Carza pointed at herself, saying 'Carza', then at the girl, who blinked again, and mumbled.

"Kani."

"Nice to meet you."

Kani blinked a few times, leant forwards, backwards, tilted her head to one side...

"Eh?"

"Good to meet you."

"Eh?"

"Pleasure to-"

Kani's eyes widened, and she drew back from Carza. Right. Sure. Avoid the word 'pleasure'. In general, just avoid... trying anything which wasn't an easy noun or infinitive verb, hard to misinterpret those. Too tired to really think about how she'd been misinterpreted as vulgar. Right, so... walking. One foot in front of the other. Her mind whirled with ideas - translation, mostly. Tralkic provided a loose framework, but she really needed to get some more expertise on the local dialects if she was going to get on with her work. Hadn't written anything for a bit, not since her first experiment - there was simply nothing to write about, beyond a massive list of questions. And she mulled them over so often she didn't need a sheet to remind her of the specifics. First:

She pointed at a chair. She hadn't heard the word for 'chair' quite yet, maybe...

"Chair."

Kani looked at her like she was insane. Carza committed after only a moment of shameful hesitation bred from a mortal fear of all forms of social faux pas.

"Chair. Yes?"

Kani blinked. Carza wondered if she understood anything. Maybe the Tralkic word for 'chair' was her word for 'unspeakable acts committed upon someone's hind quarters'. Hull would've loved that joke. Well, he'd have made it, she'd have thought it but never said it. Part of why their partnership worked so well. She was the brains, he was the lack of inhibition.

...was.

Was.

"Chair! Chair? Come on, is it chair or not chair?"

Kani blinked a few more times.

"...khash?"

Carza blinked back, then pointed once more at the chair.

"Khash?"

Kani nodded, looking nervous.

"Khash."

"...khash is chair. Alright."

That was only mostly agonising. Fonuder, it was odd being around someone who looked so... who reminded her of the things in the mountains. There had to be relations between the two, but how did it work? She was an anthropologist, not a biologist, she studied anthro, not bio, men, not... life. Well, she studied living men. And women. And animals, if necessary, but mostly as cultural objects, and objects themselves were always relevant, and...

She pointed at the cauldron.

"Cauldron?"

Kani looked like she wanted to run away. But the fool that she was, she'd helped Carza stand up. Meaning Carza was now leaning on her. Meaning, Carza was able to restrain her and force her to name common household objects until one of them died. Or someone else came to unbind their forcible linguistic clinch. This was distracting her. This was healthy. Right now, she was on the verge of acting like a rabid animal, just like when she was a child. Barely sentient. Mostly an engine for food acquirement, scratching at anything which came close. Without Hull, she could... she could feel the gnawing, in her stomach. A deep, bassy chewing that demanded she act like a feral creature. It'd made her try to crawl out of the tent. Acting like a scholar helped, acting like a scholar reminded her of the path she'd chosen, the duties she'd taken on. Her younger years provided a massive pile of volatile fuel in her stomach - and her time as a scholar was a... a train engine around that fuel. The burning would happen regardless. And she could either let it consume her, or channel it to something productive. Something useful. Kani mumbled a word - right, her vocabulary was expanding. Typewriter... typewriter...

"Ceiling?!"

"Hulgai?"

"Hulgai?!"

"Hulgai!

"Ceiling is hulgai...."

She could talk about putting a chair or a cauldron on a ceiling... the basic building blocks of any interaction. Hull would've loved that.

She missed him.

And so it began.

* * *

Her work was proceeding. Helped her focus, this. Stopped her from having a continuous mental breakdown, which was generally quite nice. Sometimes her fingers ached from typing, still regrowing most of their skin after surrendering it to the frost, and she had to sit back and wait. And in those long moments, she found her heart itching. Her gut demanded action. A new instinct had been planted... no, no, incorrect. The same instinct, reframed. The gnawing in her gut wanted her to live at all costs, it wanted her to survive. It would only curl up and go to sleep when she was fat, old, happy, drunk, and confident that all four would endure until she passed away peacefully in her bed. And now... now she was feeling this clawing emptiness. Hull was gone, her entire expedition had died, she'd lived because she was lucky, and now... if she didn't work, if she let herself dwell on that emptiness, then... well. Best not to think about it. And the gnawing in her gut agreed, demanding that she work, find some form of satisfaction in her life, because the alternative was paralysis. She worked because it stopped her from not working. And not working enabled her to think. And thinking enabled her to dwell. And dwelling enabled her to...

"Type...writer?"

Kani was working her way through a pile of clothes in need of mending. Carza had paid a little attention... should've paid more. Reliant on hospitality for the time being, she had... not much to pay them with. And if she couldn't provide hard labour, then she could probably stitch, cook, clean...

Which would be easier if she knew how to do any of those things. Well, that was unfair, but... no, no, it was reasonable. Stitching and cleaning was for the cleaners around the Court of Ivory, and cooking was attended to in the cafeterias. She hadn't really needed to do... any of that for years and years. Not since she was a child, when her primary 'use' was cleaning glasses. Her hands were thin and long, she was better at cleaning the long-stemmed glasses compared to the thick-fingered and inflexible. Bit of work when she was younger.

...bad memories overall, though.

"Typewriter, yes."

"...you..."

She trailed off, trying to phrase things simply. Carza folded her hands delicately over one another, and shot her a look.

"Speak normally. But slowly."

She couldn't develop fluency if she was coddled constantly. And she might as well get started early. Kani smiled self-consciously... Founder, it was eerie seeing a face made of glass smiling. Her brain still occasionally refused to accept that skin could look like that, could be crystalline and flexible simultaneously... could bleed, while looking hard as diamond. And it was harder still to accept that she wasn't a prisoner, and that these people weren't going to slice her apart, gore her with tusks, send her to join Hull via the same method.

"So-rry. Type-writer. You made it?"

Carza hummed.

"No. I didn't."

Kani looked disappointed.

"Who?"

Carza checked the emblem.

"...Black Sparrow Industries."

"Black Sparrow... what?"

"Industries."

She paused.

"A... group that makes things."

"Ah! Artisan clan?"

This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.

"...maybe?"

Hold on. Focus on that. Anthropology time.

"Artisan clan, could you... explain?"

Kani grinned, but her hands kept flying over the stitches in front of her, sewing up tears, patching over some of the more unfortunate stains, dismantling whole sets of clothes which had served their purpose, turning them into piles of scrap which would be used to create new outfits. It was honestly a little humbling, watching her work so easily - only a few glances now and again to confirm she was going correctly, otherwise it was completely automatic.

"Worm-milk."

Carza blinked.

"...worm-milk?"

"Name. Worm-milk. They milk worms, so... worm-milk. Found a valley full of caverns, found silk-worms in them. Learned to milk them, breed them..."

Carza typed furiously, nodding along. Right, Worm-Milk, made sense, but... awkward to say as a name. In her language, it was 'Krolist', kro meaning worm, list meaning milk. Might be easier to separate that part out, otherwise she'd feel... it was odd, but she felt childish using names like 'Worm-Milk'. But when she made it all foreign-like, it was significantly more impressive. Plus, it'd make her ethnography easier to read. Krolist it was.

"Learned to make them into silk for themselves, sell it to others. There's... hm."

She paused, and sang slightly. Archaic form of her language... eerily similar to Tralkic, actually. Shaved off a lot of the later evolutions.

"From old days, to have the milk of worms, to have the beauty of lithe limbs in silk, and the beauty of our daughters is enough. Song of clans. Is good?"

Carza nodded quickly.

"Is good. Yes. Please, carry on."

She kept talking, and Carza felt... familiarity. Like her own Courts. Almost.

"Krolist are funny. Good clothes. They say 'kidnap a Krolist woman if you want someone with ugly face, and good hands'. Never get kidnapped by Krolist men, though. Their other wives are awful, horse-teeth, tits like empty oil skins, stomachs like cauldrons. Ugly. And if you go to them, then they get jealous, try to make you ugly as them. But their fingers... oh, lovely fingers. Krolist men will worship anyone beautiful enough, though. Everyone knows this. Krolist men would sell their mother and all their wives for someone pretty. Slaves to their urges."

She laughed lightly, but... coarsely, like she was sharing a rude joke. Which she was.

"My cousins, they kidnapped the wives of the Krolist once, ran in, took what they liked. Good stuff. Great ladies. Ugly as sin. But good at sewing. They had the best clothes around for years... but had to keep on kidnapping, though!"

Kani grinned lopsidedly.

"Because the kidnapped wives would kill the new kidnapped wives - too pretty! And if you could sew, hooh, got your fingers cut off, your nose too, before they decided to kill you proper. But, boy boy boy, did those men have some nice clothes later... should've just kidnapped someone from the Yakra, though! Those ladies can brew... and when husband is drunk, doesn't care that half his wives are ugly as sin. So, you see?"

Carza nodded hesitantly, and typed.

Stereotyping common, divisions common between groups, relations highly volatile - going from peaceful trading to happily raiding and kidnapping, likely within a short span of time. Similar to the Courts of ALD IOM, but the abundance of space here likely means that they can afford to be more violent. If things go out of control, one side can simply leave and go somewhere else. Which would seem to make things more peaceful, but probably just makes it easier to be intensely violent. If ALD IOM was violent constantly, we'd have wiped ourselves out years ago.

No, no, idiot. She was just being ethnocentric now, comparing things to ALD IOM. Would make for good material in the ethnography, but she couldn't structure all her thoughts around 'this is similar to home' or 'this is different to home'. If she did that she'd overlook a million useful points, and just produce a glorified travel guide. Not suitable for scholarly publication, more suitable for... for a pulp novel.

"Are the Krolist...?"

She gestured vaguely. Kani blinked.

"...women? Yes. Some. But also there are men."

"I mean..."

"It is shocking, I know."

She waved harder at her own skin, at Kani, trying to ask something without sounding peculiar. How to... would saying 'glass' be ludicrously offensive? Would glass be a relevant... dammit, Tralkic had no word for 'glass'. Diamond? Jewel? Gemstone? Kani was slowing down in her stitching, crud, crud...

"Jewel?"

Kani grinned.

"Thank you. But not here."

"...w-"

"You are nice, too."

"No, I mean-"

Oh Founder, she'd implied vulgarity again, she'd acted like some sort of... ragged wench.

"But you are not an appropriate match for me. It is kind. But I do not find you attractive."

Now she was just being hurtful.

"Listen, I-"

"I know what you mean. But I am being funny."

Kani nodded a few times, very satisfied with herself. She didn't burst out laughing, though, which might've made this easier, she just... smiled innocently, nodded, and got back to her stitching. Was this how humour worked? Exploiting the credulity of foreigners while remaining utterly deadpan? This wasn't humour, this was... workplace bullying. She could feel irritation rising in her. Genuine irritation. Annoyance, even. She could...

This felt like talking to Hull.

Kani's small smile dimmed when she saw Carza's expression.

"...was I not funny?"

"No, no, you were... very funny. It was funny. Good joke."

Kani's fingers flashed, stitching clothes with the speed of someone who was intent on their task. 'Look, the conversation couldn't go on if it didn't need to, look at all this stitching she had to get on with!'

Right.

"...the Kralist are... not demigods. If that is what you mean."

"...demigods?"

"I am a demigod."

A cold feeling swept over Carza, and paradoxically, she found herself sweating a little.

"Demigod. As in, someone who is half god, and half..."

"...oh, no, no, no. Not that. I am a baby god."

Right. Ambiguity of language. 'Demi' meant 'half'... but for this language, it meant 'half-grown'. Her linguistic brain was interested in that. Her practical brain was starting to get very close to panicking. Too many memories of the mountains. The things there. Their laughter. Their speed. Their brutality. The way they simply... ripped people apart, like it was nothing. Tusks as spears, arms stronger than iron, flesh laughing at bullets, the only wound that mattered being the bullet Hull bought with his life. Only a life-bought bullet could hurt them, and even then, only when it entered their brains. A nightmare vision of the creature breathing even after losing its skull... she'd tried to pretend it was a hallucination, stowing it away in a corner of her mind where she didn't need to think about it, but... but the body had lived. Even with its brain destroyed, the creature could live. Could breathe. Maybe never recover, but...

The point remained. It was tough. Inhuman. And these people were connected, even if they were being kind to her, and had, quite possibly, saved her life.

"...and what is an adult god."

Kani smiled brightly.

"The ancestors. In the mountains."

Her blood froze. Her mind locked up. She knew this was coming. But she didn't like it.

"They're your... ancestors?"

"Yes, indeed. You smell of them."

She patted her ribs shamefully.

"...I cannot produce the scents, nor can my family. We must wait until we are older."

"What... happens when you're older?"

"We drink the nectar of the mountain-roots, and become ancestors ourselves."

She spoke like Carza was slow. The... 'nectar of the...' hold on. She understood. Contamination. Did... she groaned as she moved off the bed, examining Kani a little more. She was... right. Two tiny dots underneath her eyes, on her cheeks. Looked like freckles, which wouldn't be much if she had any other freckles to speak of. Glass skin tended to show them up, to be blunt. And... she'd patted her ribs, not her chest, nowhere else. And... she'd moved the fabric of her dress a little, and Carza could very slightly see her ribs. Very slightly. And more importantly, she could see that she... very well might have more than the normal amount. Were those ribs at all? Were they arms ready to grow out? And... and she had a pair of tiny, tiny lumps just under her the corner of her lips. Normal features, or the roots of tusks?

"Please. Explain."

She needed to know. Sod being polite.

"...do you not know?"

"No. I don't."

"You smelled like the ancestors when we found you. We thought you were-"

"Right. Yes. I know. But I didn't understand the specifics. Please. Just talk."

Don't mention that she might've shot one of them in the head. In her defence, they had killed Anthan, and her first friend. First... anyway.

"We are children. We think as children. We act as children. We speak as children. Then, we become elders. Ancestors. Immortal and perfect."

Mutants up there. Definitely mutants, but... but mutants didn't speak, they didn't cooperate, and they most certainly didn't look that similar. She could be wrong, but she was fairly sure that the creatures in the mountains had been a defined species, all the usual hallmarks of mutation just weren't present. So... dammit, why didn't she study biology? But if she was going to guess... maybe this species worked by integrating contamination into their life cycle, rather than treating it as, well, contamination. Obviously some things went away - sanity, morality, ability to empathise with travellers - but they were still able to work together, control their mutations... her typewriter was whirring frenziedly at this point, she was typing down every possible angle. Too many to remember, far too many. Kani had stopped sewing at this point, and was simply trying to keep up with Carza's half-incomprehensible questions, rattled off in a creole of her own language, Tralkic, and whatever she'd picked up thus far in this tent. Nothing else remained but this, because if she didn't focus, she started to think about the mountains again. Understanding the enemy was the first step to defeating them, right? Someone clever had said that once, doing the clever thing of saying something painfully obvious but then making a tonne of money from it, and gah, stop thinking, just... just type!

"Do they live in the mountains? All your ancestors?"

"Almost all."

"Do any live down here?"

"No, they must go to the mountains when they age."

"Do any fail to become ancestors, do they go insane?"

"Some. If one has lived a virtuous life-"

Carza cut her off. Culture could wait, just for now, she needed facts.

"Alright, fine, fine. Now... if you're a child, what about your parents?"

"They too are children."

Carza mentally adjusted. Alright, difficulty in translation. 'Juvenile' might be the right word, 'children' carried too many cultural connotations. She corrected herself with a pen, almost stabbing through the paper as she erased her old work, updated it properly.

"And what distinguishes juveniles from ancestors?"

"...did you not notice the arms?"

"I did. But I want you to-"

"Yes, yes, I understand. Four arms for elders, four eyes, two tusks, and they are much larger. We are smaller, have two arms, two legs, and no tusks."

"Anything else?"

"...it would be-"

"Please. Just... explain."

"We are capable of... mating."

She reduced her voice to a near-whisper. Oh. Oh ho. This was interesting. A life cycle which involved a juvenile state where breeding was possible, followed by a controlled mutation into a larger, immortal creature which could live in harsher conditions, and... wait, what was the point?

"Why?"

"Why can we-"

"No, why have this system? What advantages does it have?"

"Excuse me?"

"Advantages. Good things. What does it do?"

Kani looked on the verge of simply running away at this point. Carza's eyes did feel wide, and her demeanour did feel tense... she tried to smile, but that only seemed to make things worse. Right, fine, Kani was still here, she was still willing to answer questions, just... push before something else happened.

"Well?"

"...well, the ancestors protect us."

"When did you come here?"

"Generations ago."

"How many?"

"Many!"

"How many?!"

"Very many!"

Carza forced herself to calm down. Stop acting like a deranged scholar, just act like a regular scholar, that was... anyway. She could work with this. If their arrival here was shrouded in mythical time, then it surely had myths surrounding it, right?

"Did your people always live here?"

"...my people have always lived here."

"And the ancestors?"

"...they came here from a distant place. An ideal city. A place of infinite scents, a library pressed into service as a city in mountains so ferocious that brute force was necessary for even a day of survival."

Her voice had the quality of someone reciting a ritual.

"That is what they say."

She shrugged. The implication being that 'well, yes, that's how it's said, but it's doubtful if it's how it is. Carza narrowed her eyes. Alright. So... not uncommon to have mythical origins in an area, but in this case...

"How often to people cross the mountains?"

Another shrug.

"You are the first in a long time."

"Do armies go over?"

"Not that I know of. And I would know. Armies aren't very quiet."

More humour, registered, acknowledged. Fine. She kept typing. This group had a myth about arriving in this region some time ago, coming from a distant place. That mountain pass seemed like a poor site for an army to go through - mutants could live for, biologically speaking, as long as they damn well pleased. Until someone killed them or they mutated beyond the ability to function as even semi-intelligent creatures, they were basically immortal. Assuming there was nothing else being hidden from her, or nothing she hadn't teased out via intense (anthropological) interrogation... fine. She could work with this. It was unlikely an army could get through that pass without being massacred, if it was peopled by mutants that were probably capable of killing anything that tried to hunt them, might well have removed all forms of natural competition through the miracle of 'working together'. And if armies couldn't get through, then how had the Court of Horn invaded? How had the Yasa set themselves up? And... no, wait, the Yasa had myths about the glass-skinned men of the mountains. An earlier theory was dissolving. The Yasa and the Court of Horn had likely come in separate waves of movement, the Yasa coming after these creatures had arrived, the former coming beforehand. Explaining why the Court of Horn had said nothing on the topic, while the Yasa did. Well, that was one possibility - maybe the glass-skinned men came during their movement, and... just keep it simple.

Fine, she had that much. And that meant this group had migrated here some time ago, bringing ancestors with them. And it wasn't terrifically distant in time. But the ancestors were still mutants, they still lived nearly forever. Maybe that was why the language was so different, why the culture was different, why this tent had long, thin rays as decorations, while the things in the mountains had enjoyed abstract dissections of animals and huge depictions of themselves on the walls of their grottos. The ancestors had come from somewhere else, preserved their language, and their descendents had integrated. Thus, distance. But the descendents could still scale the mountains and become ancestors themselves in time. One important question:

"Why are no ancestors here?"

"They are ancestors."

Kani shrugged. 'That's just how it is', she seemed to say.

"Why not come down to help their descendents?"

"They are ancestors. No-one talks to their ancestors."

...point made. So... distance. That was almost relaxing - this wasn't quite one united body, it was a pair of groups within a single species that maybe kept their distance for reasons she found hard to get out of someone. Probably conceptualised in the same way as local, human belief systems involving ancestors - which were distant and mysterious, on account of being dead. Made it easier to accept that their ancestors were also distant, keeping on top of their mountains. The difference being that the local ancestors would be intangible spirits, while these ancestors were real, powerful, and vicious. But if they didn't see them... well, it was a case of a tree falling in a forest and no-one hearing it. So what if they were real, if they never came out of their mountains or talked to anyone?

But why?

Kani was looking uncomfortable. Fine. Could work with this, just play it very, very safe indeed. Yes, very safe.

"Do people need to go up the mountain to become ancestors?"

"Of course."

"Has anyone tried to do otherwise?"

"Not that I know of."

Seemed unlikely that it was impossible... worth considering. Very much worth considering.

"And the smell-"

Kani shrugged, looking irritable.

"Scent-language of the ancestors. Easier than speech when the cold is bad enough to chill your tongue, or when you live alone on distant peaks and cannot be heard by anyone. Smell can endure when sound cannot. We do not possess the glands, yet. And you... your scent had the complexity of the ancestors."

Her fingers moved like flashing sapphires, working away quickly and efficiently at the sewing in front of her. Dedicated, and using it as an excuse to stay quiet. Place the burden of interrogation on Carza. If Carza wasn't a frightened person asking questions out of fear and panic, and was an actual interrogator, she might actually call it a good tactic. Probably. If she wrote it down in a novel, it might sound passable. At least, to readers who weren't used to things like this. An idle thought, and an unnerving one, came to her - had her scent saved her? She'd wiped her face with that dead creature's arm, was that why they were extending such hospitality? Maybe not, maybe guest-right was strong here... her stomach twisted. Play it safe. Lying and safe was better than truthful and possibly murdered on the spot for killing a beloved great-great-great-aunt. She'd discovered a new species, and had promptly murdered one of their revered ancestors... Founder almighty...

"I see. I'm sorry, it wasn't explained to me. Sorry for being... loud."

Hard to find the right word.

"It's fine. Why do you ask so much?"

"I'm studying you."

Kani looked at her sharply, alarmed.

"What?"

"I mean, I'm... studying your... uh..."

She paused, trying to figure out what to say. 'Culture' was a difficult term, and trying to define it was hard enough, trying to translate it was... well. Not easy. One definition she'd personally worked with was 'behaviours passed from individual to individual, divorced from genetics'. Easy enough, but incredibly broad. Another definition which had some popularity around the Court a while ago was 'man's extrasomatic means of adaptation', which came across as needlessly functionalist. No-one reduced culture down to function, only scientists did that. Culture was more shapeless, in her eyes. And while her ponderings had filled up a good few essays in the past, they weren't much use here, when she needed a concrete term. Maybe...

"I'm studying your history."

Inaccurate, but workable until she found a better term. Interesting problem, though. She wanted to add 'religion', but even that term was hard to translate. ALD IOM had vastly different Courts with very different faiths, coming from very different parts of the world. So, the term religion had emerged to describe them, because the usual practice of just incorporating new beliefs didn't quite work when beliefs were utterly different and completely incompatible. Easy to add a new god to a pantheon when the 'new god' comes from a place barely a few days away by horse. Hard to add the philosophies of the Founder to the ancestral guardians of the Court of Horn to the secularist and materialist teachings of the Court of Salt, and it was downright impossible to add in some of the weirder Slate philosophies. Whatever those were. Point was, the term had emerged under specific conditions, and those conditions hadn't existed out here when the Court of Horn introduced Tralkic to ALD IOM. Founder, this was... odd. Thinking like a proper anthropologist again.

It was viscerally satisfying, yes, but she could feel homesickness burning deep. Fishhook in her stomach, pulling in the vague direction of the Court of Ivory, her little golden void.

Lonelier void, now.

A little less golden without Hull there.

Anyway. Kani was nodding thoughtfully.

"...I believe I understand."

"Oh? So you-"

"My brother said that things like this happened in the great ridings. That some people try to know what makes us so... successful. So fantastic."

Carza blinked.

"...sure."

"We shall have dinner with my father, soon. He will explain more."

Oh crumbs.

"Well, I... wait, how many people are here?"

"Myself. My father and mother. My promised. And that is all."

"Promised?"

"He will marry me in a few years, once he has completed his service. We shall dine, and-"

"Where's your brother?"

"At war. He plunders the deserts of the far west. My father rode, just as my brother now rides. And when he returned, he brought gold, silks, and three black-headed ones."

Carza didn't need to ask, just needed to look curious.

"...ones who were captured and now labour?"

"Slaves?"

Kani blinked.

"Slave?"

"They work for you, you brought them here forcibly, do you pay them?"

"They are fed and watered, if that is what you mean."

"Do they get any currency?"

Another confused blink. Ah. Nuts. No currency. Interesting.

"Can they leave?"

"They will not go far without a horse."

"But they can leave?"

"Why would they?"

This was going nowhere.

"You didn't mention them-"

"Two died some time ago. The others are tending the herds."

Kani stood up suddenly, brushing down her front. Her gaze was intense, and for a second Carza thought that the act had been rumbled, somehow. Something in her behaviour, maybe, signalling that Carza had lied, and was about to be enslaved or-

"You've asked many questions. Now I will ask. Show me this object."

She stepped over confidently, hands on her hips, and peered strangely down at the typewriter. Carza clicked a random key, letting the small metal bar sail across and strike the paper strongly. 'A', as it turned out. Appropriate. Kani stared at, and Carza was almost disappointed - hoped she'd jump, or something. Call it a savage idol of the gods of machinery, and now Carza was its head priestess, and... well, that felt judgemental. Very judgemental. Something from her pulp novels... no, treat her like a normal individual, not some sort of credulous rube. She started typing more, keeping it slow, so Kani could see the passage of key, to bar, to paper.

"How does it leave ink?"

"Well, there's a... ribbon, there. Ink ribbon. And the keys press against it, which leaves a mark."

Kani sat beside her, and Carza involuntarily shivered. Still uncertain about things. Kani poked a key experimentally, and Carza had to snatch the typewriter away - not messing up her notes. The look of shame which flicked across Kani's face was... alright, just go down a few lines, let her try.

A few taps...

And she made a rookie mistake. Two keys at once. The metal bars clicked together, and Kani looked... terrified, just for a second. She refused to meet Carza's gaze.

"...I apologise, I may have-"

Carza picked the two bars apart without a word. Classic mistake, took months to get out of the habit herself.

"...I apologise again."

"Hm."

Kani kept tapping away, writing a string of absolute gibberish across the page. Carza was... more than a little confused, but after a few awkward minutes she shuffled the entire thing over onto Kani's lap where it'd be easier for her to type. Not like there was much to do, beyond... hm. Could teach her how to use Carza's alphabet. It'd make her notes less secure, admittedly, but... no, no, just type in an obscure language. Easy enough. Have to retype today's notes, of course... anyway. She leant over, and started helping her piece it together. This place had no written language, apparently. The 'ridings' seemed to use orders of some kind, but in terms of script, they seemed to use something foreign, adapted for their own use. Which made this whole thing easier, admittedly. Carza found herself drifting off as she helped explain the phonetic meaning of each key, and Kani typed out first her name, then a few basic terms... no idea if she was misspelling anything, given that there were no accepted spellings of her language for this script, but...

It was nice. Watching someone else work. Feeling satisfied.

Terrified too, admittedly. Because... because she'd found a new species. And as pleasant as Kani was being, she could easily become one of those things in the mountains. She had to, in order to be a proper 'ancestor'. It was part of her damn life cycle.

She was being kept here as a guest because she smelled like the ancestor she'd killed.

And she was surrounded by people that could become as bad as the thing which had killed Hull.

People that, despite this, were behaving shockingly decently.

But worries lingered. They had slaves. They went to war. They kidnapped people from neighbouring groups. This was worrying. This was very worrying. All of those things presented instability - a warband attacks the camp, and Carza gets carted off as a wife to some random individual. Or just dies. Or gets enslaved. Or she gets sold into slavery after they realise who she is, what she's done. If they can. Scent-language... maybe those glands left a scent which meant one thing: 'this person killed me, kill her on sight'. A last-ditch defence mechanism against their foes.

Kani typed away.

And as she grew more confident, typing faster and faster...

The pace of the clicks began to match the ticks of Carza's heart.

Going faster. Faster. Faster.