Chapter Twenty Two

The Sleepless were camped around a large... well, Carza was fairly sure it was a temple of some kind. It didn't look very designed for defence, but then again, the Sleepless didn't seem very designed for holding territory. Good at fighting, good at driving people out, but holding territory? She doubted that. It was a wide stone compound, a central courtyard with a high building in the middle, surrounded by a field of pillars which spread out into the treeline where they vanished from sight, consumed by rising moss. The central building was... not in any style she really recognised. It was old, though. Back from the days when things were simply built for the sake of rising higher and higher, piling brick on brick until the sky was close enough to touch. Because people could, and if they could, then they might as well. Layers of stone, supported through beams which stretched into the earth. The top of the tower was far above the treeline, and the base was many times wider simply to support it. Like a teardrop, that was the shape that came to mind. A teardrop-shaped temple made from old, weathered stone, every sharp edge dulled by rain. Tiny slits for windows, and dark chambers inside illuminated by endless piles of jaundice-yellow candles.

Not a fortress. But it seemed appropriate for Kralat to have come here. It was... imposing enough. No idea what it had once been devoted to. She saw no idols, no scriptures, no priests... it looked abandoned. And a few lingering anthropological instincts insisted that she probe deeper. What faith had lived here? What priesthood? Why had it ceased? She'd heard rumours of 'earth-singers' out here... priests who could communicate with the underground rivers of contamination, calling it up to drown their enemies, and sending it back down to protect their allies. But that was... well, it sounded made-up. Or exaggerated. No priesthood could endure just by promising miracles over and over and over - the sorts of miracles that would have real, tangible effects that could be measured. No religion could thrive that way, if that was the case, then engineers could wrap their work up in mysticism and become better priests than anyone else. The fact that they didn't, by and large, suggested that the earth-singer narrative was a bit on the... limited side. Smacked of pulp novels and sensationalist reporting. Neither of which were generally good sources of anthropological fact.

It was either anthropological theorisation or going insane. And thus far, she was sane, so... that really only left one thing to occupy her time with.

Sue her.

The Sleepless sprawled casually around the place, no hint of organisation. No tents, simply small rolls that were spread out wherever the ground was level enough to support them. Bodies lounged on pillars, on crumbled walls, on piles of fallen masonry. They seemed relaxed, but Carza could feel their eyes piercing her. Like sleeping tigers, she thought - never seen a tiger before, but she'd read about them, and she assumed they sprawled like house cats did, albeit much more threatening. There were no trophies here, nothing beyond scalps. No-one had explained that... but she could guess. Gory displays of excessive violence were very effective against their enemies, but there were no enemies out here. This was Sleepless territory, she doubted any patrol could get within a mile of this place without being cut down... or simply finding an abandoned temple riddled with traps, the Sleepless having vacated it long before they arrived.

And that was why they could wander.

Not like they could escape. If they tried, they'd be hunted for sport. If they became irritating, the Sleepless could happily live without any money they could draw from their ransom.

They were let out of the temple, sent into the courtyard and the field of pillars... and left to their own devices. Sleep. Eat what was given. Don't cause trouble. And stay in the bounds of the camp. That was it. Those were their instructions. And despite being captives who were only useful so as long they were alive... Carza still felt absolutely, completely, unreservedly terrified. She felt eyes on her at all times. The Sleepless didn't sleep, they just... waited. She didn't know how they remained sane. And she was getting the feeling that they weren't. That something in them had snapped. And she was in the depths of the lion's den, feeling hungry eyes at all times of day and night, hearing them sharpening weapons... the air stank of sweat and soap. Soap for cleaning the scalps. To keep the hair smooth and perfect, to reflect the prestige of the one who'd taken it. She saw the golden hair of the captain, she swore she did, being delicately combed by a Sleepless fighter, unblinking and intense. How long until the mutations drove them mad? She saw no gas masks, no filters... barely any herbs that served as folk treatments for mutation. How long?

Days?

Hours?

Right now?

Kralat had sent them out of the temple, and left them alone. They were shown where to collect food, where to relieve themselves, and that was it. Nothing else. And Carza was left alone with the three others - Hull, Egg, and Lirana. She wondered where the local girl was... what her name was, even. And where Anthan had gone. The other prisoners had been... less lucky. Most had been dragged off for trophy-making, far from the camp. They had a sense of sanitisation, they weren't going to perform messy, bloody butchery in the same place where they ate and cleaned themselves. That would be ghastly. No, their butchery happened closer to the fringes of their territory, where it would have the most effect. Use every drop of blood, every scrap of skin, even if just as set dressing. Let the screams of their captives echo through the forest where their enemies could hear, not in the same place where they tried to relax. There was something human there, amongst the general inhumanity. The four were sat quietly in a corner of the temple complex, checking constantly for any observers. They'd just been released, hadn't even visited the stockade yet. Needed to get their stories in order.

Hull began.

"First off... thanks, Carza. Saved our bacon there. Sorry I was so... out of it."

Carza shrugged. It wasn't impressive, she just told two very small lies and then acted scared the rest of the time. And the last part was easy. Hull kept going.

"And second... alright, so, Liraza, stick close to Carza. You can...?"

He mimed writing. Good, staying quiet on anything compromising. Lirana nodded nervously. So different to the more confident individual on the train, this was closer to how she'd been after killing that man in the bar. Except this time no alcohol was necessary. She kept hunching into herself, afraid of showing everything to her captors. Afraid of speaking for fear of her accent slipping out and being recognised. Well, if she could write, she could make a passable secretary. Carza scratched idly at her arms - bug bites and mutations galore, in need of a fair amount of clipping and a hell of a lot of cream. Which she didn't have. Because almost all of her things were gone. The third thing to do was get an inventory of wounds and... well, everything else. Hull was recovering from a small concussion. Everyone was recovering from general exhaustion and hunger. Egg had suffered a bad cut along his left elbow, but explained that one of the Sleepless had splashed liquor over it and then Egg had torn his shirt to create a makeshift bandage. Minimal risk of infection. Healing properly... though Carza flinched when Egg idly commented:

"Still, best to be safe. I'll burn it out with some hot wire or something, just to make sure no contamination got in. Remarkable how fire is often a wonderful solution to these things…"

She clutched her own arms, and glanced at Hull, with the gash on his forehead. He looked as nervous as she felt. Didn't want a hot wire anywhere near his face. Egg noticed his expression and laughed gently.

"Don't worry, yours is nice and shallow. Only really a problem for deeper wounds. You'll be fine."

Hull grimaced.

"Thanks. Appreciated. So, they'll be keeping most of us separate, anyone get any sighting of the other prisoners? Who else did they capture?"

Slowly, they assembled a list. The local girl had been seen, bruised and battered. No idea where she was now. Hopefully she'd die quickly, she seemed... resourceful on that front. Even a little leeway and she'd probably find a way of slitting her own throat to avoid being tortured. A handful of soldiers, but... she doubted they'd be alive for long. They were soldiers of the colony, and foreign soldiers - they'd be killed and displayed to intimidate the rest. And that would be the end of it. No need to single them out for special treatment. Shan... Shan, the guide, he'd been taken too. He knew the language, knew how to surrender himself properly, identify himself and negotiate on his own. No idea what happened to him afterwards, but he... well, Carza, hazarding a guess, thought that he was either being killed in an exceptionally painful manner as befitted a traitor, was negotiating some kind of arrangement (either as a prisoner or as a defector, possibly), or he was always working with the Sleepless. Maybe he'd led them into the ambush. or maybe he simply had a long-standing arrangement with the Sleepless where he wouldn't be immediately killed for working with the enemy. No idea how the situation out here was - would association be enough to get a death sentence? So that was a few people, at least. Most of them were dead or weren't going to be alive for much longer. Out of the patrol of twenty-two... it was the four of them and possibly Shan. That was it.

Then... then the important question. She asked it quietly.

"What about Anthan?"

Lirana's mood abruptly changed. She snarled, some of her old confidence coming back. She spat on the ground, stood, kicked a rock, swore loudly, and sat down nursing her bruised foot. The rock had been a little... ambitious, admittedly. She growled, the anger helping mask her accent - seemed to be common for people who knew a variety of languages, it was common to lapse from accent to accent depending on mood or inclination. And when Lirana was angry, she sounded like a garbled mixture of ALD IOM's city-speech and a half-dozen other things which Carza didn't want to identify. She tried speaking, stopped, adjusted, made sure she was speaking in a properly unidentifiable accent, not a hint of Mahar Jovan...

"That bastard abandoned us. I saw him, he ran immediately. Like he knew they were coming. Maybe he was a traitor from the beginning, maybe he just knew how things would play out and decided to make a break for it. My guess? He saw the ambush coming. And he wasn't going down with us. So he ran like a coward."

Carza gripped her own arms tighter, and stared vacantly at the ground. She'd barely known him, but... it still stung, getting abandoned. Then again, in his position, would she have done any different? No, no, she'd have stayed. Even if she knew the ambush was coming, if she had a choice between running alone or staying together, she'd have stayed, warned people, tried to save lives or something. If the local auxiliaries had been warned, they could've committed suicide to evade capture, even a second of warning would've been enough for them to avoid a tortured death. The sting of being abandoned shifted. From a dull sting, to weak annoyance, to legitimate irritation, to genuine anger. By the end, she felt a trace of what Lirana did. The bastard had abandoned them. Left them to the Sleepless. Not even a second of warning. Maybe he'd go back and get help, maybe he'd just run and die of starvation, maybe he'd be cut down by the Sleepless, or maybe he'd leave and drink away the salary he'd been paid so far, before hitching a ride to another city where he could get more work. And this would just be another occasion where he'd barely escaped from the jaws of death... by feeding it a few other people who'd been partnered up with him.

Her hands balled into fists.

But otherwise, silence.

It took her time to break it.

"I need to clip my mutations. Anyone else?"

Nods all around. They'd all been exposed. Wanted to get rid of the things. Carza mournfully remembered when she had smooth arms... by the end of this, they'd be pocked with tiny scars from clippings. If she had any arms left by the end of this, of course. Arms attached to her body, at least. As opposed to strung up from a tree to haunt the dreams of any scholars who came in her wake. But... she'd been putting this off for too long. The stockade. Hull and her exchanged glances. For a second they thought of attending to this alone... but they were all in this together. And leaving Lirana without people to back her up in the event of any questioning... anyway. All four of them walked off, feeling eyes on their backs. The Sleepless were always watching. Always eager to see how they worked, and if they were going to try anything funny. There didn't seem to be many of them... but somehow they were everywhere all at once. Always hunting. Always looking for more victims. They walked, and walked, and hunted in silence for a stockade that supposedly existed. Maybe it was just a euphemism for a shallow grave, and Kralat had been mocking them. Tempting them. Go on, do something stupid - there's a prison for you, there's a possibility of mercy. Go on. Try. And then the last thing she'd feel would be dirt heaping on her chest as Sleepless men laughed to one another over the latest foreigner to fall for the trick.

To fall for the idea that the Sleepless had any mercy to speak of.

...she was only half-wrong on that front, admittedly.

The stockade was real.

But it didn't seem particularly merciful.

Long branches bound up into a sturdy cage, barely large enough for half a dozen people, made to fit ten, crammed shoulder to shoulder, their limbs bristling from the gaps in the cage - anything to get a bit of room. It made the whole thing look like a prickly bush, shivering in a non-existent wind. Tired eyes slowly cracked open as Carza hesitantly approached. She was filthy - her clothes were gone, her luggage had been taken. All she had left, really, were the clothes on her back, and the bag she'd been carrying on her person - thrown curtly to her by a Sleepless guard, with all the valuables long-since stolen. The trunks were gone. The equipment was gone. And she felt... well, the Court of Salt had made her feel like an uncouth little wretch the last time she'd visited them. They were so effortlessly elegant, and she was... not. And so, as she approached the cage, she felt a mix of nervousness and cruel vindication. Here she was. Ugly, filthy, uncouth, unkempt, and free. And all the elegance in the world couldn't hide the bars of that cage. It took a moment, but one of the prisoners spoke, in flawless city-speak.

"...so, they found you."

Woman's voice. Carza's eyes widened.

"...Miss vo Larima?"

"Yes. Me. Good day, Miss vo Anka."

The voice was exhausted, but still had an air of effortless command to it. The cage was full of ten people, and they slowly adjusted to allow their leader some passage through, clambering clumsily over until she could hook her long limbs around the bars of the cage and haul herself up. By the end of it, she was elegantly positioned far above Carza's head, hanging from the gridded bars like some kind of excessively well-dressed monkey. She couldn't even pass up the chance to stare down at Carza while in a damn cage. There was something admirable in that. She looked the same as she had when the two first met in the Court of Salt's office near the Court of Ivory. It'd been... a few months, must've been. Since Carza had walked in with Hull to declare herself formally, and had been politely dismissed once it'd been shown that, for all her academic skills, she lacked any kind of common sense. Common sense would've led to her doing a useful subject, after all. Not anthropology and linguistics, preparing her to be an overqualified translator and a stater-of-the-bloody-obvious, which anyone could do if they were so inclined.

Anyway. Enough bitterness.

She still looked pretty good, Carza was reluctant to admit.

Grey suit, sans jacket and tie. Long dark hair still kept in good condition, somehow. And her eyes, despite being exhausted, were still bright.

"...how did-"

"I appear to have annoyed our generous host. I see you've not accomplished that, not quite yet."

She hummed. And Hull spoke up, incredulous.

"You were trying to work with the Sleepless?"

Oh.

Right.

Lirana's eyes widened to the size of dinner plates.

"You... you worked with the Sleepless, why would... why would you think that was a good idea?"

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

Egg simply blinked a few times, and said nothing. The others had said what needed to be said. Miss vo Larima frowned for a moment, before shrugging with more elegance than someone clinging to the walls of a wooden cage really ought to possess. The people below her seemed to be subordinates, mostly. Hard to say if there was anyone from any other Courts in there... but either way, none of them looked happy with the general state of things. The stink was tremendous, she just realised - unwashed bodies, filth, food remains... a bouquet of unpleasantness that filled the air. It was a miracle that vo Larima wasn't going completely mad in there, her office had been so clean. Her tiny frown ceased, and practised tranquillity returned. She was good.

"Our business in this region was for negotiating a permanent arrangement, and the colonial administration wasn't going to last much longer. Either we gave up on having any arrangement, or we sought their most likely successors."

A wry smile - precisely calculated, not reaching her eyes.

"Not our best decision, but to be fair, we weren't entirely aware of their... anti-industrial policies. If we were, we wouldn't have played up their elements. I don't know how they expect to run a successful state while being opposed to merchants who don't fit their very narrow and yet poorly-defined category of 'good traders', while also refusing to build any factories."

She sighed.

"Anyway. At least there's some conversation around here now. No offence to my... room-mates, of course."

A vague murmur of 'none taken' from the other nine people in the cage. Carza stiffened her back, nodded at Hull, who actually did the talking she didn't want to do.

"So... did you send them after us?"

Vo Larima blinked.

"I beg your pardon?"

"The Sleepless. We found some things with your mark on them, then we got ambushed... your Court is trying to stop us from mapping a route to the steppe so you can monopolise any kind of trade over there, and that's why you want to... well, work with the Sleepless. I'm curious if you sold us out before you annoyed Kralat."

A moment of silence stretched into almost half a minute. Miss vo Larima sounded... actively bewildered.

"Why on earth would we do something like that?"

"Well-"

"We don't murder our competition. What sort of... no, no, beyond that, what kind of overinflated self-importance do you possess? We don't send assassins to kill people, that's the worst way to go about your business. Hired killers are usually the bottom-feeders of the criminal underworld, they have nothing to lose and precisely zero loyalty, they'll fail frequently, and in the end, it reflects your own inability to do business legitimately."

She let out a small, sharp laugh.

"We didn't want to kill you. We simply paid off a single member of your group to feed us information, and then we'd follow you and take advantage of the work you did. That was all. What were you going to do, kill us? With the famous martial skill of the Court of Ivory?"

Carza froze.

"Who did you hire?"

Anthan? Lirana? Egg? Hull? Or-

"That fellow from Fidelizh. Cam. How is he? I don't-"

"He's dead. I thought you had him killed. To whittle us down."

The woman looked legitimately distressed by that, and Carza turned sharply to Egg, who shrugged.

"Nothing I knew about. Must've been some side business. Damn fool, intelligence work is always messy. Easier to just do the job we were paid for... then again, you weren't paying us much, so..."

She'd had a spy in the expedition from the very beginning... because she didn't pay him enough? She was paying a decent wage, a very decent wage. Maybe not for this kind of danger, but she hadn't anticipated anything close to this, and... and he was dead. He'd died to a random attack. Miss vo Larima finally spoke, sounded genuinely shaken.

"How ghastly. I'm very sorry to hear that... he was just going to feed us some information on your progress, your location... we intended to follow you as far as the mountains, then offer our aid. We could offer better supplies, better weapons... you could do your scholarship as much as you wanted, our interest was a trade mission with the nomads. That was all. You could do whatever you liked otherwise."

"But... the treasury said you were going to try and intercept us, that we needed pristine academic product from the steppe, or..."

"Or what?"

"...or we'd... uh..."

Miss vo Larima poked her head through the bars, and looked down scornfully as Carza flailed for a response. And failed.

"My dear girl, how important do you think your Court is? How important do you think our city is? We're an irrelevance. I was simply trying to invest in a promising-yet-risky trade route, I legitimately couldn't care less if you got there before us. Why would you need to get there before us? We don't plant factories like seeds, our intention was to establish a trading factory and monitor the situation, if things shaped up we'd do something more permanent, but this was a scouting mission, initial negotiations only, nothing more. It would take months to lay any amount of track, years to establish a real presence, decades to become powerful - if that was even on the table."

She leant forwards.

"Why on earth did you think we were a threat to you? We wouldn't kill you, wouldn't even capture you."

A low chuckle passed amongst the others. Carza felt her face burning, and Hull shuffled awkwardly. The shocks of the last few hours, the last few days, and... this entire conversation, it poked a hole in what she'd believed. The work would've been painfully necessary, right? The future of the Court could be determined by having access to this route, to this source of data. And they just needed to get a few people out there first, to... to... oh. To establish a presence, open limited networks of informants, make the way for others to come and expand matters once things really kicked off and the data seemed good. They needed this data, if they had it, they could achieve a position of legitimate academic repute in the modern world, and exploit that to sustain their operations for years. One part of a bigger operation, that was all. So... so... hold on.

"...the treasury told us you might be a threat."

"Did they, now?"

Miss vo Larima hummed.

"Our interests aren't opposed. We want trade, you want study. If anything, we could help each other achieve our goals, but our goals don't conflict."

She sighed.

"Listen, I'm... very tired, but as I understand it, your Court wanted to map out the route first. Why so eager?"

"Because we needed the data. To preserve our future. It would give us an unprecedented amount of academic product we could use to-"

"Product? Listen, we didn't want you dead, we didn't even want you to stop your expedition. Do you understand how we work? We want to retain our city's relevance in the modern world, we're being realistic about the future. Things are going to change, whether we like it or not. The Court of Salt has changed, and if we hadn't, we'd have remained uncompetitive and our city would be even more of a backwater. I love ALD IOM as much as I'm sure you do, but surely you must realise that we can't achieve that by snarling at one another like jackals. If your Court had simply made contact with us... anyway."

She sighed.

"I'm sorry you were wrapped up in this mess. You may want to keep your distance from us. My Court will pay our ransoms gladly, but if yours fails to come through, I assure you, I will make sure you and your friends get out of this alive. If you like, as of this moment you are associates of the Court of Salt, and to you we extend our protections. Make sure that the leader of this band of brigands mentions that - it should speed any ransom deliveries."

Carza and Hull glanced at one another. Felt wrong. Nothing else was really exchanged. They had no news for the people in the cage, the people in the cage had nothing for them, and a Sleepless fighter was standing ominously on a nearby pillar, staring at them with naked hostility. Give me an excuse, he seemed to say. Give me an excuse to rough up the prisoners, or to throw you in the cage. Add four to a cage almost overfilled with bodies. At least the people inside now were holding up alright - didn't seem to have suffered any major breakdowns. But then again... they might not have been in there for very long. No room to sleep, the only respite hanging from the bars... and if the Sleepless wanted, they could lash at the hands and feet dangling outside, force them to compact in, until they couldn't move an inch in any direction, until they were literally locked together. Miss vo Larima seemed to understand that, and did her best to stay on the good side of her captors. Some polite nods. And that was all.

...the offer was tempting. Get someone else to guarantee their ransom being delivered. The Court of Salt was much richer than the Court of Ivory, and actually dealt with dangerous circumstances a hell of a lot more.

Betrayed from the start. An informant in their ranks. Embroiled in a literally one-sided struggle, the other side wondering why she was making so much fuss over nothing. And now... trapped. And not because of a targeted ambush, just because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time with the wrong people, and what did they expect to happen?

When they settled down to sleep that night... none of them rested easily.

Doomed from day one.

* * *

Carza woke.

She wanted to stay here. To never move again. To simply stew in her own thoughts until the sun went down. There was nothing else to do, no books to read beyond those in her case - which she'd already scanned a good number of times. So... why not just stay? No-one was going to stop her from doing so. The temple was all around her, the Sleepless hadn't slept a wink, at no stage could she really experience peace. Hunger didn't even brew in her gut, just the habitual thirst from the hot weather. And once some water passed her lips, even that went away. She felt... felt... felt nothing. It was a paralysing thing in her limbs that made her not want to move, eat, act... and she knew it would extend onwards. A series of grey days until she returned home. The others seemed to annoy her suddenly. Egg was a bald, overly-cheerful freak who was clearly suffering from some sort of shell-shock and refused to acknowledge it, Lirana was constantly chewing her nails and looking around in fear... and Hull... Hull... he'd gotten her into this mess. She gritted her teeth when she heard his voice, talking quietly to the others. She wanted silence. Did she? Would silence be any better?

She rolled over on her side on the hard stone, and stared morosely into the distance. Sticky, from head to foot. Nothing in the right place. Nothing fitting correctly. She... she'd felt this way, when she was in her mid-teens. A feeling that the whole world had come undone in some important way, and she had no control over it. A feeling that the conditions of existence were no longer tolerable, and a jealousy of the old version of herself that did find them tolerable. A grizzly sensation in her soul that choked her blood vessels with cotton wool and made her skin feel like rubber stretched over a too-small mannequin, leaving odd folds and valleys where something ought to be. Doomed from the start. Imprisoned from the beginning. A bowl of damp grains was placed in her hands, and she stared at it hatefully.

She loathed this feeling.

She leant back... and stared up at the sky. The boiling sky. No-one should live in this green hell. Most animals only lived in narrow ranges. You didn't catch a... a... a... tiger outside of the jungle, right? Not usually. And she couldn't imagine a bear living here without sweating itself to death in less than a day. So why shouldn't humans just stick to where they could live and think and exist? Why stay in a place where they boiled themselves down to skeletons and lost most of their sanity along the way? It was an unfair thought, but... she found herself hating everyone who'd lived in this place and insisted on developing here instead of coming somewhere else. It was very unfair, and she regretted the thought the moment she had it. There would be no change today. There would be nothing at all today. She would stare into the forest, and think, and do nothing about those thoughts. She knew nothing of the language, and the only one here who spoke the native language and city-speak was the terrifying leader in his dark room full of candles, where he stared and smiled and spoke and smiled. And she wasn't going to talk to him.

She regretted her hate. Lirana was frightened. Egg was just a tired professional. Hull was her friend, and her only friend, really. At least she was alive. At least all of them were still alive and largely uninjured.

Quietly, she snipped at her mutations, letting them collect in the emptied bowl of food she couldn't really remember eating, though she had the musty aftertaste on her gritty tongue, and could feel a faint burn in her throat that she always experienced after too much grain. Purple growths, like budding flowers. One of the Sleepless guards watched her curiously, shadowy eyes bright with suspicion. She snipped.

One growth.

Two growths.

Three.

More.

The pain faded, and she simply made it part of the routine. Just something that needed doing. Founder forbid there'd be any variation in her day.

She sulked.

No other word for it.

She'd lost, been captured, was miserable and knew she was too lucky to complain about that feeling. Everyone else was dead. She had no right to be miserable about the long, humid day which was already making her want to dunk her head in a stream and not come up for minutes on end.

"You wear suit."

Halting city-speech. Oh?

The Sleepless guard nearby was staring at her. His voice was low and cautious. Nothing about him was left up to chance. His hands never strayed from his long knife, from his pistols.

"Yes, I do."

"Suit for men."

He sniffed derisively.

"For merchants. Oppressors."

"...not in ALD IOM."

"Stupid."

He grinned.

"You see what we do to women that forget that, ha? Some forget. Some put on trousers and act like man-around-the-house. We show you what we do to them, real real soon, ha?"

The local girl.

Still alive.

Still here.

Carza stopped talking, and the guard laughed sharply.

"You like our methods?"

"...I don't see much method."

"Then you must be pretty stupid."

Another sharp laugh.

And Carza stopped engaging. Mostly because she agreed. She was pretty stupid.

But the mockery... it sparked something. A thought. Suits. Miss vo Larima wore one as well. Silly thought, just an idle connection... but it was a thought, and that was better than the senseless porridge which had filled her head until now. Come on, think, there... she'd been through this before. Trapped. No way out. A hopeless route to a hopeless future. Happened twice. First time, she'd clawed her way into the Court of Ivory, blackmailed her father, and forced her way into the life she wanted. Second time, she'd worked with Hull to organise this doomed expedition at all costs, to make sure they could keep their positions of comfort in the Court. And now... now she needed to get out of here. She needed to get out of this camp, and back on the road, maybe. It wouldn't make much of a difference. If they had a guide... the patrol had been intending to abandon them anyway after this point, let them do the rest of the route on their own. So, if they had a guide, and some supplies... they could get to the mountains.

An idea.

"Hull?"

A minute passed. Well, several minutes. And the silence around the stockade was broken by a sharp voice.

"Why did they lock you in here?"

Miss vo Larima looked up blearily.

"...because we were acting too mercantile, apparently."

"Did they lock you up immediately?"

"No... no, they didn't. They waited until our positions were confirmed, and they were sure we had no backup waiting to ride to the rescue. We do have backup, but not enough to assault this place and free us. Easier to pay the ransom."

"But at what point?"

She was speaking quickly and frantically. Needed to know. Needed a plan. Because staying here felt like the peak of misery and pointlessness, and it would insult the people who'd gotten her this far, all of the dead men and women in that patrol, if she just sat around and her let her bosses bail her out like some spoiled adolescent locked up for assaulting some barmaid. So many people had died... twenty two people in that patrol. Twenty two. One lost to the fort's promises of safety, that meant twenty-one had died in total, all dying because of a promise the governor had made to her. They'd been ambushed and ripped apart, tortured and butchered, and if she just... sat here and did nothing, then she was worse than a wretch. She deserved every bit of humiliation she found in ALD IOM if that was the case. She deserved to be kicked out of the Court of Ivory. The idea of kicking down other people to clamber higher, it... it reminded her too much of her early life. Far too much. Of things she didn't want to remember any more. The way hunger and desperation had turned her into an animal, turned everyone into an animal. At least that had been justified by it working, and by how seriously she took her life afterwards. That excuse didn't exist here. Not unless she acted.

Miss vo Larima climbed up again, extricating herself from the mass.

"We... explained our interest in extending a train line through the mountains, one the Sleepless could tax. We had no issue on that front. But once we started talking about the specifics, and specifically, once the leader here found my copy of the Saline Manifesto, he... took rather against us. I assume he'll still pursue the investment, more's the pity, but exclude us. I'm sure one of these days we'll come back and offer him the money he needs to build the railway, and then it'll be wonderful and fine and this misery will have a point, but until he gets the message that his 'free state' would be too poor to build more than a few lines of rail, let alone a functional locomotive... he's spent years destroying his home, and now he expects it to bleed gold once he takes charge."

She sniffed. Looked like she hadn't slept at all last night. Just stood around, resting when she could... but never truly falling asleep. Bags under her eyes, and tattered ends to some strands of hair. Her suit was matted with sweat and mud. She looked... worse, that much was for sure. And she was letting more personal spite slip through her professional mask. Interesting.

"I... see. And you're sure he still wants the line to go through?"

"I'd imagine so. I think he's opposed ideologically to overly mercantile people, not to trains. I think."

"And did you have anyone waiting ahead of here? Closer to the mountains?"

"A few. There's a village near the foothills which we sent a few people to some time ago, they were meant to make the way clearer for us."

"Would they still be there?"

"Possibly."

Hull stepped closer, having been silent until now.

"Alright. I think I have an idea. Well, Carza and I had it, she can take credit for the initial idea, I'll take credit for... anyway. Creative feedback. Point is, we're not you."

"...very well-observed?"

"We're not you, we're not like you. We want to have an expedition, that's all. Nothing mercantile."

"...and?"

"But it could still be useful."

"...oh-ho?"

Carza stiffened her back and spoke clearly, in a language the guards wouldn't understand.

"A business proposal. We try and negotiate passage to the mountains. Once we're through, we do what we were always going to do - set up a mission, make the way clearer for others - but we'll also make sure the ground is right for your Court to set up there as well. We help you salvage this, and in exchange, we get those resources you have ready to cross the mountains, and a cut of the eventual profits. As long as we get a piece of the proverbial pie, we'll be happy to help. As long as this helps all of ALD IOM, we're happy to help."

"You... personally?"

"The Court of Ivory. We came out here to help it, and we're not going to pass up a chance to do that."

Miss vo Larima leaned out through the bars, eyes twinkling with renewed interest.

"Oh. Ho. So, playing businesswoman, are we? I assume we stew in this cage while you walk away, of course."

"If we can get you out, we will. If we can't... the ransom should come through, right?"

"...yes, yes. And...?"

Hull cut in.

"You were going to head west as well. Now you can't. We can do your job for you, at least, some of it, and in exchange we want the Court of Ivory to be properly paid for its services. A nice packet of the profits. Do we need to draw up an agreement?"

"No paper here, darling, but... we can form a verbal agreement. Find yourself some witnesses, and we can try to hammer something out. What percentage, ballpark figure?"

Carza and Hull blinked.

Numbers weren't their strong suit. If they were, they wouldn't be doing this expedition to try and make ends meet. Vo Larima blinked.

"...we'll do that later, then."

"Later."

Vo Larima smiled.

"It would be wonderful doing business with you. Anything to salvage this operation. All for the glory of ALD IOM."

"About that... you really do...?"

"I like ALD IOM. A great deal. You have no reason to believe me, so I can only say that I love ALD IOM and all its Courts, no matter how strange and backwards. It's a slice of heaven. The rest of the world squabbles and expands, rots and spreads ruin wherever it goes. We have a place so wonderful that invading armies have simply settled down and joined with us, because it was that much better than their homelands. We have a pleasant land, with a delicate climate, and a blessedly wonderful environment. We are not base merchants who will sell us all out at the first opportunity - because without ALD IOM, the Court of Salt would be lost. We can't compete with the greater companies out there, not for a second. We're struggling as much as you are, we just wear it better. I understand we have no reason to trust one another, but... we're both of ALD IOM. I grew up there, and I love every dust-covered brick of the place. I want to benefit it."

She smiled sadly.

"I intend to retire there, after all. And there's a special place in hell for those who ruin their home towns, don't you think?"

"...I suppose so. Yes."

Hull shrugged, and glanced at Carza, as if to say 'she's aloof and smug, but she seems honest'. And more than that... she was from ALD IOM. And in a place like this, they had to stick together. Carza spoke clearly.

"So... we have a deal, Miss vo Larima?"

"That we do. Find some witnesses, and we'll make it official."

A distant scream echoed from the forest, and Miss vo Larima paled slightly.

"...I don't blame you for trying to get out of here. Best of luck with it."

"...thanks. And... sorry."

A toothy smile.

"Think nothing of it."