CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE - THE INDIGO SHADE OF CORRUPTION

The device sat on the table. Tanner had no idea what it was. And in all honesty, she felt the urge to take it right back upstairs and throw it back into the safe. The Erlize had those, she remembered. Safe rooms. Heavy metal walls, installed in post offices around the city. Terrified of bombing campaigns, people stuffing volatile chemicals into a parcel, a decaying divider keeping them from combining... then just waited until the divided rotted through and the reaction could begin. But... anyway. Anyway. The device looked similar to an hourglass, in the sense of two larger elements, with a thinner element joining the two. It was metallic, and had an almost organic flow to it, nothing jutting, nothing protruding, everything flowing nicely and undulating in and out of the metal chassis. Cables were never exposed, but meandered along like tree roots, sheathed in protective metal coatings. Pipes were shaped like blood vessels, and the whole thing pulsed with warmth, with all the regularity of a heartbeat. An active theurgic engine. Had the governor meant to do something with this before he died? Was it just a transient nomad in his safe, or a permanent resident? Or did it just pay rent, lest it be evicted?

Not sure what rent was in this metaphor, but... no, no, it was theurgists maintaining it, keeping it from blowing up. Was rent still being paid? Or was this thing overdue? Wished she could get another landlord to provide a reference for this errant tenant, but alas, she was out of the land game.

Or a terrible option - was it squatting? And if the governor had found it, would he be evacuating the whole mansion?

It pulsed.

She just watched it, for a while. Tapped her finger on the desk to time it, make sure it wasn't varying, wasn't speeding up, slowing down... nothing. Nothing.

Yan-Lam whispered, as if afraid to wake it up.

"What... do you think it is, miss?"

Tanner buried her nervousness. Had to appear competent. Remember - she was paranoid, rambling, and shambling her way to an early grave in the eyes of the colony. Yan-Lam was part of the ruse, so Tanner had no excuses, had to be on tip-top form. Wished she had her cape on, though. Damn thing still smelled faintly of poison gas, even if it was apparently safe as... oh, hell, nothing really felt safe these days, the governor was dead, the colony was full of peering eyes, there were killers in the dark, a man in a windowless, locked room had vanished once he became a problem, there was a pulsing thing in a locked safe that was just above where she'd been for a few days now, Marana was surrounded by people who understood finance, and just out of that window over there was a looming, enormous statue that seemed to be glaring right at her at this very moment.

Nothing was safe. So... yes, the cape was safe as... snow? Snow. No-one touched or beat the snow for long. Snow was safe. Well, safe for itself. Snow was a safe, reliable category.

She was going funny again. Needed to stop drinking so much coffee.

"Well, theurgic engines can be stable for quite some time, if they're... not especially complex. I think we're fine to keep this nearby."

"But what does it do?"

"Unsure. Let's just..."

She picked it up very, very, very delicately, wincing at the slight warmth that reminded her of how it felt to pick up a small animal, always aware of how it could scuttle away, or worse, snap when she gripped too hard... and placed it into its wooden box once more, clicking it shut.

"...leave it alone for now."

Hiding it was another thing entirely. She thought about going back upstairs, locking it up in the safe... no, no. Best to just keep it nearby. If she took her ledgers, piled them up as she usually did, she could easily hide the thing in their midst. And if she took the brown paper bag the governor had kept his scarf in, she could easily make it seem like a harmless little parcel. Tied it shut with one of the ribbons on her cape. There, now it was just a... birthday present. A lovely, warm, pulsing, ticking, volatile, theurgic birthday present. Still. Her eyes remained drawn to the thing, even as it slept under layers of disguises. Found herself seeing it with more detail than she should - the slight rumpling of the paper bag, the tiny discolourations of the ribbon, the way it was tied, the way it sat, the minute unique features that surely marked out every object in the world, but on this one... on this one they all became significant. She saw it with such detail - why shouldn't someone else? Someone searching the room, glancing around, seeing a package swollen with details, like a piece of ancient driftwood marked by barnacles, seaweed, salt, sun, damp, flotsam, jetsam, the spume of countless waves... they'd see it, and they'd immediately go 'why, that's peculiar, most objects aren't possessed of such intricate detail, this must be significant, everything else in this room is easy to overlook, but this...'

She knew that was stupid.

But here she was.

It took time. But they got back to work. Now, though, she found her eyes frequently drifting to the door, and she asked Yan-Lam to lock it from the inside, maybe even prop a chair against the handle. Just in case. These documents... she flipped through, and some names were unfamiliar, belonging to incoming colonists, but others... others she knew. Others she distinctly recognised from her research. She realised, with a shudder, that the governor had been investigating the same lines she had, and had dragged out these folders from... wherever these folders were stored. Somewhere she couldn't access, because if she did, then it'd be obvious what she was looking for, that she was going down the governor's road, and she'd doubtless meet his fate even faster than he did. They had practice with killing off nosy investigators, after all. Even governors. So... the indigo covers rustled under her fingers, the pages turned with lazy smoothness... names, names...

A bouncer she knew.

A bouncer she definitely knew. This was the file of a certain fellow by the name of Mr. Myunhen, the man who'd been killed, presumably to try and provide a satisfactory conclusion to the Tyer case, a conclusion which couldn't be questioned, on account of the perpetrator being dead by his own hand. She'd doubted it from the second she heard about him... maybe this was why he'd been singled out, they were aware the governor was looking into him, and prepared to rub out a little vulnerability on the verge of being exploited.

The application was one of those things which was complex yet simple. Innumerable entries, but most of them equated to the most basic, useless sort of information. Eye colour, separate entries for right and left, with additional space for blemishes or distinguishing marks, alongside prescription for any eyeglasses/monocles, alongside any references to family history involving poor eyesight/blindness/astigmatism etc. etc. and so on and so forth. Eyebrow colour, left and right. Condition of eye sclera. Satisfactory pupil dilation on exposure to bright light. Any abnormalities with ears or nose that would prevent the wearing of darkened glasses to prevent snow-blindness. Eyes alone dominated a whole page, the bulk of it crossed out or answered with a simple 'no', comical in such large boxes, like anyone with enough problems to fill those boxes would have the slightest chance of getting shipped out here. So, they wanted physical perfection, fine, fine... no, there was that old man up in the cold-house, the one who minded the door. Wonder how he got up here, if there was such attention paid to physical condition... maybe he'd been injured after arriving, but even so, age-related impairments alone would provide little entries to most of these boxes. Hm. She scanned further, flipping past the physical examinations, into the realm of the social. More warnings blared at her from the page. Confidential Erlize business. Background checks, ho ho. Yan-Lam set a small china cup of coffee down near her elbow, and retreated to a chair where she promptly started up with a little needlework. The click-click-click of her needles as she embroidered a handkerchief filled the room soothingly, made this all feel rather more domestic, more... ordinary. Like she wasn't investigating a murder.

So...

Myunhen's background checks.

Shantytowner, born and raised. Address was given in coordinates, there was no pretence at a proper street layout in that place, things built up and down and left and right and in any direction there was space. In time, perhaps, they'd build enough buildings to reach the city above. In the meantime, addresses were practically irrelevant - one day, there was a building, another day, it was gone, or split apart, or abandoned, or another building devoured the street which led to it... anyway. She checked a standard governmental map of Fidelizh, noting where he was... gods, she'd not been too far from that place, while working a case or two. Could've popped by and said hello to his... nobody. Orphan. Well, mother died six years ago, father died eight. Tuberculosis outbreak, nasty business. Father had employment records indicating a long, steady career as a cleaner, mother had a brief stint as a housekeeper before remaining at home to raise Myunhen. Character references satisfactory was the cursory note on them. Hm. Odd. So much detail on, say, eyes, but the character references of a man's parents were considered unworthy for inclusion in the file. Now... the interviews. Several of them - they'd conduct one, research him further, then conduct another. The Erlize really were thorough about this sort of thing... no, no, on second thought, the Colonial Office was. She didn't see many Erlize signatures on the report, mostly it was just colonial types, with normal names that recurred in other areas of the document. Particularly a man called Mr. Gulyai. Rather senior chap, it seemed.

Remember Marana's words - it was appearance of omniscience that was important for the secret police. Mr. Canima's limits had been made apparent quite a few times now. Don't assume that was just because of a lack of resources out here, this colony was a closed system, everything that came in was charted and regulated, the shantytown was a seething mass of chaos. If she was going to guess... well, the Erlize didn't handle every single prospective colonist, the Colonial Office was handling the bulk of it. Maybe they got it rubber-stamped by an Erlize man, but... well, that didn't imply intense scrutiny, not necessarily... be a little lazy to assume that without evidence, though. The interviews... the interviews interested her quite considerably. Printed in full, for once, 'as per governor direction'. So, he'd nagged about it, and they'd decided to send the whole things up instead of a summary. Let's see... he was interviewed by an anonymous figure. Same questions she'd expected. Why did he want to go to the colony. What sort of work did he want to do. Was he qualified/experienced with this sort of work. Did he know any reactionary or monarchist groups. So on and so forth.

The answers...

He wanted to come to the colony to work, and he wanted to see the world a bit more. Stuck in the shantytown all his life, didn't want to stay there forever. Simple as. He wanted to do whatever work would take him, but he had experience as a bricklayer, a builder, and a courier - he was hard working and willing to learn whatever was necessary. Wasn't going to be leaving anyone behind here, given that he was a solitary orphan. Knew no reactionary groups. Knew no nationalist groups. Knew no groups that were remotely hazardous in the slightest. He kept his head out of politics, he was too sane for that. She read the responses, drained of humanity and tone by the ink and paper, information alone sliced out of it and presented to her, like de-boning a chicken and thrusting the bare, clean length in her direction. And quietly, she drew out her own notes... and the suicide note Myunhen had left behind. And slowly, deliberately, she began to compare the two. Obviously, she didn't expect to find immediate, glaring problems. Words were words, once you removed inflection, accent, patter, all that business, you were left with a sterile expanse of data and little else. Not like the interviewer had tried to phonetically reproduce his accent.

The responses were normal. Completely normal. In point of fact, he was a damn harmless individual by the standards of the report. She murmured quietly, interrupting Yan-Lam's embroidery.

"Could you check the notes? I want to find anything relating to a man called Myunhen. Used to be a bouncer."

The clicking ceased. No reply, but Yan-Lam knew it wasn't necessary. Immediately headed over to check the pseudo-ledger of relevant information they'd spent days assembling, written in Tanner's painfully neat hand, and Yan-Lam's slightly more... well, it was deeply neat as well, but there was a schoolgirl neatness to it, the sort that came from firm instruction, rather than habit. The difference was noticeable to Tanner, at least. Regardless. Slowly, she read out the findings.

"Myunhen... according to what we found, he entered the colony a few years ago, briefly worked as a labourer in the city, then became a bouncer until his death. Crimes... he was associated with none explicitly, but we were able to find a few signatures of involvement, miss. At least, by your reckoning. Involved in a bar fight, where two men tussled over some personal grudge, a knife was drawn, Myunhen failed to stop one from being seriously injured. The perpetrator was sent back home, Myunhen's testimony at the time was instrumental in the governor's decision. The victim healed up, and went on to... become a bouncer himself, now he works as an overseer. Jyuna, he's come up before, hasn't he?"

He had indeed. Tied with quite a few deaths, he was.

"Continue."

"Another incident, where a woman was found hanging from the neck in her house, committing suicide over... well, she left no note for anyone to find, but Myunhen testified that she'd been drinking more heavily than usual, and high amounts of alcohol were found in her system. Likewise, a bottle of alcohol was found in her house, so it was possible she... intended to die that night and drank herself into a state of confidence."

Tanner knew the one. Quickly dug out the mortuary report... right, strangled to death, not a clean snap. Gotten the length on the rope wrong. Extensive bruising around the neck, some bruising where she'd presumably kicked and flailed before dying... but the bruising was in the wrong place. Her knees, like she'd been thrust to the ground. Her knuckles, like she'd fought back. And 'mild bruising around ribs', which made no sense at all given how she died. Possible she'd been beaten, strangled with a rope, and hung to cover it up. Mortuary report had found nothing suspicious, body was sent back home, case closed. Mortuary assistant had really screwed the pooch on some of these, wasn't as thorough as he probably ought to be, and... ah. Ah. That explained it. Time of arrival in the mortuary was in the godawful hours of the evening, when he was about to go home. So, hang the body, hide it from sight, get it called in at an awful time, mortuary assistant fudged the examination in his eagerness to leave, and by the time the body was buried, all that remained was bureaucracy. Sterile, clean, unambiguous.

So...

Myunhen was a naughty boy, wasn't he? Something of a felonious fellow? Rather a dastardly little sausage, hm?

Gods, stop drinking coffee, it made her weird. And get some sun...

Point was. This man had gotten involved in the corruption that embraced all the bouncers. Maybe he'd been approached by a grey man who wanted to hire him for the merchants, the investors, the company leaders... or maybe it was something else entirely. Maybe it was a death cult. And Myunhen had, at one point, had a cast-iron decoration on his wall - at least, based on the carefully-hidden marks left behind. Removed maybe after his death. So, he was involved in this business.

But looking at his background check, there was no hint of that. None at all.

He was snow-white. No thefts, no murders, no assaults, nothing. And, see, she knew how crimes progressed. At least, in theory. Remembered... Dyen, yes. Started with smaller incidents, worked his way up until he was battering a cat to death to intimidate a man into leaving the colony. The point was, crime was a skill like any other - people made mistakes early on, and sometimes they repaired those mistakes when they tried again in future. The shantytown was hardly well-policed, but there were still... records, the Erlize was very concerned with maintaining some form of order, and regular patrols went through. Myunhen was, according to this, the most harmless man to have ever existed on the face of the planet. Nothing at all to indicate a criminal background. She flipped to his physicals... well, would you look at that. They did note some scarring around the fists, the knuckles... but nothing about an assault or a burglary, or even an altercation (they'd need to report that, even if it didn't amount to a crime). She checked the coordinates again... she knew that place, it was hardly nice. Growing up there would be difficult, very difficult, and she couldn't count the number of kids she'd seen with the hunched stances of boxers ready to shield their vitals from harm. She wouldn't judge Myunhen for being involved in criminal activities, but...

Going from a harmless little fellow to someone capable of being in the same league of people as Lyur? A man who, under no circumstances, could be described as normal? No, that was too much of a leap. There had to be some foreshadowing, had to be. She checked his mortuary report again, flicking through all the lists of injuries...

And there, buried deep, was a little, irritating note. Just a little one.

Mild scarring along posterior.

Caned, then. Not uncommon. Schools still did it, though Tanner had always been too well-behaved to experience the touch of the old switch herself. But hard enough to leave scars? Now that was excessive. So, a violent youth, perhaps characterised by beatings, followed by life in a very tough area, tough enough to give him scars on his knuckles, alongside life as a bricklayer and builder... there was no way he should have such a clean background, no way in hell. And no way that someone with a perfect record could slip into the sort of violent life the bouncers clearly enjoyed. Why would the governor take a man, if the discrepancies were so glaring? She checked the interviews again... all of them, very straightforward, very plain, very reasonable. He'd been in the colony a few years, maybe... she could see a narrative emerging, almost. The Colonial Office investigated the man, found nothing worth commenting on, and shipped him up here without any further fanfare. Maybe the governor saw the discrepancies, or... no, no, no, she checked the migration ledgers, he arrived with a very healthy number of people at once, and similar-sized shipments happened over time... maybe he'd slipped in with the rest. Maybe his recruitment as a bouncer was predicated on the governor seeing the discrepancy, and thinking to himself 'ah-ha, here's a man with something to hide, here's a man with some violence in his life, I could use a man like this'. Bouncers answered directly to the governor, so there'd be no concern about the Erlize pinning down the discrepancy and interrogating him...

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The question was, and it was a simple one - was this deliberate? Was this something the governor wanted them to do back in Fidelizh? Scrub violent people of their past, send them up here, and he'd have blackmail material aplenty. The right sort of people for his enforcers, perhaps. Leashed in every sense.

That could be it. Could be as simple as that.

...could be.

She checked the records...

And one point in the interview stood out. Not in a surprising way. Not at all.

'You're allowed to smoke in here, if you'd like. Or we have some snuff, chewing tobacco...'

'Thanks. I'll smoke. Snuff makes me sneeze, chewing tobacco tastes... I mean, makes your breath stink, turns your teeth brown, tastes awful, really nothing redeeming about it.'

And how had she found him? With a mouth filled with chewing tobacco. Something his suicide note was very adamant on pointing out. Won't light a cigarette, afraid I'll be tempted to burn this thing and try to move on. Or, alternately, the people hanging him didn't want him to burn down the house... or, they wanted to cover up something in his mouth. Poison, maybe? The same gas used on her? How detectable was it after death, after the body was left alone for a while, after... oh, gods, she had an image of a terrified man being shoved to his knees, forced to chew tobacco over and over until they knew it'd mask the traces of the poison that was about to kill him. Hell, maybe there was more than chewing tobacco. Either way.

She had proof that he was murdered. Didn't mean anything, obviously. She'd already known. But it was nice to have conformation of her suspicions. Have it made plain that her hunches, sometimes, were completely correct.

Sometimes. Don't get cocky.

The point was - this immigration report contained things she wasn't... certain about. The background check on his parents being missing might mean that the checks had gone poorly, but they'd been politely covered up. So... did the governor expect that sort of treatment? Had he asked for it deliberately, to keep the file as clean as possible? Then again, this file was in his safe, not like it was in an easily-accessible archive like all the other ledgers... so, why worry about others seeing it? Then again, the Erlize were permitted to look at these things in Fidelizh, maybe he'd been covering for the governor on that front, sending him people the city wouldn't otherwise hand over - too dangerous - by masking their dubious past. Explained how Lyur might've made his way up. But... Mr. Gulyai was the only one actually doing this, signing off on things, along with a handful of recurring names. The Erlize just stamped it at the end. And the tone of the notes - as per gubernatorial direction, character references satisfactory, for satisfaction of required quotas... something prim about them, prim and slightly offended at having to explain itself.

That being said...

It could just be a plan. Governor was already willing to break protocol when it came to organisation, and flouted due process when it was convenient. He gladly trod on the toes of the company owners if he thought it benefited the colony... and regulated all social activity for precisely the same reason. Authoritarian was one word, paternalistic was another... either way, this wouldn't be too unique.

She closed the folder.

A narrative could emerge at this stage. The governor created a basically extra-legal organisation, formed of violent individuals from Fidelizh with their pasts scrubbed (mostly) by helpers in the Colonial Office, particularly a Mr. Gulyai who seemed to be in charge of the whole affair. This organisation grows. At some point, potentially, it was subverted. Marana's cynical voice entered her ear - perhaps the deaths were the work of the governor, of course. A police force that regulated social activity... and removed troublemakers by any means necessary. He'd fought in the Great War, she'd heard about the sacrifices made during that time, the gradual reduction in the value of a human life down to an expendable, replaceable component in a shuddering, groaning war machine that operated with all the ferocity and certainty of a cornered animal. Would it be so remarkable for a man like that, who took pills for virility while never engaging in the act, who made his archives incomprehensible to deflect oversight, who locked out the Erlize from his decision-making... would it be so strange if that man decided to create his own secret police, answerable to him and him alone? Come on in, he'd say - come on in, have some rotten tea, let me train you up as a good enforcer, then you go out into the colony and police it at every level. What if the door-guards were just a training camp for secret policemen?

Possible.

Possible.

Cynical, deeply cynical, and fairly unpleasant... alright, at some point, the governor maybe lost control of the bouncers. They either acted in the name of someone else, or their own interests. They bucked back, and the governor was crushed in the process, while trying to investigate one of their misdeeds involving Tyer. He saw that things had gone too far, and was brutalised in his desperate attempt to shut them up. Then, they scrambled to cover up the mess they'd made, silencing their own members, killing them if necessary, while building a story to deflect all attention towards convenient scapegoats. And if Tanner got too close to the real truth, she'd end up like the governor did. Simple, simple. The governor, hung by a rope he'd spun himself. Marana would like it, maybe more than she liked the merchant story. Could blend the two together with relative ease, if she was so inclined, though with adjustments.

...but she didn't like it.

She didn't like the way some things didn't fit in.

The hammer and the eye. The cast-iron plates. The cages. The scarf, and the unstained coat of the governor. The specifics of Tyer and Lam's deaths, not to mention the soldier who'd been dragged down with them. The fact that they'd made no efforts to erase the data which could destroy them - they'd been able to extract one of their own from this place, but they couldn't break into one safe and burn some files? Couldn't find wherever the rest were stored? Terribly selective omnipresence, wasn't it?

Terribly selective. Unpleasantly so. Suspiciously so.

She could run with this narrative. It'd be satisfying. Already, it felt like it was getting closer to the truth, but... no. Focus on specifics. Focus on evidence. Build upwards from there, and don't stop until every last piece of evidence at her disposal had blossomed, flowered, and stretched upwards to support the narrative she built. You couldn't build an aqueduct with only half of the columns standing, and you couldn't build a narrative with only chunks of the data.

Hm.

...she needed more context.

The folders were stacked, bound together. And she hid them between ledgers, sandwiching them in the pile. Pages facing outwards to stop the characteristic indigo covers from showing. The box, that also needed a little tweaking before it was completely invisible... no, no, she just put it on the ground between her feet, and let her skirts go over the top. Immobilised her, but now they were invisible. Come to think of it... ah, screw it. The folders could go there too. And carefully, she outlined her plan to Yan-Lam. And what Yan-Lam needed to do.

Time to get to work.

* * *

"Mr. Canima's here, honoured judge."

Yan-Lam's voice had dropped to a whisper as she scuttled into the room, holding the heavy door open for a certain gentleman. Small individual in dark clothes, followed by a towering figure in tweed... even if the colours weren't quite right, she was distinctly reminded of a funeral procession. Mr. Canima entered, silent as the grave, cufflinks gleaming flatly, like the eyes of a predator. His suit was remarkable in its opaqueness, and sometimes she thought the edges might shimmer a little, like a mirage - blending smoothly into the background. If he were wearing all black, he might look slightly comical, even ghoulish. But in tweed... he looked like he could be anywhere, acting any role. Give him a newspaper, and he'd be unnoticed in the corner of any waiting room. Give him a leather case, and he might be a banker, a businessman, a country doctor, or a well-heeled professor. Give him a napkin, and he'd be quite at home at any dinner table, be it high or low, noble or common. She honestly thought that if Tom-Tom tried to measure his skull, she'd find the measurements changing every few seconds, even his bone structure working to keep him as threateningly ambiguous as possible.

Even now, her skin crawled at the sight of him. He knew everything about her. He knew everything worth knowing. And her methods for the last few days - poring over documents, investigating lacunae, highlighting discrepancies and deviations... it was Erlize to the core, according to him. Not sure how she felt about that.

Maybe he'd known she'd use these methods, and chose to tie them to the Erlize to foster a positive impression.

Maybe he'd just done it by accident.

No, no, this man did nothing by accident. Under his gaze, she felt herself instinctually wilting, just a little.

"Mr. Canima. Please, sit down."

He sank into a chair, and almost vanished from sight. Once more, only his shining eyes and cufflinks were visible.

"Honoured judge."

"I'm... sorry I haven't produced more results. Still working, though. Day in, day out."

He stared at her for a few long moments. The silence invited speech. And as it grew, she realised the speech it demanded was her own.

"...I promise, there's some leads I'm pursuing. And I'm sorry to have disturbed you from your work."

"It's no trouble. And I believe you, on the intensity of your work."

Tanner flushed around her collarbone, and felt the urge to knead her skirt. Barely resisted it by gripping a pen like a stress toy, squeezing until she was afraid of the ink bursting out. Did she smell? How did she look? Thought she'd made herself more presentable, but... there was only so much that could be done in the periods of time she allowed herself for cleaning. Didn't like being out of the room, leaving notes and so on vulnerable. Either way.

"Would you like some tea?"

"No, thank you."

Silence. Nothing more. Go on. He seemed to say with his eyes, his cufflinks, the knob of bone at the front of his forehead. All five of his eyes glaring at her, and speaking in soft, authoritative tones. Go on, impress me. Justify interrupting my work, which is more informed than yours, and engages with higher mysteries of state that you couldn't begin to imagine. Come to the high priest and speak of divine mysteries like you have the right.

Which you do. Of course. Honoured judge.

He leaned back, and his cufflinks seemed to wink at her, mockingly, even as his regular eyes remained completely flat. She saw, faintly, a little ink on his hands - he'd been writing recently. His shoes had the colour of roasted chestnuts. Polished in such a way that they'd never gleam.

"...I want to ask a question about someone in Fidelizh."

No blink.

"Is it salient?"

"It might be. It's... now, I want to establish something, clearly, between the two of us, sir."

Silence.

"I'm trying to find out who killed the governor. There's a lot of evidence to work through, and I found... well, I'm wondering, you said you didn't have tremendous involvement in the work of the bouncers, and if there was evidence of corruption among them, I thought you'd be interested. And..."

She swallowed a hint of disgust.

"And if it came to light that some knowledge might need to be suppressed, for the good of the colony, I'd be... willing to play along. But I think we ought to liaise on the topic."

She didn't trust him. But she trusted in his loyalties. He was an Erlize officer - a higher-up. The chief source of authority in this colony. As an office of the Erlize, he was bound to their regulations, to their priorities. As an acting governor, he was bound to the colony, it rose or fell with his name attached to it, from now until spring at minimum. Had to assume he wasn't compromised by anything. And the act of the terrified, paranoid judge was... one that would be made more effective if she came to him for help when no other option remained. Hell, she'd summoned him - she never summoned him. But in his flat, dark gaze, there was no guarantee of anything she did being believed. No guarantee of her lies holding up longer than a moment apiece. Another swallow. Didn't intend to let things slide out here - law be done, even if the world was ending. But... she had to go with the act. Had to go with the act.

"I... think there may be hints of corruption, with regards to the bouncers, possibly liaising with... higher-ups in the colony. Businessmen. Investors. That sort of thing. Now, I can't confirm that, but I'm looking into all the areas where the influence of money could play a role in getting the bouncers here. And please, this mustn't leave this room, not under any circumstances, sir. It's very sensit-"

Mr. Canima sighed, and pulled something out of his pocket... a device of some kind, some sort of... tube thing, which he extended, and pulled a number of blades away from, wide and flat, before beginning to wind a key installed at the base. Tanner watched dumbly as the device was wound tighter, tighter... looked almost like a windmill, really, like one of the god-towers, and... the key clicked. And Canima carefully set the device down on the desk, blades upwards, and allowed it to spin. The blades rotated quickly, and she heard a vague hum coming from it, a hum which varied in pitch and rhythm every few seconds. Tanner blinked.

"Baffler. Prevents certain forms of eavesdropping. I wouldn't normally be so cautious outside of enemy territory, but..."

The cell. The torn-up walls. The disappearance of a prisoner from a locked, windowless room, guarded by two men who still claimed they knew nothing, had done nothing, had no awareness of any sort of any nefariousness. Nowhere was safe. And as the files under dress proved, the safe wasn't safe either.

"I... understand. Thank you. What I want to know is... the immigration process. The actual act of getting from Fidelizh to the colony. Now, I asked a few questions, kept it subtle, but I'm given to understand that people go through the Colonial Office, who send them up north."

Mr. Canima looked at her darkly - like she was wasting his time. Well, she was. But only to a point.

"That's correct. The distance means we can't approve or reject every prospective colonist. However, we have the right to return them back home, if we find the Colonial Office has made a substantial error in some variety."

"Does that happen often?"

"Not any more."

"...I see. But you provide directives for them, some kind of broader guideline they're meant to listen to follow?"

"Quite. There are quotas on the number of people we believe ourselves capable of accepting, skills that we require filled, and... yes, a balance of locals against Fidelizhi citizens that promotes harmony, rather than strife. A priority of the late governor."

"Right, right. And... do you know who actually signs off on all of this?"

A moment of silence. Mr. Canima studied her carefully.

"The Colonial Office is its own kingdom. Government departments generally are."

"But the Erlize..."

"The Erlize are... regulators, administrators, enforcers, investigators. They move beyond, around, between and above the hierarchy of departments."

He seemed tight-lipped, refusing to go any further. Tanner could make her assumptions - the Erlize might not penetrate government departments so effectively, not like they did for the general population. They weren't meant to observe the work of government, that was for other parts of the government to handle. So... there was no guarantee of them having a major influence on the work of the Colonial Office. Not that Mr. Canima could admit that out loud - not that she wanted him to. The sight of him being open and unreserved about a weakness, a flaw in his own organisation would be so unnatural as to, necessarily, be a complete and utterly lie. Or a sign of madness. One or the other. That being said...

The way he said departments was quite remarkable.

He managed to turn a three-syllable word into a nine-syllable one. And each time he said it, the number of syllables multiplied, like each one was loathsome, and he had to divide them further to countenance letting them pass his lips.

Oh ho.

Oh ho.

"It is the business of departments to handle the duties assigned to them. In the case of the Colonial Office, that is the distribution of resources and personnel to us. Here, however, the department has little sway."

Quite.

"...one name keeps emerging. I was wondering if you might know him."

"Oh?"

She turned over a few pages, like she was gathering her evidence together, while the real evidence remained wedged between her feet.

"Mr... Gulyai, I think. People mention him a little, he seems to be involved in a fair number of people-"

"Mr. Gulyai of the Colonial Office is the head of the recruitment bureau responsible for the supply of people to the colony of Rekida."

Mechanical recitation. Completely emotionless.

"And he..."

"He corresponds with the governor primarily. He is..."

A pause.

"...an official of a department. He has his kingdom, and keeps it. Thus far, he has supplied us with people, while his colleagues have managed the supply of resources, and the governor in particular attracted investors."

Minimising his importance. Seemed to be a hint of a personal grudge there. A dislike of losing control over something so important. Well... Tanner the Paranoid Carcass could see a link of corruption there, a place where money could work. A lack of Erlize scrutiny due to interdepartmental politics, and an abundance of authority resting on a single man. Odd that the head of the bureau would interview everyone heading out, would be so thoroughly involved, with a finger in the largest public pie and the smallest public tart... oh, there was something there. Now, as Tanner the Paranoid Carcass, she was connecting that to the business leaders, who might very well be bribing Mr. Gulyai to speed up certain checks, sending them bodies, at all costs, and ideally some rough-and-tumble types ready to execute their fiendish will. Building an army, perhaps?! And Tanner the Still-Paranoid Not-Carcass was connecting it to the governor, wondering if he'd had an arrangement to get these violent persons sent in without sufficient checks. And if so, there might be correspondence indicating this. Law be done, though the heavens fall - she was resigned to dying in this place, killed for what she knew, so she might as well know something worth knowing, hm?

Didn't want to be implicating the governor in his own death, but she had to get this right, had to find out what actually lay at the bottom of all of this.

And...

"And one thing. Mr. Lam, and his daughter. I'm told they corresponded personally with the governor, is that correct?"

"It is."

Yan-Lam was being very quiet now, standing far away from the conversation, but with eyes brighter than the surface of the moon.

"Did that... factor into things?"

Mr. Canima drew himself up slightly, and his eyes shifted to study the ceiling carefully, like he was trying to read the movements of the stars through layers of brick, plaster and tile. Knowing him, he might very well be capable of that. The only unbelievable thing in the whole statement was that Mr. Canima would believe in astrology.

Now, reading entrails, that might be more up his alley. Purely to exploit a resource he doubtless had in abundant supply.

"Mr. Lam sent a letter on one of the resource shipments. Not many people apply to the governor on such topics, so he took it... rather seriously. The governor had an affection for certain things. Cats. An obscure Herxielic artist. And those attempting to make fresh starts on the frontier. Not that he was a man possessed by flights of fancy, but he had certain passions, and gladly followed them when they didn't stand in the way of his duties. At all times, duty was paramount. He personally approved the application... twisting the proverbial wrist of the Colonial Office, but the approval went through regardless."

A pause.

The man looked, for a moment that passed very quickly indeed, slightly mournful.

Yan-Lam definitely did. The governor had been shockingly decent to her family, really. Decency that had possibly killed both of them, in a roundabout sort of way. Tanner tried... she tried to think, would the governor create a secret police force that was capable of and willing to brutalise any enemy of his new order, while also... writing passports for individual cats who came into the colony? Buying a tie embroidered with little foxes playing around? Inviting a family of two to come to the colony, doing everything in his power to keep them comfortable and happy, even starting work on securing Yan-Lam's future when her father died?

Individual kindnesses compared to overall brutal pragmatism? Islands of rosy pink in a boundless sea of iron grey?

Sounded like bad poetry. Best to keep those observations in her own head.

"I see. Thank you, Mr. Canima."

"Quite all right, honoured judge. Would that be all?"

"Yes, sir."

"Good."

He stood quickly, folding his baffler away, before brushing his trousers for imaginary dust that might've settled. As he walked to the door, he shot Yan-Lam a small look. Said nothing, though. Too reserved, perhaps... or too apathetic. He did, however, say something to Tanner, over his shoulder as he departed.

"I trust that you will act in the best interests of the colony. Undermining the authority of the governor, myself, or the structures necessary for the colony's continuation... there would be wiser things to do. But if you wish to tear the door-guards apart for corruption, I invite you to do so. No doubt the patrons of the colony's inns would thank you for it."

A pause.

"...I assure you, however. Whatever comes, whatever changes - my interests will always remain aligned with the colony. It'd do you well to remember that. Ms. Lam. Judge Tanner."

And with that, he was gone.

And Tanner had her confirmation.

For once, for once... she had real, solid, genuine evidence of corruption.

Now, she just had to pursue it, and see how far it led. And when she came crashing down, armed with all the evidence in the world...

Well.

And based on Yan-Lan's expression, her eagerness outstripped even Tanner's.

Well.

Good!