CHAPTER FIFTY - HUNG UP TO CURE

Another body.

Did she really even feel something? Body number five. Five bodies, in barely a week. Mr. Lam. The soldier. Tyer. The governor. And now... this. No blood, at least. Like Marana had said - after a while, it got easier, whether she liked it or not. Pieces of stolen cold cuts clung to the inside of her teeth, maybe that was helping - that every little movement of her tongue made touch a little piece of twice-dead flesh. Cold. Slightly slimy. All the remnants of muscle severed from a central nervous system, fibers cultivated to the point of maximum delicacy, all the natural chaos of hormone and chemical and cell replaced with the subtle infusions of spices. Maybe this was telling her brain - don't worry. You're eating something twice-dead, and it's delicious, it sates your stomach, it sustains you. What's a once-dead corpse, really, at the end of the day? If you took this corpse before you, slit its throat, drained it of blood, and started to cure it... you probably wouldn't even know the difference. All that stands between the meat in your teeth and the meat before you is spice and time. That blood you see pushing against the skin, livid against the pallor, forced up, up, up until it's liable to burst out... drain it, stuff it in a sausage casing, and you have a healthy little breakfast waiting for you. Wonder if you leaned forward and took a chomp here and now, you'd just think to yourself 'I preferred the cured meat, the spice adds needed complexity'.

No, not really. She was just getting used to the dead. Experience to dull her. Weariness to cast a grey sheet over her visceral reactions. And simple resignation to sustain her even as her stomach cramped a little. At the end of the day, she was poking a closed system that had a proven tendency to bring meat in, chew it up, and spit it out again. Might as well be surprised by the sight of a crow eating a dead deer. Sooner or later, she'd be up there, too. Her face turning purple.

She started her notes.

Hanging. That much was obvious, on account of the rope around the neck, the kicked-aside chair, the swollen purple face. Quiet residential area. Neighbours noticed the body hanging through one of the windows, silhouetted by a still-burning candle. Quick reporting, at least. And the house was warm enough that decomposition could happen naturally, no concerns about the snow interfering. The storm whirled outside, the night drew on, and she stared at the dead man, trying to pick out identifying features from the swollen purple mass. The rest of the body, by contrast, was deathly pale. At least, what she could see through the clothes. Trousers darkened by urine. She wondered how many natural processes were still happening? His fingers weren't purple, and she almost thought she could detect his fingernails continuing to grow a little, using up the last reserves. Ammunition factory worker in a defeated country, working away until told to stop. Hair, though... she doubted there was anything continuing in that department. The face was a swollen wreck of a thing, purple as a royal's cloak, with a tongue bulging grotesquely from the mouth, combined with his fishlike lips, it gave him a carnival look. His hair seemed almost perverse. One of the few indications that there was a human under all that ruin, and not some sort of abstract sculpture or bizarre fungal growth. Stank.

She was alone on this one.

Soldiers were waiting to clear him away.

And most importantly...

She knew this man.

Not by name. And not by face. She'd never seen his face, on account of it being almost completely swaddled with cloth, protecting it from the cold. Only scraps had been visible, really. She remembered his frame, though. Cadaverously thin, but dense, muscle packed onto him in ever-tighter layers, like instead of growing outwards, he just grew a layer of muscle that constricted all the others ones deep inside him in every-tighter sediments. This was a man who grew via constriction. His face had been clawed by a bad razor, making him almost look flayed. His eyes had been dark. Now, from his fishlike lips spilled a slowly dripping trail of chewing tobacco, mashed into a homogenous brown paste, slowly cascading downwards. Pip-pip-pip, sometimes soaking into his clothes. Dried blood was brown, wasn't it? Gave him a bizarre half-vitality. The pip-pip-pip of dripping blood from a fresh body, but the brown hue of a dead one. She remembered his voice - clawed by tobacco. Did chewing tobacco damage your throat? Or was this some effort to quit something, maybe a little desire to have a burst of tobacco before he died, the tenth of a second before he was swimming in mid-air, kicking like an infant, staring at the ceiling... she had a strange image of him considering a cigarette, deciding he didn't want to burn down the house by accident. Choosing the chewing tobacco.

Had his last thought before the panic and the struggling been marginal annoyance at an inconvenience?

Or slight relief at not being a nuisance to others?

Might be projecting. Easy enough, when there was nothing but faceless purple meat to serve for a face. Could be anyone under the distortions.

No, not anyone.

She knew him.

Never known his name. Just called him Mr. Claw, on account of the clawed face and clawed voice.

And he was a bouncer.

She started the last rites. Wanted a moment before the soldiers came in to remove the body, and naturally disturbed the scene a tiny amount. Standard kitchen, standard house, standard everything. Been in plenty like this, anticipated being in plenty more if this rate of death kept up. A little messier than most - the man had a poor habit of not using a proper bin, preferring to just use random crates to store his trash, before hauling it out in very, very large quantities. Like those people who only washed up their dishes after enough had piled up - after a point, you were just living from squalor to squalor, the degenerations outnumbered the renewals. Plenty of bottles, made sense for a bouncer, he was right next to the damn inns all day. A truncheon, hard-worn and slightly stained where it'd been at work over time, lay propped up casually next to the broom. Food... hm. Basically nothing, save for a braid of garlic trailing from the ceiling. Ate at the inn. Surprised he remained so thin, in that case. Inn food was hardly the most slimming fare. Bedroom... rumpled sheets, cot that squeaked when she poked it, pillow the colour of dishwater...

She checked all the things she'd learned to check. Pace the floors, check for something loose. Look under the bed. Check for the signs of screws being removed and replaced, and the means one might use to cover them up. Examine all personal effects. A book of pornographic drawings, and text with titles like 'One Night in a Girl's Finishing School' and 'The Criminal's Wife and the Judge' - the last one made her slam the book shut while glaring at it. Scandalous filth. Inaccurate. Ought to be burned. Not entering into a list of souvenirs, no sir. A wallet, not particularly full. The only part of his house he seemed to take exceptionally good care of was the shoe rack, which almost filled half his bedroom. His boots were exquisitely polished, and a little apothecary's kit of polishing products stood nearby. Stuff for stripping polish, stuff for moisturizing and renovating the leather, stuff for filling in cracks, stuff for recolouring and revitalising, and wax polish to give it a sheen. Only four pairs, but they were... well, if there were auctions up here, she could imagine quite a bit of competition.

Gods, she'd be the one organising those auctions, wouldn't she?

Oh well.

What else... ah.

Of course.

The cast-iron decoration. Now where was it... not visible. She ran her hands over the walls resignedly, feeling for the off-colour patch, the area where screws ought to go...

There it was. Cunning. They'd tried to hide it slightly - some grime covered it, and filled in the holes were screws ought to go, but it was there nonetheless. Could be the result of a former tenant's choices and the current tenant's neglect, but she sincerely doubted that. Shouldn't doubt it, though. The house was messy, not unforeseeable that Mr. Claw would let the wall become grimy. But she had blood in her nose, and she felt convinced. Her guess? Whatever was going on, the people involved were trying to cover their tracks by any means necessary. Not judgement-worthy, but... oddly, that wasn't mattering as much at this particular moment.

She returned to the kitchen... and shuddered. Needed to pat him down. Search for anything relevant. There wasn't any stink, beyond sweat and fear, but even so... she reached out, her hands twitched, her tongue ran over her teeth to catch those little pieces of cold meat... the purple face with bulging, dark eyes stared at her, beads of pre-mortem sweat clinging to the forehead. Made him look like a fruit coated in morning dew. Look at his body. Don't look at the head or the eyes. Search the pockets, the pockets... she plunged her hands inside, and shuddered again at the feeling of slight warmth from a body still learning it was dead. How long did it take for all the processes... she'd already ruminated on that. Around the dead, thoughts tended to go in circles, like matter circling a plughole.

In one coat pocket, fluff.

In the other coat pocket, papers.

Crumpled papers.

She pulled them out cautiously, and her eyes flicked over the first few pages...

Suicide note.

"You can come in now. Tell the..."

What was his name?

Tallug, that was it. Mr. Tallug. Lug, that was the suffix a lot of Parliamentarians used, wasn't it? Maybe that was how he got such a nice, cushy job in a colonial morgue with all the cold cuts a man could want.

"Tell Mr. Tallug to let me know about everything. I want him to be thorough with this corpse, and send me the report afterwards."

"I'll sort it out."

The voice made her flush slightly. Bayai looked tired, but he was standing at attention nonetheless, his broad frame comically out of place in the narrow worker's house. Tanner tried to smile at him while the hanged man swung slightly behind her, face twisting as the rope ground into his neck, flaying it raw with its coarse grains. The two stood in silence. Were they meant to socialise? Here? In front of the hanged man?

Oh, hells, why not.

"Didn't wake you?"

"No, I barely sleep at the moment. Worried about things like this. What's that you've got?"

"Suicide note, looks like. I'll give it a proper reading, get back to you."

Bayai sighed.

"Suicide, then. Shoddy way to go. Wonder if it was the stress."

"He was the same man who reported on Tyer's location. Called it in on that last night."

"...guilt, maybe? It's a hit, learning you were responsible for a man's death. Even if he was a murderer."

Tanner studied the body as it slowly, slowly rotated. Was there a guilty man in those bloated, slowly clouding eyes? What conscience slept under those peat-coloured locks?

Might as well find out.

"I'll get back to you. Confirm matters."

"Thank you, Tanner. Appreciated. All well in the mansion? You look beat."

"I'll be fine. Hear you've been liaising with Marana."

"A little. You were a tad bit busy. If you object-"

"No, no, keep going. I've got things to do."

He sized her up, seeming to try and read her like a fortune-teller with palms... or Tom-Tom with skulls. Whatever he found, he didn't seem to find it worth commenting on.

Worked for Tanner.

* * *

A sip of near-luminous citrinitas, and she was striding around the governor's office. It felt like one should read a document like this under conditions of cloistered shadow. Too bright, and it felt too clinical, like an autopsy. Too open, and it felt like she was making an exhibit. Best to read it like this - now, she just felt like a voyeur, like she was scanning that book of deeply distasteful pornographic fantasies. And if she felt shame for this, then that was good. One ought not to read a suicide note with glee, after all. Shame was better. Chased down the citrinitas nicely. Not that she had much experience, but... hell, might as well commit to the practices she was inventing here and now. She was utterly alone as she read the document. It was written in a clumsy, looping hand, the sort of handwriting that belonged to an inexperienced epistolist. Not many sheets, but... she tried not to get bogged down in the prose, she tried to skim, to pick up on the salient details.

It was a confession. The last confession of a man called Myunhen, who had no surname worth recording. It was direct. To the point. This was a confession of guilty feeling, and being guilty of a crime, both of which were substantial enough that he saw suicide as the only way out, not being willing to return home to face the shame, not being willing to face honest punishment, not being willing to... exist without the affection of his beloved, which he regarded as permanently severed. It claimed that...

Her eyes sharpened.

When I arrived here, I was deeply and terribly lonely. The colony was cold, the company was poor, and I found myself staring into the stove most nights, just waiting for the sun to come up. I drank more than an honest man ought to, and lived in squalor. Until a lady at one of the inns caught my attention. She offered me a drink, saying that my shift as a bouncer was almost up, and I deserved to have a little something to warm up. The glass was turning cloudy in the cold, and her fingers left long stripes in it. Small, thin, elegant stripes, and my own covered them completely. Felt like touching the ghost of her hand. I looked into her eyes, and thought she was the most beautiful woman I'd met. Understand, anyone who reads this, I'm not a man who likes women who wear too much makeup, do themselves up with airs of superiority. In the damn shantytown, ladies that tried that looked like circus clowns, queens of the damn pigsty. She was different. Plain and honest, beautiful by her own merits, not by the merits of some white pain slapped over her face or a stick of red over her lips. She glowed. Glowed from a long day's work, and a long night's enjoyment. Honest woman. Thick, beautiful hair that came down to her shoulders. Eyes that were always moving, always bright, none of that dead fish-look you get in some folk. A lip split with a tiny scar, but when she smiled it drew up into a bow like there was nothing wrong with it. Heart-shaped face, and just... beautiful. Sun-tanned, and snow-beaten, but it just made her shine all the more.

She worked with the work crews in the city. Shame, really - she was the sort of lady who deserved a better sort of life, but in my heart I knew no other life would suit her as well as something outdoors, something physical, something to put that glow in her cheeks.

Even though she was Fidelizhi, I adored her.

The more I learned, the more I loved. Talked to her, and she kept hinting that she felt the same way. Touched my arm when she laughed. Smiled at me differently to how anyone else would smile. I wanted to ask her if we could go and eat something, but...

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She was taken by another.

Oh ho?

A rat-bastard called Tyer.

She froze.

Oh.

Oh dear. Her reading went faster.

She was his. But he was... clumsy, he stank, he laughed too loudly, I saw how she chided him from time to time. She didn't really love him. I thought she'd been with him for too long, and now she wasn't going to leave, because skipping from one person to another is... a bold move, and honest ladies aren't interested in making it. Had I found her a few months earlier, I know we would've been thick as thieves. But I didn't. So we weren't. And without me around, she just went for the next best available thing - and now she was in too deep. I watched, I watched as the two of them walked home together, how she clearly wasn't as loving of him as he thought she was, how he was a shambling idiot who didn't know the first thing about how to treat a woman.

I thought I had a chance, when she moved from the city to the cold-house. Separated from Tyer. Heard they weren't being seen around one another so much. I was moved from place to place, so it was hard to get in contact, but when I saw her next, she was hunched over the bar, drinking... I went over, but my tongue stuck to the roof of my mouth, I couldn't say a damned word. I was a coward. Spent a night going over the incident. Figuring out what I should've said, how I should've intervened. There was a proper opportunity to make myself more known to her, to be more than just a door-guard. To be a person. I knew what she liked, I knew what she enjoyed. Knew her favourite drinks, knew her favourite meals, knew what jokes made her laugh - and she has the most beautiful laugh, you couldn't imagine. I was getting my courage up.

And barely any time later, my chance was gone.

Tyer transferred to the cold-house. They were seen together.

I was dead in the water. He'd seen her, alone and vulnerable, and swept in to snap her up before anyone else could come along to show her a bit of bloody sensitivity.

Took a while.

But I decided to do something about it. Not just wait for everything to go wrong. Tyer and I had similar builds. Similar appearances. And it was easy to do an impression of his voice. I'd been trying to imitate it, a bit. Thought that maybe my beloved was attracted to something physical about him, so I thought I could perfect it. Do his voice, his act, all of it, but inject good hygiene and some genuine heart underneath all the muscle. I wasn't going to do anything at first. I promise, I only did this in a moment of madness, then had to commit.

So I went to his street at night. I was drunk. I didn't know what I wanted. All I saw was a shape walking towards me. Running into me.

And I thought it was Tyer.

So I hit the figure. Hit it hard.

Realised it was a woman. Thought I'd hit my beloved - so I ran over to pick her up, dust her off, apologise... it wasn't her. Was someone else. Fisherwoman, I don't know her. Saw her retreating to her house. Watched.

A bouncer who assaults someone while drunk stops being a bouncer. The others wouldn't allow it. Disgraces them. Governor would hate it. I'd be gone. Sent back home in disgrace. Black marks on my record. Erlize might make me disappear. I'd be dead.

So I gambled.

I doubled down.

I kept going.

I dressed like him. I sounded like him. I could imitate him. And through a door, once you sound odd enough, people all sound alike.

So I started to bully the woman. Hammering at the door. Doing everything to frighten her. Make her want to go to the judge, knew she was in town. She didn't know anything, she didn't have any preconceptions, she wouldn't be biased. She didn't know anyone involved in this. Nobody but the fisherwoman, I think.

She did what she was meant to.

She went to the judge.

I thought that Tyer would get collared. His word against the word of the woman and her neighbour, who heard me, 'drove me off'. I didn't go into hiding, I just took off the clothes, shaved myself of the pathetic little beard I'd tried to grow, and moved on back to work. Easy enough. Easy enough. Thought so, anyway. For a while, that was it. He'd get collared, several people's word against his, maybe he'd develop some alibis, but I knew people didn't like him. Only a couple did - one of those people who's easy to see through, easy to dislike, but sometimes, sometimes, he finds someone too nice to criticise him, and then he gets under their skin and sticks like a parasite. He'd be disregarded by everyone. He'd be cast out. Even if he wasn't dragged up and out of the colony, even if he wasn't locked up for a while, he'd be shamed. That was the point. I didn't have a plan. I just wanted revenge on him.

I didn't know what would happen next, I swear to you, I didn't know. I really didn't. I promise, and I'll keep promising it even if no-one believes me when I'm gone. I didn't know he would go so far. I thought he would get collared.

I didn't know he would kill those men.

I swear, I didn't know.

I saw him. I reported it. I think he suspected me of something, but he ran away when he saw the people around me. I reported it to a guard, and hoped he would be taken away, I was afraid even then that he was going to do something awful. I should've stopped him. I could've, if I had the stones for it. Could've killed him, shut him up, made sure no-one ever thought I was at fault, but I couldn't. I could try to ruin a man's life, but I couldn't bring myself to even try to end it. He's dead. Lam's dead. A guard's dead. Because of me. Even my beloved is hurt, she won't recover, I'll never forget what I did to her, and I can't love someone who I have to lie to every single day. I just can't.

Take my confession. Use it. Absolve Tyer a little. Comfort Beldol with the truth. At least let her know why this all happened. I can't do it myself. I've been a coward. I remain a coward. I end myself as a coward. Writing this is all I have left. Won't light a cigarette, afraid I'll be tempted to burn this thing and try to move on. But there's nothing else. I have no parents. I have no siblings. My friends are home. They will not miss me. Nothing remains.

By all the spirits of hammer and eye, I make this wrong right.

Myu-

And there it ended. He hadn't even finished signing his own name, just a loose scribble that trailed to the edge of the page. Nothing more to say... and then he'd have climbed onto his chair, looped the rope around his neck... had he tied it first, and let it swing over him while he wrote, a reminder of what waited at the end, or had he tied it last, to give himself the feeling of freedom, all he had to do was burn the papers and the matter was done with? Somehow, that little practicality stood out to her. She studied the notes, shivering slightly. Placed them down on the governor's desk, and kept walking from one end of the study to the other. It was neat. It solved the Tyer angle. If she relied on this note, she could focus completely on the matter of the governor, treating them as fundamentally unrelated incidents. She could. It was within her remit to make that sort of decision. So much of her work had been unstructured, it wasn't like she made regular reports to anyone, she had the time and power to do whatever she damn well pleased, and she could give these notes to Femadol 25... Beldol, that was her name, she'd been right about the Dol suffix.

If only she could believe this note.

A man had hung himself. He was discovered almost immediately. He had a note addressing the mystery explicitly. He was a bouncer. He was connected with the case, and was one of the people she wanted to talk to, once she mustered the right quantity of evidence.

It removed an important witness, while also burning the threads she was pursuing, before tying the burned ends into a nice, little bow.

It was too convenient. It was calamitously convenient. It was the sort of happy alignment of events that could only be designed by an overlooking hand, it was so much so, in fact, that she honestly wondered if it might be true, simply because no mastermind would do something this catastrophically obvious.

Stared at the pages on the desk, which stared back at her, luminous in the dim moonlight. Mocking her with its clear, satisfying resolution. She wanted to question it. And she thought about that mottled, hideous corpse, swinging in a tiny, sad kitchen. Was this a lie? If so... who had hung him?

Was she dealing with people so completely deranged they were willing to hang a man, fake a suicide, simply to distract her?

Was this case really so important? Or were they so insane? A surge of paranoia ran through her, and she rushed back to the main room... spun on her heel, almost falling to the ground in a pile of skirts as she turned back. Couldn't forget the note, someone might steal it, ooze out of the walls and snatch it away. She ran back... and now it actually did go poorly for her. Her boot heel skidded, and she fell over in a messy tumble, only a single started 'ohmph' leaving her lips as she collapsed into the carpet. She was a tangle of skirts, buttons, hair, fear, cape, ribbons, with a single suicide note sticking monument-like out of the mass. Did someone see her? Crumbs, time was short, time was short - she crawled desperately across the soft carpet towards her little table, where she fitted her auto-quill while still on her knees, and started to... floor worked, there were some boards. She started to click-click-click down every single one of her findings, every single one. All her suspicions and concerns. All of it. She stopped after filling up half a page, muffling a curse. She might die, she couldn't let all of this be swallowed by a faceless bureaucracy that wouldn't understand the subtle details, but when she looked over her thought processes, she sounded insane and erratic. A pause. Might as well. Leave it for someone. A monument to her death. Her own suicide note, given that pursuing this case was probably suicidal. She wrote, and wrote, and wrote, and when she looked at the page, she saw nothing.

She just saw ink.

She saw hunches. And paranoia. And fear. And amateurish attempts at being an investigator. Inclinations, suggestions, personal anecdotes, little things that explained her lines of thinking in a rambling, incomplete way. Sister Halima would projectile vomit at the sight of it.

She bit her lip.

And wrote two more copies. One stuffed down the front of her dress, locked in place by the buttons. Another within a ledger of no importance. A third... she scuttled into the governor's room, resisting the urge to crawl there, and started rummaging in his drawer, sweat prickling at her face - she needed a bag for her first version, she didn't want to stain it. Right, right... she rummaged, rummaged, looking for a good hiding spot...

Her hand moved too quickly.

Too powerfully.

A finger snapped through the thin wood at the base of a drawer...

And she felt a hollow space.

Tanner froze.

Drew her finger back.

A hole lingered. A hole in the desk drawer.

A little probing... and she could remove it. The entire bottom came off - it should be removed with a special tool, but she'd chosen the brutish option.

She stared.

Nothing lingered beneath. Cleared completely. Maybe something had lingered, or...

No, no. There was something. A picture, stuffed into a corner. A daguerrotype, faded and spotty...

She pulled it out...

A picture of a younger man, no scars on his face. And a woman at his side, just as young, wearing a gorgeous dress. He was in military uniform. She was forcing herself to smile, eyes ringed with worry. And on the back... a scribbled note. Hal - reminder to return. No suffix for his name, none at all... she'd been on intimate terms. She knew half the governor's first name, maybe... yes, it was definitely him, definitely him.

Was she still alive?

Had he returned? Had she been there to meet him?

She'd never known him. Hadn't just grown into the world, he'd had a life... all snuffed out. All gone.

She sat in his chair.

Stared at the photo of him in his younger years.

The suicide note lay just beyond it.

A spasm in her stomach, and she winced.

Her automatic quill was still on her finger, she still had paper... no, the governor had paper, creamy letter-writing stock, good quality. She brought the finger down...

And only managed to write 'Dear Eyg-' before she stopped, and crumpled the paper up.

They were most likely going to kill her.

But she had to get something out of them, first. Whoever they were... they'd broken the law. Hardly had much of a choice in the matter, did she? She drew another sheet of paper, and began writing a small list, even as a lock of disturbed hair fell over her face, and she declined to push it away. Names. Lyur, the man who'd killed Tyer. Talk to him, draw him in. Before he died too. Mr. Canima. Any Erlize agents she could get her enormous hands on. Beyond that... Tom-Tom. She wanted to talk to Tom-Tom. And Femadol 25, Beldol damn it all, ought to be brought in to stay here, Tanner didn't trust leaving her alone in the great broad world. The moon was high. She hadn't slept, was fuelled by citrinitas, and might otherwise pass out. Her supply was limited - had to ration.

And with her list complete, she moved out with all the stateliness one as dishevelled as herself could muster, found a soldier, and gave her orders. People she wanted retrieved and brought here, either for safety or interrogation, likely both. And then, even as the soldiers exchanged glances at her... state, she marched back to the room, and got to work.

The bouncer.

The one who'd been involved in that mucky business with the two frozen bodies, a crushed cat, and a strange little spot of exile. Was he still here? She checked the migration ledgers carefully... no, no, he remained in the colony. A weak spot. But he was no longer on the list of bouncers. She could assert the authority to return him home, even just for suspicions of impropriety... would the threat be enough? If she managed it, she could squeeze information out, get a bouncer to really tell her the truth about how their group worked. His name was Dyen, and if she looked him up, cross-referenced... now that was interesting. That was quite interesting. It took her some time to dig through the ledger - he'd arrived some time before becoming a bouncer, quite some time. A matter of years, in point of fact. Now, what else did he do, what else... the irritation was, employment ledgers were generally profession-specific. If there was just a nice, straightforward census, up-to-date, she hadn't found it in the governor's index cards. Her search continued through the night, and when morning rose, she was still hunting for the name of Dyen, for his unique identification number, for any trace of where he'd gone. The bouncer had been involved in several altercations, several, and if she was willing to invent a handful of details... just for the sake of an interrogation, of course...

They...

Hold on.

Back garden.

Again, her chaotic mind. Damn it all to hell. Two bodies had been found frozen in the snow after leaving an inn guarded by Dyen. Both of them had traces of alcohol, but this would easily be skewed if they were older than anticipated, and the mortuary assistant had cocked up with his recording. The only knowledge of time of death came from the inn and Dyen, meaning it was unreliable. Could be older deaths, hidden using the snow. Possibly deliberate, possibly just cover-ups of a bit of unpleasantness gone wrong. Leave a body to ripen, then let the authorities take it, they assumed it was just a drunk passing out and dying of cold. The sun was still coming up. And she had no information on Dyen's current employment. He wasn't dead, she was fairly sure of that. But she could look something else up. One body had been found near the city. The other had been found in a back garden, hidden by a wood-store.

And what back garden had that been?

There was no 'home ownership' ledger, but if she found the 'home incomes' ledger as part of the broader tax library, then she could look up the address, then the names of all individuals who'd been paying out for the use of the address, then narrow it down by date, then return to the migration ledger to look up the number and thus the name which showed up...

She paused. The first rays of sunlight were coming up to illuminate her dishevelled appearance. She had no mind for it. Only for the address. The name seemed irrelevant, the woman called 'Una-Mal' wasn't a bouncer, and had actually left the colony since. But there was something about the address. She dragged out a map of the colony, started tracking it down...

It was...

It was behind Tom-Tom's house.

Quite literally behind it. Could hop over the fence, and you'd be there.

Tom-Tom's house, which had an ice cold (illegal) pond in the back garden, adjoining to Una-Mal's back garden.

She thought of the crushed cat. How it was succeeded by yet another exile.

Had this been a message?

Mess with us, whoever we are, and suffer their fate.

To punish... to discourage... to intimidate?

She felt her mouth growing dry, and she picked a piece of twice-dead meat from between her teeth with her ink-stained fingers, almost poking her own eye out with the automatic quill.

So.

Things were linked.

She wasn't insane. Not that she'd ever thought she was insane at all, obviously, not remotely. Nuh-uh. Nuh. Uh.

Well.

Well.

Time to have a chat with some people, perhaps. Tom-Tom needed to be talked with, for one. The mortuary assistant, too. She needed to find out how he determined whether or not bodies were drowned, if there were any lingering signs of the process. Just thinking, a body that was wet died a hell of a lot faster in the snow. Reason why those snow-covered, iced-over rivers were so dangerous, why there were whole chunks of the landscape off-limits during the winter. In the right conditions, that pond would be a damn fatal weapon. But only in the right conditions. Something odd brewed in her. Not revenge, she didn't want revenge, but she wanted explanations. And then, maybe, she'd want revenge, but only when properly reinforced by a rigorous structure of objective facts and well-written judgements. She wasn't a barbarian. She pushed the stray lock of hair back over her head, and considered. Was it possible that 'accidental' deaths were being used to cover up something more brutal? If anything, she was starting to get a hint of... well, the governor's way of doing things extended into every facet of his home. Everything designed around a velvet glove concealing an iron gauntlet. His archives were designed to be near-impenetrable without his consent. His desk had hidden compartments. His colony was designed to manipulate social dynamics. His right-hand-man was a member of the secret police, for crying out loud. His natural damn successor was someone who made people disappear, and examined every step they made at any given moment. Or, well, was meant to. Been a little deficient as of late, or at least his men had.

And likewise, she thought she could see... something of a pattern.

Tyer, killed in a convoluted fashion. Myunhen, killed in a convoluted fashion. These other bodies had possibly been made in a convoluted fashion. Law-Nat had been banished in a convoluted fashion. Always, multiple steps. Always, a series of indirect actions designed to keep eyes away from... what? She had an image of the bouncers as a kind of... cartel, some sort of criminal group, managing their own... maybe they were just the last survivors of the governor's silent war against this sort of insular group. Managing to survive by ingratiating themselves with the Erlize, making themselves part of the regime, then slowly building outwards, restoring themselves, and now... well, obviously that didn't make total sense. The bouncers came from Fidelizh, yes, and they were broadly locals, but they were still being imported. The migration process was halfway random, and the governor was insistent on breaking apart groups that regarded their own priorities as higher than that of the colony. Plus, the constant rotations of bouncers. Still. A question hovered in her mind, though. Where was Dyen, the bouncer tied up with the two corpses and a dead cat? Where was he, what happened to him, and what did he know?

Furthermore, would banishment be an effective threat? Effective enough to get him to spill the proverbial?

Hold on.

Thought. Thought. Thought. Not related to the investigation. But related to everything else. A vital, vital, vital-vital thought.

She'd stolen that mortuary assistant's cold cuts.

What a cow she was. Absolute cow. Those were his. His property. She'd committed a crime. They could have her for that, back in the temple, oh, gods...

Had to go and apologise. Her quill slipped off. Her cape descended around her shoulders. And she swept out of the room with all the speed she could muster, dashing down... no, no, rush back, grab all her files, and then run away, no-one could see. Not yet. She sprinted clumsily down the hallway, the stairs, into the snow, down, down, down... running towards the still-lit lamps of the mortuary. Come on, come on... guilt churned in her stomach, and she hammered on the door as quickly as possible, then stopped once the wood started to make uncanny noises. Something was moving behind the door, and she practically hopped from foot to foot, red-faced and breathing heavily through her nose... not sweating, thankfully. Mother always said that ladies did not sweat, ladies glowed. Ladies were radiant. Apparently ladies did exceptionally well in cold climates, didn't even have the opportunity to sweat in a place like this. She paused. She was... trying to apologise for stealing a small number of cold cuts while investigating a suicide, the murder of the governor, and... no, no, principle of the thing. She'd be unable to sleep if this continued. Should've apologised when things started.

The door opened.

A pudgy man stared back. Tanner smiled as wide as she could - not very wide, but it was the principle of the thing.

"Good evening. I'm very sorry, but I stole some of your cold cuts. I've brought reimbursement, if you-"

"It's nearly midnight."

"I'm very sorry, I really don't mean to be inconvenient, I-"

"Did you... steal my cold cuts?"

"I did. And I apologise. It was conduct unbecoming of a judge, and I'm happy to reimburse you for the cost of the meat in question. My behaviour doesn't reflect the standards of the judges, and I hope that this doesn't diminish your opinion of the Golden Door, sir."

She bowed slightly, and fished around for her purse.

"...no, no, that's... fine...?"

"Please, I insist."

She pushed a few coins towards him. A bit generous, but her conscience wouldn't let her be a skinflint.

The man took them in slightly pale, sweaty hands.

"I apologise again. Have a good night, sir. And if there's any deficiency in my response tonight, please, feel free to tell me."

"...uh?"

"Good night, sir."

She nodded professionally, and stalked off through the snow, face utterly flat. As it always was.

Stalked up the hill like she was leading a funeral procession.

Kicked her boots free of snow with a rapid tap-tap-tap on the door-scraper.

Padded upstairs like she was in total command of the world.

Her guilt had been absolved, she thought to herself as she strode into her makeshift study, chin held high. Her crime... oh, crumbs, she'd forgotten the sweets, the ritual sweets that dissolved a grudge once a case was finished, oh gods, she had to run back down, wake him up, reimburse him for the inconvenience, then they could chew sweets together and-

"You're in rather a state, honoured judge."

She almost screamed.

Her face locked up even further.

And Mr. Canima oozed out of the walls of the study. Like he'd always been here. Since before she left. Watching.

And his gleaming, deep-set eyes were locked on her.

Tanner Magg understood what it felt like when an animal was immobilised by a snake's stare.