CHAPTER FIVE - ORANGE COMETS DANCE AMIDST METAL THROATS

The guidance of men with orange scarfs led her onwards. The waitress had been right - and Tanner inwardly kicked herself for not asking after her name. A few turns, and she was in the flowing thoroughfares once more, bag thumping against her leg, like a hammer tenderising meat. If she kept walking for long enough, she thought, maybe she'd whack off every excess pound and turn herself into a lean, tightly-wound piece of ambulatory mutton. Not sure why she picked mutton... no, no, sheep always looked pretty content with themselves. And fair enough, they weren't destined to be slaughtered, it was more profitable to keep them around for ages and ages. Sheep had it sorted, in Tanner's philosophically inclined opinion. Almost as sorted as eels, with their nicely defined life-cycles, doggedly determined voyages to random points, and the sudden, unhesitating switch from sustainable living to a suicidal run towards breeding grounds. And like an eel, she dove into the thoroughfare, this living river, and swam desperately against the current. She had a man with an orange scarf in sight. And she hunted him with all the conviction and commitment of someone who was doing the equivalent of jumping head-first into a pool of ice-cold water. Better to get it over with, no matter how shocking it was at first, because doing it slowly would be agonising.

She waded through the mass, avoiding a whole panoply of people and the gods mounted their backs, head cresting above a solid cloud of cheroot smoke and riverbed dust, hair brushing uncomfortably against the tops of hats. Even so often a little glittering pebble of an eye would be visible through the haze, looking upwards, startled... before vanishing once more. She made her undulating way through the crowd, prey in sight...

And she asked, in a voice that wavered between necessarily loud and instinctually quiet.

The man blinked, cheroot hanging dumbly from his lips. Processing the question.

And Tanner got to see something interesting, as she looked into his flickering eyes, uncomfortable with direct contact. Instinctually, he probably wanted to just shrug, mumble, and move on. Do what many people did in this sort of circumstance, in Tanner's experience. Indeed, back home she wouldn't have done this, wouldn't have dreamed of just asking a random person for directions in the middle of a busy street. Too risky, too embarrassing, too... anyway. But she had no choice, and the waitress had reassured her. She was tired, she was fired with that bizarre citrinitas stuff, she had encouragement. And... yes, she could see the man doing what most people would do. The inner, cautious core of a person. He shrank back slightly, hunched into himself, did exactly what anyone living in this part of the world would do in the face of a giant asking him for directions. And then... the scarf took over. The orange scarf with tweed patches, the reins that a god used to ride around on his back. Wheeling-Yellow-Dancer, she thought the waitress had said. It felt like a shudder went through his entire body, the embarrassed wriggle of someone suddenly aware of being watched while doing something less-than-dignified... and his entire demeanour changed. His shoulders relaxed. His eyes brightened. His stance unwound.

"Right, yes, yes, of course, just this way - in one of the old parts of town, all a bit winding and confusing. Tally ho and so on."

And with that, he set off like an overheated locomotive, leaving Tanner to wade as quickly as possible through the crowd in pursuit.

...he looked confident. He looked very confident. Gone was any hint of reservation or confusion, he knew exactly what he was meant to do, the rest of the city would accept this behaviour as acceptable and expected... and that shudder. That wriggle. Like he'd suddenly become aware of the god riding on his back, fingers digging into his shoulders. The eyes of his god suddenly riveted on its worshipper, its personal steed. Enforcing a certain pattern of behaviour, a certain response. She was conflicted, as the man led her boldly through the crowd, down convoluted turnings, phasing from new town to old town in a matter of minutes, before slipping back again just as quickly. His orange scarf flapped behind him like the trail of a shooting star, and his head had the upturned, thrusting quality of the effortlessly confident. Quite the contrast to the shrinking, reserved person who'd flinched from her on instinct. She liked the idea of just... surrendering to approved, expected purpose. Disliked the idea of having to be gregarious, though. Wondered if he was feeling content, under the layer of performance. If he was fine with this sort of thing. Did he choose to wear that scarf today, or was it dictated by some bizarre ritualised calendar? Did he want some parts of the god riding on his back, but not all of it? Was she inconveniencing someone deeply while they forced a happy face and played along?

Did it matter?

Eels lost almost all their survivability once they needed to swim away to mate. Made them hard to keep as pets, really - if they decided that it was time to go back to the sea to breed, they'd do anything to get there. She'd tried to keep an eel in a big bucket of water, once, just in secret... and randomly, she woke up to find her mother screaming bloody murder as the eel undulated doggedly over the carpet towards the front door. And she'd heard of eels bashing their own brains out when they were prevented. Not that she'd eaten eels before, but she'd heard that the weirs where they were caught just... took advantage of that natural flow, exploiting the unstoppable passage of pilgrimage. Like bandits standing beside a holy road with billy clubs in hand. Scientists had tried to keep an eye on captive eels, seeing how long they'd last once they metamorphosed into their final state... barely any time at all. They literally couldn't eat, just burned through what they had and died. They didn't seem to complain about this, and if they didn't do it, the species would die out. They literally served no purpose unless they had this potential within them, and if they lacked the drive, would they ever manage to get back to their spawning grounds, somewhere across the ocean?

The man's scarf slithered behind him, eel-like in the oceanic haze of cheroot smoke and riverbed dust, leading her onwards.

Happy or not, he was still taking her where she needed to go.

His heels clicked as he came to a stop some time later, turning sharply to face her, his face still smiling.

"Well, just down that way. Would there be anything else, miss?"

She blinked.

"Oh, nothing. Nothing. Thank you, it's... very kind of you."

"Not at all."

He tipped his hat courteously, and his expression seemed to soften - he'd done what he was meant to, his duty had ended, and he could return to normal passages of life. She hated the idea of leaving him with a bad impression - scanned his face with not a little intensity, trying to figure out if he liked the role he was wearing, or if it was something forced unwillingly onto him. If he liked losing agency in favour of confidence, or if he wished he could take this silly scarf off and do what he liked. Did he hate her, or was he ambivalent? She saw nothing. The street was silent, cobbled, old. Faceless kings stared down, and the face in front of her was just as inscrutable. A second.

"Thank you. Again."

A quick remembrance.

"My name is Tanner Magg, I'll be here for a while. It's nice to meet you."

The man blinked. Was that a shudder of discomfort going through him? Too much familiarity? She'd gone too far. He tipped his hat again, clicking his heels a second later with a sharp tap which echoed around the hunched, haze-shrouded buildings.

"Yundol. Pleasure."

And with that, he was gone, striding away into the mist. She couldn't see his face as he departed - not sure if the polite smile was still there, or if it was gone. Replaced with a scowl, possibly. She stared as he left... and as the sounds faded away, she finally brought herself to turn and face the last road. It was narrow, straight, without deviation of any kind. And at the end... her heartbeat was pounding in her ears as she walked slowly and carefully down the cobbles, the only other sound being the creaking of a distant windmill. She glanced backwards... and saw the windmills poking through the gaps in buildings. A little army of painted eyes glared at her from between the leering structures, and just as quickly as they appeared, they dissolved, the sails of the painted windmills moving away with dull creaks and groans. Not sure what they were powering. Presumably it was important. She walked away, surrounded on all sides by private, cloistered buildings, marked with tiny signs beside the doors - stationers, copiers, book-binders, booksellers, cape-menders, all the hullabaloo which accompanied the legal profession in Fidelizh. If they were open, they didn't advertise it - the doors were shut, the windows were shuttered, and she heard no conversation. No-one met her as she clumped her heavy way down the street, hunching her shoulders as if the buildings all around were alive, and would take unkindly to someone challenging their height, even vaguely.

Before she knew it, she was there. Her little pilgrimage was over. From barge to office to street to kaff to street to...

Here.

And a great inner temple lay before her. A vast wooden door with stubbornly lingering flakes of gold leaf, where some ambitious Judges had decided to make their name more literal. Judges of the Golden Door. Her new family, her new vocation. One she'd been called to by someone else, sure, but called nonetheless. Just a door - no way of seeing things lying inside the structure, and it wasn't particularly tall. Not remotely as tall as the god-towers littered around the place. A whole life lay behind this door, and it wasn't revealing a single hint of what it might be like. She paused...

Remembered the lodge. Remembered the entrance.

And knocked boldly, imitating her mother's style. The brisk confidence of it, the assertion that, yes, someone is here, and someone is-

Before she could knock more than twice, a little slit opened with a hiss, revealing a pair of glaring brown eyes, the colour of old chestnuts.

"Identify."

"...Tanner Magg, sir. I have a letter of introduction."

Another slit opened, this one with a clunk, and a large, calloused, ink-stained hand shot outwards, gesturing curtly. She complied. The voice hummed a little, the eyes flickered from side to side, reading the plundered letter. A second passed.

The first slit closed - hiss.

The second slit closed - clunk.

And a third slit opened up at a higher level, accompanied by the sound of stairs being ascended. This one opened with a thump and a rattle. The eyes met her head-on from this higher vantage point, narrowing in suspicion.

"Tall, aren't you?"

"I've heard words to that effect, yes."

"Hm. Says here you passed your preliminaries in Mahar Jovan. Intending to study for the full status of judge - is that correct? Sure you're not interested in a minor degree, in something more... generalised?"

She blinked.

"...no? I... no, I'm here for the full course. I want to become a judge."

"Certain?"

"Quite."

"Quite certain, very certain, what? Need to be specific if you're to be a judge."

Tanner's jaw tightened.

"Very."

"Tanner? That's a last name, isn't it?"

"Not in Mahar Jovan."

Tanner was a very normal name, damn his eyes. No, no, that was rude. Just smile and go along with this weird little charade.

"To become a full judge is difficult. Expensive, too. If you run out of money to finance your studies, there'll be no option but to kick you off. Are you suitably... benefited?"

Shouldn't have been. If things went normally, she'd be nowhere close to the right level of funding. Becoming a judge was... pricey. And she wasn't smart enough to earn a scholarship. Put simply, she had to sell herself to them, not the other way around. The lodge, if it pooled all its resources, might've managed to ease her through, but... that was an investment that would never pay itself back, and the lodge didn't tend to splash money on things like that. Putting you up when your home burned to the ground, sure. Putting you in contact with the right people to solve certain problems, definitely. But not an infinite store of money to draw from, not at all. If it was, it'd have run dry a long, long time ago. Under any normal circumstance, she wouldn't have been able to afford a single year at this place.

Things had changed, though. Ever since they'd received that letter from the distant west, from a city she barely knew a thing about.

"It's... arranged. There's funds set aside."

A low, solemn stare. Sizing her up. Trying to sniff out a lie. And a few moments later...

"Understand that once you pass this threshold and enter into the territories of the golden law, there's no deviation or return. Either you succeed, or you fail. But there's to be no retreat and no rebellion."

Right, right, maybe this was just a mystery play, like the lodge did every other week. Re-enacting some heroic or symbolic deed, incarnating it into the world to reproduce its effects in some fashion. Thankfully she'd never been senior enough to participate - just watching them had made her cringe internally. The idea of going onto a stage was bad enough, doing it would be something else entirely. A tiny flash of anger, quickly suppressed. These chestnut-brown eyes weren't going to stop her, but they were delaying her, and she was... she wanted to put her bag down, blast it. No, calm, calm. Restraint at all times. Even when she was feeling particularly fraught. Like right now.

"I understand."

"Your life will be confined to the law from now on. There can be no hesitation. Do you comprehend the nature of the sacrifice you are making? You will never be anything besides a judge, or a failed judge. If you pass this door, you sacrifice normal life and give yourself up to the structures of the law. Is this comprehended?"

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

"It is."

A long, pregnant silence. Years and years rested on it - the tiny, insignificant isthmus connecting her from one island to another, both of them vast in their own way. One with the all-consuming vastness of familiarity, which filled itself with so many details that it was impossible to quantify them all. The other with all-consuming uncertainty. She'd already gone through the immigration office, but it felt now, more than ever, like she was on the fringes of a foreign country with a foreign landscape, where rivers were dust and the gods strode among men, where thrones were empty and the skulls of leering monsters hung from the walls.

A clunk.

The lowest slit had opened. A hand emerged, bearing a single sweet. A swirl of white and red, like a pinwheel. Right, right, she knew this part.

Delicately, she took it.

Delicately, she chewed it.

Delicately, she nodded in appreciation, mulling the excessively sweet substance around her mouth.

And delicately, she swallowed the paste, conscious of every little muscle twitch.

"Then enter."

Clunk. The hand retreated.

Rattle-thump. The eyes vanished.

Click-whine-click-clunk-screech-scrape-click-click-hiss... lock upon lock upon lock disengaging. A slow withdrawing of pressure from the wood, and a few little flakes of gold leaf fell to the ground, lost amidst the dust in a matter of moments - golden stars in a brown-grey sky. Tanner gripped her bag nervously, aches and pains forgotten, the embarrassment on the barge gone from her mind. The door shuddered...

And slowly, slowly creaked open.

Opening the way to the rest of her life.

* * *

The towers of Fidelizh rose high above. In Fidelizh, height was a necessary predecessor to importance, in terms of architecture. The Golden Parliament's central building had no fewer than nineteen clock towers, each one challenging the others to be higher, and they rang at exactly the same time every day. The god-towers with their painted sails made the earth sink below them, suppressed by sheer weight. Each year, they sank a little more, barely held up by the sturdy nature of the city's foundation. Houses built attic upon attic upon attic, and the dust-heaps of Fidelizh were crammed with the discarded tiles from a house's umpteenth renovation. Height was difficult. Height was something that strained a building, that demanded work on all fronts, that provided little additional space despite the effort involved. But height was also kingly. And in Fidelizh, every man and every woman could be a god - so why not a king? Why shouldn't every house be a castle, a temple, a fortress? Why not?

The judges had predated the king's removal.

And they had no love for... passing fashions. To the judges, anything younger than a few centuries was a passing fashion. Above that, anything younger than a millennium was a sad indictment of the current era's downward trend.

So they built down.

The man at the gate had led her inwards, taking her bag and staggering away with it as he directed her to a winding staircase. No words, just pointing irritably, while his face turned an unusual shade of red. Tanner had bowed and thanked him and done all the right things, but he'd stumbled away without any sound passing his lips beyond his increasingly laboured breath. The entrance hall was... grey. Grey walls, and nearly a hundred grey pillars, crammed into the entrance space. Grey pillars that were unlike any she'd seen before. Metallic, and whorled, like the bark of trees. Almost organic, but clearly sculpted by human hands. They reached far above her head to disappear into the ceiling, the metal spreading outwards into a series of convoluted branches, gnawing their way into the stone and vanishing entirely. They were... cold, she realised. Deeply cold, and... she paused, just before she left. The pillars hummed. There was a low, low hum in the air, almost feminine, produced by the metal throats of the hundred whorled pillars. She stepped forward, running her hand over one... feeling how cold they were, almost painful despite her gloves. And feeling the hum resonate through her entire body. The whorls resembled no scene, no mural, no words, no moral lessons or important maxims. They were just... metal pillars shaped to look like trees, which hummed, and were unseasonably cold. Could vaguely see the little screws holding it together, each one carefully concealed from prying eyes with inconvenient aberrations in the metal. Tanner desperately wanted to ask the man what these were, what they were meant to do...

A ripple passed through the metal. A motion began and reversed.

She stepped backwards, eyes wide.

...no. No, she was imagining things. Must've been.

Just... impressionable. The organic shape. The humming which sounded almost human. Her own weariness and nervousness.

But it'd almost felt like the iron pillars were... breathing.

Like she was surrounded by a hall of a hundred metal throats, breathing softly and humming demurely in the entranceway to her new life. The man was gone. Swallowed whole, maybe. She took a few more steps back, feeling... feeling like a country bumpkin. Was this something Mahar Jovan had, hidden away from everyone else? She'd been raised on the docks, and Jovan wasn't the richest place in the world, so...

She had no idea why the judges had a hall of metal throats.

And while she was sure she'd find out eventually... right now, ignorance was a comforting, cloying blanket. And she wrapped herself in it gladly.

The staircase echoed around her as she trotted down, relieved of her bag, and relieved by that fact. The stairs were too small, designed for normal-sized people, and she felt like she was always on the verge of falling, tumbling, crashing to a halt at the bottom in a pile of limbs so broken they'd never even manage to peel her off the stone. Have to just rename these the Tanner Stairs - the ones studded with little bits of a clumsy giant. Gods, there she went again. She clattered downwards, dress flapping around her legs, hair bouncing with each step. Winding around and around a central column... and this, at least, was decorated in a nicer manner than the columns in the hall. Grey stone, with a spiralling double helix of blue lacquered tiles embedded at regular intervals. Swirling around and around, surrounded by smooth stairs, and illuminated by a distant glow at the very top. A clouded skylight leading to the outside world. And as she descended, the natural light became weaker and weaker, dimmer and dimmer... until she reached some vital point, and a new form of light began to glow. The tiles on the column were... they were filled with lights. Each one was slightly translucent, and within was an ambiguous glow - not sure if there was some sort of flameless candle burning inside, the sort she'd seen sometimes in the richer houses around Mahar Jovan... not sure if it was something else. She'd heard of glowing liquid before, and candles which burned using things other than wick and wax, and metals which shone when theurgists coaxed them just so.

The light within danced slightly. A little wisp within a blue prison. A twin helix of light that she followed downwards, the blue light somewhat calming, even as the skylight receded further and further above, until it might as well have been a dot, or nothing at all.

Another door. Another passage.

And this time there was someone waiting for her.

A tall man, gaunt and slightly hollow-eyed and hollow-cheeked, stinking of vinegar. He wore a heavy black cape around his shoulders, tied at the front with three small silver chains, and the interior flashed with green silk. Beneath, there was a rather modern grey suit, three pieces, with small pearl buttons. It was all buttoned up, in fact. Buttons up the trousers, buttons up the waistcoat, buttons up the sleeves, buttons up the jacket front, each and every one an immaculate little bead of pearl, the sort you used to scoop up caviar (apparently, according to someone in her lodge. Aunt Fuller, loved talking about high-class matters). She wondered if this sort of thing was fashionable, or worse, standard. Even his well-buffed shoes had a few little studs just around the border of the vamp and the box. His mutton chops descended below even his chin, twin curtains of purest white that framed a narrow, sunken face. He looked up at her, the hunch in his back plainly obvious from this angle.

"Ms. Magg."

She bowed slightly, biting the inside of her cheek nervously. His voice had a drowsy quality to it, deep and husky, a voice which was used to reading aloud for long periods of time. It was a well-muscled voice, and it filled the air with a distinct lack of effort.

"Yes, sir. Tanner Magg. I'm... here to study."

"Study."

He rolled the word around his mouth like he wasn't quite sure if it would take. Almost seemed liable to spit it out.

"Walk, girl."

She walked, forcing her nervous limbs to restrain their pace. He walked deliberately and in a statesmanlike manner. He walked like he was pacing an imaginary theatre, but had been doing it for so long that all the grandiosity had vanished, all the pomp and the circumstance, and now there lingered... well, to put it curtly, all tights and no thighs. But what a pair of tights they were. She felt clumsy next to him, unpractised. Shapeless and unclipped. She gripped her elbows behind her back, locking herself like she was in a straitjacket, eager to be small and neat and prim, however possible. One of her shoes, she was painfully aware, squeaked - the sole had been mended, and poorly. The glue used was squishing faintly, and it sounded like she'd stepped in something vulgar. Each repetition made her wince, and made her grasp her elbows with such force that she felt like she might tear herself apart with a single snap. Whirl asunder into a dizzying pile of limbs, for a split second a perfect triskeles.

Goodness, her thoughts were odd today, weren't they? She blamed the lodge, they planted her with all sorts of weird images that she'd never managed to shake off.

The man spoke, once more filling the air with his casually muscled voice.

"My name is Brother Olgi. If you achieve the rank of judge, you will be permitted to refer to yourself as Sister Tanner. Until such a time, you are to be considered Ms. Magg, or simply Tanner. This is the first law of etiquette. If you fail to practise it, I find it dubious you'll master the further principles of law."

"Yes, sir."

"Brother."

"...yes, brother. Sorry, brother."

"Good. There are other laws of etiquette you will obey as time goes on. Your cape is to be kept well-pressed and clean. Your bed is to be well-made and spotless. While not a law, I recommend your notes take the same form you intend to use in formal writing - we believe in the establishment of solid foundations, and working towards that goal is no trifling matter to be done the night before. Start as you wish to continue."

"Yes, brother. Understood."

She was gripping her elbows with renewed force, memorising everything she could. The corridors were slightly more lively - she could see people working through the cracks in doors, judges illuminated by solitary pools of light, surrounded on all sides by relative darkness. None of them turned to look at her, and with their capes, they seemed almost like enormous human-headed mussels mounted upon their desks. With some effort, she dragged her attention back to... to Brother Olgi. Not Mr. Olgi. Not sir. Nice to know what was expected of her.

"If required, you may leave the inner temple and enter the outer temple to acquire stationery from our affiliated traders. If you wish, you may go further and enter the city without restriction. However, entry to the temple is only permitted before sundown. If you fail to enter before this time, you will be required to seek lodging elsewhere. You will remain in the inner temple for your entire course, the privilege of residing elsewhere may only be sought under exceptional circumstances. Your course will last seven years. During the first, you will lodge in a dormitory with other noviciates. As you age, your lodging will narrow down, and by the time you reach your sixth year, you will have the privilege of your own room. Examinations are to be held at the end of each academic term, with formal scrutinies occurring at the end of each academic year. Furthermore, collections will be held at the beginning of each term. During recesses, you are expected to work at the assignments provided, and in later years you may seek out apprenticeship with senior judges. Is this all understood?"

Seven years. Sleeping with a bunch of other people. Crumbs.

"Yes, brother. I understand. Seven years. Dormitories. Sundown curfew."

"Quite."

His lip suddenly wrinkled, as if he disliked saying what came next.

"Engagement with Fidelizhi superstitions is permitted, but not encouraged. Let whichever god you like ride on your back, but the intercession of any number of deities will not change your duties, your obligations, your responsibilities. In the dormitories, you are required to sleep with your hands above the covers at all times. You may join no political associations of any stripe. You will study the law and its applications. You will ponder the philosophies of the temple. You will not concern yourself with smaller matters. Do you regard the law as a yielding thing, Ms. Magg?"

She was still processing the 'sleeping with her hands over the covers' thing, trying to figure out what it actually meant, so the sudden question almost floored her, and she stumbled slightly.

"...no, si- brother. No, I don't."

"Do you regard it as unyielding?"

Nervousness rose a little. This felt like an interrogation. Her jaw clenched, and two sharp nubs of protruding bone appeared at the fringes of her face, like a pair of savage tusks.

"I... think so? It's... well..."

This was all happening a little faster than she had expected.

"Go on."

Crumbs.

"...I suppose, uh, well-"

"Speak or be silent, refrain from using space-fillers. It isn't behaviour becoming of a judge."

His eyes were watchful, swivelling in their hollow sockets to keep an eye on her as they walked in lockstep down the eerily illuminated corridors of the inner temple. Tanner bit her cheek, focusing. How... did she think of the law, really? Took her time to put an answer together that she had a semblance of confidence in. Not much, but... better than nothing. And she spoke slowly, carefully, pinching herself when she started going 'um' and 'uh' and 'well' and 'I suppose'. Hard to overcome a habit built over the course of a lifetime, but...

"I think the law is unyielding in purpose, but flexible in detail."

"Go on."

"It's... able to be amended to suit a particular situation, but the overall purpose always remains the same. To make sure people don't act in ways that are... bad for other people?"

Brother Olgi hummed briefly, before coughing wetly into his hand, grumbling as he did so.

"Law is for the preservation of the common good, then. The goal of law is protection, then. Preserving life by criminalising murder, protecting property by criminalising theft, securing happiness by criminalising the excessive infliction of misery."

Tanner looked at him cautiously.

"Is that what the judges believe?"

"Hm. You immediately place your beliefs in reference to our own. Good response. I've met too many people with well-paid tutors who think they already know the mysteries of the law. Very well - the judges consider the benefit of the common good to be a facet of the law, yes. But there are others. Many others. Some see law as the great boundary between anarchy and tyranny. Or, perhaps law is simply something that exists as an administrative reality, the moral merits and demerits being basically excluded from deliberation."

He paused, thinking.

"In all of these ideas is some shade of the law. We see imperfect reflections of a divine prototype, and muddle our way onwards as best we can. You will learn more, of course. In generalities and particulars. You will learn the nuances of the law, and of our own doctrines. Do you know why we call ourselves judges, and not lawyers?"

Tanner tilted her head to one side, thinking.

"I don't know."

Brother Olgi snorted slightly, the sound echoing in the hollow corridor.

"Quite. Good. It's because our goal is not the promulgation of the law as a basic structure. We are concerned with... higher things. A perfect law is simple, and requires no argument. Indeed, it brooks no argument. A lawyer takes the law and argues with it, manipulates it, finds the right arguments to draw out a desired conclusion. A lawyer is an instrument of the law, they do not make it. Likewise, a politician is not a judge, because they are not concerned with the law itself, but with the imposition of governance. The law is an instrument of control, but they do not wield the law - they simply impose their own will upon it, like a leaf floating over a still pond. Step onto it, and it crumbles immediately. But at first glance, it appears solid, stable, even seems to conceal the water beneath. Enough leaves, and you might forget there was a pond at all - until you place weight on it. Judges are philosophers of law. We are poets of legalese. A lawyer argues, but we proclaim. The finest judgements deserve a double encore. We see the water of the pool, and we wonder what lies at the very bottom. What hoards of gold might be concealed still. Law is more than jurisprudence, young scholar, it's truth. Buried under layers of human necessity and ambition, not to mention our own limited faculties, but truth nonetheless."

He came to a stop, sounding slightly breathless. Did he give this talk to every new entry? It sounded like it, but the passion which slipped into his voice towards the end... she felt a very slight shiver run up and down her spine. Law as a... divinity, of sorts. She'd been around the Judges of the Golden Door before, seen them working in Mahar Jovan. But they always came across as... well, just judges. Nothing else, nothing priestly. They held court at lower levels of society, providing services without needing recompense, administrating their own laws and the laws of the city in tandem. Bigger things went to the city, but the overwhelming bulk of the dull, slow work of small claims, injunctions, the majority of criminals, the occasional employment tribunal... it was slow, long work, but there was an honesty to it that she liked. When her father had his accident, Mother had managed to get a bit of cash out of the mutant-hunters for dereliction of safety. Didn't demand payment or anything. Tanner had barely been aware of it at the time, but the judges had helped there. They weren't a rich family, and that small payment was probably all that had kept them from starving in the months before they gave in and surrendered to the mercies of the lodge.

She hadn't expected them to be so...

Philosophical? Zealous? Religious? Devout? Not sure what the right word would be, but they were definitely more mystical than she'd anticipated. Wished she had her bag, now. Wanted to hold something, have a proper handle the squeeze on.

"The law is unyielding, Ms. Magg. It is unyielding in all details. It never changes, it never alters, it never wavers. It has immaculate purpose and reason."

A pause.

"Now, once we find this law, all will be well. For now, we make do. Your rooms."

Tanner blinked. Oh. Ah. Yes. They were here. Dark wooden door set into the stone, the vague sound of murmuring beyond it. Brother Olgi smiled faintly at her, his lips thin and pale, his face the same shade as the paper in law book. She tried to meet his gaze, but there was... it was odd, but there was something in those eyes of his. Something intense. Something which fixed her in place and made her want to curl up. Not due to fear, just... she was unsure about a great many things, and she got the feeling that he wasn't. That his mind was absolutely certain, and that he was completely content with the course of his life. She envied that, and... feared it, a tiny bit. Wondered if it was something she wanted to aspire to, or if she was missing something, if she'd poke and find out that he was a deeply unreasonable individual with nothing good in his personality or his habits. Maybe he was a horrific axe-murderer. But if he wasn't, if he was simply certain and devoted...

Then she envied him.

He knew what he was going to be doing tomorrow, in a way she simply didn't. And hadn't, for a very long time indeed.

"Will there be anything else, or may I leave you here?"

She coughed uncomfortably.

"No, brother, nothing. I think. Thank you for taking me here."

He looked her up and down.

"Hm. I hope you'll endure with us. It's not an easy life, but there's virtue to it. I hope to see you on stage, soon enough."

What?

Stage?

What?

What was happening?

Where was he going?

She needed more explanations, she very much needed more explanations. Stages? Why stages? Did judges do things on stages? She was tall enough already, could she maybe not go on a stage if at all possible, she'd still probably be taller than the actors, so-

But he was already gone, striding away solemnly down the corridor, back to wherever he'd emerged. All his pearl buttons winking in the faintly blue lights lining the ceiling. She hesitated, wanted to call out, ask him what he meant. But the opportunity vanished... and she heard something. A strange rattle. A quick glance...

And she saw a grille in the ceiling. A metal grille, like the ones that some people in Mahar Jovan pierced their noses with, to exalt even the basest exhalation with pleasurable luck. And she could... there was a strange ripple, and she felt her hair being moved, air moved out of the grille, warm and flavoured with the scents of the outside. Oh. Ventilation? That was... hm. The trees up above, the pillars which breathed and hummed... ah. She might have figured out what those actually were. And in that case... the warm air felt uncannily like she was being breathed on. Like she'd descended into the belly of the beast, and now she could feel every inhalation and exhalation, every pulse of a colossal, hidden heart, even little contraction of lungs large enough to swallow her whole. And as Brother Olgiz vanished into the twisting maze of corridors, almost intestinal in their convolutions...

She preferred to just go into her dormitory.

She'd had quite enough of strangeness for one day. Beds, though...

Beds you could rely on. Couldn't go wrong with a good bed.

And for crying out loud, she needed a nap.