Chapter Seventeen

A day had been lost, to Carza's chagrin. The schedule was still on, but she felt like she'd released her grip for just a moment too long, and now... well, any mountain climber could tell you that you could have a solid grip ninety-nine percent of the time, and lose your grip one percent of the time, and all those previous successes would mean nothing when you were splattered across the mountainside like a thin red lichen. Well, she assumed. Never talked to a mountain climber. Read a book about them, once. It was alright, but... saucy. Which had honestly ruined the whole experience for her, why would she read a book about saucy mountain climbers when she could read about anything else? The mountain climbing was the best bit, and then the main character and his improbably proportioned partner had to huddle for warmth in an ice cave, etcetera etcetera, and she felt... honestly, just bored. Oh, goodness, wonderful, yes, why would she want to behold the daring feats of derring-do which only a few people in history would ever embark on, when she could instead read about something that literally every generation before her had done, statistically speaking. Just felt... prosaic. Anyway.

She'd lost her grip for a moment.

And now she was struggling to regain it. And based on her random thoughts about saucy novels, she was having... mixed results. Egg, Lirana, and Anthan had spent her missing day gathering equipment, and steering very, very clear of any bars and cat-houses - as per her instructions. Another drunken brawl would leave their party woefully undermanned at worst, or simply compromised through injury... anyway. Marle had come through with a guide, and Carza had spent the day frantically studying... well, anything. Language, mostly. The civisprach of Mahar Jovan - and then she'd insisted that Marle find her an accomplished guide who could actually speak that to some degree of competency. She was... having a hard time learning the grammar and vocabulary. Still needed a sturdy reference book to communicate properly, but at least she had reached the point where she could divide any spoken sentence into 'the bits I understand' and 'the bits I don't, as opposed to a vague stew of foreign noises which made literally no sense. The guide had been obtained, and was currently being vetted by the governor's men. Fair enough - someone who knew the land outside the city could very well be allied to the Sleepless, and the last thing they wanted was a traitor in their midst when they were vulnerable. Hadn't met him yet, but she... mostly trusted Marle's judgement. She'd been here for a while. Even if she drank too much and had gone a little bit mad.

Equipment had been purchased as per the guide's requests. High-quality compacted food. Sturdy clothes for everyone. Medicine for any of the nasty diseases out there. A reliable supply of gas mask filters. And for the mountain... things were difficult there. All Marle had said on the topic was that there were two options, which she'd relayed around another breakfast of lukewarm boiled eggs coated in some kind of thick, dark sauce. Honestly, Carza didn't even mind, this was her average meal as a student. And a scholar. And... generally.

"The guide's a man named... well, his real name is a proper Krodaw name, and he doesn't like people mispronouncing it, so he's insisting on being called Shan. Easier. Shan's reliable, he ran a whole bunch of jobs for merchants a while back, trying to open trade routes out west to some of the wilder bits of country. Sleepless have had him on lockdown in Krodaw ever since they got aggressive, and he's been relying on the profits from the good days to outlast the bad. Standard deal, really. Everyone's stuck up in bars, just trying to drink until the evacuation order come through and the trains stop checking you for a ticket. That, or they're just trying to get their rocks off before the Sleepless come in and make everyone much, much poorer. Anyway. Shan says that the mountain passes are usually impossible to go through in winter. Should still be open for him, but he wants pay for any amount of time he spends stuck on the other side."

Carza grimaced, and glanced at Hull. The pay they were sending to Cam's family was already eating a little... no, no, it was the right thing to do. And they were buying less equipment, that much was certain. They shared a nod. And Marle swigged at her bottle again - the glasses were piled up high in the sink, no-one bothering to wash them, and now Marle drank straight from unlabelled bottles that no-one else dared to touch, let along allow into their digestive systems.

"Anyway. He says that if the journey gets delayed, if he thinks things are too dangerous, he knows some small places near the pass where people can get nice and drunk. He's not been through the pass before, not exactly, but he thinks it should be manageable."

Carza stared.

"He's... never been through?"

"Well, no. Why would he have gone through? This is uncharted territory."

"Is he at least used to working with mountain passes?"

"Oh, definitely. Mountainous environments, certainly. He can deal with snow, he can deal with ice, he can deal with inclement weather conditions of all stripes. Seasoned guide. You'll do just fine with him."

"Have you used him before?"

"No. But all my sources say he's just dandy."

Carza was feeling increasingly nervous, and it must've showed on her face because Marle sighed deeply and with the exasperation of the untrusted-yet-trustworthy.

"Look, either you take Shan, or you run around looking for a guide who speaks the language, and isn't working with the Sleepless, and hasn't already caught a train to literally anywhere that isn't Krodaw. He's good. And if he can't get you through that pass - you've got a handful of villages scattered around the mountains anyway, and they'll be happy to provide you with a whole army of buck-toothed peasants who should be able to take you through the pass."

Carza hummed uncertainly, and Hull interjected, speaking around a mouthful of boiled egg that he was struggling to get down.

"Why haven't people explored this pass before, exactly?"

Marle shrugged... then jumped away from the table, returning a second later with a sheet of paper and a pencil. The sound of scribbling filled the air, and all three scholars hunched over to see what Marle was drawing. First, an image of a single large circle, surrounded by a grey haze. Then, a series of smaller circles surrounded by haze... then a number of large circles, and finally, a medium between all three extremes - large circles with orbits of smaller circles. Astronomical? No, wait, she studied Subterranean Ichoric Geology, might be related. Carza was silent as Marle explained in her lilting, half-drunken way, her eyes reigniting with some spark of what had surely existed back home, before she came out here, to the heat and madness and thump-thump-thump of artillery fire. At this point, Carza didn't even notice it. It was comforting - when it was silent, she wondered why. She wondered if the batteries had been taken out. If the Sleepless were coming. Or if the reserves had simply run dry... and it was time for the last gasp before the end. If a tide of flesh had outpaced the tide of metal.

"Right. So. Foreigners call this 'foundation stone'. It's resistant to contamination. Set under every major city. The stone erodes to form dust, which can spread out to prevent contamination from seeping up through the earth and destroying settlements. Mutants hate the stuff, there's no nutrients for them in it. Different regions have different arrangements and concentrations."

She pointed to the large circle.

"ALD IOM has the single largest deposit in the known world... but it's very concentrated. Just one huge mass. No satellite masses, really."

She pointed to the median, the circles surrounded by smaller circles.

"That's how it is in Fidelizh, Mahar Jovan... most of the states out east. A central mass on which their capitals usually rest, and satellite, temporary masses on which towns rest, or small coloniae. These satellite masses rise and fall, sometimes a colonia barely exists for a generation before its protection goes down and contamination rises up."

An idle gesture to the arrangement of large circles.

"Then you have the northern states, mostly depopulated now, which used to have a series of very big masses with minimal satellites - a medium between us and the east. ALD IOM at one end of a continuum, the eastern states on the other end, the north in the middle. No idea what it's like now."

And finally, the scattered smaller circles.

"This part of the world, the western states, is just small masses, with minimal exceptions. Travel is hard, because you don't have the broad spheres of influence out east, or the guaranteed safe harbours up north. Hard to settle. Hard to expand. Warlords do well here, because they can easily dig in like ticks, and become very, very hard to remove. Meaning, no empires, no huge states as a rule. Just... small, petty princedoms, really. Before we started setting up train networks, most trade was small-scale, between these little princedoms in a certain region. Trade between regions was rare. Trade across the whole damn west? Never. There are places out there where... to be honest, people can just be isolated. For generations."

She grinned.

"You hear stories about the stranger ones. Where they get all bottled up. Where the roads erode away, and they've got nothing but each other. Some of the stories are jokes - 'hear about those freaks up in the Prince's Copse? Been isolated for so long, all of them have three nipples and twelve fingers, that's what happens when you've got nothing but family, eh?'. Stock jokes, really. Some are... different. Places which just vanish, no-one knows why. Places where the language has been isolated for so long that no-one can understand them. Places where they eat the bodies of the dead to stop the mutants taking them away, where they form religions that make no sense to anyone else, where they live like they did a thousand years ago... place like this, you can travel through time if you walk enough. Here, it's like the modern day. Somewhere else, a century ago. Somewhere else, a millennium."

Carza didn't know what she felt about that logic. History, in her experience, wasn't a smooth progression along a linear line, it was one of the things that her colleagues had argued very strongly about. Cultural development wasn't dependent on political, economic, or technological development. Once, they'd happily talked about primitive cultures. Then it became apparent that by comparison to the rest of the world, ALD IOM was a fairly primitive place. And all of a sudden logic was invented that justified them not being primitive, they were simply developing in different ways at different times, in some ways their high culture exceeded the outside world, and you could hardly reduce culture down to a people's ability to... to use typewriters or cameras, and... so on and so forth. Lots of justifications. But the point stuck. Technological inferiority might be common out there, but culturally, things might be wonderfully sophisticated.

Not that Carza wanted to find out. She wasn't spending any longer in this sweltering hell than she needed to.

But the point remained... this was a strange country. Trains had gotten her this far, but any of the rails leading further west had long-since been taken apart by the Sleepless, or simply abandoned due to having no reason to run. So, they'd need to ride. A few weeks on the road, constant riding, followed by the mountain pass. This was accounting for the problems in terrain, the necessity for stopping to rest... they were never going to travel at the hottest period of the day. Noon would just exhaust the horses and themselves, drain their good water, and the higher respiration would chew through their gas mask filters. So, they'd travel in the morning, the evening... being with a patrol should speed things along, at least. They always had backup horses and mules, always had plenty of supplies to borrow. But once the patrol was gone, they'd be alone in the barren wilderness, punctuated by petty princedoms no man from ALD IOM had ever looked upon. Carza still felt twists of unease in her stomach. And Cam's body kept surfacing in her mind.

She hadn't left the mission.

Justified it by saying that she had work, and no reason to leave.

But she was frightened of Krodaw. Frightened of the Sleepless. Of the Court of Ivory, which might be sending agents out to cut them down. And it was a miniature war the Courts were fighting, immense to the participants and tiny to any outside observers. The governor had treated it with absent-minded dismissiveness. And maybe he had a point... maybe she was just fighting for a tiny patch of land that no-one particularly cared about, competing to scrape a few pennies out of this mountain pass in a desperate attempt to keep their city relevant. Maybe to stop them being invaded, having another Court added to the eight - and one more powerful than any other, funded by states so vast that ALD IOM barely warranted a scrap of notice. That was something. Krodaw made her feel small. A whole war was being fought here, and her war seemed infinitesimally petty by comparison. And then... then the kitchen was filled with guns. And the panic only rose.

Rifles, mostly. Flamethrowers were for military use only, and the fuel was too heavy to carry anyhow. She clutched her pistol as a box of the ugly things were brought in, along with quite a bit of ammunition. The hires were playing things safe. She just hoped the budget would hold out - they couldn't make any withdrawals, all they had was what they'd brought, and she'd been fortunate to have nothing stolen yet.

Egg was holding up. But he'd... changed. Not in the sense that he'd become a more hard-bitten, grim man... more that he had adjusted his behaviours. And Carza got the feeling that he'd changed his god, and was now emulating something else. He remained bald and tall and thin, but now he wore a strip of green cloth around his waist, wore boots with sharply pointed tips, mopped his face with a delicately embroidered handkerchief, and flipped a coin easily between his fingers when not striding around in search of more equipment. More tools. More anything that might ensure their survival. Carza wanted to ask what god he was, and what it meant. Was it an act of mourning? Or was this simply a case of wanting to switch to something more auspicious? She genuinely wasn't sure, and... didn't want to ask. Because how did she ask someone whose friend had died because she'd brought him here for an expedition that was entirely selfish in terms of motivation. She just wanted to have a quiet office in the Court of Ivory where the world could leave her alone. And someone had died in pursuit of that dream.

Anthan was... rugged. He just kept on working. She honestly had very little read on him, he was simply competent. Always a little detached from the world around him, but in a way that made him seem world-weary rather than aloof. He'd seen enough, and now very little affected him. Again, someone she didn't want to interrogate. Even as her suspicions grew. Hull had said nothing, but... maybe. Maybe the Court of Salt had already placed infiltrators. Anthan had been awfully quiet... maybe he was in their pocket, and would sell them out for the sake of a quick payday. If the Court of Salt was working with the Sleepless, he could just draw an ambush, then be politely escorted back to his employers and sent back home with a bag of money to use as he pleased. His loyalty had already been bought, was it so remarkable to think that the Court of Salt could just... pay him more, and buy his loyalty that way? He was already willing to sell his safety in exchange for money, after all... but he kept working, and Carza didn't confront him. She wasn't a spy, she didn't know how to be a spy, and maybe making her suspicions known to the hires would just drive everyone in a frenzy of paranoia that would lead to the entire expedition failing and... and...

She smoked a lot over the next few days.

Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

A lot.

She and Hull talked often in Tralkic, in-between honing their skills at Mahar Jovan's language. Rarely did they talk of espionage and the potential danger from the Court of Salt. They both had pistols, they were both untested scholars, the best they could do was keep each other's back covered and try to stay on their toes. And be ready to run, or simply to surrender themselves as the case may be.

Lirana was a surprise.

She stopped chewing coca. Instead, she drank. She drank a lot, always with the same faintly hollow expression in her eyes. She'd bludgeoned a man to death after he stabbed one of her colleagues, but Carza didn't know how close the two were, or how accustomed Lirana was to violence. The odd woman, who'd been so vulgar earlier, just... sat around in the kitchen, drank, and got up when commanded to do some work. That was all. Nothing besides remained. An idle thought struck Carza one day as she pottered through the small kitchen in search of a clean glass, while Lirana drank in silence. Egg, Cam, and Anthan... they were all soldiers. At some point, at least. Had Lirana ever mentioned being one? How worldly was she, really? And Carza, quietly, spoke. She spoke in Mahar Jovan's language, and the sound of her native tongue made Lirana sit up suddenly, setting the bottle down with a hefty clunk and a substantial slosh. Her slightly watery eyes fixed on Carza with impressive ferocity. Much easier to talk to without coca in her mouth, that was for sure.

"...are you alright?"

Lirana grunted.

"Fine. Alive. You need me for anything?"

"No. I was just... curious. You killed a man."

"That I did."

She took a swig.

"That I did. Nothing wrong with that, is there? Better than any more of us dying."

"I... suppose so. Yes. Will you be alright for the expedition?"

"I'll endure. Good to get out into the wild."

Carza hesitated... then sat down at the table sharply, plucked the bottle away, and poured herself a tiny thimbleful of alcohol. Hated this stuff, tasted rancid, but... companionship was important. The look in Lirana's eyes, it... it made Carza think. Either she was an impeccable actor, or killing that man had genuinely affected her. And if it had, then maybe she wasn't a traitor. How could a traitor sell them out if they broke down after killing someone in an entirely justified scenario? How could someone who resorted to drink after preventing a madman from killing more people hand them over to the Sleepless for the sake of profit? And maybe... maybe Carza was remembering Marana. Marana, with the scars running up her right arm, with her long needle filled with cocaine. The shudders of pleasure that ran through her once the plunger depressed and that hyper-concentrated poison ripped through her system like a lightning bolt through a dead tree. Maybe she thought that Lirana, by comparison, seemed... just a little less odd.

Maybe.

Who could say?

She sipped her alcohol, wrinkling her nose at the taste, and Lirana laughed coarsely and unintentionally. Normally that would make Carza irritable, but... well, she allowed it. Lirana had killed a man, she was allowed to laugh at a silly expression or two. Even if that expression belonged to Carza.

"Why did you leave Mahar Jovan?"

Lirana froze for a second, shrugged, poured herself a glass, and spoke quietly in-between her occasional gulps. Carza sipped, and Lirana gulped. There was something telling in that.

"Left because I wanted to. See the world and all that. Nothing for me back home... well, that's a lie, there's a lot."

She was obviously drunk. Kept stuttering.

"There's a lot back there for me. Friends, family... a hell of a lot of things. Everything I know, honestly. But there's also... nothing. You know? No jobs."

"Really?"

"None that pay good, and none that I can take. I can read, I can write. I could be a typist. I could be a bricklayer. I could do a lot. But... well, you know that saying that money isn't everything?"

"Hm."

"Yeah, ask someone if they still believe that when the bills get more expensive, when rent is due, and when all the grocers want you to pay more for less because the farms are still struggling to produce enough, and states are squabbling again which means interruptions... you know, there's a... a... country, south of Mahar Jovan. Scoria. Awful place. But they produce enough food to satisfy anyone. But then they get pissy about something, have a skirmish with Fidelizh, suddenly all the trade routes are locked up. We're not even involved in that, but our food is now more expensive."

Another gulp.

"Money matters. Money matters. So, I come out here, I want money. Retirement, maybe. A big house in some nice little colonia, place where I can have a stable of manservants and a cellar of wine. You know, all the things a lady needs in her life. I like Mahar Jovan, but life there is easier to live when you have a lot of money in your pocket-book, and a big house that you're not renting. Harder and harder to make money, harder and harder to get a house. So, need to leave to go and get the money so I can get the house, and the servants, and the wine, and everything. A little place all for me."

A spark of kinship. Odd kinship. But kinship nonetheless. Both of them wanted quiet lives where they could be left alone to do... something. Hm.

"What else? Just wine and men?"

She shivered at the thought. Vulgar. Lirana shrugged.

"Whatever I want. Hobbies are a waste of time when you have no money... I figure I'll discover some. I like cards. I can... do those."

"...but you have a goal?"

"Yeah. To be rich."

"And then?"

"To drink. To gamble. To be the worthless layabout that I was born to be. Some people are born with a silver spoon in their mouth, I'm not so lucky, I need to make my silver spoon. And if I'm making it, then I'm making a big one, really big, filled with wine and assorted substances. And playing cards. And then I'm sucking on that thing like it's an icicle in the desert."

She nodded wisely. There was... it was odd. Like looking into a warped mirror. There were familiar features, but bent out of proportion and distorted to the point of absurdity. They both wanted quiet lives, but Carza had a definite goal. Right? She wanted to sit down in an office with her typewriter and her tobacco, and to... write things. Hm. Well, there was some goal there, something fairly specific, in a fairly reasonable sense of the word. She was going to write stuff. She was going to practice historical anthropology in a way that left her basically immune to the goings-on of the outside world, because the outside world was a harsh place full of strangeness, and the best solution was to find a golden void to immerse oneself in to... to... hm. Maybe she needed to think more concretely. But there was a definite similarity. Even if Lirana was more debauched, there was still a solid hint of relatability there. Maybe. Hm. One thing was for sure, Lirana was a very different person once her own language was in play. She spoke more freely, used more colloquialisms, sounded like... stilted and firm, in a way. The nodding continued, and finally broke.

"World is a fuck, gotta fuck harder to stay afloat, y'know?"

Carza blinked. Wanted to chide her for vulgarity. Lirana seemed to realise what she'd said, and slapped her forehead.

"Shit, fuck, I'm sorry - fuck, I'm sorry, shit, fuck, shit, sorry, sorry, sorry, forgot you can speak my language, sorry, thought I was being clever."

Carza bit her own tongue.. and a second later, waved it all off.

"It's fine. I just dislike vulgarity."

Lirana sniggered.

"Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know, I know. How old are you?"

Deception.

"Twenty-two."

"Liar. You are eight. You are seven. You are... eleven at most. You are so thin."

Her vocabulary and sight appeared to have been compromised.

"Well. I'm glad to see that you're... in good spirits."

"Hah! Spirits! Yes! I have spirits. I have a bottle of spirits, and it is... it is low, now. I have low spirits. Can I have high spirits soon?"

"Maybe. I wanted to make sure you were doing well after... the incident."

Lirana paused. She blinked. A few times. A few times more. Her hands shook... and before Carza could do anything, Lirana had collapsed to the table, and was weeping huge, messy tears. Splattering downwards into the wood, mingling with the warm moisture that accumulated on every damn surface in this damn city. Her hair was matted with sweat, her skin was unevenly tanned, and her eyes were frothing. Carza wanted to back off. This was viscerally uncomfortable. Hated seeing people cry, it was the same experience as being around a wild animal - not a common experience for her, but it had happened once or twice. The feeling of being around something which now operated under inscrutable laws. Normally, this kind of outburst would be regulated and kept private. And now that it wasn't... what other rules could be broken? Lirana had gone from a person to an unfathomably strange engine which kept on producing tears over and over and over. Carza had literally no idea what to do. Did she... did she pat her on the back? Maybe? Offer her alcohol? She picked up the bottle with one hand, and reached out to pat Lirana with the other. Cover all bets. That felt logical.

Or she could just go and grab Hull, tell him to please help her with this because she was very, very lost.

Her hand made contact before she could reconsider.

And Lirana immediately grabbed it and dragged her in with a squeak of alarm. Oh no. Oh no. Why had she done this? Why had she allowed for her personal space to be invaded? Lirana kept sobbing, even as she drew Carza into her shoulder and clutched her tightly enough for Carza to feel like her spine was about to break. Lirana's voice was thick, choked with sobs, and interrupted by frequent ungainly hiccups. Any thoughts about her feigning guilt fled from Carza's mind. She sounded distraught.

"I didn't mean to kill him, I promise, I didn't, I just... I just wanted to get him away from Cam, and... and he kept coming, I didn't... didn't even know what he was saying, he just kept... kept attacking, and I was afraid he'd get me next, and I just... I just hit him, and hit him, and hit him until he stopped coming, but by then he... was... he was..."

She fell silent.

"I didn't mean to kill him, please, just... just believe me."

Carza was terrified. No idea how to respond. She just kept patting Lirana's back automatically. Said nothing. What was there to say? Lirana seemed too drunk to really take anything in, and... and Carza was utterly clueless. Where was Hull?

"I... I didn't mean to..."

This time, the silence lasted. And Carza kept patting. She kept on patting Lirana's back until the woman seemed to calm down a bit. Her tears stopped, certainly. Slowly, ever-so-slowly, Lirana's breathing became quieter, her shakes became less violent, and the flow of tears ceased completely. Carza patted her and made odd noises, somewhere between genuine words and the sorts of senseless things she'd say to a mewling kitten. Founder, she was glad that she knew multiple languages, half of what she said was in Tralkic, just because she was uncertain that her words would have any effect, and was going to hedge her bets. Hard to take offence to something you didn't understand... was she asleep? She was... definitely snoring, that much was for sure. With very gentle motions, she set Lirana's head back on the table with a light thump, placed the bottle in the crook of her arm just in case she got thirsty, and... and... uh... was a blanket appropriate? Might kill her through overheating...

She patted her on the head.

"Uh."

Yes.

This worked.

She left very, very, very quickly, and immediately wrote a long letter to her aunt detailing how good the steak here was (true), and how the heat was awful but tolerable (mostly true), and how interesting the work had been (possibly true but hard to say) and how interesting the people were (lie by omission) and how charmingly odd the local customs were (complete and utter lie).

Because lying to her aunt about how well things were going was legitimately easier than trying to understand what the hell she should do about Lirana.

Just...

Just...

Uh.

* * *

The days flew by.

The work was done.

The governor sent a letter round informing her that Shan was cleared for duty, he was clean of any ties to the Sleepless, had no knowledge of their operations, and was unlikely to betray anyone or anything if he knew what was good for him. So, even if he was feeling sympathetic towards those particular individuals, he was unlikely to have the courage or stupidity necessary to try it.

Gear had been prepped. Coats, nets for mosquitoes, gas mask filters aplenty, and their currency had been converted into solid resources - gold, silver, anything that was light and usable. Apparently it was common practice for merchants out in the wilderness - thin golden bracelets worm around the arms and legs, concealed under clothing, all of them designed to be light and easily traded, while also being damn near impossible to pickpocket. Carza's thin arms had been weighed with a good few, and they rattled whenever she walked.

Lirana hadn't cried again. She'd been drinking a little less, though. Maybe the catharsis had done something, or maybe she was just focusing on the goal in front of her. Egg had slipped completely into his new role, and presumably his new god now watched over him/became him. Anthan had spent a full day customising the weapons he'd acquired. A pistol that he'd apparently spent hours tinkering with, slotting new components in, ensuring that everything was just how he liked it. A rifle that he'd adjusted until it was ready for the harsh conditions of the world beyond. He looked like a soldier now, all dressed up in form-concealing clothes with his weapons stowed and his gas mask hanging loosely around his neck. They were ready.

Marle saw them off with a pat on the shoulder and a drunken slur which sounded vaguely like a human voice, that was attempting to pronounce 'have a nice trip' without having any comprehension of how sounds ought to work.

So it sounded more like 'h'n'tp'

Which worked.

The governor saw them off from the city centre. A platoon of guards was to accompany them, dressed up in their finest uniforms. Meant to be thirty. They got about twenty-two, a combination of young locals who'd bet on the colony, and foreigners who'd been here for longer than they wanted and were eager to get back home. Mostly men, but she saw a couple of women, including three local women who stood in a small group and clutched their rifles with gloved hands. Their leader was a non-commissioned officer, promoted from the ranks after the original had his feet burrowed into a dozen times by small wooden stakes the Sleepless loved to plant. Injury was more effective than death. Injury demanded medical care, injury demanded a choice between wasting resources on someone who wasn't going to recover to their previous strength, or killing them, or simply sending them home (if they were likely to survive the trip). The last choice was ideal. But sometimes... sometimes the trains were late, the patient was weak, and the wounded spilled into the governor's palace where they were propped up on priceless couches and pumped full of painkillers. Their last officer had been wounded, infection had set in - the stakes were always coated in excrement - and as a result he was currently lying with both of his legs taken off up to the knees. Waiting for him to recover until they could send him back.

The replacement was a man, thin and wasted away by heat, wits flowing out along with any spare piece of fat clinging to his tall, rangy frame. There was no great ceremony. The governor, with his wife and Marana at his side (Marana's glazed-over eyes and vacant smile made it seem like she'd been indulging in cocaine this morning) had seen them off with a few curt salutes, as other guards looked around nervously. The governor seemed unaware or uncaring of the risk, and happily slapped Hull and Carza on their shoulders.

"Best of luck, old sports, best of luck. Hope you find what you're looking for."

And that was all.

Their war was so small that it barely warranted two sentences from the governor, and not a drop of pompous ceremony.

Maybe that was for the best.

Shan waited for them on a thin horse. He was... well, he was a local. Short black hair, terracotta-coloured skin, eyes made wary by years of constant danger, and long, ladylike gloves pulled almost up to his elbows. He stared cautiously at Carza. The first time they'd met, really. The guards were pulling up stakes, checking everything, making sure their horses were properly saddled - the Sleepless did this constantly, apparently. Bribe or threaten a washerwoman or groom to come and slice up the saddles, just to delay deployment. Even a few minutes could be enough to flee back into the forests, so they had no reason not to make life as inconvenient as possible for Krodaw. The soldiers were hard at work as Carza looked up at Shan, who refused to descend from his horse. He grunted, his voice oddly musical. His speech was slow and careful - he was ensuring that each word was the correct one, never allowing for misunderstanding.

"Mountain pass, then?"

Silent nods.

"Good. I'll take you to the mountains. Then, we will see. Follow my lead, do as I command, and you'll be fine. Interfere or make the going difficult, and I'll turn around and head for Krodaw. If you follow, you follow. If you stay, you stay. Understood?"

Hull tried to be game about the whole thing.

"Of course, very much understood."

Shan smiled slightly.

"You're both blushing virgins, hm? Bad with heat. Sweating like pigs. Don't worry, you'll get used to it out there."

Carza flushed with irritation. She wasn't some blushing maiden who was incapable of handling the wilds. And as she thought this, Lirana helped her up onto a horse, and saddled up in front of her. Because Carza didn't know how to ride. Nor did Hull. Shan, to his credit, didn't bark with laughter, he simply... smiled, and moved on to the front of the train of quietly cursing soldiers to make sure the officer was acquainted with his methods. Carza's flush remained. Lirana barked for her to grip tightly to her waist and not to let go. She was thin and weak, which was good - the horse could handle the two of them for longer. But she'd be expected to change horses regularly, as would Hull, to spread out the load evenly. The beast below her was large, dark, and hollowed out by heat. It snorted and stomped at the ground. No name for it, and she wasn't going to ask. There was something indescribably unnerving about the thing, which might've just been born from unfamiliarity. Those huge, chomping teeth that could sever a finger as easily as a carrot... those hooves which could crack her skull open... that head, unnaturally long and studded with two huge bulging eyes that seemed to reflect more intelligence than an animal ought to have.

Carza clung tight to Lirana, who froze for a second...

"You'll be fine, he's a good lad, this one. Name's... well, translated, it's Frothy. Say hello to him."

Carza looked into the huge eyes.

"...hello, Frothy."

Frothy snorted.

Horses were very alarming creatures. If it wanted to eat her, it could. What was she going to do, run? Fight back? Against this? She resolved to keep Lirana between her and Frothy at all times. The thing was scary.

As with the governor's goodbyes, there was only a single mark of change between 'preparing' and 'going'. No ceremony, not really. Just a symphony of murmurs up and down the line as soldiers managed to get their saddles working again, then grunts as they saddled up one by one in no particular order... and then they were off.

That was it.

No ceremony. No grandiose speeches.

One second, they were in Krodaw... and the next, they were on their way out.

Towards the mountains, which scraped the sky a great distance away.

Carza shivered.

No going back now. It was startling, just how... unreal it had all been until now. She glanced around nervously. How many agents of Salt were hanging around here, watching, planning, reporting? Paranoia kept churning in her gut, and beside it, an endless gnawing. The mountains. The goal was in sight. Just... get there, struggle through, manage for a few years, and then... then peace. Then her own bed, her own office, contentment and boredom and safety and all the things she liked. Hull would be by her side, the hires would be paid... and Cam's pointless death wouldn't be insulted. Her gold bracelets jangled quietly under her clothes, and her dark eyes stared warily.

And before them... the jungle chattered with a thousand unnatural sounds...

And gleamed with the whites of a hundred sleepless eyes.