Chapter Forty Six

Carza's consciousness came in stops and starts. She'd been more exhausted than she realised... and had accumulated a few problems. She knew her hands were numb, at least. When she fell to the ground, they'd been numb too... she'd barely been aware of the walk through the steppe, though. Managed an hour of desperate staggering before the last parts of her gave out and she simply collapsed into the green sea. Memories were twitching through her, most of them disconnected... the numbness in her fingers, and a solid weight in her stomach. A reminder that she was alone. A stranger in a strange land, and the sole survivor of a catastrophic expedition. Then her memories twitched... and she thought this was like the beginning to a bad pulp novel. A disastrous expedition, wiped out by savage creatures, with only one person striding off into the steppe. But those were beginnings, and this... this felt like an end. The conclusion to an underprepared scholar walking off hoping for the best, and finding calamity after calamity. Six of them. And now just one.

Now just her.

The steppe had been cool, and... surprisingly dry. The mountains cast a shadow over it, but nonetheless the grass was thick and lush, waving carelessly in the breeze which formed little rivers in its surface where the wind pressed the blades down into a flat carpet... before letting them rise once more. Undulating invisible serpents, crawling aimlessly over the surface of the endless green and blue. No plough had ever been here. No building. No empire. Nothing but the horses which kept their distance from the bedraggled wanderer. The ice melted over her, and by the time she fell, she was soaked to the bone, her hair plastered over her face. She felt... oddly cheated. The smell of perfume was clogging her nose, and she couldn't even manage to tell if the steppe smelled good or not. If it smelled of fresh earth and virgin grass, or if it stank of horse manure, or if something else lingered. Smell helped her to make memories, and without it, the steppe had felt unreal. Which was appropriate. Because the world seemed a little more hollow without Hull in it.

She never turned to see the smoke.

She didn't want to imagine leaving him there. If she kept her eyes ahead, she could almost imagine him walking beside her. Sometimes she had a thought, and glanced over... to see nothing but the grass and the distant horses, hiding from her in stands of grass so tall they could be confused for trees at a distance.

Her thoughts migrated to one of two extremes. Sometimes, they found grief. Loneliness. Solitude. The feeling of being a child again, stick-thin and almost entirely friendless. No-one trusted one another, no-one dared to. She relived those moments time after time over the hour which seemed like a hundred years. Those days had planted the gnawing in her, the longing for warmth, comfort... living death. Because the dead had nothing to fear, nothing to desire, no duties weighing on their shoulders. When she heard stories of the Court of Slate, and their mummies - their past rulers, bound up in bandages and sat cross-legged in one of their silent towers, empty sockets staring at their living incarnation... when she heard those stories, and others shivered or cursed, she felt jealous. A duty without duty, comfort without want, all things fulfilled in dusty silence. That was before she really comprehended what a mummy was, of course. Even when she did, the jealousy endured. And the gnawing had grown louder.

The other extreme was the polar opposite.

It wasn't memory. It wasn't thought. And it certainly wasn't awareness of any kind.

It was simply the darkness which lay behind her eyes. The rippling nothing which swam unceasing. Unconsciousness. Sometimes things danced over its surface, like fish breaking the surface of a vast black lake, but... no sound. Thin things, barely visible, barely comprehensible. All her thoughts came here, eventually. All her memories. Of Hull, of her childhood... of anything, really. One thing played occasionally, before vanishing. Glass hands reaching out. Picking her up. And then nothing. Maybe she'd died, one of the creatures had come for her... no, no, spoken Tralkic, the things in the mountains had just snarled and snapped in their own language, one entirely alien to her. Even thinking about it made her want to shudder... well, if she was alive now. Her fingers had been numb, she'd been hungry, bruised... maybe she was dead.

Death had more regrets than she thought.

She slipped into the dark, and after all her memories had whirled by her like tattered streamers...

She slept. And no dreams came. For that much, she was thankful.

She wasn't ready to dream of Hull. Because she knew that she'd be convinced he was alive, the dreams would be flavoured by mad desperation, and when she woke she'd be convinced, just for a moment, that he was nearby. And the drop in her stomach when that wasn't true...

She remembered her mother dying. And that had been with a long illness, a long process of understanding. Hull had been too quick, and too... unnecessary. Her mother had been bad enough.

She couldn't go through that again.

Darkness swallowed her whole. And all thought ceased.

* * *

Consciousness, like unconsciousness, came in stops and starts. One second, she was drifting in nothingness, feeling nothing, thinking nothing, knowing nothing... and the next, reality flooded back. Breeze on her skin, a tuft of hair slowly moving across her face as the wind drove it onwards... clothes rubbing against her skin, the world coming back in limited sensations. She never felt them for long, just... long enough to realise she was alive. And then sleep would claim her, and she'd forget everything. But sparks of light danced across her closed eyelids, tiny points of relevance and understanding. Her sleep was no longer so certain. No dreams, but... the half-dreams that came from the place between waking and sleeping. Did she dream opening her eyes to see a brown ceiling? Did she turn over and groan? Did she run her tongue over her lips to wet them, or... she legitimately couldn't tell. Good. She liked this place. Mundane, but unreal. It meant that she didn't need to worry about, say, falling over - because this was a dream. But she also didn't need to worry about seeing Hull. Because it was far too mundane.

It was what she needed.

But the weight in her stomach... that endured. Even now, it endured. There was a feeling that part of her was simply gone, a vital part of her psyche had died with Hull. And what was left was... half a thought. Half an idea. Half a person. And at that point, of course she collapsed. She'd carried Hull through the pass, but he'd carried her as well. Given her purpose, a reason to stagger onwards even when her boots flooded with freezing water, when her fingers went numb, when her face prickled with frost, when the darkness seemed to go on and on and on. She had the functional limbs, yes, but Hull was providing the necessity. She'd have collapsed hours ago in the snow, rested in a cave, taken her time and maybe gotten killed. But with Hull... she had to go on. Even if it damaged her. And seemingly, it had. She'd never felt this sore...

Felt.

She could feel. For longer than a second, too.

A cohesive sensation.

Slowly, painfully, she cracked her eyes open.

Brown ceiling. She hadn't dreamt that. But it looked... no, it was moving. Tent. And there was a very slight breeze, which confirmed the theory. She'd been placed in a tent, and she felt an itchy pelt underneath her, stretched between some wooden planks to form a cot. She tried to move... and for a second, succeeded... and a second later, she regretted everything that had ever happened. Ever. Pain rocketed through her, her hands were on fire, her face wasn't much better... everything hurt. Everything. She groaned lightly... and sensed movement. Someone walking over the grass. A memory twitched... glass hands. The creatures. The things in the mountains. She wasn't dead, but that was because they were going to tear her apart when she could feel it, not when she was unconscious and half-dead already. They were coming, they were going to overwhelm her with that beautiful scent of theirs and then rip her in half or gore her or simply torture her for the rest of her short and miserable life and-

Water touched her lips.

And all thought fled. Founder, she was thirsty... someone had pressed a waterskin, and she drank slowly, trying not to throw up. Still had the mental wherewithal to realise that drinking so much after exhausting herself completely and... not really drinking much at all would probably be a bad move. When was the last time she'd had water? Not in the cave... no, had she... she couldn't remember. It was all just a blur of snow and ice and darkness and the scent and Hull... Hull...

She stopped drinking, but the few gulps she'd had were enough to make everything feel... clearer. Like a lit torch dropped down a mineshaft, sending rays of light outwards. A tiny underground sun, a pulse of clarity through flesh that still felt a little on the dead side of things. Making its mind up... the water pushed it over the edge. Life it would be. But she had to focus, couldn't just drink whatever was put before her. She strained to turn her head, feeling it crack a little as she went - stiff from lack of use. How long had it been? She turned, blinked, the world remaining an infuriating haze...

A gleam. A shimmer. Refraction.

Someone with glass skin.

Her thoughts snapped into a more animalistic mode.

Just like when she was a child.

* * *

The girl's heart begins to pound. Her breathing increases. Pain rockets through her, unending, unceasing. All her muscles are weary and pushed beyond any healthy limits, the mountain pass taking a vicious toll on her. Even now, she struggles to recover. SHe doubts that she has eaten anything solid, only liquid. Her breath stinks of hunger. Deliberate weakening, surely. Food is a tool for tormenting people. Withholding it as a punishment, granting it as a reward. She scrambles backwards, and...

Cot.

Tent.

No walls or rims or anything to balance on... and her limbs are all half-dead anyhow.

The girl feels a sturdy carpet slam into the side of her face as she plummets from the cot. Involuntary moan of pain escaping her lips, a rush of hunger-scented breath, rancid as spoiled milk. Reminder of weakness. The gnawing in her stomach escalates further, and all she sees are animals around her, savage beasts. Sleepless men, silent mutants, laughing glass-things which dwell in frigid caves and spit at bullets, chuckle at flame. Unstoppable and unkillable, not as she is now. Animal longing for survival overpowers her, her heart is a small rodent lurking in her chest, shrieking for movement at all costs. She starts trying to crawl. Someone moves. Someone comes for her. She never thinks that something is wrong when hands find her - never thinks that these hands are smaller than the creatures in the mountains, never thinks that those creatures could pick her up with a single hand, and this figure struggles even with two. No thought. All that is known is glass and savagery and cold and loneliness and loss.

All she knows is that something with glass skin is currently in a tent with her, and she needs to move before she is torn apart. Survival is the imperative... and the girl also thinks of her work. Her scholarship. A pulse of civilisation runs through her, her higher mind touches her lower instincts, a brush of light... her work is incomplete. She cannot have it wasted by some idiots in the mountains and smaller idiots on the steppe. Images of glass-skinned armies coming from the mountains, indoctrinating the Yasa in worship of their mighty forms, then replacing them in the steppe. Invasion. Driving them out, driving out the Court of Horn, forgotten to time. She sees the invaders whose slaves called them gods. It makes no historical sense, but she is afraid, and the fear conjures mad visions. She cannot die like Hull. Cannot. Cannot let the two of them be remembered as failures, there are obligations to meet. She must return home. She must make the expedition worthwhile. The gnawing in the girl's gut is a deafening scream, drowning out reason.

She crawls, feeling exhaustion pulse through her sluggishly... a demand to stop, to rest. Ignored. Had to move. Had to-

Someone is talking.

A spark of recognition floods through the girl.

Tralkic.

The syntax is similar, the grammar is partially mimicking Tralkic, but... too much is wrong. Garbled Changed.

Why?

The focus... focuses her...

The girl blinks...

* * *

Tralkic. She recognised the syntax, some of the grammar... but it was wrong, somehow. Altered. Well, Tralkic was... very old, even the Court of Horn barely spoke it outside of ceremonial occasions. Odd thought to have when she was so terrified, but her thoughts were running too fast for her to care. It felt like cold water was dripping down her back, though, something that jerked her into a kind of lucidity... Carza was curious. Against all her best impulses, she was curious. Instincts drilled in by years of linguistic lectures. The language had changed... and it was definitely different to the clicking, growling speech of the things... no, no, they were the same species, just different groups, that didn't mean they wouldn't gore her to death. She moved, crawling towards the tent flap, but some of the hunger in her gut has faded, just a little. Reason overpowering her fear, just for a second. Her feet were bound up in bandages, and she couldn't really... move them. Whenever they touched the ground she instinctually flinched, almost screamed... had to bite her lip to avoid it. Her legs worked, but her feet didn't. Her hands were bandaged up too, but if she rested her weight on her palms, her elbows... she could manage to get by. Closer to the exit, to the steppe, had to try. Rational thought had fled.

"...father..."

A few more garbled words... and then a low growl. She was going to be-

Grabbed under the armpits and hauled up. She tried to thrash, to resist... her limbs were weak, exhausted, and the person carrying her was... strong.

But small.

Smaller than the creatures in the mountains. Taller than her, yes, stronger too, but not... monstrously so.

Almost human.

If she ignored the glass hands grabbing her, dragging her back to the cot... airborne for a second before she sank into the coarse pelts.

And she saw the face of the enemy standing above her.

Female. Wearing a dark green dress, thick enough to serve as a luxurious blanket, trailing down to her shins, where they gave way to light blue baggy leggings, themselves tucked into high brown leather boots, ornamented with golden embroidery. The only indication of how... inhuman she was lay in her hands and her face. Her hands vanished behind her back, and her face... her face was shining. And looking up at it, Carza froze. Something was wrong with it. She saw sharp features, she saw skin gleaming like glass that nonetheless flexed smoothly and organically... two dark eyes staring angrily down at her. Two. Not four. She saw no huge tusks, and only two arms. And as she took in panicked breaths... she smelled nothing but fresh grass and slightly damp fabric from the tent. That was all. No strong perfume, no powerful scents... nothing. She was tall, yes. Strong, yes. But she looked disturbingly human. Even her hair lacked the razor-thin sharpness of the things in the mountains... no, it had hints. It was thin and wiry, but it didn't look like it was going to slice her hands open if she touched it. High forehead, hair which was naturally buoyant...

Twisting her glass lip in annoyance.

A garble of words fell out of her mouth, barely any of it recognisable. Carza blinked dumbly, mind not quite processing anything... and the girl sighed, slowing down, speaking louder, gesturing as she did so.

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"Bed."

She pointed at the cot.

"Sleep."

She mimed resting her head on her hands and clsoed her eyes - an opportunity to escape? Carza shifted... and the girl immediately shot her a vicious glare.

"Stay."

She pointed down. Simple words. Simple ideas. A moment passed... Carza processed her options. Run? No, she'd fail. Could barely crawl, running was beyond her current capabilities. Fight? Even worse. The girl was looking... memories of a cold stone grotto came back. A creature twice her height, many times her width, arms strong enough to rip a grown man in half with barely any effort. And yet... yet she couldn't help but see this girl as a different breed. Maybe she was a child, and she'd found the adults... but then, where did the extra eyes or arms come from? What about the tusks? The height? Either way, she... she recognised that she couldn't run or fight. And that meant remaining was her one available option. As much as she hated it... if she was a prisoner, she couldn't change it. Already her feet were hurting again - even if she'd escaped, she'd have collapsed later on. Everything throbbed in low, warning pain. Her body was telling her not to try that again.

The girl huffed through her nose, then brought a water skin next to Carza's lips again.

This time she drank greedily, her stomach acclimated. But her eyes remained locked on the glass-skinned thing keeping her prisoner. The girl ignored her eyes... avoiding eye contact, to be more accurate. Odd. Water. And then... wait. She was awake, and her breath was scented with hunger, the smell of her body digesting itself in lieu of anything else. The girl noticed with a wrinkled nose, and walked off before returning with a small bowl filled with... tiny pieces of meat. Looked dried. Nothing else. There were no utensils, and... and Carza couldn't resist herself. Not like she had any other options. Her first bite was bitter and spiteful. She didn't want to be kept as a prisoner, she wanted to leave, to head out and... and do something, but not remain with these people. Creatures. Whatever. The second bite was significantly more eager. The meat was gamey, probably hunted instead of reared... no idea what it was from, but it was wonderful. Thick. Hearty. Dry, yes, but water helped her wash it down. The girl allowed her to take the bowl, and watched carefully as Carza's cautious nibbles turned into ravenous gulps. A small bowl of meat... gone in a minute or two, and that was mostly because it was dried and she needed to grind it up a bit with her teeth before it could go down. The girl shrugged...

And passed her a cup of rancid milk.

Carza almost threw up just at the smell.

Founder, what... was this the punishment? Resist, and be compelled to drink rancid milk? It was thick, and... it smelled beyond potent, had hints of other flavours that she didn't really want to think about. Could be growing a whole damn ecosystem in this thing. She glared at the girl, who nodded happily. Go on, she seemed to say. Drink up. Smug little turd... Carza could see through her little game. Run away, and drink rancid milk. If she refused, she'd be forced to, or her food would be taken away, or... well, screw her. Carza would down this whole damn thing even if it made her throw up, just to prove that she wasn't going to keel over and act like a whipped dog. Hull hadn't done that, and neither would she. She couldn't fight or run, so this was... in a way, her only form of resistance.

She downed it. In one go.

Almost threw up at the taste, which was... sour. It was like the dregs of a wine bottle, gritty and pungent, left an almost almond-like taste her tongue, and it was... Founder, it was sour... and something in it, a sharp, almost acrid lingering feeling that...

Oh dear.

It was alcoholic.

She hiccuped, and the girl laughed. Not cruelly, just... lightly. Oh dear. She was feeling... quite nice now, actually. Felt like her stomach was warming up, like... like everything was clicking back into place. Emotions were dulled, panic included. Had they drugged her for experiments? For probing the human captive, poking her, prodding her, making her fight something huge and... and she was feeling rather sleepy. Drugged. Had to be. Alcohol was a drug, she was... fairly sure. Some of the weight in her stomach seemed to relax, just a little. Alcohol stopped her coming to conclusions, alcohol stopped her from going from thought to thought to thought to Hull. All it brought was warmth, freedom from paranoia, freedom from neurosis, freedom from... from loneliness. The knowledge that somewhere in the mountains, her first friend was burning to ash. Had already burned to ash. Would always be burning, in her mind. The last sensations he'd left to her... a cold cheek to stroke. A smell of soot in her nose. An ache in her stomach. And... and lips.

First friend. First kiss. Probably her last.

She fell back on the cot, all her weariness catching up. Sadness was still flavouring her thoughts like salt, more so now the panic had faded... the girl draped a blanket over her, taking the dinner things back. No idea what time of day it was, how close they were to the mountains. But she murmured something. Something that stuck with Carza as she slipped back into the darkness of slumber... last time, weariness had stopped her from dreaming. Now, alcohol did. It helped ease the way into the gulfs of slumber, and made her too stupid to even think about dreaming. But the murmur... the murmur stuck with her. What she understood, at least.

"...smells..."

The only thing she could catch from her murmur. The one word. Smells.

And she remembered marking herself with that creature's scent.

Had that saved her life?

* * *

Her next waking was nastier. Her mind was clearer, which reduced confusion... and left behind clarity. Which was significantly worse than bleariness - at least bleariness could become something good. Caustic reality was always going to be caustic, unless she indulged in enough delusion or enough alcohol. Ideally both, the latter leading her to the former. And as she feared... she woke up with Hull's name on her lips. No memory of the dream, just the sense of arms wrapping around her, lifting her up, spinning her around while the two celebrated... something. Not the funding, the scene was different... maybe it was just an amorphous dreaming void, maybe it was something invented. Maybe she was being twirled in the hall of anticipations, before the great metal door leading to the place where her tattoo was embedded. Or maybe... she had a brief, mad image of herself wearing one of the satin gowns which the secretaries were allowed to wear when they got married, her lips stained blue, as per tradition, with the juice of a certain flower...

Madness. Never happened. Never would happen. Given up on childish thoughts like that a long time ago, when she realised that a safe life was, by sheer coincidence, a celibate one.

The heat of a kiss on her lips. Another invention. Hull's lips had been cold as ice.

She woke with his name at the back of her throat. Sighing it. Wistful.

Pain was pulsing slowly through her limbs... and she saw the girl standing overhead once more, her dress a little different... come to think of it, it was more of a coat. And another one of the things was standing across from her, glass skin, wiry hair, thick woollen dress/coat. Older, still female... mother? Aunt? Older sister? Hard to gauge age on those faces... Carza groaned as a sharp stab flowed up her arm... and the older woman pursed her pseudo-crystal lips, leaning closer, examining the bandages... Carza was paralysed. Watched with wide eyes as she slowly unwound them. She felt... felt something... something pulsing, something wrong, something cold, something was very, very, very, very wrong... the bandages around her hand were pulled away. She saw pale, puckered flesh which hadn't seen the sun in... days? Maybe? Mottled areas, flecks were skin and flesh had come away. Oh. Oh. Frostbite.

She had frostbite.

Skin dying as the blood retreated inwards, as the body was forced to make the hard choice between saving the internals or the externals - withdraw blood and heat from the latter, preserve the former at all costs, but in the process let things begin to die.

And she could see the bloody patches where that hard choice had been made, and now she had to live with the consequences.

The bandages continued...

And came away completely.

She saw flesh. Purpled. Mottled. Pale. Struggling to come back to life.

...and...

And three fingers and a thumb.

Her ring finger was gone. Cracked off at the stump, like a broken twig. A poultice was bound over it, and the older woman was examining it, tsk-ing. Carza's breathing was increasing, and the girl was shooting her a series of increasingly nervous looks. She'd lost a finger. She'd lost her finger. Given it to the mountain. Never lost one before. Only had one ring finger left. Maybe none, the other hand was still swaddled... the older woman ignored her, and murmured something too softly for Carza to hear. Examining other areas. The other hand... chunks of flesh gone, as per standard, and... and no pinkie. Two fingers down. And toes... she didn't dare to look, but she could feel the cool air rushing over more blackened areas, and... and three bare stumps. Left big toe, and the one adjacent. Right little toe. She was still alive, yes, she was still able to walk, yes, but...

She couldn't grow those back.

It was a moronic thought, and if Hull had heard it he'd have burst out laughing, clapped her on the back, and said something perfect to defuse her tension and help her begin to unwind. Even just by attracting spite to himself, spite he'd bear willingly. She missed him. More than could be adequately expressed in words. The hollowness that came from thinking of him was enough to almost drown out the pain from the wounds being anointed with some kind of ointment, something that burned... and then bandages. A little thinner, she had more motion... but she could feel other places all over her body where frostbite had set in, and patches of skin had simply... shed. Abandoned to the outer dark. She'd left her heart in those mountains, and now she'd left two fingers, three toes, and enough skin to wrap a dinner's worth of dumplings... Founder, that was a weird thought. Damn freakish. Her pack. Her pack. Where was her pack? Oh, no, no, if they'd burned it or destroyed anything or just let the damp seep in... if she had no paper, if she had no typewriter left, if she had nothing and no-one and all was lost... she'd have no anchors. And she'd have lost Lirana's biography, the last living remnant of her existence beyond a... a... cousin in Mahar Jovan. Couldn't forgive herself for that. The older woman finished bandaging her up, and Carza managed to croak past chapped lips. So what if they were her captors, she was rotting from frostbite and she needed to bloody well know.

She croaked out in her best version of Tralkic. Accent was likely all wrong, she'd learned it from someone who'd learned it from books. But the meaning, the meaning... grammar didn't damn well matter for single items of vocabulary.

"Pack…"

The girl squeaked, and jumped backwards. The older woman stared at her with wide eyes. Carza tried again.

"Pack... uh, backpack, suitcase, bag..."

Some of her words were met with confusion, but most... the older woman spoke quickly, and something of the interrogator entered her tone. What? What did she...

"Slow. Please."

Still clumsy, but it was the best she could do. Tralkic could only partially describe the language the two captors were speaking, it had drifted over the intervening years, and had been added to by other forms of speech. It was a language that they drawled out easily, a flowing river of sounds and glottal slips, something rasping, but always rapid. The older woman combed her hands through her dark grey hair, same shade as steel wool, and about as wiry. Took a deep breath. And spoke much, much slower. About half of it was comprehensible. The rest was disjointed, faintly recognisable things that refused to resolve... but sprinkled in the mass was a pearl or two, a word that was just as she remembered it from her lessons with Hull.

"Name... place of birth/origin (literally: womb-spring)..."

"Carza vo Anka."

She pointed at herself.

"ALD IOM."

She pointed elsewhere. Confused blinks. They didn't know about the queen of cities. Of course they didn't, anyone who tried to get here was killed by the heat of the forest, the madmen in it, the cold of the mountains, or the different, unrelated set of madmen there. Madmen, madmen everywhere, where were the sane ones... even Krodaw had a depressed governor and a daughter addicted to injecting cocaine, where were the normal ones. The two women chattered quickly, ignoring her for a moment... the pain from her body was constant, but it lacked some sharpness - days had passed, she could guess. Enough for the first layers to be repaired... but the stumps would ache for a long, long time. No wonder she'd missed losing her fingers and toes, she could feel crackling fields where they'd once been. Easy to imagine them remaining. As the two talked, she glanced around, feeling a little lucidity return. The tent was...

It was nice.

...was she... was she not a captive?

No bonds, no guards, the tent flaps weren't exactly lockable... and she could see a few elegant wooden chests scattered on the carpets, a pit where a constant flame endured, smoke flowing up a hole in the roof and into the stars. Rich walls, decorated with long, thin lines - everything angular, smooth... like the walls of an ancient temple. Golden thread, too... springing out in great rays, everything streamlined, simplistic, symmetrical. The cloth backing was dark, highlighting the shimmering gold... it was hypnotic, really. And delicate... and all for a tent? Was she not a captive? Was she an... an invalid, being cared for by kindly strangers? The light of the fire gleamed off their false-crystal skin, and she remembered the things in the mountains... they were similar, but for every similarity, there was a great mound of differences. Too few limbs, too few eyes, no tusks, and... speaking reasonably. No hunting parties. No scents. The scent, really, was what helped. Those creatures had been so... so obsessed with that scent, planting it all over the mountains, everywhere but that statue, dripping the smell of every spice in the world from their hand-glands. These two... she saw their palms. No dark holes. Nothing that could produce the scent.

Unless this was a very elaborate joke...

She... might have overreacted earlier.

A flush of embarrassment crept over her whether she liked her or not. They'd helped her. And she'd tried to run away, thought such venomous things... she remembered that Female in the mountains, and a small pulse of terror ran through her. Had... she been help- no. No, not thinking about that, not for a singular second. But these two were being... very decent. Fed her. Watered her. Hadn't hurt her one little bit. Bandaged her up, gave her a cot, set her up in a fairly nice tent... closest she'd had to sleeping in a nice environment for so very, very long... just a few weeks, but it felt like years. Like a hundred thousand days.

She lay back, and stared up at the ceiling - a series of wooden struts. Fascinating, so... it was rigid, not just the little sagging lean-tos she was accustomed to seeing in pulp novels... this was complex, and well-executed. Tidy, too. She didn't detect a hint of damp or rot, or any of the things she'd expect. A surge of realisation.

She'd met the nomads.

The nomads who'd... well, clearly displaced the last bunch.

A tiny smile crossed her face, to the curiosity of the younger girl standing above, bickering about something with her... mother? They seemed familiar, mother was likely. The Court of Horn, the Yasa... their nomadic predecessors were, quite possibly, gone. And this group remained. She had, before her, a whole people, a whole new species... and two instincts wedded together into a frighteningly volatile and potent engine. First, her academic instinct. The desire to investigate, to probe... the sacred language called it 'QUZ AXAXAXA UQLON', the quivering of the brain which posited 'and...?' when confronted with a problem. With anything. With any assertion of any sort or stripe. She could feel it now, and... it felt good. Felt almost comforting. And the other, the other... the instinct to make Hull's name respected. To do all she could. To get back home, glorified and elevated, to properly honour her fallen friend. To make sure that he was honoured in every way she could muster, that the expedition wasn't remembered as a disgrace from which no success emerged. She had to succeed, to make his death worth a damn, to make the others worth a damn.

She was the sole survivor of the expedition.

And she had a damn job to do. And nuts to the consequences.

She struggled to speak in her best Tralkic. Not just using scattered vocabulary, forming sentences, whole damn ideas... each word reminded her of Hull teaching her. Almost felt like he was beside her now, holding her hand (depleted of a finger), and grinning in his good-natured, boyish way. Never really grown up. Never would.

"I'm very sorry to bother you. I understand my language is poor. I would like to learn. I am an…"

She struggled. 'Anthropologist' might not translate well. The two women were looking at her with wide eyes.

"I am a scholar."

Confused blinks.

Carza mimed opening a book, writing in it... slow nods of understanding.

"Thank you for helping me."

Very slow nods. And the younger one hummed affirmatively. Surprised at her language skills. Well, they couldn't just hum, she needed to learn... she was a linguist, she specialised in this sort of thing. If she remained still, she'd think of Hull, she'd think of everything she couldn't think of if she wanted to keep functioning. So she had to work. She needed her pack. The younger one gestured to a corner of the tent, where... yes. Her pack. Her clothes, too, folded up neatly and placed in a pile. Carza struggled to get out of the coat, gritting her teeth... the older one shoved her back down with a curt few words - something to do with idiots. Couldn't possibly be talking about her, she had certificates to commemorate her intelligence. Not that she'd... well, brought them, and they weren't in a language these people would understand. Carza protested.

"No, I need to check, I need to-"

The older woman spoke firmly.

"Tired. Stop."

"...I need to work, please-"

"Shush. Sleep. You. Are. Hurt."

Oh, now they could...

"Please, I can't let my friend down, he died getting me here, and if I can't work then I did this all for nothing, please..."

Firm hands held her down, and the younger one was staring wide-eyed as Carza weakly struggled, desperately trying. Didn't they understand, she needed to work, needed to strike while the iron was hot, slam her notes down as quickly as possible before they fled her skull. Didn't they understand? Hull was gone, Lirana was gone, Egg, Cam, Anthan, all of them gone, and she remained. She remained, despite being the least competent, the least useful, the one that could've been lost without a damn thing changing. If she had died, the world would have continued, matters would've proceeded fine. Hull appreciated art and poetry, all she could do was... was type and think about culture. Any monkey with a brain could think about culture, culture was easy. The others could've had wonderful adventures out here, and all she could do was type. And if she couldn't type, then she was useless and worthless and might as well have died out there in the steppe.

Her voice rose to a scream.

"Give me my typewriter, I need to type!"

The younger one was moving for her pack, rummaging for something... Carza thrashed, she needed to work. She was awake, and she had enough fingers to type. Nothing else mattered, nothing else. Hull's cold lips were pressed on her own, his cheek was a piece of smooth ice, and he needed to be vindicated. His death needed justification, because without it, her life had no justification. She owed him this! She owed him the world.

A hat was placed before her, and the younger one smiled optimistically.

It was Hull's hat.

Her lip quivered.

She took a few deep breaths, trying to settle down... and mimed typing. Confusion on all sides.

"Box! Black box. Latch. Machine."

Confused still, but trying. The hat... she ran it in her hands over and over and over. Shaped for his head. Too large for her. It was... it was his. It was one of the few things she had from him. Wanted to cry, forced it all down. She had eight digits remaining, that was enough to type. Even if she was feeling awful pain right now, typing was all she had. The younger girl came over with... yes. Carza placed the hat down reverently on a nearby table, brushing some loose dust from its surface. And she opened the box. Typewriter... intact. The two women stared at it in mixed curiosity and suspicion. Thought she was going to blow them all up.

Carza loaded her paper. Brushed shivering fingers over the flawless chassis... no, not flawless. Scarred here and there from a very bumpy journey. Keys were functional... the first click made the younger one squeak again, but then she came closer, staring fixedly. Carza looked at the blank void of a page, the space which could be filled by anything. She had... had it. She could type. She needed to type, and... and what was... language, she could... the hat was rough against her fingers, turned rough by bad weather and bad maintenance, and...

She typed.

I miss you, Hull. I wish I could've said more when you were alive. You were the first person I really considered a close, adult friend who wasn't an immediate family member, and I'm sorry I was so childish about it all, I'm sorry I kept misinterpreting things. You deserved better than that. I don't know if you reciprocated anything. By the end, you were half of me. Without you, I feel half-made. This place is strange. They speak a variant of Tralkic, but muddled by time and admixture. You'd love it. Their tent is gloriously strange, and the people here have glass skin. Can you imagine? A new species. A new culture. One that takes care of lost scholars half-dead in the grass of the steppe. Civilised, in short. You deserved better than what you got. You deserved to be here, and I should be up there burning to ash for the sky to swallow. Not you. Give my best to Lirana and Egg and Cam and Anthan, and the girl who died in front of us. To the entire patrol, if you can find them. I will perform the rites soon, when my fingers work.

Yours,

Carza vo Anka

Unknown position on the steppe. Unknown date.

She hesitated.

I love you.

Her fingers burned. Her flesh was blackened in some areas by the loving kisses of frostbite. Two fingers and three toes surrendered to the mountain as their just payment for her survival. No, not just, she'd lost Hull, that was enough to pay for a world. Her eyes sagged... and she barely managed to close up the typewriting case again before weakness overcame her... the younger one took it reverently, licking her lips very slightly... they couldn't read it. They couldn't read it. She slumped backwards into the cot. Surrounded by strangeness.

She'd made it.

She had made it.

No-one else did, but...

But she had work to do.