CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT - THE HOURGLASS OF TUMBLEDOWN COTTAGES

Nothing was simple. Visiting someone meant being seen visiting someone, and the same applied to calling someone in for questioning. Anything could be tracked and charted. Only what happened in the confines of her own head was truly confidential, and she refrained from making too many notes. Whenever she did, she kept them in bundles, and stored them as securely as possible. Well, she kept them in arm's reach at all times, and slept lightly, never in a bed. Always in a chair, her hands clasped over her documents, bound in string and wrapped in brown paper, with a few hairs tied to the seams. When she woke - as she did several times a night - she checked those hairs, and noted if a single one had been broken. Sometimes one was, likely by the motions of her body and hands during her short, dreamless slumbers, and she'd promptly become very paranoid indeed, and would check every single page, looking for any sign of interference. But none were ever stolen. And the additional hairs she attached to the edges of pages were almost never broken either. Well, she expected her hair was going to fall out anyway from stress, so she might as well make use of some of the stuff. Get ahead of the wave, so to speak.

Feh.

A few days dragged on. And she spent them all identically. Outside this room, nothing existed. Outside this room, there was nothing but a great factory that produced more pages for her to analyse. All that mattered was the data, and all that lay between her and that data were endless pages filled with ink, numbers, names, places, occupations, incidents... she reviewed them all, and sketched out great diagrams, put pins into maps, slowly assembled her findings. At night, she removed the pins, rolled up the maps, and had to replace everything in the morning. Terrified of someone seeing. The room became encoded with memory, with data, interlacing into the fine texture of the chairs, the rippling contours of the leather bound ledgers, the sharpness of old pages on her fingers, the gleaming surfaces of polished tables, the rich depth of the carpets, the slow shifting of the light... in the bars of dust in the empty bookshelves, thin as pencils, thin as needles, thin as the feeding mechanisms of tiny insects, as the teeth of eels. The only exception to her monastic existence was the occasional, hurried, nervous trips to the toilet or the bathroom, where she scrubbed herself as quickly as possible and hurried back like a small rodent fearing the shadow of a descending owl.

And slowly, but surely, Tanner found herself becoming peculiar.

Yan-Lam brought her coffee, and sat by her, scanning ledgers and noting down the right points. Tanner had started by checking her work... now she didn't bother. Trusted her enough. But Yan-Lam could leave, could fetch food, medicines, drink, the things Tanner needed to survive. She took decontaminants, and vomited up chunks of her innards, slowly purging everything. The gas no longer affected her, but a paranoid person would keep taking the decontaminants - supposedly they helped with all manner of poisons, especially if you took them regularly. Her cheeks began to hollow out, her eyes sank slightly, her skin was never anything more than sallow and pale. Walking carcass, really. But she didn't feel weaker, that was the strangest thing. She didn't stagger or drape, and she slept barely a few hours a night. Somehow, she felt stronger. Like she was melting away every piece of weakness from herself, all her doubt, all her feebleness. One day, she stood and realised that the fat had melted from her arms, shrivelled away, and what remained beneath was... hard. Long and strong as steel cables, rippling under pale, sometimes ink-stained skin. Who cared if her cheeks were raw with weariness - she was sharp.

And her eyes were hungry.

Always hungry.

Yan-Lam told her about what the others were saying. They said she was paranoid. Said she was too pale. Said she barely ate. A walking carcass - complete walking carcass. Dead. Reviewing endless piles of ledgers - premature senility, that was a diagnosis bouncing around from place to place. 'Get away from that one, Yan', the cook said from time to time, apparently. 'Better things to do than hang around a dying woman. Sleep in the kitchen, if you like, but don't stick around those walking corpse any longer if you've got any brains in your skull'.

But Yan-Lan always returned with coffee, tea, food... and when night came, sometimes she slunk away to sleep in her small room...

But more and more, she slept in the ledger room with Tanner, curled up into a chair like an overlarge cat, while Tanner simply let her own head drop into her chest, where it remained until wakefulness returned.

They worked.

They drew comparisons. Debated very little. Debate was only done once all data was understood. They tracked the movement of bouncers from job to job. A large number moved directly into the service of a company, usually as an overseer. Regardless of violent history. Another lead. They tracked the dead, and linked them to disputed houses. They looked into the current inhabitants, checking everything they possibly could... but there was only so much they could do with what they had. The cold-houses, though... those were interesting. Ample records on them. What was sent in, what was sent out, who worked there, who stopped... trying to find out how it was connected to the Tyer case. Beldol had been sent to the cold-houses, seemingly to shatter a relationship with Tyer, a local. Tanner was convinced that this held all the problems of the colony in microcosm, linking to all the major areas. Indeed, she checked the addresses of Lam and Tyer on the map... and noted that if these houses were to be occupied by locals again, the entire street would be occupied by them, top to bottom. Not a single Fidelizhi individual to be found. What she wanted now were transfers. How did someone move from one company to another? How did a woman get transferred, forcibly, from the city to the cold-house? Beldol wasn't available for interview - Tanner didn't dare bring her in, not yet, not here. The woman might squeal to someone else. Had to keep a tight tourniquet on any sort of information leakage.

Bouncers had a planned retirement once they left their little corps. Sometimes death. Sometimes exile. And much more frequently, a quiet entry into another profession, usually as an overseer or a foreman. And she had vague evidence of them continuing their shady operations while in these new roles, arranging accidents, assisting on more sides than one. Whoever was actually paying them off to do their dirty work had, seemingly, managed to spread their reach quite far indeed, across multiple areas of the colony.

The employment records of the cold-houses were... well.

They were an interesting case.

A litany of movements. The issue was that the cold-houses had no permanent membership, not really. During summer and spring, their workforce exploded with temporary labourers, all of them helping with hauling around the food supplies for the winter, operating the machinery, all that business. And when the tide of people withdrew, a different arrangement of remnants was left behind. Each time. Never, ever the exact same, though there were some long-standing individuals. The old man from the cold-house she'd visited, that was one - lame, and likely not much use in other professions. There were some others. And while she found no evidence of former bouncers going to work for them, she did see a... hm. Well. She saw something decidedly convenient. The permanent core of members were always locals. Always. The winter workforce, though, did have Fidelizhi members, quite frequently as a matter of fact. But they never remained from year to year. After a winter, they vanished from the cold-houses and never returned to work there in future. And if she... ah, there she was. Migration records, cross-referencing (the work of an entire day, at the end of which her eyes were desperately trying to close, and she took to striding around while reading, just to keep her blood flowing)...

A local worked in a cold-house during winter - they maybe stayed for another year, maybe left and entered another job. Perfectly fine. Not very interesting work, and didn't demand enormous skill. Exactly the sort of work that had high levels of turnover, in her experience.

A Fidelizhi citizen worked in a cold-house during winter, though?

Gone from the colony within two years.

Every. Single. Time.

In two cases, the workers wound up dead in... an accident at the smeltery for one, an accident in the city for another. Cross-referenced with their autopsies... hard to tell, but she was fairly confident that their overseers at the time had been former bouncers.

She studied the results. It'd taken a while to chart it all - an entire day - but... she had proof that something was happening. And as Yan-Lam stumped off to get more coffee for the two of them, Tanner started charting timelines. When did this start? When did the turnover of Fidelizhi citizens become so... well, odd? Beldol had said that working in the cold-house was unpleasant, her colleagues were standoffish, would she be here come the spring? Well, obviously not, not after Tyer. But even if that hadn't been a factor, Tanner thought she might well head home anyway. Thing is, this was fairly unnoticeable unless you knew what you were looking for. There were lots of bouncers, they were rotated frequently, and after a while they tended to occupy a lot of positions, just by process of elimination. There weren't that many deaths, and they were kept fairly distant from each other, with convincing excuses for all of them. The cold-houses were so chaotic in the summer that it'd be easy to miss someone just hopping on a boat back home - and some workers took up to two years before going back home. And 20% of 'final inhabitants' of contested houses being Fidelizhi was... 1 in 5. Not entirely unreasonable. Compared to overall population numbers, it wasn't awful. Fidelizhi citizens were in a minority here, though a very sizeable one.

The question here was one of organisation.

Was this a concerted effort? If so, who organised it, and why, and how?

Or was this... depressingly, she had to think that it was accidental. Bouncers were given positions of power. Exposed to the public at their most weary. Often, they were locals, plucked out of the shantytown, and given power over the same people who literally lived above them back home. Could glare at the roofs of their houses over the lip of the river, if they so desired. Maybe it was just... resentment. Bitter people given a taste of power...

But the story from Lyur, the murder of Myunhen, the confession of Dyen, the case of Tyer... all of it added up to something a little more organised. Couldn't just believe that it was a case of random cruelty inflicted by some very, very angry individuals. It was too subtle for that. Though... maybe. Maybe. The bouncers were organised, after all - organised by the governor, and answerable, first and foremost, to him. Who could say that under such conditions, when organised by another, they'd learn to organise themselves more effectively? Like taking a spinning gear, and attaching another, home-made gear. Taking some of the power for themselves. Getting organised... simply to, what, expel foreigners? Keep Rekida Rekidan? Get revenge on the Fidelizhi?

Maybe.

Maybe.

She didn't want to settle on that for good, though. It implied... unpleasant things, it'd be impossible to fix, and it was such a pessimistic option...

And she kept thinking of the hammer, the eye, what Marana had said to her - that they were banners, flags, once. Like her lodge, in a way. Binding people together into little self-interested collectives. Cartels, that was her word.

Hm.

Needed a... few more details. Just a few.

And on the eve of the fourth day, Marana returned with her first 'report'.

* * *

"Yan-Mal?"

"Hm? Yes, miss? Something else you wanted me to get on wi-"

"No, no. Nothing. Well, not to do with the ledgers. Excellent work, by the way."

The chambermaid glowed slightly, though her smile never went beyond a very tasteful inclination of the lips.

"Thank you, miss. Very kind."

"Well, anyway-"

The chambermaid deflated. Right, note to self - when giving her compliments, keep it up for a while. She wasn't one of those types to take a compliment and savour it for months, if not the rest of her life, she needed sustained contact with grateful parties. Tanner engraved that into her memory-room, and soldiered on. Judged on. Anyway.

"I was... wondering about the governor's room. You've cleaned it in the past, yes?"

"Sometimes. Largely, I was doing more delicate work - polishing, dusting, removing litter... heavy duty cleaning was purview of the grown servants."

"Right. But you're familiar with his safe?"

"I am, yes."

A pause.

Yan-Mal stared at her... and her intelligent, oddly triangular green eyes narrowed very, very slightly. Her chair groaned as she shuffled it forwards quickly, mounting her elbows on the table and seating her head on her hands. Slightly childish imitation of how Marana conducted herself, with all her airs and gestures. Hm. Looked better on someone without a chronically swollen, reddened nose - when Marana did things like this, Tanner had to ask herself whether or not the woman was drunk at the moment.

"Are you trying to get inside?"

"I'm... curious. There's shades of other documents here. You've felt it too, yes?"

"A... little. It's not my place to judge-"

"Quite right, that's my place."

Ha! Her sense of humour hadn't been destroyed! Just... oh, gods, she was making jokes, Tanner Magg was making jokes, this meant poor things. She was going odd. Probably should've realised she was 'going odd' when she stopped buttoning up the front of her blouse, and just used it as a glorified jacket. In her defence, she had a lot of work to do.

Oh, gods, she had the front of her blouse unbuttoned. Sleeves were buttoned, back was buttoned, skirt was buttoned, but she'd forgotten the most sinful part of the blouse?

Ought to rectify that. Corrupting the youth via exposure to her very thick, highly concealing, and deeply modest under-shirt.

"Yes, honoured judge. I agree. Well, it's not my place to judge, but... yes. Yes, I feel... well... I wonder how anyone could make use of this. We keep cross-referencing and digging around, and I wonder how someone was meant to use this in the first place to actually research things."

"I've had thoughts on that too, I think it's a security measure, or a way to keep their activities quiet... make sure only the governor and his aides knew exactly what was going on at any given moment. I'm more thinking of... well, hints of other documents."

"...yes?"

"Obviously a census has probably never been made, people come and go too quickly, change jobs too quickly... and judges usually take care of that sort of business, or used to. Still do it in some colonies. Anyway. Besides the point. But... what about this migration ledger? I mean, you were born in Fidelizh, yes?"

"Yes, honoured Tanner."

Was she being mocked?

No, no, Yan-Lam was far too nice for that. She brought Tanner coffee, and had remained uncorrupted despite the front of her Tanner's blouse being unbuttoned in a scandalous fashion, and she'd seen Tanner running around with wet hair from her brusque morning washes. Plus, several encounters with Marana, yet no alcohol habit had festered in her soul. Obviously she was basically incorruptible.

She was going peculiar, wasn't she?

"Well, I wasn't born in Fidelizh. I moved there from Mahar Jovan. And when I arrived, I... there was a whole procedure. I had to talk about my reason for travelling, with proper letters of introduction to my place of work, had to state my ignorance of reactionary groups back home, any monarchists, anything. Was I part of one, did I know anyone part of one... I had to accept being monitored and interviewed by the Erlize whenever they liked, and I had to agree to be apolitical... hold on, I remember the precise requirement: 'recognising that any engagement with domestic political associations is to be considered tantamount to agitation by a foreign element, and will be treated accordingly'. Turned over my foreign currency, and out I went. And I was being invited by the Judges of the Golden Door, they've been in the city practically since it was founded."

A pause.

"And... Mr. Canima said they knew things about me. Had a file on me. I haven't found that file, but I have to assume it exists, alongside... now, don't tell anyone, but I think the governor had copies of keys to every house in the colony. Never found those, either. It feels deeply unlikely that this book of migrations is the only record of people coming in and out of the colony, I have to assume there was a vetting process of some kind, even just to make sure that the right ratios were being kept - the governor was such a stickler for everything in the colony, there has to have been some documentation. Can you tell me, precisely, how you came here?"

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Yan-Lam hummed, tilting her head from side to side to agitate the old grey cells. Gods, she looked... rather thin. Burning herself up for this, much as Tanner was. But Tanner simply had more wax to melt before she was all gone, Yan-Lam was slightly more... confined in her potential contributions. Needed more sleep, needed more food. Shouldn't be emulating Tanner, not as she was now. Tanner emulated, she wasn't to be emulated. And Tanner, honestly, expected to die here. The judges would expect it of her, if necessary. The governor had died pursuing what she now pursued - and she was much lesser than him. By all rights, Tanner Magg would die in this place, and if she achieved something before it happened, then she'd be remembered honourably by her colleagues, by her lodge, by her mother, and she liked to think her father.

But that was nothing for a girl to emulate.

"...I came here with my father, and there... was a process. My father saw most of it, I wasn't privy to all of the discussions. But I understand that he wrote a personal letter to the governor's office, asking to be... taken ahead on some kind of list, I think. I believe that people apply to the Colonial Office, some are accepted, some are rejected, and the accepted ones go on a list. Sent up in batches from Fidelizh once their number comes up."

Tanner nodded slowly.

"Any interviews?"

A small snort.

"Of course. The Erlize love their interviews... sorry, miss, that was rude. But... yes, there were interviews. Mostly for my father. But I had to sit in a few, where they asked me about my employers, my friends, my education, and asked me to study a number of faces they'd drawn out. Troublemakers, I think. I'm here, so I presume none of my answers were too troubling for them."

Hm.

So... yes, the governor would definitely have more detailed documents on people, wouldn't he? The issue was, these documents would be coming from Fidelizh, and the simple problem of distance meant that he might not get the full documentation, but he might get a condensed version. The Erlize archives were absolutely enormous, too, and she doubted this mansion could hold all the colony's data - but summaries, possibly, possibly.

"I see."

She leaned closer, voice becoming more confidential.

"And there's a known habit of removing some documents from circulation. I imagine Mr. Canima knows where these immigration documents are, but... honestly, I don't know if he'll hand them over to me. And if I warn him, effectively, that I want them, he's likely to keep a very, very close eye on them in future, making them harder to... take."

Yan-Lam nodded seriously, and offered her own scintillating contribution.

"Also, he's scary."

Tanner blinked.

Desperately wanted to agree with her.

But that would be unprofessional.

Yan-Lam flushed slightly as Tanner soldiered on, heedless of her deeply intelligent and perceptive statement. And Tanner flushed slightly in turn as she felt embarrassed at embarrassing her. Matching pair of tomatoes, they were.

"...so, if you know anything about the safe in the governor's room, I'd appreciate it. For all I know, that thing contains things he doesn't want generally available. Maybe just personal effects, but... if it's his safe, and he was willing to keep things like the activities of the bouncers hidden from Mr. Canima, he might've kept the safe combination hidden too. So, have you ever seen it opened, or unlocked?"

A minute of thought.

"Not... necessarily. Never unlocked. If I was cleaning the room, then it was empty. Didn't want to disturb him if he was using it. But I did... now, it was small, but I remembered one evening a few months ago, the cook made this... spiced chicken substance, quite tasty, but very greasy, and eaten with the hands. The governor returned to his room, and I thought, unfairly, 'goodness, I'm going to be mopping up that grease from his desk tomorrow, aren't I?' And... uh, I did. That was entirely accurate. But a little rude. And while I was there, I saw grease stains on other surfaces he'd touched - nothing grotesque, I want to clarify, he wasn't spraying grease every which way, but he did leave a slight, noticeable residue. At least, noticeable for someone looking out for it, not for-"

Gods, weird seeing this from the outside.

"Yan-Lam."

"Sorry, honoured judge. Sorry. But there were markings on the safe dial, and... an address book. The cover, where he lifted it up, and a small range of pages. I think I might be able to remember which ones - understand, I was paying attention because I was wondering how to clean it up, not because I was being a nosy parker."

"I quite understand."

"Do you, honoured judge?"

"Yes, definitely. Not a nosy parker. Purely a highly competent and devoted chambermaid, doing a credit to her profession, and if any of this was being noted down, I'd underline that point several times."

"Well."

A pause.

"Good."

Another pause.

"Thank you, honoured judge."

Tanner hummed vaguely, and glanced around.

"Right. You look for the pages. I'll keep an eye on the door."

"Yes, honoured judge."

"This isn't thievery, understand? I'm acquiring evidence I'm entitled to claim. Just have to jump through a few hoops first. Nothing irregular."

"Yes, honoured judge. Absolutely, honoured judge."

"Check the corridor, make sure we've got a clear route."

"Immediately, honoured judge."

* * *

The safe clicked, wheels turning, metal clunking as mechanisms stirred to life, and as far as Tanner was concerned, that might as well be the sound of her sweat glands activating one by one. Practically perspiring through her damn dress. The governor's room was much as she'd left it. Carefully searched, but not ransacked. Tidy, with the thinnest layer of dust where the servants had stopped cleaning it. Without someone to tell them to do it, seemed like they'd just... fallen off the bandwagon, so to speak. And Yan-Lam's services had been monopolised. For all Tanner knew, the servants had stopped entirely on the governor's death, and Yan-Lam had been holding the fort, keeping the flame burning until Tanner had requisitioned her for this secretive investigation. The chambermaid was inside the room now, flicking through pages... finding notations. It was odd, thinking of the governor writing it down. Maybe his mind had been... no, no, not failing, not remotely, but maybe he'd started to doubt it. Tanner knew the feeling. She checked if she had her keys in her pocket before she left her room, before she shut the door, after she shut the door, and then every few minutes until she was back where she started. And she was only grazing her mid-twenties, he was a significantly... well, if she was a smooth cliff-face (albeit an abnormally large one), he was a weather-beaten crag. And at the end of the day, she knew which one of the two hikers might prefer to skirt close to the edge of. She remembered, with a flush of embarrassment, the... pills in his desk.

Pills for the 'sexually jaded'.

She glanced at his bed, trying to keep her attention away from the flicking of pages, turning of wheels, the whole process of... of thievery. The process, but not the motive or legal framework. Otherwise identical. And deeply uncomfortable. The bed was uncreased, perfectly made, tucked in at the edges until it was smooth as Tanner Magg if she was a cliff-face, as mentioned above. Did he.. she doubted he had affairs, especially out here. But... she had a sudden image. Not taking the pills out of necessity, taking them out of paranoia of losing his edge, losing a skill he always considered his own, and perpetually his own. Maybe the address book notations were the same - not a failing mind, but the fear of one, and the fear of losing an inalienable skill. You only dreaded losing things you thought could be lost, and the horror of realising that anything could be lost, that life wasn't a complete package and even the most intimate parts could be whittled down by degrees, and you could still go on afterwards... you could lose your mind to a harpoon accident in Mahar Jovan, and live onwards, incapable of feeding yourself, bathing yourself...

Life was a very resilient thing. Sometimes that was a very frightening statement.

Either way. A man obsessed with controlling his colony, paranoid about losing control of his mind and body... sure. That fit.

She stepped closer to the door, listening closely.

If they were caught...

If they were caught, she had a plan. Had a plan to make it seem like she was just a mad little woman spiralling out of control, still absolutely convinced by the story spun for her by Lyur and Dyen. No idea who was on their side, her side, or their own side. No idea how committed they were to any of the above. She listened... shouldn't be people around here, but she could hear some movements. Some. Boots from distant reaches - soldiers moving around, keeping warmth in their limbs. Like sharks, she'd read that those could never stop swimming, reason why the Fidelizhi aquarium lacked any that weren't preserved in formaldehyde. Had to keep marching or they might forget they were soldiers, and wonder what they were doing out here. Too distant to be relevant. The cook's pans clattering as she idly put together some small meal, simple and uninspired. Stew for the soldiers, and something preserved set aside for the madwoman who ate at strange hours and was probably going to keel over soon. Anything else... no, no, no scullery maids, no assistant cooks, no secretaries, nothing. The mansion was dead, the governor had torn the heart out.

But Mr. Canima moved without speaking. His shoes whispered. His body blended in to any background. She imagined that if he were standing in front of a spotlight, right in front of her face, she'd still try and see if there was something on the glass, making the beam go all funny. Almost looking like a human, if you could believe it.

No sign.

"Coming?"

The chambermaid hissed back, her voice muffled by distance and cloth and stealth.

"Time!"

She returned to the door. Felt odd, stealing around like a thief in the night. Felt wrong. And it made the world burn to the touch. The world was never quite as real as when you knew you shouldn't be there. Everything burned. Every imprint was felt like she'd stained a masterpiece. Guilt, shame, terror, all at once. That doorknob - was she leaving residue on it? This room - did she leave footprints in the dust? Was the bed as perfectly made as when she came in? Gods, it was light stage fright all over again. Where should her hands go? Where should her feet go? Her face, what was her face doing? How on earth could she be trusted as an independent person - when she was granted total, keen awareness of her own body, absolute freedom, she locked up and her stomach turned to water. Was her breath lingering in the air like miasma, and would Mr. Canima sniff it out, detect traces of coffee and cured sausage, track it down on all fours, ease himself under the door like a cockroach with his eyes bright and teeth bared and-

Humming.

She heard humming.

Who... Mr. Canima wouldn't hum, doubted he could. Soldiers wouldn't be up here. Cook, no reason. No other maids. Marana? No, wasn't yelling enough, wasn't calling her a 'yobbering limpet', or something suitably strange, using a word that didn't exist yet made absolute sense. Yobbering. Salvatorian. Gallabulating. Trobbler.

Stop it, Tanner.

Click.

Nothing more.

Still trying.

Who else?

A creeping feeling of fear. Two people she knew existed, and had every reason to be here, yet she'd never met. Mr. Canima's two assistants. Erlize agents, or at least Erlize affiliates. Tweed suits. Gleaming cufflinks. Dead eyes from seeing too many faces swell with blood and bruises until speech was barely possible - speech went last, they always had to be able to wheeze out a confession, a name, a simple 'yes' or 'no'. At least, in her nightmares that was how it worked. Turned blind and deaf, the last sound she heard being a pivotal, awful question... then darkness and blood filling every sense.

No, no, she had authority.

But they might be corrupt. Might be indiscrete.

Might be. Might be. Might be.

Felt her dress clinging to her. Gods, she was useless... her ear pressed against the door, no, retreat a tiny amount, didn't want direct contact, her heart was the size of a horse's and was pounding ten times as fast, if she made contact she'd turn the door into a colossal useless drum. Summoning the dogs to dinner. The humming approached...

She was very, very still.

No more clicks.

It was a song from something familiar. Operetta? Theatrophone play? Something else?

Closer. Closer.

Near.

He might be able to feel her heat. Hear her heart. Smell her paranoia. He might, in that way prey animals did, feel the gaze of someone. Anyone. The crawling feeling of attention. Maybe if she moved fast... birds of prey screeched when they dove because it stunned the prey for a vital moment. They had no idea what to do with the wave of sound, the rush of motion, the approaching shadow. All too much, all at once. They were used to silences and subtle movements, not these explosions in every last sense. By the time they parsed it, it was too late, they were chewed up and spat out as a rotten little bundle of bones and indigestible fur.

If she moved fast-

She might give the whole game away.

She might have a dead body in the hall.

The humming moved.

She remained very, very still.

Moving...

Moving...

Moving away. Further down the hall.

And she almost leapt out her skin as someone yelled from downstairs, the sound destroying any hint of calm or reason and almost turning her into the aforementioned prey animal under the screech of the hawk.

"No racket, boy."

Mr. Canima.

So. That was him when he was irritated.

She never wanted to hear it again. It was a hollow voice. It seemed to enter her own empty lungs, fillt them up with itself, aching to become a new transmitter. It was a voice which created its own echo in everyone it touched, stealing their voices and replacing it with simply the reverberation of the thrashing tongue. It was shout and cavern and listener all at once.

The humming stopped.

But the footsteps continued.

They were alone.

Click-click-click-click...

Clunk.

Tanner whirled around, staring at the safe. Yan-Lam seemed equally surprised, and raised a hand to her mouth.

"...it was... in an address."

"Whose?"

The girl laughed, lightly, in a slightly disbelieving fashion, before clapping her hand over her mouth solidly, killing the noise. When her voice emerged, it was very quiet indeed.

"Mr. Arlug of... Tumbledown Cottages."

...Tumbledown Cott-

Tumbledown.

Tumbler.

The governor was a comedian.

Tanner checked the corridor again, a flash of paranoia - nothing. No-one. If they were fast... well, Tanner had a plan for getting anything they found back downstairs. She barely heard the door creaking until it was done, too busy making sure nothing was going to interrupt the two of them... she was already concealing all of today's notes on her person, but she was still terrified of someone rummaging around, maybe finding out that she was still on the case, and if they did, Marana might be dead before the day was out. And she'd be next. Unsubtle, yes. Provoking a crackdown, yes. But at this point, the enemy had clearly demonstrated that they were willing to resort to extensive murder when they were pushed into a corner. To punish. To discourage. To eliminate. Could be marching down the corridor now, shoes off to muffle their footsteps, revolvers in hand...

"Honoured judge?"

Right.

Safe.

She strode quickly over, dropping carefully to her knees to examine the dark, dust-free interior... alright, come on, where was the disappointment, the revelation that Mr. Canima had been here, or the governor stored nothing here but old sentimental pictures and a collection of well-made pocket-watches, come on, where was...

Her eyes widened.

Oh. That wasn't disappointing.

The safe was mostly empty, admittedly. Only a handful of files, with covers of deep, deep indigo, and a small wooden box resting on top, sealed with a stained brass catch. Carefully, she drew them out... and the two of them moved like a well-oiled machine. Tanner opened the front of her dress, tactically loosened to provide more room, and slipped it into the bundle she'd carried with her, and promptly buttoned her dress up as far as it could go. Yan-Lam pushed the safe shut as quietly as possible, and twirled the dial back to the starting point, before replacing the address book in its old spot - she hadn't disturbed a single mote of dust since she entered, had been very careful to avoid leaving obvious evidence of their presence here. They paused. Listened...

No hums.

No footsteps.

She checked the keyhole.

Saw nothing.

Move. Move, damn, move. Stage fright killed you if you were still, if you moved, you were at least doing something. Movement... walking was just controlled falls, you destabilised, you fell, you caught yourself, you did it again. Walking was a constant series of near-defeats. If you moved, the body forgot everything and simply worked to keep you upright, taking control away, leaving you to think rather than manage every bloody valve in the body.

Move.

They hurried for the door, post-haste, moving with bare feet to avoid anyone hearing their footsteps.

Out into the corridor...

Downstairs...

To the room...

And Tanner checked the frame. She'd wound a hair around the handle, twist the handle, break the hair - yes, many of her security measures involved plucking out her own hair, it was a renewable, easily available resource, and she was already running her hands through it constantly. After a while, she'd just started treating that as necessary resource-gathering, and that'd made her feel less neurotic about going bald. Because now going bald was just doing her duty as a judge.

And that made it fine.

Speaking of fine - the hair was unbroken. No-one had entered.

Except for the two of them.

Obviously.

Ledgers were back on the shelves - no indication of what they'd specifically been looking at. Tanner hesitated... and finally let out her breath, removing the packet of papers as she did so. Yan-Lam was... oh, gods, she was bouncing, literally bouncing and wringing her hands like an excited rodent. Did... oh. The look in her eyes. She was ferocious with eagerness. All of this was connected to her father - to her, she was advancing in finding out why he'd died, and who she was going to blame for it. No wonder she barely slept, and no wonder she was emulating Tanner's work habits. Tanner was trying to get the governor to ride around on her back like a Fidelizhi god, because she wanted his competence, his knowledge, his skill... and Yan-Lam was doing the same for Tanner, in a way. Trying to gain her right to judge, her power to investigate, her unwillingness to give up.

Wrong on all three counts.

...another spasm in her stomach, and she groaned slightly as she placed the spoils of plunder down on the table. A handful of files bound in indigo-stained cardboard, no labels. And a wooden box. The files interested her first, and she flipped through them. Smooth, high-quality paper, studded with large, formal-looking letters stared back at her. Warning labels and handling instructions aplenty - punishments for unauthorised individuals handling this, and prim demands for people like to her to return the file ('UNREAD') to either the governor, the chief registrar at the Colonial Office, or the nearest senior Erlize officer. Well. Alright. She bypassed the warnings with only the tiniest of law-abiding shudders, her justice glands rebelling against the perverse inclinations of her brain, and found a...

Oh ho.

Names.

Largely unfamiliar.

But she knew what this thing was. Immigration document. And... goodness, she could see stains from the snow. This must've been one of the folders she recovered from that wrecked carriage, what seemed like a hundred years ago. A folder, recording the next entries on the list of new colonists. Didn't seem to be open to questioning, funnily enough, just had a curt note appended to the back, reading 'for satisfaction of required quotas'. So... that was enlightening. He'd direct the Colonial Office, but he didn't have direct control over who he was sent, only the broader principles of their selection. Interesting. But this was the first genuinely straightforward document she'd seen... ever since arriving in this place. No complex numbers, just a simple description of an incoming colonist for the spring. Name of Hubel (funny, 'bel' wasn't one of the suffixes you saw too often in Fidelizh). No last name - meant he was a city boy of no ancient lineage. They usually left 'of Fidelizh' out of these things, given how blindingly obvious it was. So...

So they had immigration documents.

They had something.

And it was abundant. They had a little life story. They had documents, copied for the governor's convenience. They had the process of handling, stamp after stamp after stamp of approval - Hubel had really gone through the wringer, several interviews, a background check, and then it had to spin through the office of one... Mr. Gulyai. Now, there was a more common name. Brother Gulyai, a colleague. Gulyai of the Tableland, a playwright she'd found was best for her... limited talents. Mr. Gulyai, immigration officer at the colonial office, special bureau for the administration and expansion of the renewed city of Rekida under the aegis of the Golden Parliament of Fidelizh and associated colonies. In short: SBAERCRAGPFAC. If she was feeling concise, that is. Could be SBFTAAEOTRCORUTAOTGPOFAAC. And she thought if she said that, she might summon something.

Here was plain, ordinary information. Likely, this thing would be filed away in some secret place, or... maybe burned once the data was filed in the usual inscrutable fashion. She'd caught this before the governor could manage to do it, and no-one had bothered to finish it off, or no-one had gotten into the safe yet.

She turned quickly to the girl at her side, and asked a quiet question.

"Was your application for this place... did it ever have the name 'Mr. Gulyai' on it."

A pause.

And many, many nods.

"Oh, yes, yes, father said he was going to Mr. Gulyai's office, that he had to submit forms to Mr. Gulyai, that he had an interview with Mr. Gulyai, and if I ever met a man called Mr. Gulyai from the Colonial Office, I was to bow deeply and thank him for the chance to go back home."

Tanner flicked through the other files.

Approved personally by Mr. Gulyai of the Colonial Office.

Approved personally by Mr. Gulyai of the Colonial Office.

Approved personally by Mr. Gulyai of the Colonial Office.

And so on.

Each and every one.

Approved by the same man. A man who seemed to make his choices independently of the governor, beyond some vague directions. Who didn't send requests for a colonist to be accepted - who sent information on the colonists already heading to the colony, as per his discretion.

Her brows furrowed.

Well.

This was juicy.

"Box?"

Oh. Yes. The box. She was far more interested in the paperwork, personally, but she supposed there was no harm in indulging the childish urge to open every box in sight. She pushed open the lit, noting how well-polished the hinges were, how high-quality the wood was, properly varnished and smoothed and everything...

Blinked.

Cushioned interior.

And nestled within...

"...miss? What... ah... is that?"

Tanner blinked again.

"I have no idea."

She reached inside.

And felt a little pulse of warmth. Saw a hint of red within. Saw the metal thing expand slightly, contract slightly...

Her hand snapped back.

She knew that.

She knew what sort of machines did that. Looked like that. Felt like that.

"I don't... know. Exactly."

She gulped.

"But it's definitely theurgic."