CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE - FIRST RUMBLING

"Governor."

Tanner froze. Marana did much the same. Sersa Bayai said nothing more... just moved. A stately march turning into a light jog in seconds, and he began to make his way back to the colony. The other soldier followed him immediately, not even deigning to glance at the other two. Uninterested. Gods, had he found out? Had the governor learned of this, tried to nip it in the bud immediately, before it stepped on his toes? Tanner set off immediately. Marana struggled along behind her, but Tanner quickly outstripped her, long legs powering easily through the high drifts, following the hazy silhouette of the soldiers. The world seemed unformed for a moment. Hazy mists drifting atop the snowy fields, the wall reduced to an abstract shadow clinging to the horizon... and amidst it, shapeless human-shaped things running silently, footsteps devoured by the snowfall barely a few moments after they fell. The statue above, seen from this angle, seemed almost to be smirking at them, snow-filled eyes narrowed with harsh amusement. Tanner ran, and the colony started to approach... but more shadows were joining them. Shades, wraiths in the grey, emerging from the pillar-boxes, from outposts, from buildings. Soldiers in long, flapping coats, like vultures amidst endless grey-white clouds. Their faces were stolen by heavy scarves and the occasional gas mask. An army manifesting from the gloom. Ghosts of the last war.

Tanner felt her nervousness rise.

What was going on? Why was Bayai so nervous? Why were so many others coming this way?

The mist had risen. Mist on all sides, mist pressing into her clothes and soaking into her coat, mist cloying at her hair, mist entering her lungs and sending filaments of damp cold all throughout her chest. The food she'd eaten felt like lead in her stomach. Shouldn't have eaten. When animals ate, they sprawled, lazy and useless, until their digestion could kick in. Gluttony was the natural response to rot by creatures which couldn't store the meat they yearned for, only a poor predator would ignore a good meal for the sake of moderation. Humans didn't have that excuse. But they had the instinct. If they ate, the predatory part of their brain murmured that they were sated, they could stop, they could rest and sprawl, stomachs bloated like a swollen tick. Hunger meant alertness. Hunger meant every instinct was operating as it should, like it did in the days when survival was no guarantee. Idiot. She pinched the skin of her wrist as she ran, digging deep, almost breaking the skin, feeling bruises spread... the sharp pain focused her, kept her instincts honed, stopped her getting lazy and fat.

Could feel shades of that night.

Her legs moved faster, and she carved through the mist and snow. Not quite the same. She had no obvious target. She had no idea what waited for her. And she had no truncheon to wield. But even so, she could feel herself sharpening and tightening. The buildings of the colony rose suddenly around her, dark windows flat and dead with condensation. The intelligence in them was gone - the minds had vacated. She was behind them, though. The news, whatever it was, had come to her last, and she was at the tail end of the crowd. Could barely feel them ahead, an almost living force that, even invisible in the clouds, still radiated a sense of presence. She paused suddenly, almost slipping in the damp earth. Something was wrong. She could see something. In the space between two houses. She looked quickly, sensing movement, some utterly irrational part of her worried that a theft was going on while everyone was out, some scavenger lunging out of the shadows to pick at the abandoned carcasses... she peered closer, moving to get a better view of the dark shape huddled in a garden, barely visible...

She blinked.

A cat. Just a cat. Large, yes. But... just a cat, nestled in the snow, chewing at something. It looked up sharply, staring at her with unblinking, near-luminous blue eyes, the pupils narrowing to razor-sharp slits. Something red was staining the fur around its lips, and a long, pink, rasping tongue emerged to lap away some of the anonymous matter. It stared unblinkingly. Tanner stared back. Something about it... something to do with the teeth...

Urgency drove her to move away. Idly, she remembered Tom-Tom complaining what felt like a hundred years ago about a cat eating her fish if she left it outside. But... who cared about cats at a moment like this?

People were moving in the streets, more than she'd ever seen here outside of a work crew. Civilians in hastily donned coats and scarves, many with unbound hair. The afternoon was marching on, and night came early - the nightly storms were about to come, but people ignored the cold easily, breaths fogging in front of them. It felt like the mist was being made by the crowd, their collective breathing forming a huge layer of frigid steam that hung over the colony. A physical embodiment of the rising tension. The rising panic, perhaps. None of them were talking to one another. Silence, silence, all around. Silent and mists. Silence and dead windows. Silence and doors hanging open and abandoned, gaping like mouths opened in surprise, like the three mouths she'd seen on that awful night. Sweat prickled at the back of her neck. She was finding it hard to move, now, with the number of people growing, the snow getting churned up. It was like... like wandering through the arteries of a stagnant body. The snow was turned brown and filthy by so many running feet, churned into thick, thick mud, slick with pools of chilled water that splashed up in great geysers with each footstep. People, marked with that same mud until they seemed almost hewn from it, crowded the narrow streets, filling them, straining them, the artery fit to burst with brown, dried blood, hardened into pudding.

Tanner began to shove.

Gently. But she towered above them, all of them, and they parted before her unconsciously, some part of their minds understanding the inevitability of her movement, and respecting it by moving aside.

They were close to... no. No, the colony had no true centre. It was winding passages, countless nodes where people could congregate, but there was no central plaza, no point where all social life was conducted. Divide and conquer, perhaps. The governor's mansion was invisible in the growing haze, and Tanner thought they might be somewhere near a familiar inn, but after a point everywhere looked the same. The streets weren't designed for this sort of gathering, and she almost imagined the streets would erupt, the walls would snap, and a plaza would be made by sheer press of bodies. A spark of worry for Marana, smaller than her and more vulnerable to the crush. She moved amidst the crowd, shoving to the centre...

And froze.

Sersa Bayai was there. Soldiers clustered around him. He was staring. For once, in all the time she'd known him, he seemed truly, utterly lost. Unmoored.

In the centre of the crowd there was a body.

A familiar one.

Even with the blood... even with the wounds... she knew what the governor looked like.

Her heart sank, and her eyes widened a little.

The body had been pummelled to death. It was written on every inch of flesh. His face was a swollen purple-black grape, still warm enough to melt the snow that settled upon it, until the whole thing seemed to be oozing frigid, blood-tinged juice. Juice that soaked into his clothes like blood entering capillaries suspended outside the body, thread by thread, gradually, clambering downwards to stain the whole suit. One eye just a purple mass of swollen flesh. The other eye flooded with blood, turned the colour of an overripe plum. Even so, it was recognisable - the craggy scars, the military bearing. Even in death, his half-paralysed face gave him a hint of dignity, froze his face into a kind of death-mask. No look of sadness or surprise. The body was mangled. Half his ribs had been depressed inwards by some terrible force, and the sight of his clothes settling into the depression made her feel slightly nauseous. Bruises were everywhere, and she could see places where skin had pulled tight around his bones, hammered inwards by the attacker, until the skin had split and wept little streams of blood where the body's own bones had carved it open. Skin attacked until it turned black, everything compressed and liquefied beneath. He almost looked chewed. Pounded and tenderised by the action of enormous molars. The body was mostly liquid. Mostly soft bags containing warm, lukewarm liquid... and if you tenderised it enough, all that softness popped open. All those delicate valves ceased to move. Blood vessels compressed into tangled knots like the leavings of lugworms. All those odd fluids spilled and filled the empty cavities around the bones.

The governor had, for a time, been compressed to the most effective possible size.

And now, he was expanding again, like a swelling bladder. All the space his killer... killers had made would be filled with putrid gases, oozing through the myriad tiny cuts.

Fourth body. Fourth. The soldier. Mr. Lam. Tyer. The governor. She idly thought that the body here, with the little ruptures in the skin, might well have contributed dozens of mouths to those three. The purple mouth. The gaping mouth. The fanged mouth. And now the dozens. A crowd in one man.

Killers, must be. No one person could do this. A mob. This mob? This crowd? She looked around... no, no, no split knuckles, no remnants of violence.

Sersa Bayai seemed to gain some semblance of presence, and yelled for the others to back away, to make some room. He removed his coat and laid it over the governor's body, hiding it from sight. Tanner was numb for a moment, watched as the crowd simply shivered in place, not enough people stirring... she could see that Bayai was nervous. Deeply nervous. He had no idea what to do. This wasn't meant to happen, and he was afraid of what the future held, now that this was on the table. No framing this as an accident. No framing it as a lone maniac. This was the work of a crowd. Battering their governor to death with hands and feet, until nothing remained in that stern old man. Tanner paused...

And bellowed, flinching at how loud her voice could really be.

"Everybody, move back!"

The thunder of her roar carried over the crowd, and they responded immediately, the ones closer to her almost wilting under the weight of her volume. The stumbling backwards was done in waves, some more stubborn than others, and to her... to her relief, almost, there was an expression of horror and foreboding amongst most of them. They weren't wall-faced psychopaths. They were still... well, people. Some lingered, particularly a red-haired man she vaguely recognised, though she wasn't sure from where. He was weathered, old, sun-beaten... and he was weeping like a child, fat tears pouring from wide, wide eyes. She gently tapped him on the shoulder, pushing him back, a motion he accepted without resistance, all power drained from him by... grief? She nudged him towards the crowd before issuing yet another bellow to drive back the last of the holdouts. Didn't want to yell in the face of an old, crying man.

Her bellow was successful, though some people kept shooting her odd glances, like they were seeing her for the first time. Almost insulting, that. She'd been here for weeks, and they'd... anyway. Governor was dead. Her mind was just so numbed by violence that this point that... it took a moment for everything to sink in. For consequences to sink in. The future seemed spiralling and uncertain, she felt like she was hovering at the edge of a whirlpool and feeling the current starting to drag her inwards. The crowd briefly became an anchor keeping her stable - not humiliating herself in front of them. And the details of their faces, their reactions, their eyes... it helped ground her in reality. In practical facts. Her eyes crawled over them, easily picking out faces from her great height. Not sure what she was looking for. All the faces were united in their shock, and their dread.

They could feel it too. The whirlpool in the world that had opened up where the governor had fallen. The future seemed grim.

Sersa Bayai was ordering people around, his face pale as a sheet.

Tanner clenched her fists.

And stared helplessly as that same dreadful future advanced closer and closer with each passing moment.

* * *

The governor's mansion was suddenly exposed to the flaying cold as Tanner entered, eyes dark with thoughtfulness. Sersa Bayai was at her side, one of his colleagues being ordered to handle matters. The crowd wasn't unruly - just unsure. The cold drove them indoors quickly, at least. No-one wanted to remain outside, chattering idly, when they could do it inside inns. Bouncers had given up, apparently. Just started letting people in. A kind of horrified paralysis had descended over the colony, a feeling that... someone just had to make the first move. The governor was dead. A hundred thousand possibilities expanded from that. The question thus was - which one came first? Who made their move, struck their claim, settled their score? Once this happened, then the number of choices collapsed, the single point now had a twin to accompany it, another piece of data from which a trajectory, an arc, a sequence could be established. Maybe that just meant another murder, Tanner thought darkly. And in her own way... no, no, maybe this was the other murder. The second data point. Tyer. The soldier. Mr. Lam. The governor. A night's massacre linked into a broader trend. Her mind twitched in a panic, and... anyway. Marana was with her. For help. Soldiers had borne the body away to the mortuary immediately, where it was being kept under close guard. The three of them, and...

A few others were already here. Looked wealthier. People she'd never interacted with, all of them sweating through their suits. Their eyes were vacant, their cheeks hollow. Men, largely. Well-heeled, well-dressed, well-esteemed. Merchants, perhaps. Suppliers. Men of significance to the community, desperate for answers. Stank of fear, and their hair, be it fair or dark, was plastered to their scalps in damp forelocks. Barely been a few minutes, and already the great and good had assembled. They glanced at Tanner and her associates with grim resignation. Welcome to the club, they seemed to say. Gods. It was still... sinking in. The ramifications, too. The quiet house was still quiet, no-one was talking, no-one was willing to discuss matters. All were waiting inside the crowded living room, awaiting... something.

Gods.

The governor was dead.

Still didn't feel real.

Had she actually walked up here? She didn't remember walking. Just brief facts. As she sat down in one of the last empty chairs, she realised she was just... moving automatically. Some part of her was stuck in that moment before she saw the body, and another part stuck in the moment of realisation, and only a tiny, tiny element was still considering such silly matters as the present. And no part of her was considering the future for longer than a moment. Because the future was...

...the future was for the future. Stick to the present. Focus on being... nuts, she had to stand up. If she sat down for too long, she stopped having so much to focus on. Only her thoughts. And her thoughts were all locked up. Start moving, no, stop, don't pace, that makes people nervous. Stand very still, rock back and forth on your heels, and focus on the act of balancing, on the terror of falling. There, that was nice and practical. Worrying about making a social faux pas was tiny, but it was something that could easily devour her attention. And right now, her attention was in need of devouring. The chair remained empty for only a moment before Marana took it, the expression on her face one of... lingering sadness and resignation. Sersa Bayai was just stiff, and a tiny worm of sweat was easing out of his hair to trickle down his neck, where he refused to wipe it away. Too rigid.

The great and good only watched the three for a moment.

Turned away swiftly. Back to their own worries. Gods, the chambermaid must be... lost her father, lost her mother at some point in the past presumably, and now lost the one thing approaching a guardian, someone genuinely watching out for her well-being. Gods. She rubbed her hands together for luck, but it felt... somehow weak. And the lodge... had she said too much about eels a few nights ago? Had her candle guttered out, ashamed at her impiety, her lack of secrecy? Was witchcraft descending on the city, all the hungry forces of anti-luck, turning accidents to fatalities, close calls to disasters, inserting living bodies into every collapse, prompting a disease-laden cough at the wrong time... writhing black streamers of witchcraft, coiling around their limbs and insinuating its giggling way into their organs, poisoning them inside and out, nudging them into conditions of greatest hardship.

...and she was a judge. Judges didn't think about witchcraft. Well, she did. But the ideal judge didn't. And right now... right now, she was the only living representative of the Golden Door's principles. Had to stiffen her shoulders, square her jaw, stare boldly at the small door leading to the governor's office...

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A voice from nearby almost made her spontaneously combust.

As it was, she let out a long, strangled hiss from her nose.

"You know, there's nobody in that office."

Mr. Canima. Oozing out of the bookshelves, apparently. How did he... hold on. Hold on. She looked down at the tall, skinny, tweed-clad Erlize leader, his cufflinks glinting, the little knob of bone on his forehead shining strangely, his eyes dull and flat... Sersa Bayai beat her to it, his voice at a low growl.

"Where the hell were you?"

Mr. Canima's eyes flicked over him with all the dead calculation of a butcher working on a carcass.

No answer was forthcoming. Gradually, the rest of the room realised he was there - a wave of awareness that crashed from person to person. They stiffened. Shrank back in their chairs. Afraid of him, afraid of the secret police, afraid of what his presence here meant for them. Mr. Canima stalked slowly to the centre of the room... and as he did, a great change in demeanour manifested. Gone was the oozing passivity of his usual entrances, the reveal that he was always in the room with you and was simply being very, very quiet. Gone were the sleepy eyes. Gone was the meandering voice. He picked his way across the thick carpet, all eyes on him, and he seemed to grow in height. A subtle change in stance, in stride, in expression, in the flash of his eyes. His fingers seemed to become longer, his body seemed to become denser, and by the time he reached the centre, he looked... looked like something you hung criminals from in obscure towns. Tall. Shoulders jutting out like knives. Fingers like long, sharp medical tools. Suit clinging to him and highlighting his height, his thinness, his rank. His face was harshly carved, and his jaw projected outwards like the prow of a ship, while his eyes vanished into overshadowed pits, only the tiniest of glimmers suggesting there was something living inside of those fathomless burrows.

"Thank you for coming here so swiftly."

His voice carried, and silenced everything in its wake.

"As you are aware, our esteemed governor has died. However. Business is to proceed as normal. Winter is upon us, and your roles will be light, as they are every winter. The duties of government in the colony will be delegated to various officials working in tandem with one another. As the governor's adjutant, I am the final source of consultation. I strongly caution you to attend to these delegated officials, however. My time is not infinite. Some affairs will demand my attention. And you may find your feelings... hurt by my absence. To avoid such hardship, I recommend you listen to those officials placed. Think of them as organs of the governor. His mind is gone. But the body of his government lingers. I suggest, kindly and gently, that you listen to it."

There was a pause, and his dark eyes sidled around the room, paralysing anything they rested upon. Tanner held her breath as his gaze roved over her, not stopping for a moment. One of the men in the room, with a long, black forelock hanging over his head, slick with sweat, raised a hand like a schoolchild. He was practically crushing his doffed hat into powder, such was his nervousness.

"...Mr. Canima, I'm sure I... speak for the other interests in this colony, when I say that I'm glad for your prompt response, and, of course, we'll be... very happy to listen to your advice on matters, but there's... some source of concern, what with the last bit of unpleasantness, the ghastly circumstances of the death, and-"

Mr. Canima walked closer, and the man fell very, very quiet, gulping wetly. Mr. Canima loomed, and his head slowly descended, until it seemed like he was about to meet the man nose-to-nose. The sharp contours of his spine were clearly visible through his suit, and it was a miracle the jacket didn't split against the sharp ridge of his vertebrae.

"I caution you, Mr. Jilgol, against making statements regarding the death of the governor before affairs have been... established to objective satisfaction. Until such a time. Remain silent on the topic, Mr. Jilgol. If you would."

Someone spoke, suddenly. Another man, older, with mutton chops bristling with sweat, but his nervousness was translating into anger.

"Now, really, sir. I don't mean to cause a fuss, but... really. The governor's been bloody well murdered, and you expect us to sit around like a bunch of half-witted sows, waiting for this atrocity to repeat itself upon our heads?"

He rose, face reddening.

"We have priorities to consider. If this bloody winter didn't stop that mob out there from killing our governor, who's to say we're not next on the block? We need soldiers and action, something to crack down on any hostility within the population. I told you and the governor that playing things softly-softly would just get us killed, you give those brutes an inch, they'll take a hundred miles and our heads. We need-"

Mr. Canima didn't even look at him.

"Mr. Nangi, please return to your seat."

"I will-"

And now he turned. His eyes seemed to burn like distant stars.

"Mr. Nangi. May I ask how your daughter is faring, currently?"

The man, Mr. Nangi, growled like a guard dog.

"Don't bring my-"

Mr. Canima stalked closer, the light around him seeming to dim.

"You are an esteemed citizen, Mr. Nangi. Esteemed. And regarded highly in all our ledgers. For this, I applaud you, as do we all, and you were thought of well by our late governor. His praise of your character dies with him, of course, but I hold it closely to my own heart. And I will endeavour to remember it. By your actions, our cold-houses are richly supplied with pork for the long nights. Come spring, I anticipate great returns on your investments in this colony. Great returns. Prosperity for you, and prosperity for each and every man and woman in this room."

A pause.

"Of course, this assumes that your investments linger until spring. That there's no reason to review our arrangements with your businesses."

"Is that a-"

"Think of it as you like."

He leaned closer, and murmured something into Nangi's ear. The man blinked, his face reddened... then slackened. The redness vanished, replaced with a corpse-like pallor. The murmur continued. A constant stream of sensitive words... Tanner barely caught a few tastefully louder portions, calculated to be slightly audible to the others. Mentions of a daughter. Mentions of irregularities, thought what sort she couldn't be sure. Mentions of consequences. Mentions of renewed attention. Nangi's eyes darted over to Tanner at the mention of all of this, and Tanner stiffened, terrified of getting dragged in. And slowly, silently, the man sat back down. The others stared at him. Wondering what exactly had been said, and why it had destroyed him. Sweat began to prickle along a dozen necks and arms. Tanner herself was... oh. Oh gods. The Erlize had files on all of them. How readily could she be unmade? Association with a known neo-monarchist - an association that was renewed in Mahar Jovan. A private meeting in the ruins to discuss subverting the governor's will. Unlawful evidence gathering by Marana, her appointed associate. Oh, gods. The letters to Eygi. The ones she hadn't burned. The ones in Fidelizh. How many had been read? How many had been copied?

His eyes spoke to her paranoia.

He knew everything. If he wanted to... she could vanish. The governor was gone. But Mr. Canima could snap up her future and crush it to pieces in his closed fist. Resisting him meant nothing. How many other agents would carry on, would fulfil his last orders? The others must be coming to similar conclusions. Even if someone stood up, shot him now, and they all agreed to never speak of it to anyone... the other agents could ruin them. Tanner was more immune than most, with her lack of a Fidelizhi family, but the others... the others had families, friends, businesses, dependents. A little adjustment, and all of that would vanish like that.

This was a tiny, snow-flecked colony.

No-one would hear them scream when the Erlize unlocked their doors with a key they'd always had ready for this moment.

Mr. Canima spoke, his voice a whip-crack.

"When spring arrives and the roads reopen, applications will be made for a new governor from the Golden Parliament. I'm sure a replacement will be dispatched as soon as possible. Until such a time arrives..."

He paused, soaking up the silence. The rapt attention they sacrificed to this tweed-clad monolith.

"Until such a time arrives, I ask that you continue to function. To obey the organs of the colonial administration. They say an eel can continue to function without its head for some time. It can even continue to slither to its next destination, determined to reach it. The command to move lingers in each and every one of its organs, not just the brain. Our head is lost. But our body remains. And we need only slither onwards for a few months, gentlemen. Until the snow melts."

Felt like someone was rifling through her undergarment drawer. She shivered.

"As for the tragic and untimely death of the governor... honoured judge."

Tanner wanted to cry. Just a little bit.

"Yes, sir?"

"I expect you to investigate this to your fullest capabilities. All resources are available to you. All powers granted. Investigate, and determine what caused this... senseless death. Gentlemen, ladies, if our resident judge chooses to interview you, either personally or through her associates, you are to comply immediately. I'm sure everyone here is hungry for justice. And I'm sure our honoured judge is more than fit to seek it for us."

Tanner nodded rapidly.

"Yes, sir. Of course, sir. I'll... start work immediately."

Mr. Canima smiled very, very faintly, and his voice became a soothing, insidious murmur.

"You have all of winter, my dear. No-one can escape. No-one can enter. And nothing shall rot. If someone was responsible, if this was a murder... bring the culprit to me."

A shiver passed around the room.

"As for other law enforcement duties - Sersa Bayai, I'll be speaking to you later. You and I will be liaising extensively on matters of colonial security..."

He kept going, but Tanner had stopped listening a little, as he enumerated the more precise details. Gods, he was prepared. No panic, no terror, just... immediate switching to an alternative mode of command. Was he just that good, or had the governor laid plans ahead of his death, or... no. No, only those two. Competent improvisation or competent preparedness. Marana looked at her, eyes dark with foreboding. Tanner looked back, but made no expression, gave no signal. The governor was dead. The governor was dead. What... what... who could've done it? Why?

He'd talked about wheels within wheels within wheels. Wheels he'd set into motion, and wished to attend to himself.

And here he was. Bludgeoned to death and dumped in the snow.

Might as well have been crushed by those same wheels he'd set up to begin with. Her hands twitched. Priorities. First places to investigate. The street? The body? The governor's mansion itself, poring through every nook and cranny? Why had he been outside? Why didn't he have a guard with him? How could such an extensive beating have happened with no-one to see or report it? She thought back to the crowd... they'd looked horrified. Shocked. An act? So many people, and so convincingly? She kept imagining that old man walking down the street, stiff and limping from old war wounds... then a door opened. Nothing inside. And hands suddenly reached out, pale and fierce, grabbing him from a dozen different angles, hauling him within...

And minutes later, that barely recognisable thing was dumped on the side of the street. Search the houses? Search each and every one? The snow was whirling outside as the night started to set in. Tracks would be gone by tomorrow morning. Investigations would be stymied by the cold, by the confusions of sights. Already gone, most likely. The body was below them. Frozen. Ready for dissection and examination.

She turned at the sound of creaking door...

A pale, terrified face stared at her. Red, tangled hair framing it on both sides.

The chambermaid.

Mute. Frightened. Tanner tried to smile... but the chambermaid simply retreated into the mansion itself, the sound of her movements muffled by the thick carpets. Marana reached over to give Tanner's hand a quick pat, reassuring her of... something. That everything was going to be alright? Tanner tried to think, tried to think of anything she'd seen at the crime scene, something that would be gone by tomorrow morning, wiped away by the snow... the mud had already been churned up, nothing to see there. The body had been moved already, for the public good. The houses... people would have a chance to move. Nothing there.

She'd been having lunch scarcely a few hours ago. Eating in a warm cantina in a city of the dead.

And... her mind kept turning to... to the cages, to the iron decorations, to the chained towers and chained walls, to the cold-house with its food-stuffed tunnels...

To a cat, gnawing at something red in the snow. The governor? A chunk, stolen away before anyone could find it? First witness at the scene, and it was a mute, dumb animal.

She tried to think.

Something about that cat had unnerved her. Very slightly. And she couldn't say what. Something beyond the meat in its jaws.

* * *

"...he's gone."

Tanner's voice was low and solemn. Their house felt empty. Like some kind of vital structure had ended around it, and now it was unmoored, adrift, lost at sea. All reference to neighbours, gone. All reference to the broader colony, gone. She hadn't even... liked him, particularly. Respected his position, respected most of his authority, but... the two had clashed. Well. Clashed in the strongest way Tanner clashed with anyone. Passive-aggressively and with frequent concessions at every turn. She'd disagreed with how he handled the case. She'd even been angry with him, from time to time. But... like he'd said. Colonial administrators were like headmasters. They were beyond normal authority, and beneath it. Their authority was based on a kind of unnameable fear and respect, and the dignity of a titled position at the head of a hierarchy. A headmaster ruled over children who knew nothing about the wider world, for whom the confined world of a school was the whole universe, broader than anything before or since. Colonial administrators made everyone in their power child-like. Agency surrendered. Alone in a hostile place. The colony being the boundary of their understanding, their control, their prosperity. Beyond it lay nothing at all. And the man who sustained it, structured it, gave it direction... he was somewhere between king, god, father, teacher, confessor...

Gone.

Another body for the pile.

Maybe that was why she'd never learned his name. It didn't fit the role he'd taken. A name would make him bounded, less of an authority. Headmasters were just 'sir' or 'headmaster', their names were practically irrelevant. She respected that, in a way.

And even if she hadn't liked him much... how could she not mourn someone's death? How could she not keep seeing that mangled body when she closed her eyes, next to all the others? Wheels within wheels within wheels... she sagged into a chair, thinking deeply, hands twitching as she wanted to reach for a quill, just to write something, to feel busy, less helpless. Wheels within wheels. The colony had dynamics she didn't understand, didn't even know existed. Always, she could see their shadows, fading whenever she looked for too long. Everything was hiding something. And... if she connected it to the other three murders, it was even more baffling, and she felt like someone trapped in a rip-tide. Fight it, and you exhaust yourself. Just survive, and try to stay above the surface. Some things aren't conquered, they're endured. But here, she... she had to conquer it. Had to figure things out for good. The governor was dead, and as much as he'd inhibited her, he'd also been a foundation to work around, to consult when it came to her duties, to bring her information to. To abrogate responsibility to. Her judgements were just recommendations. Now... this was important, there was no way her judgements could just sleep in a dusty old filing cabinet, if she found something, she found something. Someone had murdered a governor. Whoever she named as the killer would be given to Mr. Canima.

And that was... a fate.

Marana sat beside her, and stared into the middle distance, clearly still processing matters. Not emotionally - politically. What did this all mean for the future? What did it mean for them? Tanner kept trying to factor the three other deaths in. What had the governor been doing when he was killed? Had trying to intervene in the dynamics behind Tyer's death destroyed him as well? A cowardly part of her murmured that she could do her investigations, come up with something interesting, but no solid names, then... wait for spring. Spin out the months in guilty silence, offering nothing but vague suggestions on new angles to pursue. Abrogate responsibility again. She glanced at Marana. Marana might well caution that. The dynamics that had killed Tyer might've burned the governor to ash as well. What chance did she have? She had less knowledge than either. Less skill. Less... everything. She was just less. Stay back. Let the hidden furnaces burn. Let the hidden dynamics play out in their own silent way. And stay alive. Get back home, maybe in disgrace, and live. Years later, look over her books, her luxuries, her quill, her cape, and realise that she made the right choice, that each one of those years was earned through cowardice. Die surrounded by well-wishers and honoured colleagues, and know that this was bought by cowardice in this one, pivotal moment.

She gritted her teeth.

"You're free to remain absent from this. But it's my duty to investigate."

Marana shot her a look. Tanner expected a rebuke, a caution to remain cowardly, to stay quiet, to survive till spring then run. Maybe even an offer - stay with my family, Tanner. They'll fund you, keep you fed, introduce you to some lucky fellow you can marry and produce a race of giants with. And you won't need to be a judge. You could disgrace yourself here, and still live a perfectly comfortable, contented, fulfilling life. Well, if she said that, Tanner would scorn her, she'd bark rebuke upon rebuke, she'd-

"If you try and exclude me, I'll bite you."

Tanner nodded glumly.

"Alright."

"Wonderful. I'll skip eating tonight. I assume we're seeing the body tomorrow."

A mute nod.

Would be the decent thing. A good first step for the investigation.

Marana patted her on the hand gently.

"Come on. Don't stay up all night."

No grand speeches.

That was nice, actually. Made this feel less... this. More manageable. In the bounds of reason.

"Keep your gun with you, Marana."

"Never leave home without it. You might want to do the same."

"I'd miss."

"Then get something stronger than that stick of yours. You look like you're holding a twig. You need to intimidate people. Now, I might be a dozy old cow, but I think I still know how to clean things - let me go and spruce up your cape. Don't want to go out in a dust-covered thing, now do you?"

Tanner started to move, but Marana pushed her down into her seat.

"No, no, you stay here and think about things. I'll get you something to write on."

Another mute nod.

Right.

Thinking.

She should do that.

She leant forwards... and tried.

And the image that kept coming to her mind was that damn cat. She studied the memory closely, giving into the inclination, the hunch. Her memory room embraced it, and now in the middle, in the spot where a tiny rug usually sat, there was something dark and prickly, warm to the touch... in that texture, she encoded the memory precisely, embedding it in a way difficult to erase. The cat had been large. Black. Bright blue eyes. A little chipped at the fringes - a tail with a wedge-shaped end from where something had snapped off the tip, little pieces taken from the ears, but nothing beyond the range of a normal stray cat. Red matter around its jaws, where it'd been chewing something. Need to investigate that. If that cat had managed to get to the body, then it'd been there for longer than expected. Needed to interview people about timings, particularly. When it was deposited, who was the first to see it, who spread the word. Maybe a Marana job, navigating that nest of gossip, she could already imagine the headache. Anyway. The cat had been chewing away, and...

...and she realised what had made that thing stand out in her mind.

Not just the red matter.

Something about the teeth.

Something about those flashing, silvery teeth.

They weren't sharp enough.

Cats had long, sharp teeth - not really for crushing, more for strangulation. Throat clamp, that was the word. She'd seen enough cats doing it back in Mahar Jovan on the docks, with some of the living fish they poached from buckets. Lock the fangs like a bear-trap around the enemy's throat, and clutch. Weaker there, less tissue, easier to latch on, and it basically stopped the opponent from biting back. Break the neck, sure, but strangle it in the end. It meant the teeth were more delicate, they weren't for ripping and tearing. Kept the jaw a little more delicate too.

This cat didn't have very sharp teeth at all. Nor very delicate.

She'd remembered, keenly, that it had a jaw full of uncannily blunted teeth. Teeth for crunching. Teeth for grinding. Teeth for gnawing on tough, tough tissue.

...in a way, they reminded her of human teeth. Blunt and sharp next to one another.

And with the paper Marana brought to her, she wrote, in neat, neat letters...

A cat with human-like teeth, chewing something red near the murder scene.

Her first data point.

And as her quill moved, she unveiled more. More and more.

The colony was one big murder scene. Contained from the outside world. Nothing could get in. Nothing could get out. All she needed was around her.

...and by every god of Mahar, of Jovan, of Fidelizh, by the Golden Law itself...

She hoped that would be enough.