Chapter Twelve

The train ride was a long one. Lirana was unwilling to talk about Mahar Jovan, the diarchy by the banks of the great Tulavanta River. And Anthan was... well, he was busy with the window. And Carza was currently trying to suppress the urge to vomit. Not because of the train, more... the distance. There was a part of her still in ALD IOM, and it was linked to her a tiny, razor-thin cord that plugged directly into her stomach. And it was stretching further and further with each second, jangling with the subtlest movement, slicing up, down, left, right... digging deep and wrapping tightly around her innards until she wanted to scream. And yet... she knew that this was just part of leaving her home. And realising how huge the world beyond was. Hull was nice about it. He noticed the beads of sweat clustering like pearls along her hairline, and quietly drew his hand under the table, where it met hers. They didn't clasp hands like shameless newly-weds, but they simply took comfort in the fact that there was someone else from their home, and that a tiny part of their home endured at their side. Someone else had a tattoo. Aberration was always easier in company - and the gap between one freakish figure and two was an infinity larger than between two and three, or three and four. To go from one to two was to begin a pattern, to establish an exception from uniqueness, and with that exception came company, and with that company came security, and the promise that there were others like them somewhere, roaming like bison across the plains.

A tiny shred of the golden void which had surrounded the inner halls of the Court of Ivory.

Egg was a surprisingly intelligent individual. The assessment Carza was slowly coming to was that Egg was large, smart, and articulate. In terms of natural gifts, his only deficiency was an oddly-shaped head and a face which only cheeriness could improve - because otherwise it had the colouration of porridge with cranberries scattered over the top, and a consistency to match. His companion, Cam, was significantly more... well, attractive, but that wasn't saying much. Cam's contribution to their partnership seemed more a case of being a competent backup. Not all partnerships were about covering weaknesses like in some kind of board game, some were simply based on the fact that two people liked one another enough to spend time together, even seek out work together. Made her think of Hull, in a way. She had languages, he had poetry. She was antisocial, he was very social. His field was confined, hers was broad. But at the end of the day, she liked him as a friend, and that was enough to erase any differences in expertise. He was her friend, and that was enough. Nice to see that that was a common pattern, and not some freakish peculiarity common to her and her alone.

Egg hummed in his deep way.

"We left Fidelizh... some years ago. The war, you understand."

Carza blinked.

"That ended almost... fifteen years ago, yes? It didn't quite... reach ALD IOM, so..."

Cam laughed darkly.

"Lucky girl. And lucky city. It did end, but the north is still uninhabitable, most of it at least. Enough refugees to choke a cannibal. Fidelizh has a river in the middle - Irizah - and once upon a time that thing was the open-air sewer for the whole city. Now?"

He grinned, and Egg finished the statement.

"The river is dammed. Irrigates half a dozen coloniae out in the peripheries of our glorious republic. And the bottom... once they cleared out the trash and bones, they built things. Buildings, streets, ramshackle slums... the city is dustier, now. Dusty, and full of noise. Too many people, not enough jobs. So we left, and found something a little... more acquainted with our civilised tastes. And over time, we found our way here. Now, we find our way further west. Should be a splendid adventure, I think."

Lirana snorted, and chewed for a moment before interjecting - making sure the silence was secure before she put herself into it. Natural caution, maybe. Or just a fondness for coca.

"Speak for yourselves, adventure's meaningless if it doesn't help you retire."

She smiled very slightly.

"A farm out in the countryside, and a stable of burly manservants... that's the way for me."

Carza shifted a little. They didn't have enough money for that. Not close. She hoped Hull hadn't been telling outrageous fibs about... stables of manservants. That felt awfully demeaning for the manservants, and she didn't like the lascivious look in Lirana's eyes. This was why she liked the sleepier parts of the Court of Ivory, she could easily pretend that people simply ceased to exist below their robes. Not that she was a prude, but she was... opposed to vulgarity, on a moral basis. It made the world feel cheaper and lower, it made matters seem common. And that was just... awful. Lirana grunted.

"I mean, I want to guide people through the pass once we're done. Heard about that part of the mountains. Ugly. Complicated. Dangerous. Guides are pricey. I figure, I can make a lot of money if I get involved in that. Early adopter, and all. Maybe find myself some gold on the other side... no, wait, hold on, check out this."

She pulled out a battered deck of playing cards from her back pocket, hummed in satisfaction... and Carza's eyes widened as Lirana performed a series of elaborate card tricks that made her feel like a child again. Turning the entire deck into repetitions of a single card, making cards disappear and reappear with gracious ease, making cards dance... it was a whole show, lasting multiple minutes, and Carza was entranced. Her opinion of Lirana had just been elevated, and she had to resist the urge to gape and gasp like some kind of slack-jawed rube seeing a train for the first time. Which was entirely unlike her own experience seeing trains for the first time, which involved a shrug of derision and 'well, of course something like this would emerge eventually, it was only natural that the reactions of heat and water should be exploited, ho ho ho'. She hadn't squeaked when the whistles went and then spent a few minutes jumping at the slightest sound. Lirana finished - and grinned wickedly.

"See? The way I figure it, the folk on the other side of those mountains ought to be a bunch of credulous bumpkins who spent their evenings passing shit around a fire, pardon me, dung, ma'am, and I figure someone with my dexterity should be able to become at least regarded as a demigoddess, maybe a minor divinity."

Something seemed wrong in that logic. Carza had a capacity to think very low things of certain people, but she was fairly sure that the folk beyond the mountains, who dwelled in the rolling steppes described in a few poems and a handful of mostly-inaccurate accounts, were canny enough to realise when an oddly-proportioned woman was just trying to exploit them using card tricks. For all she knew, they had cards, but... made of dried horsemeat, long strands of grass, and presumably the blood and screams of their enemies. She assumed that violence played a core part of their culture, the idea of unending plains which produced vicious conquerors seemed to demand some kind of horrific violence at some stage. She didn't make the rules. She just tacitly held opinions and then found robust justifications in order to make them academically reputable.

She was a good scholar.

And as a good scholar, she listened carefully to Cam and Egg, who seemed to happy to talk about their homeland.

For one thing, their names weren't Cam and Egg. Those were corruptions of their last names. In fact, their last names were Kam and Igg, but the difference was ephemeral in her own language. They weren't the types to introduce themselves by their first names - no-one here was their friend, save for one another. And in their home, being on a first-name basis was the equivalent of an ALD IOM girl above a certain age revealing that she did, in fact, possess knees.

It was highly intimate and possibly flirtatious, in short.

"So, we're from the north bank of the river Irizah, the south bank is mostly populated by savages, and the river itself is now occupied by whoever drifted into Fidelizh on their flight south. They drifted down the river, then we dammed it up for them."

Carza narrowed her eyes slightly, intrigued.

"And... these refugees, do they clash, culturally, with locals?"

Egg pondered this for a long moment.

"...not exactly. There's a certain charm to their... rusticity. Many of us are happy to tolerate their strangeness - the towers of silence they insist on raising for their dead, how they bellow to one another instead of quietly conversing, even the scents of their... peculiar food. They're foreigners, after all. They have no interest in mixing with us, and we have no interest in mixing with them."

Carza tilted her head to one side. That felt like an idealisation, if ever there was one.

"And do they have interests in mixing with each other?"

"Hm?"

"The refugee groups. Do they mix?"

Cam grunted.

"Sensitive question. They don't. They came to Fidelizh, and brought their divisions with them. But for us... it's all just a mass of people with languages we don't understand hitting each other with sticks. We can't solve that. Never would be able to. Best we can do is keep the peace. Used to be a guardsman, myself. Foreign legion, dispatched for domestic duty."

Carza leant forwards.

"And you... policed these groups? What was your experience of them?"

"How long do you have?"

Hull looked over from his own notebook, where he scribbled notes vastly more simplistic than Carza's - wanted to look busy.

"Until we get to Krodaw, I imagine."

Cam grimaced.

"...honestly, not too interested in talking about my time there. There's a reason I left."

Egg laughed quietly.

"Yes, likewise. Fidelizh is a wonderful place, but... your city is so very..."

He paused, mulling over his own words.

"...innocent."

Carza blinked.

"Innocent?"

"Innocent. The Great War didn't exactly touch you. Your valley is far beyond the chief targets of that rampage. Everyone in the continent is filled with refugees, shell-shocked veterans, sanitoriums bursting with madmen who took on too much contamination during their tours of duty... the armies have never demobilised, not truly. The coloniae require non-stop guard duty, the cities suffer from divisions between communities... every problem in the burned lands up north was transplanted and concentrated. Every little bit of sectarian violence. The armies are always needed, whether we like it or not. Even over fifteen years later, we're still operating in a state of constant crisis. Your city is so... petty, so small. Every one of your struggles is about... Courts, and small neighbourhoods, and rarely is blood spilled."

He hummed contentedly.

"I hope the steppe is similar. I imagine it must be. Nowhere is truly pristine, I understand that, but... there are degrees of weathering and degrees of violence, and your city suffers from so very... little of it. The Great War was unimaginable carnage, I'm sure your city has all manner of bloody elements to its past, but by comparison... ah, the things I would've done to be raised in your home."

Carza had lost control of this. She wanted to learn about Fidelizh, not about... how they saw her ci... hm. She felt that same instinctive urge to protest. Her home wasn't pristine, not at all. It had struggles, and problems. Quite a number of them, really. Nowadays, it seemed like everything was on the verge of falling apart. They weren't around in the quieter days, when the Courts were still fairly well-balanced with one another, and the golden void that she craved was still an easily achievable goal. The Court of Salt was poorer, the Court of the Axe stronger, the Courts of Chalk and Flint... functional. Things were different. Better. It was odd - she wanted to insult her own home. Bizarrely, there was something she disliked about people fawning over her home, and people insulting her home. Because both felt like people seeing a single fragment of her homeland and then passing judgement - inaccurate judgement, too. Only someone who'd lived in her city could judge it, only someone who weighed up the good, the bad, the ugly, and came to basically the same conclusions she did should...

...she was realising that she ought to just keep her mouth shut here.

Her own stance was incoherent. Even she could admit that. And the fact that it was so incoherent made her a little worried. She was a scholar, she ought to have more robust opinions, informed by study and rationale.

Feh.

She squeezed Hull's hand slightly. Nice to have him around. Felt comfortable being judged by him - because she had his measure, and could judge him right back. These four were unknowns. Mostly.

Think anthropologically.

Fidelizh was a city scarred by the Great War and its consequences. Permanent mobilisation of military forces to take over from overstretched civilian agencies. Martial law was... a broad term, and here it felt almost inappropriate. It conjured images of soldiers, highly trained, imposing an authoritarian boot to the back of a city's head. At least, based on the novels she read. Egg painted Fidelizh as a case of the city using everything in order to survive. Apparently he hadn't had a uniform for nearly a year. Not out of some weird system of earning uniforms - there simply weren't enough, and supply lines were already strained keeping the coloniae functioning. She drew a quick mental distinction - the city. The colonies, distant administrations in foreign lands. And the coloniae, seemingly more local areas under direct rule by the city.

Interesting.

Anthan sniffed.

"Same in Apo. Not much sense sticking around when you can find some peace elsewhere. Can't pour a man into a uniform and expect him to stay there his whole life. Man's got ambitions of his own, and there's a hell of a lot of world to see."

Egg and Cam nodded... and a second later, Lirana grunted in agreement. All four, burned out by their own cities, coming to ALD IOM for some kind of peace

As they talked, slowly and deliberately, of the cultural differences in Fidelizh - north bank, south bank, subdivisions between each, divisions between refugee groups... Carza found that it was best to focus on divisions. In her experience, she tended to learn the most about a group based on how they distinguished themselves from others. When one dabbled in so many cultures, one developed methods for quickly assessing them. Fidelizh was, like everywhere else, defined by people trying to define themselves. The individual was an obvious unit, but it was too particular to be analysed. The group was easier - and people defined themselves using it. What one was formed a hand - what one wasn't formed another, and identity emerged when the two hands clapped. And understanding what a group wasn't was often more telling than anything else. It talked about a group's true values, not just the values they loudly expressed. It talked about the context of their existence. It talked about their past, and about their present.

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It told her a lot.

She leaned forward. Some elements of group identity could be found in clothing, jewellery, tattoos, ornamentation of all varieties. Convenient visual expression. And Cam had three letters branded into his face. And that seemed important. But... it was hard to bring this up. So, she scribbled quickly in Tralkic - not the actual script, she couldn't write in that, but a doggerel phonetic version. Hull glanced to her paper, and saw the message she'd written out. She was too awkward to mention the brands. Hull was good at blustering his way through things, and she was finding her throat growing dry. Barely been interviewing for an hour, and she was already feeling like a nap. Founder, she was weak. But she wanted to pursue this, and just... didn't want to do it herself, not now. Could toughen up a bit on the road.

Founder, it was nice having a mate who could take on the difficult bits of a conversation.

"What's up with the scars?"

Founder, it was nice having a mate with no sense of tact or shame. Cam blinked a few times, and tried to explain... but he trailed off after a few seconds, lapsing into his own language. Radically different language family, it seemed - almost buzzing, like all his words were hovering at the tips of his teeth, never going any deeper, never rumbling, never gurgling, always emerging like the hum of an insect, drifting in and out with very little definition or punctuation in the form of clicks or harsh consonants. Egg leaned in, and mumbled a little - the two were trying to figure out an explanation that worked in ALD IOM's language. Hull picked out a chunk of fruitcake - the last one, as it turned out. Carza quietly placed the wrapping paper back into her suitcase, simply out of a desire to do something with her hands... and as her eyes were directed downwards while she made sure that the folding was utterly symmetrical down to the atomic layer... Cam spoke.

"It is to remind myself of who I am."

Silence all around.

"It is... hard to explain."

He pursed his lips.

"I am a god."

Lirana's eyes very, very slowly swivelled to stare at him. Anthan grinned, but said nothing. Egg pondered the statement, before clarifying.

"My friend is trying to say - we are both gods. No, no, actually... our backs are heavy with gods."

Carza's pen was frozen. She was trying to figure out what any of this meant. Egg smiled self-consciously, and chewed at the inside of his cheek while he thought. Cam kept up the attempts.

"Gods are riding on us. We are riding on the gods, too. And I need to remember who I am."

Was... was this how her tutors sounded like to people outside the Court of Ivory? Her pen moved, but wrote nothing - she just wanted the motion to distract from the gathering awkwardness. Quietly, cautiously, she spoke.

"...would the world be... possession?"

"No, no, not possession. We are not owned by the god."

"Incarnation?"

"...we do not exactly become the god..."

There, there.

"Not exactly?"

Egg rumbled.

"It is... it is hard to explain. The gods are riding us. You see? My hat is the hat of a god. And my boots have coins in the heels, like one of the gods."

"Like... holy relics of some kind?"

"No, no, no...that eye on your forehead, what it is meant to be?"

"A symbolic third eye, a symbol of enlightenment used by the Court of Ivory. I'm afraid we're... sworn to secrecy on the other elements of that, but-"

"Why?"

She blinked.

"...because it's secret."

"No, why the eye? Why have it?"

"...to be like him, and to... emulate him. Not fully, of course."

She strained her memory. Funny how the most omnipresent things were the hardest to explain.

"Seven centuries ago, the winter following the arrival of the Court of Horn to ALD IOM, one of our theologians argued that the eye tattoo was... not representative of ambition. It's representative of omnipresence. The Founder, this theologian argued, watches through our third eye and continues his studies from the higher state he ascended to. None of us aspire to be the Founder, but we allow the Founder to operate through us. Even now, our leaders are simply conceived of as his most direct research assistants, and we're all junior, junior, junior assistants in one enormous research team."

She liked talking about academic stuff. More comfortable. Sterile. Safe. Like playing a part - she had her lines pre-made for her, which meant her mind could focus on other things. The rest of life was playing a part too, if she was feeling pretentious about it, but academia was one area where she at least had her lines set out beforehand.

Egg hummed. Lirana was looking over, and Carza refused to glance at her for longer than a second - she was still chewing, the brown stains had crept over her lips now, her gums must be thick with it, her teeth caked, little drips of residue that could be picked out for hours...

"Interesting. For us... no, not that, but... we are gods. Gods are riding us. We are riding gods. I'm wearing a hat. So I'm a god."

Hard for him to explain. The vocabulary simply didn't exist.

"...so, not quite incarnation, but... emulation?"

"More intimate."

"But less than incarnation."

He grinned.

"You understand! Less than incarnation, more than emulation. Your language is very specific about these things. Very strange. We have one word for the concept, you must spend a whole sentence describing it."

Carza didn't change her expression, but she felt a hint of satisfaction - getting closer. Same sensation she had when her theatrophone had been assembled in front of her, a mound of wires and strange mechanisms finally aligning into something substantially greater than the sum of its parts. Nice when systems functioned. Viscerally appealing.

"So... you wear a hat, you have certain shoes, and this lets you become like a god... is it a god of hats or shoes?"

A spark of inspiration.

"A god of fashion who emanates through your clothing, and-"

"No, no, no, we do not let the god appear, we become the god. Let him sit on our backs."

"You take on a god's... qualities, then?"

"Yes! Yes, you understand! But more intimate. We are becoming the god... and staying ourselves. I am dancing, I am dancing by the side of a fire, and sometimes I am warmer, sometimes I am colder, but as long as I remain around this fire I will see light and heat and know the place of others."

A parable from his home.

Useful.

"And what... god are you, Egg?"

He looked proud.

"I am the god called... hm... Coral-Spiral-Judge. And my associate here is Mountain-Leap-Weaver."

Hm.

"You didn't use the definite article, are those names, or-"

"Names, yes."

"Not epithets?"

"...hm?"

"Titles."

"No! No. Not titles. The title is the name is the title. A silliness in your language - you distinguish between the two."

A twitch of interest. 'Distinctions between social and private self: a comparative study between Fidelizh and [other site to be added later]'. That could be an interesting study. It'd involve talking to a... lot of people, for extended periods, about issues which would be deeply private for most of them, and...

...on second thought, better steer clear.

"Interesting. And so, you... wear a bowler hat, and certain shoes, and then you become... Coral-Spinal-Judge?"

Egg looked heartily content.

"Precisely."

Cam nodded along.

"And I... chew my fingernails and braid my hair, with each braid wound around a single glass bead. I once explored the mountains in the great old days of the world. Seemed appropriate, no? I was a different god until a day or so ago. But that god is then, and I am now."

Language barriers were irritating, this entire conversation would've been solved a long time ago if she simply knew their language. Ah. Anyway. Before she could go on, Lirana interrupted, her eyes slightly dulled.

"I swear to all that's good and holy, I don't remotely understand you people."

Cam grunted good-naturedly.

"Mahar Jovan seems strange to us."

"No, no, one of our kings is from Fidelizh, you people kicked him out, then he shacked up with us, and now we have two kings. And he's pretty much normal, he doesn't dress funny to become a god or anything. So I figure this is something in the water you guys get. That, or my home just emanates sanity."

A spark of amusement crossed her face, and she deepened her voice, imitating Egg's solemn tones.

"I speak the language of Mahar Jovan. I dress as a citizen of this city. I cut my hair like the people of the town-of-two-kings. And so, I become sane. I allow sanity to ride me."

She snorted.

"I allow sanity to ride me raw."

Damned vulgarity. What was wrong with being polite? Being polite was fun. Then again, Carza did consider eating nuts while developing a research proposal to be a party, and... no, it was everyone else who was wrong, they just didn't understand how fun her habits were. Feh. Hull laughed quietly, and Carza shot him a scolding look. His laugh cut off. Somehow this was amusing to Anthan, who muttered something in his own language before returning to his activity of staring soulfully out of the window. She was convinced that he had specifically oriented himself to show off the sharpest lines of his jaw, because Founder almighty, it was carved from flint. Hooh. Cam patted Lirana on the shoulder.

"As a noble god, I forgive your slights."

"Fuck off."

Carza spoke before she could think.

"Don't swear."

Lirana glared over at her, a small grin spreading across her face.

"Yola-furfaka..."

She paused.

"If I don't translate that, can I say it?"

Carza said nothing. But Hull winced a tiny bit as her hand tightened. She just didn't like vulgarity. Not a pathological hatred, it just made everything seem prosaic. Prosaic, profane... there was a reason the two words were so similar. Well, no, they weren't similar, they just had the prefix 'pro' which could be found on all sorts of words, and... and Lirana was under her skin.

Feh.

With some effort, she began talking to Cam and Egg again, forcing the conversation back to anthropological matters. That was a lie, Hull did that, and then she rode his coattails because otherwise she'd just have fallen into sullen silence because she disliked confrontations with strangers. Still vaguely remembered how it took her days of observation and rehearsal before she climbed down from the roof as a child and walked up to her father's door. Wanted to make sure she had all her lines right, that was all.

Right. Anthropology.

She felt a sense of genuine... satisfaction roll over her, while she asked a final few questions. The marks on the face were reminders, a way of stopping the god from overpowering personality entirely - and that made her think that Fidelizh did have a keen distinction been private and public self, but that the distinction was incredibly rigidly enforced to the point that, to most, the private self was entirely irrelevant. She racked her brains for a comparison... it was faintly shamanistic, really. Taking on a spirit, channelling it, and allowing it to speak through them - but a spirit dissected down entirely to outward-facing-roles... but a few more questions softened the division. The god was also intended to alter their minds, make them more willing to do certain things, to enhance certain skills. The Coral-Spiral-Judge was outgoing and personable, a great favourite among the common people, and harmless as a butterfly. He was also intelligent, and wise, and capable of empathising with others. Maybe for Fidelizh the distinctions between private and public were different to in ALD IOM, maybe they had a radically different conceptualisation of the self entirely, one which conceived of the human as an... an inflected receptacle which could paradoxically become a god while still remaining itself and inflecting the god with its own notions... but that sounded less like a way of existing, and more like a form of enlightenment, and...

And maybe this was all an act, of sorts. They were exaggerating their own beliefs to retain a sense of shared identity in a foreign country where things were very, very different, and perhaps they were similar to her. She liked having her lines established beforehand, she liked being in a position where she knew what was expected of her and could simply act within those expectations. No challenge, simply dictation of every word she needed to say. Maybe they were similar to her own neuroses... or maybe she was simply projecting a personal character failing onto an entire culture, the worst kind of egoism which reduced cultures down to nothing but self-portraits, and... and...

Hm.

She stood before archetypes.

Her notebook had already lost multiple pages to these ideas. Her mind was buzzing, and it reminded her of why she'd chosen to study anthropology - not just because her father did it, but because she liked it.

This, at least, she could understand. Gods, beliefs, systems, structures... humans were often frightening and deeply unpredictable to her, and all of them seemed to have a better handle on the world than she did... but the things humans built were immeasurably easier to understand. A human was a messy pile of organs and impenetrable thoughts. A building was a harmony of rational geometric laws and physical construction. The latter could be used to reflect the former, to chart out the unfathomable depths of the self. And in the end, that was what was important. The Court was so old that no human could ever really command the whole thing, and its greatest life was found in silence. If she defended it, it would remain that way. And it would endure. It was more constant a husband than any human could be.

And she thought, in her own way, that Cam and Egg understood that fact.

It was nice to know there were others.

* * *

Hull had stepped outside. Chance to stretch his legs. Journey would be going on for a bit - and the four hires were content to stay put. They could stay still for huge lengths of time if they needed to. Lirana had steadily blissed herself out to the point of insensibility, Egg and Cam were both ex-soldiers and had apparently long-since become resigned to standing on guard for hours on end - and sitting down was a hell of a lot easier than that. And Anthan... Anthan had simply flexed every few minutes, one muscle at a time, keeping himself operational. His eyes always stared out of the window, meditatively. Carza still had no idea with him. Lirana was someone she didn't like thinking about, Cam and Egg seemed decent enough - interesting enough, which was just as good. Anthan... Anthan was simply stoic, handsome in a weather-beaten sort of way, and his voice had a husky drawl to it which made her think of someone who'd seen enough that the entire world became more relaxing as a consequence. Not sure what that said about him, personality-wise - something good, something bad, something alarming-in-a-neutral-sort-of-way. But she'd stepped out with Hull, and chewed the long-dead cigarillo repetitively, like it was a pile of fresh coca leaves and she was milking everything they had. Hull stared out of a window in the narrow hall of the train, watching the landscape rush by.

It was so very... empty. People couldn't live too far from the cities, she knew that. Contamination seeped up through the earth. Root-dust... what those four called 'foundation stone', it stopped contamination. So, people built cities on it. And outside those cities, everything was on a time limit before the rot seeped upwards, before what limited quantities of that purifying dust which existed beyond cities ran dry, and the mutants came. The mutants, emerging from within, and attacking from without - hungry for the rot which made them live. The train had defensive measures for them. Spikes, a sharply angled roof greased with something to stop things from latching on, doors that were locked firmly... even so, the window they stared out of had a single, long, eerily deep scratch in the reinforced glass, a scar which gleamed strangely in the sunlight. Hull hummed, and spoke in Tralkic - just in case.

"Furthest we've been."

"Hm."

She'd talked herself dry. Didn't want to do any more today. Hull understood that. He took over most duties.

"Interesting stuff in there. Surprised - I know you're not fond of talking."

"Hm."

He snorted.

"Fair enough."

A long pause.

"You know, I... never thanked you, I suppose."

She glanced at him, raising one eyebrow quizzically.

"You really didn't have to do any of this. Setting up this expedition, working to make sure I could come along instead of just sitting back in the Court... honestly, thanks. I mean, I have the self-awareness to know that I'm about as useless as a book cover made of butter."

She nudged him, and her voice croaked a little as she spoke.

"Better at talking."

"...well, so's a parrot. Point is... thanks. I appreciate it. If I can pay you back, happy to give it a go."

She glared.

"We're mates."

"...yes. Mates. That is what we are. But you have to admit, this is a lot for a mate."

She shrugged.

He was her first mate, and someone she legitimately liked. He was... well, he was useless in some respects, but the respects she admired the most were the ones he effortlessly exhibited. Sociability, affability, a willingness to just dive into situations and commit instead of complaining to the end. Nice to be around someone with a distinct lack of inhibitions. Hull coughed.

"One more thing. You felt uncomfortable in there. Something to do with the woman?"

Why would he use an epith... oh, right. Tralkic for 'Lirana' was still 'Lirana'. Clever fellow. She thought about saying nothing - he'd respect her distance, he'd respect that she didn't like talking in general, and presumably there were some things she didn't like talking about at all. But... ah, Founder, they were going to be in the mountains soon enough, and they were really all the other had out here. She had her aunt, but he had... she'd never asked. Needed to. A note for later. Whatever it was, the two of them would be the only familiarity out in the mountains, in the steppe... the second they left Krodaw, really, and the mission was left behind them.

"The leaves. I dislike them."

"Oh. Coca?"

No answer. She didn't hate the stuff. She loved it. That was the problem.

"Well, you... are technically paying her wages. You could just ask her to stop."

Carza blinked.

"...well, it would be awkward. And uncomfortable."

Hull shrugged.

"We pay her. We can tell her to stop chewing them in front of you."

"But it would cause stress, or confrontation and..."

"She's hauling things and shooting things. Right now, she's just hauling. And you don't need to have those leaves in your mouth to haul successfully. You, on the other hand, need to be in tip-top shape. So, I'll tell her to stop chewing them."

"But she'll know it's about me, and then it'll be awkward, and she'll feel resentful, and then matters might spiral out of control..."

She was rambling. Took some effort to shut herself up.

"I'll ask her to keep it to a minimum. Practice for once we leave Krodaw - no refined coca out there, so she ought to get into the habit of rationing. I'll pretend I knew someone in a similar situation, it'll be easy."

How on earth did he do that?

She was silent.

"Thank you."

"It's no problem, really. Now, you were talking about Fidelizh in there, but... do you know much about Krodaw?"

She shrugged.

"No. I don't. You?"

"Not a clue."

"Anything about the food?"

"It's not from ALD IOM, which means the food is probably awful and mushy."

"That feels judgemental."

"I'm a stranger in a strange land, if that's not a time to be judgemental in private, then I don't know when is. Plus, this way we're not disappointed - either food is bad, and we roll with it, or the food isn't awful, and we're over the bloody moon."

"...that's a way of thinking about it."

"Carza, I'm a little bit of a genius when I put my mind to it."

Carza smiled very slightly.

"How did you become a scholar in the first place?"

"Slept with the teacher."

Her eyes widened.

"Joking. I'm joking. My teacher was old. And a man."

Carza stared dead ahead, refusing to acknowledge him.

"...Carza, it was a joke."

The scholars of Ivory were celibate, and planting the image of depraved teachers was... well, it ruined some of the magic. And to make a joke at a time like this, when she was feeling all uncertain and homesick and she wanted to see her aunt for a few more hours, and... and...

"It wasn't funny."

"Nut?"

She glanced sharply. Was this some other... no, he was offering her a monkey nut.

...damn it. He knew the way to her heart. Each munch made her less and less irritable. Not her fault that nuts were convenient, nutritious, energising, and delicious. She didn't invent nuts, so it wasn't her fault. And it certainly wasn't her fault that nuts made for a very convenient substitute to other addictive substances.

How could someone so useless also be so terrifyingly competent at all the things she found incomprehensibly arcane? She struggled with basic interaction, and he took to it like the Court of Salt took to the modern world. She felt painfully awkward at ordering people around, and he just did it like he was asking a friend to do him a favour. She wasn't going to admit it, but... he'd guided her, really. Without him, she'd have flailed looking for a topic, and would've likely failed completely due to her own freakishness.

She kinda needed him. Especially in a time like this.

Together, they munched the nut-of-the-monkey, looked out of the window with a single bright scratch from a passing mutant, and remembered their home.

"Do you have family?"

Hull snorted.

"General probability would suggest that I do, yes."

She was silent. He knew what the thrust of her question was.

"...if you're wondering who to give my remains to, don't worry about them attacking you on sight. Ma's a secretary, pa's a night guard, no-one else but them. Lovely people, helpful to a fault, couldn't hurt a fly. Even pa - he mostly just stares at books and makes sure the squirrels aren't eating them. And you've got... just an aunt?"

Her lips thinned.

"Just an aunt."

"She makes good fruitcake."

"She does."

Silence once more. Silence and munching and contemplation.

They knew who to deliver one another's remains to in the event of catastrophe. They ate nuts together. This was probably the apex of friendship.

Had a secret language and everything. If she dredged up memories of old novels about winsome youths getting up to mischief, she was fairly sure that a common feature uniting each one of those novels had been secret languages, in-jokes, communal dining, and constantly shoving one another around. And while she wasn't going to shove Hull, and she'd hiss at him if he shoved her... they sure had covered the other three pretty well. She munched.

This was definitely the apex of friendship.