Chapter Twenty Three

They had no nuts.

They had no boozy samovar.

They had no fruitcake.

They did have a great deal of stress, though. A huge amount. No-one could sleep. Sleeping was something that divided them from their captors, gave their captors a terrifying advantage. They were like machines, slowing down and recuperating with dispassionate efficiency before setting off again. And once you knew they were always watching hungrily... it was hard to sleep again. It didn't help that now she'd been around for long enough, Carza could see the signs of mutation worsening for some of them. They kept it well-hidden. They wore hard leather visors to shield their eyes from the sun, which concealed any dividing irises. Their skin was, to its credit, frequently clipped - and they resisted any urge to scratch themselves. Their silence hid anything in the vein of altering vocal chords. And that left... well, the nastier physical mutations, and the mental degeneration. The thing which was probably driving them to fight like they did. Die Sleepless, or live on as a raving monster that needed to be put down and burned.

But it was possible to see the problems, even if they concealed them well. It was a weakness - but far from reassuring her, it made her more trepidatious of confronting them in any way, shape, or form.

The day after her impromptu deal with Miss vo Larima (felt wrong trying to learn her first name, she didn't have a first name, her first name was 'Miss'), Carza had been walking around the camp, getting her thoughts in order, pumping air into her tired lungs... when she'd seen one of the Sleepless twitching violently. Shivering. For a second, she just stared - he was seated atop one of the stone pillars surrounding the old temple, and his face was concealed - was he alright? Was he sick? Was he suffering from mutation? She wanted to just... watch him coldly, with satisfaction burning in her eyes. It was about as much as he deserved, if he had participated in the atrocities she'd seen. Hate burned in her lungs, a cold heat that paralysed as much as it motivated, demanded she act just as much as it demanded she relish in the emotion... but then she remembered Melqua. And in a second, she was striding forwards, wringing her hands nervously, looking around for another guard she could call. She hated these people, but she wasn't going to descend to their damn level, that was for sure. The sun glared as she approached...

And then the man had fallen from the pillar.

And she'd seen something in his stomach.

Something growing.

Mutation. It was... a mixed bag. Sometimes you become stronger. Faster. No more need to sleep. Power than no-one else could match. Durability that would let you shrug off arrows and swords like they were nothing.

But it was indiscriminate.

Sometimes the contamination saw two components, and mutated them separately.

Sometimes it saw two components, and saw a wound - two conjoined parts separated unnaturally. And they had to be brought back into alignment, by any means necessary.

In the man's stomach, a skinless animal leg was twitching frenziedly.

He'd eaten lamb recently. She could tell.

It was fused with him, intimately. A stubby, waving leg, shivering as it tried to find the ground, the man hyperventilating as he tried to muster the strength to tear it off. More legs were developing on his torso, twitching, skinless lamb-legs, tipped with razor-sharp hooves, desperate to be born, to accomplish their purpose. His pupils had contracted and split, and they bulged with terror. His hands fumbled for the mass, dripping with amniotic fluid, and the leg kicked desperately. It was his, and it didn't want to leave. The scent of sweet contamination filled the air, something like syrup that reached up through the nostrils and choked her airways. He grimaced, and she saw sharp teeth flashing - rows and rows of them, curved inwards like a shark's. He snarled...

And two other Sleepless grabbed him around his shoulders and began to haul him away, glaring at her. One barked a string of commands... but didn't stay to see she obeyed them, or even understood them. She could guess. Go away. Don't talk about this. If she disobeyed, she'd be hurt. The standard formula.

She watched as they dragged him into the forest, draping a heavy blanket over him to disguise the still-kicking vestigial leg.

Carza wondered if they'd kill him... or if they'd just put a collar on, and drive him to attack some nearby village. Revenge for not supporting the Sleepless... or a case for why the Sleepless were needed. Join us, and you won't need to worry about us. Or our ex-members. Or maybe just throw him at the front lines. Maybe that would be how the fall of Krodaw would begin - maddened things let off their leashes and thrown at the refugee camps surrounding the city, allowed to wreak havoc, to drive the people inwards into the fortified centre, stretching resources, straining defences, providing ample opportunity for more infiltrators to slip in... maybe even driving the governor to do something stupid. She could imagine it now. Too many people trying to escape the jaws of mutant Sleepless, minds long-gone, bodies twisted beyond recognition... the city centre incapable of holding them all, maybe terrified of the trains being overcrowded and shut down, maybe even depriving the local auxilaries and their families of places out... fear of infiltrators sneaking through the crowd to deliver strikes to positions of power... and then some guard would panic, would fire at someone he or she thought was trying to attack them...

And then it would all be over.

The mumbling body disappeared into the darkness. Her arms and legs itched where the wind could find them, reminding her of the dangers of contamination. Her fingers twitched, reaching for clippers to remove any skin tags she'd developed simply through proximity. It wouldn't be long before that man forgot ever being human. Before he was reduced to consuming more and more and more, anything to sustain his growth. To accelerate his devolution. To seek the pools where the underground rivers broke through to the surface, to drown himself and emerge like a newborn calf, skin sloughing off, vestigial limbs growing stronger and quicker... she imagined some kind of centipede-like thing, with a hundred kicking lamb legs, tipped with sharp black hooves, a face lengthening and bristling with curling rows of teeth, and...

* * *

Hours later, Carza would slap herself in the face to banish the memories of that moment. Because, after all, there were other things to worry about. They had no boozy samovar, they had no nuts, they had no fruitcake, they barely had clean clothes, but it was still, to be blunt...

Party time.

Her sort of party time, where everyone was stressed and working on a single project. So the stress was shared, productive, and could be complained about with everyone else relating. It was ideal. No, no, it wasn't, none of this was ideal, she was filthy and gross and she wanted to dunk her head in a bowl of acid to clean herself of all mutation and so on. She had made a deal with the Court of Salt, too, which made her feel like cockroaches were crawling over her skin. Not that she hated them, but... she certainly didn't like them. The idea of them as idiotic entrepreneurs trying to melt the city into slag to sell to the highest bidder... it didn't go away easily. And she'd seen their factories, seen the slums they maintained for their workers. Felt pulses of jealousy when she saw their offices and how they contrasted to the hard-worn shabbiness of her own home. It was petty, but... anyway. Miss vo Larima was clever and, most important, unideological. Maybe she just wanted to aggrandise herself, maybe she genuinely wanted the best for her Court and, wonder of wonderments, the entire city... but Carza got the feeling that she wasn't going to do something insane and prompted by zealotry. The Sleepless terrified her because she legitimately had no idea how they managed to get over that fundamental barrier which divided man from monster. At least Miss vo Larima just wanted to be rich and content, if Carza was feeling very uncharitable. And those were impulses she could understand.

And now she had to exploit the impulses of someone she didn't understand.

Lirana, Carza, Egg, and Hull were all gathered in a corner of the temple which seemed... mostly unobserved. Not totally unobserved, that would be unrealistic to expect, but it was as good as it was possible to get in a place like this.

Hull began.

"Alright, so, we just need to convince this... Kralat fellow that he ought to let us leave, ideally with some supplies. Because... presumably our expedition would benefit the state he's trying to set up. Presumably."

Carza hummed uncertainly.

"We'll need to make it seem... not overly mercantile. I get the feeling he dislikes people like that. Miss vo Larima seems to have found that out the hard way."

Egg raised his eyebrow.

"Now, I don't want to be a grouchy goose, but why is this necessary, exactly? I mean, it's not like we need to leave, we could just wait for the ransom to come through. Embarrassing, yes, but a little safer."

Lirana shifted uncomfortably, and bit her lip. Unwilling to talk. Carza understood, though. The longer Lirana was here, the more chance of her being found out as a citizen of Mahar Jovan - the city which these people were absolutely opposed to in every possible detail. If they found her out, they might well kill her on the spot (at best) or torture her to keep their spirits up (at worst). Or, in an absolute worst case, all of them would die due to being associated with her, and damn the ransom. These people had crucified someone as a distraction and voluntarily mutated themselves, they were clearly unpredictable. Still... saying any of that out loud felt risky. So Carza glanced at Lirana, raised her eyebrows...

"We don't have much anti-mutation medication, and out here, I doubt we're getting much protection from any contaminant exposure. They don't need to give us back to our homes completely healthy, just... intact enough to survive the journey. That's it. We could end up losing years to mutation. And I doubt they're going to ship us around to safe places just to give us those years back. No point wasting the effort."

There, that felt... neutral. If anyone was listening in... well, they might be convinced. Carza having witnessed one of the nastier mutants felt like additional evidence, she was sure that the Sleepless knew of her seeing that particular incident. Egg nodded slowly... then caught on and made an exaggerated 'oh' while saying nothing. Good. He got it. Hull coughed to redirect attention.

"So... for confirmed facts, we know that he doesn't like profit-oriented people, which means we have to appeal... maybe on the basis of being a religious mission? Talk about the doctrines of the Founder?"

Lirana smiled disconsolately.

"Because the best way to appeal to a zealot is to be a different zealot who believes in something else entirely?"

Carza interjected.

"Well, he... said that ALD IOM and this place have some kind of kinship, so... maybe there's some sympathy there?"

Egg grunted.

"Best to be sure before you try that. And you'll need to sound genuine about it. He seems like the sort to be able to see through... pardon my language, miss, bullshit."

Carza flinched at the vulgarity. Must he be so... coarse? Politeness was what separated man from the animals, and right now, she was filthy, stressed, overheated, and isolated from civilisation. She needed to feel human, now more than ever. Her glare clearly said all of this, even if she personally didn't dare to - an outburst was very uncivilised.

"...yes, quite. That's the crux of it, then. We need to be able to convince him that letting us go is the rational, profitable thing to do... while portraying it as purely traditional and religious. But doing it in a way which doesn't offend him. For all we know, the doctrines of the Founder would be completely contrary to his own beliefs."

She wanted to say 'because the Founder wanted a college of literate people who could study and advance the cause of humanity through deduction and devotion, while this fellow appears to be interested in brutalising everyone around him for some conception of freedom'. And that being said, she didn't know what his conception of freedom was. He wanted to be free from his colonial oppressors, but she didn't know enough about this part of the world to pass judgement on that. He wanted his people to be free from exploitation... while brutalising anyone who disagreed with him and forcing them into his mutated warband. It seemed paradoxical, and she was certain there was some kind of overriding logic which rationalised it all cohesively, but she hadn't yet grasped that logic.

Maybe she just wanted to know how they justified the atrocities she'd seen them commit.

Maybe because she just wanted to hear them try. Because she couldn't even begin to.

She spoke quietly.

"We need to find out more about Kralat before we try and convince him of anything."

Avoid the term 'manipulate', no matter how accurate it was.

"We know too little about him right now. All we know is he dislikes merchants, he dislikes the colony, and... he's content with doing... things. That's it. That's all. We need something else."

She paused.

"We need to get in closer."

Hull shivered.

"I hate to agree. But here I am, agreeing with you. And hating it. Because it's a terrible, terrible idea... that also might work. And like you said, staying here feels..."

He shrugged. practically, there was the danger of mutation. The danger of Lirana being found out. The danger of the Sleepless doing something stupid, or some mutant member of their band going insane and tearing them apart before his comrades could stop him. And... and there was pride. Stupid, moronic, idiotic pride. She didn't want to slink back home with her tail between her legs, condemned to a life of pointless drudgery after she'd put so much on the line here. She'd be a failure - the kind that got close to success, close enough to taste it, but never any further. If she had a chance to salvage this... it would be wonderful. The other reasons were pertinent, incredibly so, enough to justify trying to escape by any means necessary, but pride lay under all of them like a subtle fungus, crawling in around the edges and spreading its wire-thin roots everywhere it went. And she liked to think she was self-aware enough to recognise it and acknowledge it, instead of letting it fester behind her thoughts while she did everything in her power to ignore it. Both solutions involved not getting rid of it, obviously, but...

The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

Baby steps?

No, not really, she wasn't trying to get rid of her pride...

Anyway.

Time to bite the proverbial bullet.

* * *

"This is a bad idea, isn't it."

"Very bad, Carza. Very bad."

"We should probably just wait for the ransom, shouldn't we."

"Without a shadow of a doubt. We'll lose years to mutation, a few more years to stress, and our careers will be over, but we'll be, most likely, a little bit safer than the alternatives. Of leaving this place and stumbling over some giant mountains before winding up in a huge steppe where we, currently, have no contacts to speak of."

"And we're still going through with this?"

"Oh, definitely."

The two of them exchanged a quick smile. It was... familiar, doing this sort of thing. No, no, it wasn't, but it was familiar working with Hull on something that stressed her out enormously and could quite possibly guarantee their future. But... if the plan worked, the payout... it would be fantastic. Beyond fantastic. Profits from the trade routes, resources from the Court of Salt to accomplish all of this... they'd have everything they could possibly want. The Court of Ivory would be rich, the two of them would be heroes, and they'd be able to sit quietly in whatever office they wanted doing whatever they liked. Hull had spent the last few minutes babbling about some very obscure poetry he wanted to work on - long-term study, requiring extensive and subsidised lunches and a great deal of vellum (which he refused to explain the necessity of). Carza would be content making her way through the data yielded by this expedition... and spending her evenings listening to the theatrophone and reading things she found even slightly interesting. Becoming fat and lazy and happy, with Melqua at her side and a pile of fruitcake right in front of her. Everything she used to define success - weight, food, mood, company, and entertainment. If she had those five, she was ready for years of Party Time.

...she needed to stop using that term. But once she found out it annoyed Hull, she had to keep using it.

Anyway.

Lirana and Egg were hanging back. Felt logical. Egg was blustering and loud, he could keep any attention on himself in the event of a confrontation, and Lirana... the less she needed to interact with Kralat, the better. The temple loomed in front of them, dark, foreboding, and seemingly abandoned. Nothing could really inject life back into it - it was defined by being abandoned, by being decrepit. Life felt like an intrusion. This place was clearly hundreds, maybe thousands of years old, and it didn't look like anyone was holding by its faith any more. Which in itself was interesting... and gave her an idea. She quietly observed the finer features of the place, committing them to memory. Necessary for the plan. The pillars surrounding the central citadel seemed to have no rhyme or reason to their placement - but then again, maybe they'd once had another purpose, like holding up idols, or other structures, or platforms... or maybe they were once carved but the weather had erased it all. Definite answers weren't what she was looking for, just questions. The central citadel was tall, layered... but she couldn't see much in the way of spatial differentiation. There weren't many chambers inside, just one at the bottom, and an upper level. That was it. The ceiling tapered off too quickly for more floors. So... likely not meant for a large number of priests. The central structure was probably for ceremonies, then. Maybe a disused mausoleum. Carvings did exist where the stone was more sheltered... she saw images of... hm.

The mural nearest to her, that she quietly examined with Hull at her side, depicted a series of strangely distorted figures. Not just erosion, too. Their skulls were elongated, tapering off behind them. Cranial deformation, standard practice for some cultures, involved strapping boards to the side of the head as a child. Alright, noted. But... their fingers were long, their hands in general seemed oversized for their bodies, which were whisper-thin. Ghostly figures with long heads and unnaturally slender hands. Mutants? No, unlikely... though, maybe this culture had a more... integrated approach to mutation. It was an unstable practice, but she'd read about it a good few times. The Dozalli described in the Histories of the Founder, a very old text, apparently lived in the far north and allowed for their warriors to be mutated. Anything to advance their martial might. But notably, this meant their warriors would become infertile and, eventually, mad. So their culture was ferocious and respected, but it never spread very far. Turns out sterilising your soldiers just meant sterilising a fair amount of your male and female population, which meant inbreeding was an issue, along with... well, insane soldiers.

The Dozalli had been extinct for millennia. Maybe this temple's builders had met a similar fate.

The figures were garbed richly, with long, airy robes... and sleek diadems on their long skulls. She winced. A skull that long, with bands of metal around it... sounded like a recipe for some seriously unpleasant neck issues. So, high-status, most likely... unlikely to be mutation, probably just an artistic choice. If these figures were regarded as high-status, then they couldn't be mutated, or they'd have gone too insane to read, let alone to rule. Probably. Generally speaking, few if any cultures allowed mutants to have any power. On account of them inevitably degenerating. Mutation was either dealt with violently, or very, very, very well-hidden from public eyes. They were walking in single file, gesturing grandly, towards... a very large cauldron. An arm emerged from the cauldron, which had to be reached using a staircase. Alright, so... she immediately thought of the Court of the Axe. The self-sacrifice element, at least. Sacrificial monarchs, existing as lambs to bear the sins of the age, sacrificed when the sins grew too great, to allow for virtue to flourish anew. Beheaded with a ceremonial axe, as the Court had always done. The power rested in the royal family instead... hm. Well, excessive comparison was the death of good anthropology, so she ought to be careful, but the point remained - why were they going into the cauldron? For mutation? To be cured of mutation? If so, it was a mythical scene, there was no cure for deep-set mutation.

...an idle idea. An elite which sculpted itself to seem mutated - cranial deformation, extended fingers, maybe selective breeding to induce certain traits (she'd heard of split pupils as a legitimate medical condition that could be passed through generations, polycoria or something along those lines)... that cauldron made her think of the ceremonial basins of the Court of Wax, used to gather offerings to the spirit-in-the-swarm... hm... and then maybe mutated deliberately as a form of ascension. Maybe a funerary thing. Mutants aged very slowly, sometimes not at all. Could be a form of afterlife. Removing the filthiness of mortality, and in the process becoming something profoundly insane... but in some ways, insanity could be seen as a form of enlightenment...

It was a theory.

But it raised questions. And that was what she needed. A firm nod shared with Hull.

They had what was necessary.

There were no guards dedicatedly patrolling the citadel. If they were this close... well, they were already trusted to be harmless. To Carza's surprise, though, there were a few women. Hadn't seen many female Sleepless. But here... ah. They weren't dressed like soldiers, they had no scalps as trophies, no weapons beyond small knives. And the two she saw refused to meet her eyes, staring solidly down at the ground while shivering very slightly. Wives, maybe. Concubines, possibly. Kralat was still a human, then. Not totally devoid of human desires, then. Not sure if that made him more or less frightening. Either way, they kept their eyes down, and refused to engage with either Carza or Hull. Didn't stop them either, just hurried off the moment they were free to do so. Both were similar-looking - slender, with symmetrical faces marked with a few scars, mostly on the chin and around the ears. The temple had no winding corridors, simply an antechamber, a chamber, and an upper storey for storage. And Kralat was waiting for them.

For a second, they lingered in the antechamber, getting their nerves ready.

And then a voice echoed out.

"If you're going to come in, please, feel free."

Kralat's calm, charismatic voice rolled out like a wave of molasses. She wanted to approach immediately, out of deference... took a second for her to force her limbs to remain still. There was nothing unnatural in his voice, he was just... just convinced of himself. So convinced that he became a centre of gravity around which others orbited, simply by default. Carza glanced at Hull... and reached out to push some of his hair back, neatening it a little. He in turn adjusted her collar and used his sleeve to wipe some kind of stain from the corner of her mouth. In unison, they brushed off each other's shoulders. Would this matter? No. Did it relax them? A little. Was it worth it? It certainly possibly wasn't not potentially perhaps be worth it.

Which was good enough for her.

She poked her head in, and bowed it respectfully. Kralat was still sitting on his bed, staring at a few papers spread on the table before him... but he looked to be lounging a little. The light was still poor, and it reduced him down to a series of snapshots, none of them ever feeling truly cohesive. He was something glimpsed, never seen. She saw a pair of heavy shoulders, corded with tight muscle, layers and layers packed into solid armour... but they were disconnected from the slender, almost delicate fingers which carefully twitched the papers on the table around... and they were disconnected from the glimpse of his arms which were lined with gleaming scars and the whorls of mutation... and none at all seemed like the face which peered out of the dark, half-illuminated, wide and innocent as a lamb, eyes dark pits filled with the light of distant stars. None of them seemed like the same person, none seemed like a person at all. She couldn't imagine person with a body as muscled as those shoulders, with a demeanour as gentle as that face, with an artistry as delicate as those hands, with a history as bloody as those scars implied. It was a little like thinking about the Founder himself, she thought. Always glimpses, but never a true vision, never a cohesive portrait. He seemed at one with the dark around him, and thus he filled up the unknown parts of the room. A shapeless thing that only existed when it was observed, and then, seemed to find a random expression for its existence. She couldn't pin him down.

And honestly, she didn't want to. In the lights of those eyes was something she had no desire to meet. It looked angry, hungry... and completely certain.

"Mr. Kralat, sir?"

"Yes, Carza? Hull?"

First name basis. Alright. Hull took over. She loved him and one day they would raise a family of people with the brains of geniuses and the social skills of Hull, and their superior genes would overpower the world completely.

"I was... wondering if you had a moment to spare, I'm very sorry to bother you. But you're... I think you're the only one of the Sleepless here who speaks our language."

Still refusing to use Mahar Jovan's civisprach under pain of death. Just to be safe. The gentle face receded a little into the dark, and beyond them, the sun passed behind a cloud, disappearing from sight - gloom filled the room, and with it, the great presence of Kralat expanded as well. They were surrounded on all sides by him, by the uncertain world that could contain him... and if it could, then it might as well. Until Carza turned around, he could have a hand right behind. Who knew what mutations he concealed.

"Please. Continue. I'm amenable to conversation."

Carza spoke up. This was her field.

"...I was... was wondering, what the... purpose of this temple was. I mean, it's... old, clearly, and, I noticed some carvings on the outside. I suppose I wondered what... well, what was the purpose of it."

Stuttering was unintentional, but it added to the general effect. She'd say it was deliberate later. Had to preserve some face. Kralat hummed, but he sounded... oddly pleased.

"How familiar are you with this country?"

"...not very, I'm afraid."

"My people have lived here, in the ways of our forefathers, for many thousands of years. But we have graciously shared this land with others. Once, the Yasa dwelled here... but no more. The Monosa, likewise, continue to live here, and once ruled the territory known as Krodaw, until the colonisers came. The Unglara are split between the occupiers and ourselves, but traditionally dwelled in the gentle swamps to the south. I am of the Leneras. The Yasa came before, and they raised temples to their gods. They came from the west, from closer to the mountains."

A spark of interest in the back of her mind.

"They brought with them tales of... gods who lived there. The faith of the Leneras is the faith of the land, the faith in the blood of our people, the faith in the world which sustains us. The faith of the Yasa was one of ambition. They spoke of gods who dwelled in the mountains. Glass-skinned gods who bathed in contamination in order to ascend to the highest peaks, to dwell there perpetually. When they came here, they conquered and built temples, temples for ascension. Temples to mimic those of their old homeland, and the glass-skinned gods of the mountains. Here, they readied their royalty to bathe, to ascend... to become greater than they once were."

She'd been right! She'd guessed it!

"And they bathed in... some sort of cauldron?"

"Yes, but they didn't invent it. The Leneras once gave offerings using cauldrons - the belly of the earth is rich with iron, and we once made a facsimile of it, to properly reward her for the gifts lavished upon us. The Yasa, though... they stole it from us. An attempt by one of our old conquerors to ingratiate themselves, to use our symbols to raise themselves up higher in the eyes of the credulous and easily-duped. It failed them. Just as the colonisers have failed to do the same now."

Hm. Another spark of curiosity.

"How long did the Yasa rule, and when was this temple built?"

Silence, but she could vaguely sense Kralat smiling, like he was educating an idiotic child.

"The dates are uncertain. The Yasa ruled for many generations, and the temple was a later development - once, they performed their worship solely to stone pillars, which they anointed with perfumes plundered from the fields of those they subjugated. Ascension was done in private grottos, unmarked on any map, and the eyes of anyone who looked upon them were to be plucked out, one by one, and deposited in a basin for the crows to eat."

...ah-ha. Beyond the violence... well, this seemed less like a crude adoption, more a case of legitimate syncretism. If their grottos had been guarded so viciously, then moving the rite to a temple was probably a very, very big deal for the Yasa. Most likely, they'd mingled with the people they conquered, and their rites had adjusted... almost automatically. Naturally, even. Syncretism, the blending of two cultural systems, a temporary meeting of two rivers which allowed for water to be exchanged between them. This temple might've been a deliberate concession to the locals, or a genuine adjustment inspired by local beliefs. The Court of Horn had once had enormous taboos against spilling blood - nowadays, they barely cared about it outside of their most sacred spaces. The Court of the Axe had once worshipped a whole different pantheon, but these days, the Founder was considered superior to half their gods, which were often elided together as 'old ones' and ignored for the purposes of general worship. She liked studying syncretism, it had a certain... enjoyable variety to it.

Her guess? He was making it out to be cruel conquerors suppressing and mimicking the virtuous oppressed. And the Yasa were gone now, so... well, anything looked more reasonable when you could prove it had been done before. And if his people had thrown off one set of conquerors... why not another? Why not every set?

"...I see. But you no longer use those cauldrons?"

Dammit, she wished she had some paper. She was getting into this.

"No. We do not. The oppressors corroded the symbol, made it... dirty with associations to their rulership. Precisely why the Sleepless cannot stop at simply removing the colony, we must rule it in turn. Because every conqueror will erode at us a little, embed some ideas and remove others, with no respect for our people. No, the indignity of conquest should never be borne again. Not by us. We've experienced the yoke enough times to realise that it leaves scars. And we're quite scarred enough - we're finished with having the yoke weigh around our own necks."

She shivered at the look in his eyes. The distant stars in the back of his skull. His voice never rose, never even quickened, but she could taste the hatred in it. For a second, she saw how he saw the world. Rulers and the ruled. The alternation of the two. She noted that he never wanted to destroy the yoke, just... remove it. Maybe send it to someone else, revel in teaching their oppressors what it was like to be at the bottom of the pile. Strange that he mentioned other peoples in the area, though, she'd... embarrassingly, she'd just been thinking of 'foreigners' and 'locals', which was, anthropologically, the equivalent of shooting herself in the foot while slamming her head into a door jamb. Presumably the Yasa were just a ruling elite transplanted in, but maybe there were descendents... maybe they lived closer to the mountains, who knew. Monosa and Unglara... hm. Maybe this rebellion had an ethnic component? Anyway, anyway. Alright. She had some information. She had a window. And now... Hull interjected, trying to look calm - but she could see the dark sweat stains under his arms. He wanted to leave. Both of them did.

"Hm, yes, yes... we've had much the same in ALD IOM. Waves of conquerors who came in, took over, left their marks... most of them are still around, too, though... never really in charge. Bit of a mess at the moment, if we're being completely honest."

He laughed self-consciously... nuts, damn, bad move, take everything seriously, mock these ideas at your peril... the cold smile that met them seemed to confirm that it was bad bad idea. Hull cut off, and tried to pass it off as a nervous laugh, a tic, nothing more. Seemed to work. Neither of them were dead, at least.

"Ah. Yes. Of course. I visited your fair city once before, a long time ago. Dull labour, but... an interesting city. I imagine, soon enough, we'll be kindred."

Just like he'd said when they first met. Couldn't pass up a chance, could he?

"Oh? Why's that?"

"You, too, will be conquered. Soon, I think - if you're not careful. The states out east... they're overfull, overstressed, and their hunger for power and resources only grows. Resist their armies, and they'll infiltrate with their culture, one that incentivises personal gain at the expense of tradition and history. Resist that, and you'll need to adopt their methods. It's why I locked up those fools who came before you - they thought they could just imitate the methods of their oppressors, learn how to operate their factories, their tools, their machines. All they'd do is become oppressors themselves. They'd force people into their metal prisons and dehumanise them, force away any kind of personality or culture in the face of progress. Culture dies in factories, it burns away to ash. No, the way is to cut yourselves off, before it's too late. To slice away the foreign contaminant, to clip the foreign mutation, and then guard yourself fiercely against it. We fight with stolen weapons and crude metal, and our enemies have, oh, the mightiest industrial engine in the world on their side, and yet, we're winning. You too could do this, if you liked."

The Court of Ivory, designing chemical weapons to keep out the foreign and the impure. The Courts as a whole, devolving into lunatics roving the forests, killing anyone who looked foreign. Kralat spoke quietly and calmly, and yet she could feel the heat in the room increasing - he was angry, furious, even, even if his voice was level and his face remained meek. His arms extended out of the dark - long, sinewy, lined with scars.

"They scarred me, years and years ago. These will never fade from my flesh, and so they shouldn't. Reminders of what the oppressors must do. They offer a choice between binding yourself up in their web and calling it comfort... or freeing yourself. And I mean all oppressors. Not simply the foreigners. For too long this country has been ruled by kings and warlords... no more. Our people shall govern our people. No merchants to own us, no kings to enslave us, no warlords to drive us as fodder for their grudges, no foreign overlords to brutalise us in the name of resources. You ought to do the same. Throw off the Courts that enslave others, remind them of who makes up their wealth, who raises them up to where they are."

They both nodded, frightened. Unwilling to disagree and insult him. But they... they had a window! She lunged for it, before she could even think.

"I agree. That's... why we're here, actually. In this country. We wanted to reach the mountains and the steppe on the other side, give ourselves an advantage. We..."

She tried to make her voice choke a little, but it came out as an awkward cough.

"...the Founder dictates that we go forth and learn, study everything we can, advance the cause of humanity and the city by understanding more and more and more. And... and the world beyond has learned so much... it feels like we've been... been wasting our time. We need to reach the steppe, to gain more data, to understand something the other cities don't, to give ourselves an edge... and redeemed ourselves for years of stagnation. We've let so much pass us by, the Founder must be..."

She paused, and Hull wrapped an arm around her shoulders. They were both terrified, and that helped make them look appropriately miserable. Kralat nodded understandingly, but said nothing. Push? Push onwards? Keep asking for something? Angle for the idea that they wanted him to let them go, give them a guide, resources, enough to replace what had been lost in that ambush. But without sounding mercantile. They actually leant forwards a little, into the candlelight, to let their tattoos become fully, completely visible. Just to hammer home how much they'd given to their traditional religion. Which seemed right up his alley. Push onwards? Hull squeezed her shoulder... once. One meant no, right? She was... she was going to play it safe, yes.

"But... I'm very sorry for bothering you. Thank you for informing us. We'll write this down later. Ought to get something out of this expedition, and... and your culture is very fascinating."

The last part was added after she saw anger brewing at the idea that studying his culture was a backup to something more interesting. She tried to keep going... and feigned failure, leaning into Hull's shoulder wearily. He hauled her up, and apologised profusely for the bother. Yes, yes, Carza was simply feeling very emotional, oh, she was so terribly weepy and silly and was ever-so-worried about the future of her home, and oh goodness... the two were allowed out, and Kralat vanished into the dark, his dead-star eyes following them the entire way, impassive and inscrutable. He hadn't said a word after they'd begun to talk, to plant the seeds of their plan... did that mean he was convinced? Wasn't convinced? What?

They stumbled out, wrapped around each other...

And the second they were behind a few pillars, Carza disentangled herself with a small grunt of irritation.

"You smell awful, Hull."

"You're no spring chicken yourself."

"That's very rude of you to comment on."

"Well, you're sweating the same as I am, we both smell bad."

"I am a lady. I do not sweat. Horses sweat. I glow."

"...didn't know glowing smelled like-"

"Shh."

She paused, and brushed down her trousers.

"...thank you."

Hull grinned wickedly.

"And now it begins."

"Stop grinning, you look like a mad ape."

"Stop scowling, you look like a dog's arsehole."

"You vulgar wretch, I ought to thrash you with a reed, you..."