Chapter Thirty Two

The rest of the day was uneventful... but there was a tinge in the air. A hint of something Carza hadn't felt for some time. Cold. There was just a snatch of it, little whispers of cool air which danced through the leaves for a second. For a moment, she wondered if she was hallucinating, or if she'd become so used to the heat over these last few days that any change registered as pleasantly cool. But then it came again... and she knew that they were getting close. The mountains, invisible behind the trees, only really seen in brief snatches as they passed through small clearings or the canopy was broken by random chance. Delicate blues, scattered with white. Huge cool mounds of stone that had no trees, nothing that resembled this damp, hot place. They were close... even if it was only a few snatches of breeze every now and again, she started to chart her day by them. Because when the cool air came, her sweat would dry, her skin would feel cleaner, and she'd feel her clothes actually detaching from her body, becoming a separate object once more. In cold she found clarity, in heat she found madness and violence and stress. The cold was slow, delicate, and it appealed to her sensibilities. Heat demanded sacrifice - giving up layers, altering schedules, consuming water. It took. The cold, though... in a way, it demanded acquisition. Add more layers of clothing, bring more food, create more fires, drink more hot things... it was active. Heat, though, seemed to encourage a combination of maddening passivity and maddening madness.

She was bloody well looking forward to burying her head in some snow.

The Sleepless had, most likely, retreated down the river, crossed, and were coming up behind them. They moved quickly and carefully, guns always in hand. And Anthan had, with all the politeness he could muster, told Carza to 'put that bloody gun down before you shoot someone, you look as comfortable as a slug at a salt mine.' Apparently her 'trigger discipline' was awful, she shook like a leaf, and she kept flinching whenever guns went off, to the point that no matter how well she was aiming at the time, she'd twitch and send a bullet flying into the upper atmosphere by the time she pulled the actual trigger. All of this was a little insulting. But then again, she'd... had more success bludgeoning that Sleepless man in the face, it was certainly easier than aiming, firing, reloading... why did people use guns at all? Sure, there was a kick to them, some undoubted effectiveness, but could they really match the feeling of pounding someone in the face until their noses disintegrated, their eyes swelled shut, and she felt incredibly sick and guilty and wanted to dunk her head in water for minutes on end until she felt clean?

...come to think of it, Carza was coming to the conclusion that she just didn't like violence. Not in a moral-high-ground-pacifist way, more of a... coward way. A squeamish way. But then, she was willing to fight if it was a choice between life and death, or if Hull was about to die, or her companions...

As much as she hated to admit it, Egg had a point. She was a wet rat. She didn't like fighting, but put her in a corner and she'd gnaw like the best of them.

By the time the sun started to go down... Anthan issued them with final orders. And they weren't particularly cheering.

"We need to find a proper place to sleep. I don't want to sleep in the wild again, not when we're being hunted by people who know how to find us."

Everyone glanced at one another. Egg spoke first.

"So... we keep going until we find a village?"

"Ideally."

"And if they're aligned to the Sleepless?"

"I doubt they'll be."

He shrugged regretfully, and a memory occurred to Carza, prompting her to interject.

"He has a point. I... saw some of the orders Kralat had on his table. Something to do with sending people out to the fields, requisitioning whole villages..."

A firm nod from Anthan.

"Exactly. If there are villages around here, either they're aligned to the Sleepless, in which case their men have been recruited, and the rest have been sent to places where they can be more properly monitored and utilised... or they're still here, in which case we're going to stumble into a village full of wives, children, and invalids... or they're with the colony, in which case they're either dead or have long-since evacuated."

Lirana grunted.

"Sounds about right to me. And it's so damn quiet around here... I'm guessing the Sleepless don't have much of a presence."

Carza blinked.

"...they had a base near here. Barely two days walk away."

A shrug.

"Yeah. But why would they be out here? The mountains don't have any colonials. The mountains don't oppress them. The mountains don't have anything for them to exploit, nothing but villages they can empty. That's it."

An idle thought. That pistol from earlier, the 61st expedition from Mahar Jovan, the one which went mad and did things that... well, apparently still haunted people, even if the specifics were elusive. Maybe they'd come through here. Maybe they'd... anyway. They walked along, the sun began to set, and the sky turned into a red sea flecked with delicate pink clouds... the sun vanished almost immediately, all that remained was an ominous glow around the edges of the leaves, something which reminded Carza of that wall of flame they'd created. Every step made the last container of fuel slosh rhythmically, reminding her of how little there was. Fire seemed to be... well, it was the most effective weapon here. It obstructed movement, choked the air, frightened mutants, avoided the usual problems of shooting them, slicing them, bludgeoning them... getting close to a mutant was always a bad move, burning them was usually better. No wonder Krodaw had been shipping in so much jellied fuel. She'd heard about the tactics they used in the Great War - fields of fire, concentric circles maintained by soldiers who flung more and more fuel onto them. Starting wide, then narrowing them, inwards, inwards, inwards, taking potshots at any mutant which dared to escape. They said the north was marked with them - perfect black circles, blemishes in the landscape where hordes of mutants had been burned to ash. Someone had shown her a daguerrotype of one of the fields, studded with the charred remains of the mutants, desperately evolving ways of escaping... and invariably failing, becoming malformed black statues as the heat rose higher and higher.

Her mind was fixed on those black statues as night descended... and they found a village.

Anthan signalled them to stop. He and Egg advanced ahead while Lirana remained behind, rifle in hand. Best not to show their full numbers, just in case someone was still in the village and got... jumpy. A few agonising minutes passed... and Egg called back to them, summoning them forwards. The village was small, and the forest was starting to advance on it, confirming Lirana's belief that most of the places here were abandoned. Once, this place was likely a fishing village, but now... the jetty had decayed down to a few damp stubs sticking out of the war like cigarillo butts in a waterlogged ashtray, the boats were barely visible from the river bottom, and the houses were all starting to enter various stages of decay. Stone, largely, with some wooden shacks that had turned into pulped masses of mould and odd growths. Anthan swept the detector around... only a dull, low-level whistle, the sort which indicated higher-than-minimum, but lower-than-dangerous levels. Not ideal... but they could work with it. Gas masks were put on either way. Paid to be safe. They'd need to clip themselves of skin tags, take some extra medication... a few little steps, but nothing catastrophically significant.

She shivered.

The village was completely deserted. No-one had lived here for years, clearly. The architecture was... oh. She realised that this was probably the first time she'd seen rural architecture around here, not the colonial style of Krodaw, nor the antique style of the temple. This was as close as it was possible to get to something genuine. She wondered idly which people had lived here. What had Kralat said... Unglara, Monosa, Leneras. Yasa seemed to either be extinct, or had intermingled with the others to the point of vanishing, or were a tiny minority. No idea, and no locals to show her the way. The buildings were made of long, thin plates of stone, stacked over and over and over until they formed a hard, slightly curving shell. The stone was cool to the touch - and the huts were actually fairly cool inside as well. Good at dispersing heat. Mud had been used to keep the plates together, but years of neglect had left it cracked, and most of the huts were inhabited only by mice, a few lizards, a frog or two... nothing else. Wooden furniture had been claimed by the damp. Exterior defences were limited to what looked like the foundations for a palisade or an exterior wall, but the actual structure had been destroyed. Maybe a handful of families could've lived here... but not many, not many at all. Even if she assumed that a bunch of structures were scattered elsewhere, or had rotted away, it was still a small village.

Idly, she realised this was the first 'small village' she'd ever visited. She'd only been to cities, and even then, only two. That and a military camp inhabited by lunatics. It was odd, the feeling of... smallness. Almost claustrophobic. She wasn't some sort of... cosmopolitan city-girl who sashayed from absinthe bar to whiskey bar to wine bar, but she couldn't imagine being somewhere where a single disaster could just... end you. End everything. A place which maybe lacked a name, and after a few years of abandonment was ready to surrender itself to the elements. She had no idea where the people had gone, no idea why they'd left, or who'd killed them, driven them away... but she could feel the places where lives had once been, and the voids left in their wake. Tiny bubbles in the world, within which lay... nothing at all. She poked her head into a hut, and saw a bed which now served as a receptacle for water dripping down from a flaw in the ceiling, forming a stagnant pool where a handful of frogs were pulsing thoughtfully. It was... a large bed, really. Once, it'd been quite fine, and large enough for two people. Had a family lived here? A couple?

Had they built a life in this place?

Had they raised children?

Why did they come here? Why would they pick this village, and not any other?

A frog stared at her, and pulsed. She stared back. And felt the empty space where someone had once lived and loved and hoped and died... and felt a tiny shiver of fear pass up and down her spine. There had been meaning here, feeling, and she wondered if she would feel something like it in future. Emotions were so... strong, they made the world feel like a defined pattern of significance, ironically, emotions made the world seem rational. It compressed it down from natural laws to human laws, and that gave the world a sense of smallness which made it comfortable. Friendship, affection, protectiveness, comfort, longing... these things slumbered in her, and as quiet as they could sometimes be, she always knew they were there, warming and soothing. Sometimes small enough to shelter in the palm of her hand, and sometimes vast enough to replace the sun. And here... here she felt where that warmth had faded. And she wondered if that was as large as it really was - the feelings in her were just big enough to sustain a bed large enough for a family of frogs.

Melancholy was a very addictive feeling.

And she left it behind in the hut, walking hesitantly back to join the others in the centre of the village. A well lay in the centre, dark and stagnant, but... well, it was nice to find a defined middle to operate around. The five of them unpacked as much as they dared, set up watches, designated one of the larger structures for sleeping... and that was it. That was the entire procedure. There was nothing else to do - their food was dried stuff, it wouldn't need to be cooked. They had water, they had sleeping materials... what else was there to worry about? If the Sleepless travelled through the night, they'd be forced to approach them through the narrow paths between huts, and in the end, the large hut they were sleeping in only had one entrance, and the windows were slits placed too high up to use. In short, it was a defensible location, one where they were, largely, safe. The central hut had everything they needed, they had a proper system... sure, it was a little embarrassing sleeping in the same room as Hull, Egg, and Anthan, but... well, workable. She'd just... rest in her clothes, easy enough. Few words were exchanged, everyone was too tired. Night descended with easy languour, the world turning green-and-gold, then a faint yellow, then red, then light blue, a shade that darkened, darkened, darkened... and finally became an inky blackness which devoured light and turned the hut into a tiny chamber surrounded by nothing at all. The final outpost of existence, an illusion broken only by the dreamy babbling of the river and the rustling of uncountable trees filled with all manner of strange life.

Carza couldn't sleep, though.

The emptiness of the village was gnawing at her. The paranoia of being attacked, and... honestly, just a faint disbelief that she was alive at all. The adrenaline from the flight over the river was still in her, just a little, and she found it hard to imagine surviving that crossing. She'd been attacked, she'd fought one of the Sleepless and had only won because she was very lucky and incredibly aggressive. And now her hands weren't shaking at all. They just... lingered. She felt tense, tightly-wound... her eyes wouldn't even close properly. When she did close her eyes, her eyeballs would keep moving, twitching frantically like caged animals until she sat up again and grunted in irritation, opening her eyes and checking her surroundings. Her back was so stiff it ached, but only when she sat or lay down. Standing was fine. With a grunt... she left.

Just needed a stroll. Work off some excess energy.

Lirana was waiting near the well, a lantern burning to give her light... the air was still warm enough to not need a fire, at least. Small blessings. She glanced sleepily at Carza, and nodded. The two were still wearing gas masks, just in case, and it gave the entire conversation a surreal quality.

"Having trouble sleeping?"

"Some."

"Tail end of my shift. We're doing it staggered - Anthan and I will share the last half of my shift, then Egg and Anthan will share the last end of Anthan's, then I'll share the last end of Egg's... should mean there's always two of us around."

"...I see."

"Want to sit?"

Carza didn't respond, she simply stood and leant against the well, staring off into the night. Anthan came stumbling out of the hut a moment later, slinging his rifle over his shoulder and splashing some water from his canteen over his face, blinking to clear away some of the sleep. The three lingered in silence, not even extending greetings, just... watching the dark. It felt wrong to speak here - the village wasn't theirs, would never be theirs, and there was always a worry that speaking too loudly would wake up some forgotten inhabitant. Bring down chaos on their heads. It was silly, but... Carza shivered nonetheless, and remained quiet. Lirana scratched her stomach a few times, adjusted her mask with a clunk... the three of them must've looked like strange animals, with their river-stained clothing and their inhuman masks. They watched the dark... and at long last, Carza spoke.

"What do you think made this place abandoned?"

Anthan shrugged.

"No clue. Sleepless, maybe. Contamination's not too high, probably just some recent stuff. Not a reason to evacuate, at least. My guess, there's... probably a minor spring not far from here. Shovel sand and gravel into the thing, soak it up, you'd be fine."

Lirana shifted, and a thought occurred.

"Are you sure the 61st expedition didn't come around here?"

Lirana glared.

"I don't know. If I did, I'd tell you."

Carza leant against the well a little more, and tilted her head to one side. Too sleepy for interrogations, too alert for sleep...

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Feh.

"What... happened with that expedition? You just said that people went mad on it, so..."

Lirana was clearly gritting her teeth a little - her mouth had a stiffness to it which suggested extreme reluctance. Probably unpleasant to go over... ALD IOM had problems, it had strife, struggle, all manner of issues that had mounted up over the years. And in the company of friends, she'd be happy to talk about it. She loved her home, but... the Court of Slate was inbred and strange, the Court of the Axe were chasing a past which had never been too excellent to begin with, the Courts of Chalk and Flint had long-since sold themselves and hollowed out their interiors to create glorified retirement homes for those who'd profited from the sale... but she couldn't admit any of this to outsiders. It'd feel like... punching herself in the gut, she supposed. Pointless self-flagellation. She might dislike the Court of Slate, but if Lirana dared to insult it, she'd be willing to sing their (limited) praises until the cows came home. And now she was asking Lirana to describe an expedition which might make the people who'd tried to kill her seem more sympathetic.

Of course it was going to be touchy.

"...well, it was... popular in the newspapers. Only real source was a letter from one of the officers, who had a dispute with some of the commanders, wanted to paint them in the worst light he could, so... it's hard to tell where truth ends and exaggeration starts. Maybe he wanted to try to shuck off some of the guilt, or he wanted to get back at commanders who apparently were refusing to value him or pay him properly..."

She scratched at the bandages around the wound delivered by the Sleepless a day or so ago. Looked painful.

"Either way. It was ugly. The expedition went out here, and went mad. It was... there were factors. First off, the people in charge were psychopaths. Second, they were all overdosing on chemicals which are... very, very banned."

Carza blinked.

"...yeah. Before the Great War made us... all very, very afraid of mutants, there was something almost jealous about them. Like, they don't sleep, they don't eat anything but contamination and eat other, they don't drink, they just... go and go and go, and then stop until their muscles recover, while remaining completely alert the whole time. So, for a while, the guys at the top thought it would be fun to give these... pills out, I suppose. Not sure what was in them, but they kept you awake, made it harder to care about things, made you more loyal... also pumped you full of energy. And made you go nuts, made you completely dependent, slowly killed you..."

She shivered.

"Not used any more. But the 61st had psychopaths in charge, the men were dependent on pills which turned them into lunatics, they were in a country they didn't understand, surrounded by warlords who wanted them dead, while heat and insects and mutants slowly affected them... apparently half the filters they shipped out with were rotten by the time they arrived, so there was probably some contamination seeping through as well to worsen things..."

A pause.

"By the end of it, they'd marched through the forest, charged through a half dozen petty kingdoms, killed a lot of people... but beyond that, no idea. None at all. Like I said, all the hearings were secret, all the documents are kinda... fuzzy on the details, outright conflicting in some. Like, the officer who sent back the first letter which everyone picked up on? That one says that the commander declared himself 'king of the wastes' and started collecting a stable of wives, and a couple of husbands, while insisting on others kneeling to him. But then you read some other account, and it says that the commander was a gibbering idiot by the end, zonked out on pills and half-dead from contamination, and the real issue was just that... well, they went out with too few supplies, started raiding villages to resupply, which pissed off every local king and chief and warlord, and that only made things worse... but then you hear from the locals, and you'd think that the commander had a death cult in his name which sacrificed every male infant they found using a jagged obsidian blade because he thought it'd give him sexual powers."

A grim smile made her eyes crinkle - the only thing visible through her mask.

"See what I mean? I can only tell you that the 61st went out with a few hundred men, a hell of a lot of pills, some faulty gas mask filters, a possibly psychopathic commander who's last job was burning a contaminated colonia to the ground. When they came back, the auxiliaries were dead, the pills were gone, the filters were bust, out of the entire expedition maybe a few dozen came back, most of whom died to contamination less than a year later, the commander had been strung up and left to die on some tree in the wilderness, never found the body, and a lot of villages were burned to the ground. That was it. That was all we heard. No idea how it ended, apparently there were a series of disasters, the commander was killed by his own men... and that was the end of it. The rest just stumbled home, getting massacred along the way."

"And you're certain it didn't happen around here?"

"I have literally no idea. Again."

She sounded irritable. Carza... decided to stop questioning, no matter how curious she was. Still... a mad few battalions of soldiers, high on narcotics, under the leadership of a psychopath... it sounded like a recipe for disaster, but it also sounded like a recipe for the Sleepless. Conditions of madness, cultivated by the mad, suitable for further madmen to emerge. But in a way, it just... helped flesh this place out more. She lingered for a while longer, and glanced down into the darkness of the well. Carza froze. Anthan had said that there was just stagnant black mud in it, nothing else... but now it looked like something was shining in the dim moonlight which occasionally emerged from behind tattered ribbons of cloud. She stared downwards, peering closer... Anthan had noticed her focusing on the well, and leaned over in interesting.

"See anything?"

"Just... something shining, I think. You said there was nothing in here?"

"Just a stagnant well, really. Wouldn't dare drink from it..."

"But you didn't look closer?"

"Busy making sure we didn't have any snakes in the huts. Why?"

"Pass me that lantern, please."

Even stressed, she liked to imagine that she was polite. Minded her Ps and Qs. Wait, what was the Q here? The P was presumably 'please', but... uh... quease? Was that something? Sometimes she hated being a linguist. Made her think about things. She beckoned for the lantern, received it, and directed it downwards. The well ran deep, trying to escape any surface-borne contamination... but something was definitely down there. Gleaming. She stared closer, leaning a little more over the well. Black mud had accumulated at the bottom, stinking and thick, completely undrinkable, and... still couldn't quite get a glimpse of it. With a grunt, she grabbed a bucket by the side of the well and began to lower it via a threadbare rope which strained even under this petty weight. The others were interested now, leaning in to try and catch a glimpse, but it really just seemed like a few fragments of white stuff. A slurping sound echoed upwards as the bucket made contact, and the rope suddenly quaked under a vastly increased weight pressing down. She heaved, sticking her tongue out of one corner of her mouth... and Anthan politely grabbed the robe, and heaved faster than she could manage. Little bit embarrassing, that. But he didn't seem overly put out by the effort, he was as intrigued as she was. A grim part of her thought it would be a mass grave of some description, and she was about to get a faceful of maggots. Felt in keeping with the general tone. A heave, the rope strained, the bucket clattered noisily...

And it was in front of her.

A bucket full of putrid black mud...

And in the middle...

She blinked.

"Huh."

She'd really expected the faceful of maggots. But instead... staring at her from the bucket was what looked like a dagger. A long, shining dagger, impossibly not rusted by its time down there... maybe it was recent? She plucked it from the mud using the tips of her fingers, shuddering at the cold, clammy material still coating it... the hilt was still intact too, the leather wrapped around it was treated in some way that made it resistant to the damp, and the metal was just flawless. A splash from a canteen cleaned it up a little, and she could see that... well, it was a damn nice knife, she had to admit. Long, straight, sharp... she flipped it over a few times, testing the weight - she'd read about people testing the weight of knives in some of her novels, she wasn't sure what she was meant to be detecting here, but it was definitely a knife. She could say that with even more certainty than before. From 99.7% certainty to 99.9% certainty. That was two whole tenths of a percentage. Alright, she just flipped it around a bit and tried to feel impressive. It partially worked.

Anthan took it from her, and actually tested the weight, whistling in appreciation.

Carza tilted her head to one side.

"What is it?"

Anthan blinked, hummed, whistled, tsk-ed, clicked his teeth...

"Knife."

Lirana nodded solemnly.

"Knife."

Carza blinked.

"Yes. Knife."

A pause.

"...what kind of knife?"

Anthan's voice dropped, becoming almost confidential, secretive, conspiring.

"Big knife."

Lirana rested her chin in her hand, hunching over as if deep in thought.

"Large knife, even."

Carza surveyed their finds. Not inaccurate. But a little incomplete.

"Perhaps even a prodigiously sized knife."

Lirana shot her a look.

"Don't be pretentious, Carza."

"I wasn't-"

"It's just a knife, Carza. Don't start making up words to describe it."

"Prodigious isn't-"

"What did you study in that Court of yours? Did you specialise in being pretentious, or just word-making-upping?"

Carza hissed in irritation. There were lines, and they were not to be crossed. She'd spent three years of her life studying in the Court of Ivory, and she was only twenty-one - she had spent 14% of her life specialising and achieving the rank of scholar, and she wasn't going to let someone spit on that because she had a vocabulary. Maybe if Lirana was less vulgar, she could also learn words with more than two syllables in them.

"I studied anthropology and linguistics, and-"

Anthan slapped her on the back.

"Don't let her pull your pantyhose."

"I don't wear pantyhose. What is that, exactly?"

Lirana sniggered.

"Wow, you go around with no pantyhose? That's pretty risque of you, Carza. I always wondered what they got up to in that Court... all work, no play, gotta encourage some pretty funky activities, if you catch my-"

"If you continue to be vulgar, I'm docking your pay."

Lirana paused, blinked, glared, gave up on glaring, blinked again... then toppled backwards, cackling at the top of her lungs. Even Anthan was laughing - oh, no, not him, he was reasonable and... no, wait, he'd had his terrifically raunchy adventures with the wife of Kralat, and... and... the two of them were laughing at her, she was clutching the knife in her hands, she was ready to stick them with the pointy end if they kept laughing at her, she was a serious damn person. She'd helped kill Kralat, had brutalised one of the Sleepless with the butt of her pistol because she didn't trust herself to fire it, and now she had a knife. She was a dangerous person, she was a trained scholar... why were they laughing at her? And what was pantyhose?

Lirana finally recovered.

And Carza glared, her mask covering up her blush of embarrassment.

"...right, yeah, your city is... uh, isolated. Right, so pantyhose is all the rage back home. It's like... these very thin stockings that women wear."

Carza blinked.

"...those sound like bad trousers."

"No, they're stockings. Like socks. But really thin."

"But... why wouldn't you just wear trousers?"

"Because pantyhose shows off your legs."

Anthan nodded wisely.

"It does. It really does."

Carza had to resist the urge to gasp.

"That sounds... very scandalous."

Lirana gave her a pitying look.

"It's really not. It's all the rage. Everyone wears them... well, when they can. Bit expensive, but... well, they were around before the Great War, stopped production when everyone became strapped for cash, and now they're back in style. Very popular amongst young ladies."

"...but it shows off your legs."

"And?"

"...but those are scandalous."

"You've got legs."

"And I conceal them under trousers."

"...but why, though?"

Carza glared, and recited what her aunt had taught her.

"Because legs are meant to be a surprising discovery. Ladies are meant to conceal their legs with long skirts or trousers - anything above the knee is practically your... your unmentionables. Anything below is a bit risky. Ankles are definitely risky. It's meant to be something surprising that can be discovered later on, like, 'oh goodness, darling, you have legs, I always thought you just floated everywhere'."

Anthan blinked.

"...your city's weird."

"You're the ones who wear thin stockings to highlight your legs. That just sounds debauched and cold."

"Well, at least we recognise that legs are legs, and not some sort of erogenous zone-"

"Stop being vulgar."

Anthan groaned.

"The word 'erogenous' is not vulgar, Carza. It's a very clinical term. Point is, we're not debauched, we're just... willing to show off the shapeliness of legs. That's all."

"And that's vulgar."

The bickering continued. Carza was adamant- legs were private things that ought to be concealed. ALD IOM was very strict about it. She'd read about cultures which concealed the face for the sake of modesty, or the arms, or the shoulders... and ALD IOM was focused on the legs. Legs were debauched things and ought to be concealed at all times using whatever materials were available. Trousers and long skirts. That was it. Part of why suits had caught on so much, they were practical and concealing. The others insisted that legs were not scandalous, pantyhose was not debauched, and Carza was being an idiot. After a point, she realised they might have a point, and that she was making a mountain out of a molehill, and that obviously there'd be cultural differences, but... well, now her goal was just to keep arguing because she was still feeling a little strained, and this was helping to relax her. She'd given up on winning the argument, now she was just going to drive it into a stalemate by arguing more and more pedantic things until she felt sleepy enough to retire.

She had just started debating what people really meant by the word 'hose' (quote: 'a hose is used for the transmission of fluids, such as water, and the use of 'hose' in the term 'pantyhose' meant that something to do with fluids was going on, and that sounded vulgar to her') when Lirana signalled her desire to leave. Her shift was up. No-one had come to bother them. The Sleepless were likely at a distance. Egg shambled out of the hut, tucking his shirt in, adjusting his braces, generally mopping himself into a position of presentability, and nodded gruffly at Anthan. The two were professionals, and Carza imagined her tomfoolery wouldn't have any tuck with the two of them. Not sure how she knew that, but... anyway.

She lingered for a while.

Nothing else to do, really. Still wasn't feeling terrifically weary, despite the day's exertions. Just staying still for a while counted as resting, right? Even if she didn't shut her eyes, because... anyway. She lingered with them, shared their light, smoked a little, watched the dark and the fat grey moths which hovered loosely around their shared lantern. Interesting little things... large things, if she was being honest. They clustered hungrily around the light, showering little flecks of dust behind them as they went. Honestly, they seemed like sentient dust, little constructs that had fluttered out of the detritus at the corner of houses, and now sought light for reasons only dust would understand. Well, it made sense - she saw dust in sunbeams all the time, and that could hardly be a coincidence. Maybe dust had some positive relationship with light, and that relationship only intensified once dust became sentient, and... she was going funny. Definitely needed sleep. A moth landed on her hand, and she watched it as it paced around slightly, fluffy antennae twitching, wings drifting with stuff that resembled grey pollen, large eyes staring unblinking at random points which held revelance only for the strange mind behind them.

Silence.

She let it crawl, enjoying the sensation of its legs on the back of her hand, the way it was simply exploring with harmless curiosity...

When it fluttered away.

She blinked, feeling a sudden surge of sadness. It'd been rather a nice little creature... well, it hadn't bitten her, or sprayed venom, or leapt into her face... which made it pretty nice in the grand scheme of things. An idle glance...

She paused.

Where were the other moths?

The beam of the lantern was utterly clear, there was no sign of them, and... and... there were no mosquitoes, no chirping crickets, no solitary cries from night birds... the other two seemed to realise this as well, and sat up. Carza stiffened. Too silent. Why would everything be so silent? And then she thought about that query for a moment, and realised how stupid it was. Mutants. No animal made itself known when mutants were around. Come close, and feel your biology unmake itself. Every evolutionary instinct from any successful species demanded staying far, far away from contamination. Most of the time, it worked. And it meant silences like this one... silences that two veterans of the Great War would be far too familiar with. The Sleepless were here. They'd caught up. Unsleeping. Untiring. Growing more and more monstrous, and more and more hateful... no, not quite, just... devoted. Losing all purposes, one by one, until consumption was all that remained. And as purposes were whittled down... would they choose loyalty to their cause? Revenge for their leader? What purpose would be the last to go?

They were coming.

She drew out her pistol, feeling the cracks in the pearl handle, the cracks where she'd beaten a man's face open.

The other two raised their rifles, and she could see Egg preparing to yell for the others to come, to enter the stifling night and raise hell against any attacker, and...

Silence.

No-one attacked.

No animals cried.

Nothing at all.

And in the dark, Carza thought she felt something watching her. A prickling, the hairs on the back of her neck rising up, the scars along her arms itching something fierce... just a feeling that something was here. Something was staring.

For just a moment, Carza was absolutely, completely, totally convinced that something vast was out there. That something about to fall on her from above, rise from beneath, surround her on every side and close in. Kralat had been talented at filling up any room with his uncertain siz,e using hints of existence to imply scale... just enough information for the brain to extrapolate. Now, there was nothing. No reference. Just the dark beyond the lantern, the silence, and the uncertainty. It could be large enough to swallow the sky. It could be small enough to slither through the grass and up her leg, coiling around her neck even now, thin as a wire and twice as deadly... mutants took all shapes, they said, and... nothing. Still nothing.

What was out there?

It had to be something. Had to be.

The animals were too quiet.

Anthan and Egg were utterly silent themselves, mimicking their prey, their hunter, their killer, their foe...

Something was reaching for her. The man in the river hadn't died he was alive, he was coming he was coming he was coming. She tried to clamp down on her paranoia. The bloody face swollen from her pounding it into a pulp, the chipped pearl under her fingers even now, the shaking, the shaking, the shaking. Dead eyes in the dark. A red star in a man's back. Something huge and approaching rapidly. It was large enough to crush them with a single thought, small enough to slither around their minds and whisper madness. It was carried on the heat. It sailed on the cold. Small and insignificant... vast and interminably so. Paranoid. She was just paranoid. Sleepless were out there, that was all. A scent filled the air... sweet as syrup, rancid as spoiled milk. She remembered the black mud down in the well. Had she stolen something from it? Was the mud alive? Was it coming? She glanced down, thought she saw more gleaming things, and now they were teeth, they were eyes, they were hungry questing hands, and the village was down there, and... and...

The stench ceased.

The pressure relented.

And a second later... a moth landed on her shaking hands.

Carza could've cried.

And in the dark... something had come. And something had gone. And something could, perhaps, return.