Chapter Six

Slate, Wax, Horn, and Salt.

Wax was uneventful. Their domains were so far beyond the boundaries of this part of the great city that... well, they'd need to get some travelling gear if they wanted to reach them. The Court of Wax liked being solitary and strange. The first time anyone had heard of them was when an unimportant cadet Court - a lesser protectorate of a greater Court - had miraculously managed to defeat a whole invading force of the Court of the Spear. Until then, they were fairly simple vassals who maintained huge beehives out in the hills, producing honey and wax for the city below. The details of the defeat were poorly understood, but... well, there were always stories. Some were boring: the Court knew the hills better, and lured the invaders into a series of devastating ambushes where their numbers meant nothing. Others were mildly interesting: the Court had infiltrated the invaders and learned of their bizarre, arcane code of honour, and had demanded single combat. Over and over and over again, their finest warriors providing more than the equal of their rivals. Until, by process of elimination, they simply... won. Or reduced the enemy's numbers to such tiny quantities that they were easy to destroy conventionally.

And then some were simply... inconceivably strange.

Stories of their hives erupting with life.

Stories of bizarrely deformed skeletons found years later, the bones picked clean of any flesh.

Stories of strange elders laughing as the invaders screamed in pain.

She was glad that all that was necessary was a delivery to a dull-eyed bureaucrat in a dull rented office, who had a huge cheap bag filled with tokens. Sometimes it felt like the Court of Ivory was the only Court that took this rite seriously... well, them and the Axe. But their 'taking it seriously' made her wish they were being facetious - a single ungainly girl in a silly costume just felt... anyway. They'd delivered it quietly and without ceremony. Not even names. Horn, too was so very, very distant that it was hard to reach... but at least the process was more invigorating. After all, her new friend Hull had some expertise here. She looked over hopefully -he could ramble about the Court of Horn, how they'd invaded ALD IOM way before the Court of the Axe had arrived with their pretensions... and they'd been carved into shape. Well, more accurately, they settled on the rolling, unsettled grass plains of the Drum, and were then continuously delayed in any further invasions. Intermarriage and interconnections had bled them dry, forced them to abandon most of their ways... but the period had been interesting. One of the first great flourishings in ALD IOM culture, apparently. And Hull could tell her all about it.

"...mate, I'll level with you - can I call you mate?"

Carza's eyes were wide.

"Yes. Yes you may."

"Alright, so, mate, here's the thing - I'm not a very good scholar."

Her heart fell.

"Oh?"

"Well, I liked... the atmosphere of that era. The sense of wideness and smallness occurring all at once. Eager to explore the world beyond, and terrified of what lies out there... aware, for the first time in... seemingly forever, that there's life over the mountains. Hard to mount expeditions out there, harder to get information back from them, so... it was a bit of a looming unknown. And suddenly these nomads come riding over, bold as brass, and declare that this is the 'Second Riding of the Heaven-Made Tralkaa', and insist that this is their newest conquest. Half of them leave after a few winters, fat, happy, with enough women to keep them warm and fed on the way back... and the others stay here to go native. Apparently this was just an outpost of some regular conquering they were up to on the other side of the mountains, but once they ran out of space their way, they came our way. And to be fair, it worked."

He paused, getting his breath back.

"I like the poetry, the art... history, sure. But it's all about the general sense, the tone, the ambience. The atmosphere. Now, you want me to talk about the detailed tax records from that era which we have in our libraries? No. Never. I would genuinely rather die. But I like the... general..."

He made a strange noise, which seemed to indicate mystery, the exotic, the... intriguing. Carza blinked slowly.

"...oh."

"Sorry."

"...I can't really blame you. I studied the Court of the Spear and talking to Tanner is the closest I've ever come to really... engaging with their closest modern relatives."

Hull grinned.

"Lovely."

"But I'm still a scholar. And not a bad one. I study. A lot."

"Yeah, yeah, I get it. I get it. I study too."

"I'm not lazy."

"Of course not."

"Really, I'm diligent. I've been commended for my work."

"Naturally."

"I've had more than a few sleepless nights where I've been poring over some text or another."

"...speak any languages?"

"Three! But... one is dead, the other one is a bit obscure, but... my training really focused on the process of learning unfamiliar languages, the actual process of language acquisition. It's an interesting field, and very useful for anthropologists going to areas they have little familiarity with, and..."

She paused. She felt like she was being challenged. Time to go on the offensive.

"...what languages do you speak?"

"The one we're speaking now, and the old Horn language, Tralkic."

He hesitated.

"Well, I can write it. Read it. I can even do-"

"You can't speak it, can you?"

"No. It's got so many growls in it. Did you know there's an entire other alphabet to describe their growls? And that their written language is taken from a language in a completely different language family, which barely matches up?"

Carza felt unfathomably smug.

"No, no, I completely understand, it's very hard learning to speak a language."

Hull glowered.

"Shut it. You speak a dead language and an obscure one. I can read something culturally important and potentially useful."

"Of course, of course. You're entirely right."

She had a shit-eating grin plastered over her face, and she raised her eyebrows in mock agreement - it made the tattoo on her forehead scrunch up, almost like she had a third eye currently narrowing in mockery. She thought. Her mental calculations suggested that impression. She hoped it was accurate.

"Alright, you have me bested in terms of language. You have me bested in terms of being prepared for today in terms of shoes. But. Uh. Hm. Hm."

He seemed to have outwitted himself a bit.

"...I bet I can handle my drink better."

"That's not fair, you're larger than me."

"Natural advantage has nothing compared to practice, Carza. But then again... I suppose some people simply lack the aptitude."

...this shouldn't be a relevant point. But he was striding away, and somehow she felt like he'd been rubbing his advanced social experience in her face and gah. Being an alcoholic didn't make him better than her. It just meant he drank more... went out more... had more friends... had more of a social life...

She appeared to have outwitted herself.

Her eyebrows furrowed. The tattoo of an eye stretched out until it seemed like it was curled up with sorrow, weeping to the face below.

Damn it.

* * *

They saved the Court of Horn for last. Which left Slate and Salt. Salt was... characteristic. ALD IOM had sat quietly in its valley, dealing with its own problems, its own issues, its own wars and invasions and debates and so on and so forth. Exposure to the outside world had thrown things into sharp relief. Even Carza had to admit that it was terrifying how much the world beyond their walls had advanced in some ways... and regressed in others. Beyond them lay a world without Courts, a world without their pleasant solitude and slow-moving history. Beyond them lay a world which made half their debates seem insignificant, and the other half so pathetically tiny that it was embarassing to even think of them. Some Courts had wilted in the face of modernity. The Court of Ivory had taken what it wished then locked its doors up tightly. Best solution, in her eyes. She got her theatrophone comedies and cigarillos, while not having to deal with all the ugliness and smoke that accompanied progress. No, Progress. Capital P. Italics. Other Courts had been crushed under Progress. Others had stridently ignored Progress like a man stuffing his fingers into his ears and looking away as a train barrelled towards him. And some...

There was a saying: 'like a fish to water'.

The Court of Salt took to modernity like salt took to water. It dissolved immediately, become near-invisible, you'd be mistaken for thinking that it'd been destroyed... but the water would be flavoured forevermore. The old life would die out, and new life would emerge. Modernity had no consumed the Court of Salt - and if it had, then the Court now endured in its digestive tract, forming nice little lumps that were probably causing excruciating abdominal pain.

She didn't like the Court of Salt. If it wasn't already obvious. She could only compare it to kidney stones, intestinal parasites, and aggressive water salinisation. The Court of Salt had been the richest Court since before she could remember. Many Courts had their own doctrines, and the Court of Salt was no different - their doctrine rested upon a near-pathological love for competing with one another, accumulating more and more wealth, doing everything in their power to maximise the resources at their disposal. Oh, they had reasons for all of this. Wealth was what made the world go round, they said. Wealth was what everything came down to in the end. If ALD IOM collapsed tomorrow, if the Courts were no more, the people that ruled amongst the ruins would be the richest, those equipped with enough supplies to endure the coming terror. Every city spoke the language of currency, every single kingdom, republic, and petty empire still relied on metal, food, lumber, everything the Court of Salt wished to provide. It wasn't quite a religion for them - they had their own mystery cults, their own established beliefs, but it was all buried under a layer of ruthless, hard-nosed pragmatism which made them more willing than most to engage with the outside world.

'Chalk and Flint decline into nothingness, and we continue. Slate and the Axe are soon to go. And we endure. If our methods keep working, why shouldn't we stop doing them?'

So read the Saline Manifesto, printed and bound in exquisite green-stained leather, the edges of the pages coated in a swirling pattern of ink. Even their manifestoes had to look like accounting ledgers.

The Court of Salt had a banking interest in this part of the city, and a few tastefully written signs directed any new scholars to a certain office on a certain level. The entire building was lavish, making the Court of the Axe seem like... like a slum by comparison. But it was tastefully lavish. The quality of the furniture was impeccable, the stone floors were polished to a mirror sheen, and the members of the Court all wore matching grey suits which were immaculately tailored to their forms. Everywhere she could hear the click of hard-soled shoes on the shining floors, and the smell of pomade was nearly overpowering. She felt out of place here, and Hull shifted uncomfortably beside her. She felt... out of date. Antiquated. She had learning, skill, language acquisition, all she could aspire to. Well, could do with a couple of secretaries. Just to round it all out. But being around this place, so much richer than her own Court... it made her feel inadequate.

The office that waited for them at the end of many, many signs was buried deep in the building... yet it still managed to have a wonderful view over a sprawling courtyard. Carza always loved the courtyard back home, loved the little nooks and crannies, the accumulations of growth that was as chaotic as it was enjoyable... but this simply felt clean and perfect. Everything back in the Court of Ivory felt homely and charming. But everything here was better. Even the doors at the front of the building had been the idealised form of the door - two layers, the outer one metal and sculpted to resemble a rain of descending feathers, the inner one rich, lacquered wood that smelt faintly of nutmeg. The cost of those doors alone would've been enough to fully outfit multiple typing pools - could probably keep the entire Court of Ivory running for a few days, honestly. She was going from a hamlet to a metropolis. Modernity stared her in the face, and it was grand.

The woman who met them looked like she had killed at least one or two people to get to where she was, and she was entirely unrepentant about that fact. Long, dark hair streamed down her back, braided in a fashion Carza couldn't begin to comprehend, and she stood tall over both of them. Her smile had a stiff air to it - and Carza felt like a child wasting the time of an adult with something silly. With a gesture, she directed them to sit. Her own grey suit was wonderful, and it made Carza think of how many strands of loose hair or motes of dust must've accumulated on her own robe. A small brooch depicted a handful of feathers clutched in a gloved hand - the icon of the Court of Salt. And an elegant silver pocketwatch sat quietly ticking in the woman's waistcoat. Carza had to resist the urge to gulp as she sat down in the undoubtedly expensive chairs arranged before the woman's rosewood desk, covered in a tasteful number of files... and a heavy metal urn that predated this entire building, and was likely to be used for the tokens.

The woman looked over at them with practiced happiness. Her sharp blue eyes were paralysing in their intensity. Carza felt, in her stomach, a shiver of uncertainty. Had scholarship been the right choice? Had she made an awful mistake by pursuing it? Maybe she could've entered this place, worked her way up, become cold-eyed and well-dressed, rich and safe and undoubtedly depressed beyond all belief. On the way to a mental breakdown, most likely. But at least she'd have some wealth to cushion her when the breakdown came. At least she'd have skills that could be taken elsewhere. She was an anthropologist - who wanted an anthropologist? What relevance did it have to a place like this which could run the world?

She felt the doubt of a student post-graduation, feeling opportunities decline and impossibilities advance - piles of lost chances, higher and higher and higher. And this woman sat at the apex of one of those great piles, a ziggurat of undone futures. And she was judging all those below her. All who'd taken the wrong path and now spiralled into lost irrelevancy like someone on the incorrect train - aware they'd gone awry, uncertain of what came next, and incapable of stopping it.

"Good day. Now, I take it you're the newest scholars from our learned friends at the Court of Ivory?"

Carza coughed slightly, struggling to get her words out... Hull soldiered on, but he was clearly nervous as well.

"Uh. Yes. That's us."

The woman smiled toothily.

"Splendid. I am Miss vo Larima, pleasure to meet you both. Of course, the Court of Salt recognises your presence, your advancement, and honours your achievements up to this point, and wishes you the very best in your future endeavours. Of course, the relationship between our Courts is a very special one, and we will happily leave our doors unlocked if you wish to make any further contact."

She leant forwards slightly.

Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

"Now, it might interest you to know that the Court of Salt offers... placements to individuals of talent and drive who might wish to pursue a career characterised by dynamism, innovation, and high-speed operations. Our consultancies are always interested in more members."

A spark of thought.

A mild fantasy.

Carza vo Anka. Consultant. Dressed in a beautiful grey suit, hair attended to be a fleet of specialists. Lunch with leading businessmen, dinner parties held at her palatial estates in the hills, where the gentle buzzing of the Wax hives could ever-so-slightly be heard, and the sun lit the mountains on the fire in the evening. A house full of every little eccentricity she might want to indulge - and a retirement where she could research anything she might be interested in. The ability to fund her own projects, to study her own areas, to never kowtow to anyone above her... her life felt very uncertain right now, and a whole host of things suddenly looked rather appealing. In the end, was she willing to sell her soul to a Court she thoroughly disliked... in exchange for a lot of money?

Maybe.

Depended on how much money.

She wasn't made of stone. If she was given a lot of money, she'd be willing to tolerate these people while lecturing them on how to best run things. Why, as an anthropologist, she could be invaluable as an advisor for negotiations with other countries, and...

"...but I'm getting ahead of myself. Please, tell me, what are you two studying?"

Hull smiled self-consciously.

"Horn-Era Studies, largely with a focus on literature."

The woman nodded contentedly... and switched her attention back to Carza.

"...anthropology and linguistics. Miss."

Her smile continued, her eyes remained sparkling and fierce... and she nodded politely.

"Of course. Well, best of luck with your academic careers."

...what?

Where did...?

What about those placements? She'd spent three years studying, and apparently at the end she'd be part of a wonderfully enlightened elite, which people would fight to attract to their entourages. Not that she wanted to be fought over, but... well, if she had a choice between being penniless and miserable, and very rich and slightly less miserable, she'd be an idiot not to take the latter. She was paranoid, and she didn't like the idea of lacking a safety net in case everything went wrong in her life - which it always could.

Miss vo Larima looked back up from some of her papers.

"...was there anything else?"

Carza shook her head.

"Well. As I said. Best of luck."

A polite way of telling them to leave. Which she did. Quickly. And she left behind an institution which stood at the cutting edge of ALD IOM. Would probably own her one day. Seemed to represent power in a way that the Court of Ivory simply didn't, for all its learning and ritual. Hull turned to her as they were unceremoniously deposited outside of the building.

"...so... did you have wealth fantasies just then?"

Carza flushed slightly.

"A few. It's not that I'm greedy, I just..."

"...would rather be rich than poor?"

"...yes. Yes. Definitely."

"...Founder, they had so many paintings in there."

She hadn't even noticed them. Too busy being intimidated by the very tall woman and enchanted by dreams of being a wealthy eccentric who dined in exquisite cafes and maintained a massive private library. Being a bright young thing was much easier when there was an immense quantity of money at her beck and call. Not her fault that typewriters were so expensive. And cigarillos. And good clothes. And good food. And... most things that were any good, honestly.

"Imagine the books that woman has."

"I'm imagining. I'm imagining. And there's a lot of them."

"She had such a nice suit, I assume she has levels of competency we could never hope to grasp."

Hull nodded in agreement.

"I just felt a bit crap around her. Not bad, not weak or stupid, just... faintly crap."

Carza gritted her teeth.

"Yes. Me too. I felt crap. Like I didn't have any of my life together."

"...bloody hell, this walk has shaped up to be very cheerful, hasn't it?"

"...yes. Very cheerful."

She stared at her own robes.

Ha! There! Hair! One of her hairs! It was on her shoulder! It was so visible! She plucked it off. There would be more.

...she felt very, very inadequate.

* * *

The Court of Slate was... quick. Brusque. And once more, she felt a little inadequate. One reason she liked the Court of Ivory was that it had layers and layers of ritual, mystery, intrigue. It kept people out, and kept her nice and swaddled in the infinite convolutions which only made sense to a select few. It was elitism, sure. But it was elitism that benefited her, which made it completely fine. Elitism was wonderful when it was on her side. And honestly, the mystique, the prestige, the sheer force that came from being an ordained, tattooed scholar of Ivory was enough to keep her going. Even when she saw how low Courts could go once they lost all relevance. Even when she saw how ritual and tradition could become humiliating as the world moved on and lost interest, as rite became tacky and ceremony became embarrassing. As robes stopped being worn, and old professions lost their importance. Even when she saw how poor her home really was, how... unsophisticated it was compared to those who had welcomed the modern world and risen high on it, becoming greater and stronger than anyone could have imagined.

And the Court of Slate showed her what true mystique looked like. True intrigue. The kind which was unashamed about its secrecy, and had no need to condescend itself to the level of others. The kind which made her realise just how alloyed her own home had become.

No-one met them.

The Court of Slate did not meet people.

They simply arrived outside heavy metal gates which interrupted a high stone wall. Each brick had been carved to fit together with the others so tightly that a knife wouldn't be able to wedge between them... but as far as she could tell, there wasn't a drop of mortar used to build it all up. It was simply designed that well, maintained that religiously, carved that carefully. The building behind it was tall, dark, and riddled with long, thin windows, like openings in a huge hive - old-fashioned, stained with paintings that she couldn't see from outside. The streets around it were narrow and winding - her robe felt appropriate here, this was a place suitable for swishing. The entire building was completely out of date. It was closer to a keep than anything else - high walls, vaulting towers... and not a person in sight. This was built in a time when Courts warred freely, and it had never moved on - the Court of Slate did not move on, the Court of Slate simply remained as a fixed point in the world. When the Court fell, the world would fall with it.

Absent-mindedly, she scanned the place. Wondered if she could've gone here instead, fabricated blackmail somehow...

It wouldn't have worked.

The fence was too high, the ascent too steep, and the summit was crowned with sharp spikes. She would've have been able to climb inside, so she'd need to be smuggled... and she knew that the Court of Slate had its own language, its own little country in there that they refused to share with the outside world. If they mixed, they'd lose their special charm, would become just like everyone else. The woman's office in the Court of Salt had seemed so... lavish, so wonderful, but this was prestigious. It didn't care that she was here. It barely condescended to allow her to approach its gate. The house itself seemed to be glaring imperiously down at her, consciously aware that it would be here long after she was gone. It would endure when all other things fell. It didn't buy works of art, it made them - the pathways were lined with exquisite statues of ancient rulers, dressed in bizarre clothes that came across as esoteric and majestic, not ridiculous or far-fetched. It didn't request scholars from the Court of Ivory, it trained its own members in whatever was necessary and asked for no more.

She knew the rumours.

They said that the Court of Slate was ruled by the dead. That life was characterised by two phases - living as a juvenile, and dying an adult. That the most esteemed elders were wrapped in preservative bandages and posed, cross-legged, in huge funeral towers. Towers where the current leaders would meditate, to absorb the wisdom of their ancestors. They said that each room in that house had a dead man or woman sitting in the corner, staring sightlessly at all who walked before them. They said this house would only open its doors when the end of days came, and the sky collapsed. Then, it would open itself... and the dead would march out, welcoming the rest of the world into their domain. They said they did all sorts of things in there. Some of them illegal. Many of them scandalous. All of them deeply, deeply mysterious.

An urn received their tokens with a hollow rattle, and a rush of dusty air emerged - like they'd fed a dead body with a few scraps of metal, and now it was whispering thanks to them.

The air was thick.

This was a place time had forgotten.

They moved as quickly away as they could. They were not wanted.

As as they left... Carza wondered just how they did it. How they remained mysterious and strange, instead of tainting themselves with the modern world. How long would it last before they had to accept a little change? How long before those statues were decorating some office in the Court of Salt?

And if the Court of Slate might go... what chance did her home have?

How long until the walls came crashing down?

* * *

The Court of Horn had arranged for their tokens to be collected in a dark, unpleasant-looking bar where one of their own stooped - a huge man, with wide shoulders, heavy fists, and a face which had been broken more than a few times. He looked sun-dried, his dark hair was cropped close to his head and had the consistency of steel wool, and he insisted on shaking their hands... which felt like clutching a piece of dried, scraping bark. Outdoorsman, and the sun had melted the fat from his bones, leaving behind only the most solid components - the muscle, concentrated in hard knots along his arms and torso, bulging like a hunchback from his heavy jacket. The bone. The bark-tough skin. And nothing else. To his credit, he was still big, even with most of his mass shed and given up to nature. Out of all of the people they'd met thus far - the dull-eyed bureaucrat from Wax, the bored mutant from Flint, Tanner from the Axe, the lazing debauched fellows from Chalk, the terrifyingly competent Salt woman - this man felt like he genuinely wanted to be here in some way, and took the matter of the rite seriously. And not in an exaggerated, embarrassing way - he took it seriously in the same way he presumably took everything seriously. Because Carza couldn't imagine him laughing or joking about... anything, really, and that meant that everything had to be utterly, truly, completely serious.

The bar stank of sweat and spilled beer. It wasn't quite a beer hall - beer halls were less cramped, defined by long tables piled high with pitchers, flagons, plates... at least, she assumed. The paintings and woodcuts seemed very united on the point of the long tables and beer. Beyond that, she slid into the margins of error. This place was tight, dark, full of rounded tables and rickety chairs, a bar that had been spilled over so often that it practically had a lacquered layer of hardened alcohol, and a bartender who looked somewhat foreign. The man before him, from the Court of Horn, drank thirstily - looked like he'd been at it for a while, yet none seemed to affect him.

He grunted.

"Alright then. Tokens. On the bar."

They were placed with demure swiftness. Carza felt uncomfortable here, and clearly it wasn't really Hull's joint either - and next to this man, in this place, they felt like children poking their noses into the business of adults. And Carza had always tried to refrain from doing that. Once she'd blackmailed her own father, she'd been very law-abiding. She knew the consequences of disobedience - being thrown out of the Court and winding up in a place like this, slopping drinks over the bar to add to the eternally growing lacquer that probably predated her birth. The man grunted, small dark eyes staring fiercely at the two of them.

"Names. Spit them out."

"Carza vo Anka."

"Hull va Trochi."

"And I'm Asykh. You came here late. Most want to get me out of the way nice and quick. I see your tattoos have healed a little. You, girl, you don't look like you're from round here. Parentage?"

Right, yes, the Court of Horn took family very seriously - they traced their right to exist back to a group of invaders, and ones degree of connection to those invaders was a marker of prestige among them, a vital method of cultural differentiation in an area where they were firmly in the minority and she was anthropologically rambling again. And... crap. How to answer? Her story was that her mother was Melqua's sister, who lived outside the Court but still had connections, and her father was unknown - her mother had given her up to the Court using her sister as a familial connection, given that it would be difficult to support Carza as a single parent. Just... stick to that.

"My mother is Ivory. I don't know about my father."

"...bad omen, that. You don't want to be in ignorance of your heritage. Without it, you don't have much of anything. And you, lad, what about you?"

"Both Ivory. But I have a little Slate on my mother's side - distant relative."

Asykh grunted.

"Fine. Fine. Now... subjects. Go on."

"Anthropology."

"Horn-Era Studies."

A rare twitch of interest entered Asykh's eyes.

"...Horn-Era?"

A few odd noises escaped his mouth that she vaguely recognised as language - but it had accumulated so many consonants that she couldn't even tell where one word ended and another began. Hull blinked.

"I can't speak it. Now, if you wrote it down, then-"

The man no longer had any interest in Hull. Which seemed a little unfair.

"...anthropology girl. Done any expeditions?"

She flinched.

"...well, no, I was mostly focused on historical anthropology, and-"

He growled.

"Useless, the two of you. Ivory's having a damn laugh these days if they're sending things like you into the world."

He pointed at Hull.

"You, lad, need working on. Get yourself some damn experience with my language before you study the changes caused by my people. Until then, keep your opinions in that Court where they belong, because neither me nor my kin want to hear them."

The finger swivelled, and Carza's flinch only intensified with repetition.

"And you, girl, likewise need working on. You look like you haven't drank or fought anything for your entire life, you're as skinny as a chicken bone and easier to snap. Go on an expedition. It'll toughen you up, maybe you'll come back looking less damn unready."

The two were silent. This was unusual. But it was... weirdly gratifying to have someone take them seriously. He actually put passion into that, and Carza imagined that he'd given similar speeches to every scholar before them. Tearing them down, reminding them of where they really stood. That would've been good - a nice little hazing before returning to their pre-appointed slide down the razor blade of life. But instead...

"Now, you, lad, you promise me that you'll learn how to speak my language. You write it, you read it, you should be able to speak it soon enough. Until you do, you're not getting permission to study us or access our resources, are we clear?"

"Yes. Sir. Crystal."

She almost snickered at the fear in his voice. The desire vanished as those dark, focused eyes zeroed in on her instead.

"And you, girl, ought to get yourself on an expedition like a real anthropologist."

Her voice had become a squeak. How ghastly.

"But I'm a historical anthropologist, and-"

"That's just being a specialised historian. Are you a historian?"

"Well, not quite, and-"

"Then you're an anthropologist. And anthropologists do ethnography, fieldwork, participant observation. Go out, do some of that, then you'll be someone worth talking to. And eat something, for crying out loud, you look like a stiff breeze would fold you in half."

He paused, sipping at his drink. His eyes flicked back to them.

"Times are changing. You spend longer in that place and you learn less. No wonder things are going to shit. You're on the out, you know. All of us are. Salt will buy us all up one day, you just wait. They'll be selling guided tours to the Court of Slate by the time we're gone, maybe they'll at least do them the courtesy of splitting the profits. Anthropology... Horn-Era studies... the former hasn't left her home in her entire life, the latter can't even speak the language he's studied. Useless, the two of you. Completely useless as you are. Anthropology... what bloody use is that? What bloody use is a historical anthropologist? Well, what are you waiting for? I have drinking to do and token to take, someone needs to keep this act up. The Court of Horn recognises your existence but not your ability, it recognises that you have had an education by the Court of Ivory, but does not recognise that that education had any real value to it. Your tokens are accepted, you are acknowledged. Now... fuck off and do something with your lives that's at least moderately impressive, or don't be surprised when you're out on the street while Court-of-Ivory University trims the fat so it can afford the board a fatter bonus than last year."

They were both frozen. His words were hitting both of them where they lived. Carza felt terrified. The walls of the bar seemed to close in, she could feel liquor passing her lips, the strain of wiping down tables over and over and over. All the doubts that had accumulated over the course of the day... the competence and wealth of Salt, the dissolution of Chalk, the indefinable and unassailable mystery of Slate... all of it making her own home feel small and frail by comparison. Made eccentricity seem like weakness. The future wouldn't belong to eccentrics or bright young things, it would belong to the people who sat down and did something, accumulated skills, gathered experience, became righteously competent individuals who could actually bloody run things. Carza had been a student for three years, and she couldn't even... even open a bank account properly, or manage a business, or provide any useful skill to the world. Her knowledge had value in a tiny corner of the world, and maybe that would be enough, but... she remembered just how many people had been down in that chamber under the earth. The corner was smaller, and more crowded than ever. The world was spilling into it.

She sat in a nest she'd built carefully and precisely... and watched in horror as a storm crested the horizon. She had a nest of twigs while the rest of the world had been building houses of sturdy logs.

No, no, she'd graduated, she'd become a scholar, she was done. This was an ending for her. The rest of her life could be a blissful golden void, just like she'd seen her father indulge in his entire life, just like she'd wanted when she started studying. The ideal of life was achieving a state of death-in-life, when all purposes were fulfilled and death-like peace was achieved. Change was null, and stasis was heavenly. She'd even made a mate today, that boded well! She could while away the years in peace and quiet with the occasional scholarly dinner or book publication, but that was all. She'd worked hard for over a decade to get to this point, she was allowed to relax, and... and it would all come down. Her own natural paranoia was spiking again, her dread of the future was increasing. She could lose it all. She could be kicked out as a useless little thing, barely worthy of teaching the youngest and most ignorant of the aristocracy's children... or she could end up here. Scrubbing tables with a useless education hanging around her neck like the used to hang signs around the necks of criminals, telling the world what they did and what they deserved.

Carza vo Anka.

Crime: Wasting an education. Wasting opportunities. Wasting twenty-one years of her life. Indulging in arrogance and self-obsession. Neglecting any cultivation of competence or practical skills.

Punishment: Whatever the world damn well pleases to do to her.

The bar was gone. She was back outside. Why had she only brought one cigarillo, she needed something more, she needed the rush of tobacco in her blood... why, why hadn't she brought the whole box. She was a scholar doing a silly subject, she was very vulnerable to criticism. Not that she was thin-skinned or anything, but she was... she was... alright, she liked her subject, loved it, adored the scholarship she was able to perform, but she was grown, she felt opportunities in front of her dwindling with each and every passing day. Things she no longer had time for that were adding up into a pile that already dwarfed her. She'd passed the stage in her life when language acquisition was easy, so now learning new grammars would eternally be a long and difficult process. She'd done her studies as a fresh young pup, and now everything afterwards would come slower, her brain less capable of accepting new data, and she would begin the inevitable slide towards irrelevancy. Maybe theories would emerge that invalidating the theories she'd based her work on, maybe her thesis would turn out to be so woefully incorrect in light of new evidence that it would drag her career down with it. And after a point, adjustment was hard. She saw people barely older than her achieving more and more. A good few years back she'd lost the chance to be a young prodigy, a decade back she'd lost the chance to be a child prodigy.

...and a few more years and she'd no longer be any kind of prodigy. Two more years, and she'd no longer be eligible to be the youngest senior scholar in history. Five more years after that, and she'd have passed the age when most young scholars were settling down after gallivanting around being brilliant and daring for most of their 20s. After that, she would no longer be a young scholar, but simply a scholar. A person. An average value. And the opportunities of the past would be gone forever.

Hull looked... remarkably blasé.

"...are you alright, Hull?"

"Hm? Oh, I'm fine."

"You're not..."

"Affected? I mean, a little. Honestly, though, my interest isn't in the Court of Horn itself, more the contextualising elements. And hell, I've got time to learn how to-"

She whirled on him, her eyes burning a little.

"Do you? Do I? Do any of us? How much time? I know people who died of natural causes just a little older than us, and I smoke enough to give myself ten kinds of cancerous growths... and you drink, so..."

Hull blinked slowly.

"Carza, mate-"

"How much time, really, do we have? What happens if they start to cut the fat soon - there's a whole world of scholarship out there, and we've been sitting in our own little pool for a long, long time... who's to say that things aren't going to violently change? Maybe our findings will be hopelessly irrelevant soon, and we'll be too old to be properly re-educated, might as well start fresh with a new cohort, right?"

"Carza-"

"And...and we're not donig anything practical, what use is an anthropologist these days? That woman, vo Larima, she just kicked us out - we're useless to her! What does it matter if I can tell you half a dozen types of marriage, or that you can read huge piles of wonderful poetry, in the end... in the end, we have nothing practical to offer, and I can't confidently say that I'm enough of a genius to make a life out of simply being a genius. Oh Founder, we're... we're redundant. We're redundant. We've trained ourselves for three years to become better at being redundant..."

Hull grabbed her shoulder, shocking her out of her ramblings.

"Carza, politely, you sound fucking mental."

Carza slowed down - in speech, in body, in soul.

...she'd done something stupid, hadn't she?

Usually she kept those words inside her own head. Seemed to have let them slip out. This was why she liked being solitary, it made things easier when it came to thoughts. She never had to worry about the follow-up to conversations. Hull had become tainted goods - stained by past interactions, and now all future interactions would exist within that stain. Nothing she could say would make up for the fact that she had sounded 'fucking mental' around him, and now he could only see a mental person when he looked at her, and that would taint everything going forwards, and... and...

"Sorry. I just… was a little nervous. Long day."

"...uh-huh. You know, you shouldn't take everything he says to heart. He's just one person."

"...yes. Yes. I suppose so."

"And d'you think he's given similar speeches to the rest of us? I think he has - I think he just likes bugging people in that way. Some people are naturalborn shit-stirrers, simple as."

"...sure. Of course. Makes complete sense."

She wished she believed herself. She really did.