CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR - FINGERPRINT CANTINA

Dear Eygi.

Been some time. I've been... busy, let's say. Hope you're doing well, the weather is tolerable, your estate is harmonious, and all things are where they ought to be. This letter is going to be burned, I'm afraid - I'm not filing it away, I don't want the risk of it falling into someone's hands. Probably qualifies as a woeful breach of sensitive information. There's something profoundly strange about being in a place where you know, in your heart of hearts, that there's this simmering, violent underbelly. I mean, I walked around this morning, just to get some fresh air, appreciate the snow at its most pristine... and I just kept seeing eyes in the dark. Staring at me. I'm large, I'm powerful, but at the same time, the right person with a gun, a knife, anything of that sort, they could put me in the ground just as easily as I could do to them with a truncheon, or my bare fists. I walked past an inn I know, and I remembered that a certain bouncer worked there. And now I can't see that inn without thinking of his dark eyes, his expression when he cracked open a man's skull. Tom-Tom left this morning, too. Once she found out, she said she wanted to go back home, sleep in her own bed. I asked if she felt safe... she didn't really reply. Stupid question. From her perspective, someone she accused of assault and harassment is now dead. The sole reason for her being here has concluded.

The world's still moving slower than it should. Hours go by, and I keep expecting more news to come in, more leads, more sightings... nothing. No more sightings, because there's no-one left to see. If I wanted a sighting, I could go to the cold-room where they keep bodies, and stare at the corpses on their slabs. Naked, I presume. Strangely, that one thing stops me from going. Not the ragged wounds, I'm sure they've stitched those up, and I'm sure that when you drain enough blood from someone, everything just looks like the cuts of meat you hang up in a butcher's shop. Something in your mind just goes 'this is what good meat looks like, this quality of meat suggests that the violence has passed, this quality of meat is suitable for consumption, there is no stench of murder or rot', and it automatically switches off your ability to be truly repulsed. I presume, anyway. It's the nakedness that makes me want to stay at a distance. Seeing pale flesh covered in fine, dark hairs, seeing where they were fat, where they were skinny, where muscle lived and where it softened into flab, the gooseflesh from the coldness of the room, the little protruding veins where age or habit have forced them to the surface...

I didn't know Tyer. I didn't know Mr. Lam. I didn't know the soldier. But I could go there now, and see them in a state only lovers have seen them in. And that feels like a final insult, I think. Gods know they've had enough of those.

I've kept the knives. I've kept quite a bit, actually. The governor gave me permission to check out the house of Tyer - the soldier had his belongings remanded to the governor, for transport back home to his family. A sister and a niece, no parents. Back pay being sent to them. Funny, thinking that that niece might benefit from his death like I benefited from my... mother's cousin's death. Never knew her, but she paid for me to become a judge. Maybe this is how it goes, some kind of cosmic balance. Becoming a living virus - I was patronised, and elevated beyond my station. Now, I ensure that others are patronised in the same way. Maybe in a few years, that niece will be a judge, or a specialist of some kind, and she'll cause the death of someone else, and this whole cycle repeats again. Anyway. Mr. Lam's house is obviously up to his daughter, I've got no part in administrating any of that. But Tyer... no family, no-one to inherit, so I was just told to go in and perform last rites. Clear it out a little. I searched everything, looking for any clue I might've missed, anything at all. Nothing, beyond what I've already found. Until I've concluded my judgement, all his belongings are technically evidence, and even when it's all over and done with, not like anyone is going to pick them up. Back home we'd auction them off to the highest bidder. Never liked those auctions. Always felt ghoulish, picking over the remains of the dead, selling off their suits, their jewellery, their meagre furniture. Now it was my job to go over it all. Pick his house clean.

A box of knives. The bloody knife is in a paper bag, wrapped up tightly, locked in a safe. The others are irrelevant, I just keep them locked and stowed away. Don't like looking at them. The cast-iron decoration has been wrapped in paper as well, but not locked up. Just kept quietly. The newspaper clipping I've taken to keeping on my desk. Sometimes I glance at it, and I just think... well, why did he made it? Was he nostalgic for the god-towers? It's not even a hugely artful illustration, but... he cut it out, mounted it on cheap wood, kept it in his bedroom. Must be some sentimental value. Maybe if I went back to Fidelizh, if this infernal snow finally stopped, I'd find archives of newspapers, I could identify this clipping, the date, the surrounding articles, the context. If I had access to his records, I could try and match the two. Maybe the clipping was from a particularly happy day in his life, or maybe it was just chosen at random. I wonder which knife he used to cut it out of the newspaper. The book of poetry, I've read through, trying to find anything. Any clue, any significance in the verse. Maybe there's a code in the number of stanzas, or the rhyme scheme, or... well. I doubt it. It's a book of cheap romance poetry. The sort of thing they publish in the back pages of some newspapers, when they feel like being artistic.

I wonder if he read these to that woman. Femadol 25. Still don't know her name. Need to learn it, really. But the governor told me to bog off. Satisfy myself with reading over the same material again and again, hope that there's something new to find. Interviews, interrogations, investigations... all of that lies in his domain, now. Him, and that bony creature, Mr. Canima. Anyway. I opened it this evening, just to read through them again. Not many poems, easy to breeze through, even if you slow down and analyse every line, you don't really need to spend more than a few hours on it. I was reading, and I just... Marana had a little business with a gentleman during the investigation. I won't say his name. But she described curling into him on his cot. How the size of the beds here mean you need to remain perpetually entwined around one another. Mandatory intimacy. I keep imagining Tyer, this man with his terrified eyes, his unshaven cheeks, his look of absolute fear, his whisper of 'please', and... I imagine that woman wrapped around him, while he read bad Fidelizhi poetry. Not Rekidan. Fidelizhi. I imagine him picking it out because it might remind her of her home, it'll be familiar to her. And then the simplicity of it, the way the rhyme schemes are so simple, the way it rolls over itself over and over like a children's nursery rhyme, this constant, soothing rhythm... well. Then it makes more sense.

Then I think about the three mouths. And I wonder how someone can do both of those things.

His mug is chipped and cracked. Stares at me from across my desk. He must've had it for years. And it's one of the only things left of him. All the chips, all the cracks, all the dents and misshapen or stained portions... all of them mean something. Some adventure, some mishap, some journey. And he's the only one who could understand them. I'm staring at a book in a language I don't know.

Anyway.

I miss you. I miss you dearly. Marana is... growing on me, rather like lichen grows on a rock, but I'm coming to appreciate her. Sersa Bayai is But Marana, pleasant as she is, good company as she is... I don't know. She's old enough to be my mother. Chronically drunk. When she's drunk, she's a rambling idiot. When she's sober, she can still be infuriating, from time to time. And I work with her. I need her advice, her perspective. Her understanding of colonial affairs. Her memory. I can't... dirty myself by confessing like some sort of sobbing adolescent. I can't ramble about how I read that poetry night after night, or how my walks are getting longer and more aimless, or how... I don't know. Once you confess things to someone, once you ramble more than a few times, you become different. You seed a different image of yourself. Sister Halima... I never knew anything about her family, her friends, her social life, her inner concerns. The little annoying things. As far as I'm concerned, she might've never even slept, just stood up in her room, fully dressed, waiting for the morning. If she died tomorrow, and was hauled down to the mortuary, I think they'd try and undress her, and find that her clothes were actually growing into her skin. She could never be exposed in that fashion, at least I hope not. I'll never see her stumbling around half-dressed in the morning, reeling from a hangover, breath stinking of wine and other liquors. I'll never hear her rambling about her emotions, her inner life, her memories. Sister Halima is a judge, and will always be a judge.

I suppose I want to be that way.

Untouchable. Smooth as marble. Less a person, more of a mechanical system. In Herxiel, the governor said, they think the human soul resembles a machine, and machines resemble the human soul. I almost agree. I don't think every human soul is like a machine, but I think a human soul can become like a machine, if it tries very hard indeed. After a while, maybe, you stop being reflective. Introspection stops. Poetry seeps away. You lance every little cerebral boil, and drain away all the toxic fluid inside. You wake up every morning, and not for a second do you think about 'who you are' or 'what this means'. You're just... you. Unreflectively you. You're not just thinking inside the box, you don't even recognise the box, you don't understand boxes, the universe ends when the box does, and nothing lies beyond.

Because as I am now, I'm... a shambling little wretch who can't solve a case in time, who stays up at night reading bad poetry, and stares into the fire for hours and hours.

If I start rambling and weeping to Marana, I'll be giving up, for good, on being that kind of flawless machine, like Sister Halima, like Brother Olgi. And if I give up on that, I don't know what else remains.

I miss you very dearly. I'll burn this letter immediately, or I wouldn't be so plain. I miss you in ways hard to express. I miss your smile. I miss your funny teeth. I miss your voice. I miss the way you could just make everything seem so... easy, so small, so smooth. The way life seemed to operate the way it was meant to when you were around. Everything aligned, everything functioned, nothing really went wrong, not like it does for me. Pathetic as it is, and I know it's pathetic, I miss... well, in the labyrinth, I haven't had it for years and years, but I miss your bed. When you donated it to me, I remember just lying sprawled across both the beds, mine and yours, comfortable for the first time since I arrived, since before I arrived... I remember lying there, smelling the scent of that stuff you used for your hair, the scent you applied to your wrists every morning, and I just thought... well. It was like you'd never left. I keep imagining years of working together as judges, saying hello to one another in the news room, having lunches, dinners, all sorts of silly little meetings and encounters... in my own way, I've started to blame Algi for taking you away. If he hadn't been so irresponsible, you might've never needed to go back and manage your father's estate, and we could've stayed students together. I can see, with absolute clarity, all the years we could have spent together, I see it so clearly that with it being utterly unmanifested, I feel half-complete. Marana, for all her interesting features, isn't you. Never will be. Marana is a person who is so obviously not a machine, so obviously is deeply introspective and reflective, it makes it almost impossible to engage, because I'm keenly aware that there's a huge amount beneath the surface. I feel like I can never truly know her - the drama that happens behind her eyes. With you... you feel like a machine, like I knew you fully the moment I laid eyes upon you. You're flawless.

This bed doesn't smell of you. It feels empty. Cold. It's the sort of bed you curl up in against the chill.

I miss you dearly. But I can't say I wish you were here. This isn't a place for smooth, perfect things. This is a place of deep, dark pools with no bottom in sight, clouded with silt and muck. Could be shallow as a puddle, could be deep enough to swallow up the whole world. Regardless. I hope your estate is doing well, that your family is equally well, that your life is clicking onwards in a manner pleasing to you.

Yours, from the distant frozen north, now and for as long as you'll have me,

Tanner

* * *

Out of instinct, Tanner rolled a rocker blotter over the page, drying the ink until it ceased to gleam. Her hand didn't even ache, the automatic quills were wonderful in that regard. She stared at the letter. And a second later, she started to burn them in the greasy flame of a candle, using the battered, chipped cup of Tyer to hold the ashes. Felt a little catharsis. A little. But there was still a pit in her stomach that kept churning, kept inviting her to keep looking, hunting, probing. The winter was marching on. Midwinter would be here, soon enough. Once it came, the dark would be all-consuming, and everyone would just buckle down and wait for the sunlight to come once again. She wouldn't say that she was miserable. Misery was an emotion she... well, she had a certain familiarity with hardship, and this slotted into the same category. She remembered gutting fish for hours and hours a day, making almost nothing in the process, and being stuck in school for the other half of the day learning things she thought she'd have no use for. Some of the other gutters were basically illiterate, and they got by just fine. Long, hard days, with damn little reward for them. Heading home to eat too little, and see the house become more and more ramshackle. See her father shrivelling, see her mother ageing before her time. This... there was a similar air of helplessness. Of course, last time, she'd been dragged out of that situation by the inheritance of a distant, dead relative, and the kindness of a stranger.

Not sure how she'd get out of this one.

She shivered...

And Marana's voice split the silence.

"Come on."

Tanner turned, blinking a few times.

"...uh-"

"We're going out."

Please, not an inn. She wasn't ready for an inn. It'd barely been a few days since that awful night, and she still kept thinking of the damage a bouncer's club could do to a skull, still remembering Lyur's dark, dark eyes, still-

"Where?"

"City."

Thoughts ceased.

"Excuse me."

"The city. Come on. We're heading inside."

"Why."

"Because of reasons, many, manifold, multivalent reasons. Come on. Get your coat on, young lady."

Tanner stood up silently, and followed demurely. Fine. Why not. Might as well. Not like she was doing anything else, and- hold on, the city. The city. Rekida. The giant, ruined, mass of rubble and bones that was still being excavated, the place with a giant bombed-out pit in the centre which used to hold an enormous mass of contamination, the place that, based on the fact that they were still living in the colony, was not particularly fit for human habitation. Why was she putting on her coat? Why was she slipping on her boots, and her gloves, and reaching for her pince-nez before realising that... right. Gone. Slipped off during the chase, and she'd never managed to find them. Eaten by the snow. Might see them again in spring. If she was lucky. No, focus, city. Definitely not walking down the stairs right now. Definitely not opening the door and tightening her scarf. Was she just... Marana strode ahead, and Tanner mutely followed. Maybe she just wanted something to do. Maybe she trusted Marana's judgement on this - she didn't seem drunk, after all, and that usually meant she was somewhat lucid. Somewhat. Ought to object, ought to ask more questions, but Marana was moving too quickly, too certainly. This wasn't the sort of walk one had while talking, this was a walk done for the purposes of movement and nothing else. Well. For Marana, at least. For Tanner, it was still a fairly comfortable stroll. Maybe if she carried Marana, she could interrogate her at her leisure, but... no, no, she remembered how Femadol 25 had been shivering like a leaf in a gale after a tiny amount of unexpected contact, getting picked up might send Marana into fits of panic. Maybe. At least without some alcoholic anaesthetic.

Oddly, it was quite nice being ordered around. No, not odd at all, she liked being ordered around, liked knowing what was expected of her, and how to satisfy this expectation. Made her good at housework, manual labour, repetitive administrative duties... she might make for a good secretary, now she thought about it. Secretary. Soldier. Salt-licked sailor. What had the governor said? If we were pushed, ordered, motivated, there's very little we're not capable of. Tanner was aware of this, and the inverse. If there was no push, no order, no motivation, no restraint, then there was nothing to stop. Nothing to prompt, but nothing to inhibit. Maybe there was something inspirational - humans were capable of anything. But then she thought of three mouths opened on a winter night - black mouth, purple mouth, fanged mouth. Thought of how immaculate she'd felt on that night, running like a wild deer, muscles steaming with force, heart pounding like an industrial engine, everything shrunken, everything excessive melted away like candle wax. And then the idea became rather less inspirational. Thought helped her move, stopped her pondering the reason for this journey. The snow swallowed them up, but for once, Tanner wasn't paying attention to the cold, or the rising drifts, or the houses with their darkened windows that resembled the many eyes of some titanic insect...

She was looking at the walls.

She usually tried to avoid doing that. Felt like she wasn't meant to. Like they were forbidden to outsiders.

A huge face loomed out of the mists up above. The face of a broken statue, a wall-goddess. Boundary-watcher, arms flung wide, crucified across the walls. One arm snapped, but the face was all that was truly visible. The snow was caked into its eyes, to its lips. Made it seem white-eyed and rabid, frothing with white spittle, lines on its face hardened with icy veins and arteries. Its hair was flecked with snow as well, making it seem older than it ought to be. A scowling, rabid old woman, snarling down at them, the light flattening her face out, destroying all shadow and making it seem almost unreal, a flat image pressed into service as a statue. Almost like a harrowing daguerrotype from the asylums, showing some contamination-crazed individual, teeth bared, staring with naked hostility at the camera. The glassy white eyes seemed to follow them as they approached the Breach, the snow whirling lazily around the two of them, little dark silhouettes picking their way across the bleak plain. The colony ceased to be residential nearer the Breach, became exclusively focused on industry. Great heaps of rubble lay stacked all around, ready for repurposing into building materials whenever possible. Huge covered bins were filled with scrap metal. And grim urns were filled with bones. Soldiers stood warily about in little tollbooth-structures, sheltered from the cold, and able to defend themselves easily. They watched from behind sturdy black glasses, shielding their eyes from the glare... and gas masks hang around their necks, flexible tubes connecting them to powerful filters - military-grade gas masks were always designed that way, had to deal with contamination, poison gas, airborne venoms, dust... more heavy-duty than the mask Tanner had worn on the mutant-hunter's barge. With the tubes, it almost looked like they had the shrunken faces of elephants dangling around their necks, shrivelled masks with limp trunks, the eyes sagging and sad, ready to slot over the dark goggles.

They watched in silence.

Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

They'd know. They'd know about Tanner's failure. One of their own was dead, and they hadn't the liberty to kill his killer. All they had was her. The woman who hadn't caught the man in time, hadn't arrived a few moments earlier.

She moved faster. The Breach was a canyon between the walls, walked so often and by so many that there was a perfectly smooth path through it all, flanked on either side by piles of engraved stone. An anonymous piece of some statue lay in the middle, and... ah. It was the right breast of the woman above. Shattered away during the siege of the city, and left here. Smooth and chaste, but mottled in a way that suggested flesh, veins, the contours of a natural body. Larger than Tanner's whole body. And all over it were tiny carvings. Names. Initials, largely, stabbed in with picks and knives, done in crude, harsh angles, like ancient runes in the days before ink and paper, when writing was something you had to hack into the world. Hundreds of them. How many of these initials were from people that had been exiled? Had been removed from the colony during the governor's silent war, after his arrival? Among them would be Femadol 25's real name. And Tyer's. Right now, the breast only had most of the front covered with carvings, but they'd spread. One day, it'd be ringed all around with initials, with the names of the living and the dead.

They moved on.

Marana led her with uncanny certainty. Tanner knew she'd spent time around here, doing her art before the weather turned for the worse. Didn't know she'd gone this far into the city. She opened her mouth to ask about gas masks, but Marana anticipated the question.

"No need. Not going far. Contamination's cleared in here - gas masks are for the workers, they're going into the nastier areas."

Tanner's mouth shut with a click, and she shoved her hands into her coat pockets, moving on quickly. Boots crunching on rubble and dust and snow. The city expanded around them, and... Tanner's breath was silent. Felt wrong to make a noise here. The city was beautiful. Must've been, anyway. Tall, sturdy houses, engraved on their outside with dramatic figures engaged in mythical acts. Wide, well-paved streets with each paving stone perfectly cut and fitted with the others. They walked, and her boots clicked melodically over the stone, echoing over the murals... she was examined the whole way, examined by the mute gazes of busts lining the sides of the larger streets. Busts of men and women, heads shaved, and delicate traceries of silver picking out the lines of the skull, the convolutions, the intricate interplay of bone and muscle which the Rekidans used for their... skull-reading. Were these historical figures? Kings, queens, nobles, warriors... examples laid before the people, of how true and pure were the skulls of heroes. Some were shattered, though. Split around the cranium. Sometimes she saw chunks of silver in the wreckage... the ghostly outlines of old skulls, the networks of virtuous measurements. Measurements without references.

She saw fountains set in the middle of elegant town squares, with graceful, arcane statues at their summits, hands cupped to catch water and direct it downwards to the people. Basins filled with rusting coins, so rusted that there was nothing they could be melted down to make. Mute witnesses to centuries of superstition. She could see huge grilles in the ground, some of them stone, some metal, frequently engraved with spiralling chains of symbols... quite a number of them, in fact, at regular intervals. Sewers, perhaps. Storm drains. A moment of confusion - the grilles looked too small to allow much rain through, anything that entered would come at a vague trickle. Maybe that was why there were so many. And the houses... somehow, it all felt just a little unreal. In the inner temple, she lived in a tiny cell. Back in Mahar Jovan, she lived in a small ramshackle set of rooms. But here, it felt like every building was enormous, grand, ornate...

Rekidans must've lived like kings.

There was a ritual splendour to the city, a sense of everything being planned, everything fitting to some greater understanding of the universe. The walls that loomed overhead only solidified that notion. And on the inside... she could see chains. Some of them light and delicate, others heavy enough to be used for mooring great ships, some intact, some broken, all of them gleaming with ice and snow, weighed with glittering icicles. The chains led from the top of the wall to little towers scattered around the city, tall and graceful. Several chains to a tower. They weren't really supporting anything - not physically. But ritually? Who could say. Maybe the city was mooring the walls in place. Maybe the wall-gods were savage creatures, and needed to be chained to the city to keep them loyal, like dogs on a leash. Or maybe the city needed to be chained down, anchored by the walls, by the gods, to stop it whirling apart. The perfect circle of the city, and the spoke-like nature of the chains... that made her think that maybe the last interpretation was correct.

And in this sort of blizzard, and after her time with the colony, she could see the appeal of viewing the universe as a wild, whirling place, in which one had to be anchored. A spiralling, unstable disk amidst the infinite storm, spokes holding it together. At at the hub... a pit of contamination. Maybe there'd once been a temple of some kind, holding it all in place, rationalising the structure.

All gone.

Marana suddenly turned down a side-street, and Tanner followed solemnly, letting the alabaster stone close in around her. Oh, there were signs of age - but this was one of the more cleared areas, and that seemed to restore hints of old splendour. She could see the shadowy outlines of the city as it had once been... but the elegant buildings were empty, their windows barren and derelict. Anything that could rot had rotten away - wood and cloth, mostly. The beautiful squares were devoid of life, stalls, anything. The fountains produced no water. The murals seemed weary with their burdens of clinging snow and the deep-worn dust of the summers and springs. And as she'd seen, there was no hub to the wheel, and many of the spokes were broken. The wheel had shifted from its axle, and who could say where it might go now.

Another turn.

A door. Old, and it creaked ominously as Marana shoved it open with a grunt.

Within...

A distinct lack of dust. Indeed, a distinct lack of lack.

This place looked occupied.

Tanner poked her head in, eyes wide.

"What..."

"Little place I was told about."

Tanner shot her an incredulous look.

"By who?"

"Later. First. Get inside, I'm freezing. Should be some fuel in the corner, enough to get a stove going. I'll find something. Come on, you look starving."

Starving? Well. Maybe. A little. She still didn't feel like her work was really over, and until it was really over, there really wasn't... well, much of an appetite in her. Gnawing on bread made her feel vaguely content, filled her up a little. Sometimes she had an egg, too! One. One egg. Boiled. With bread. She disliked eating until the job was done, and things didn't feel done, not remotely. Still just... in an interlude. Three bodies were still lying naked in the mortuary, and the reason why they were there was still uncertain. Anyway. She stepped inside, following Marana. The building was small and cloistered, tucked into the side of somewhere else. Looked like it'd once been a bar, an inn, a cantina of some description. Tiled floor that reminded her of the candle-wax she used to seal her letters, red, flame-faded, marked by subtle imperfections. Even stamped in the corner with a tiny seal, worn almost totally smooth by the passage of time. Slightly lighter shade on the walls, ceiling engraved with long, continuous lines, spiralling around and around on the smooth stone, until it seemed like there were sheltering underneath a colossal fingerprint. Small counter, shelves behind it, little stove in the middle of the room, installed after the colony's foundation, based on the make. Could see the place where the original stove ought to go, rusting and decrepit, oddly shaped. It was... homely.

And she saw no cast-iron decorations. Only a cage, dangling from the very centre of the fingerprint, the apex of the whorls. Made out of ancient, ancient wood, dust caking it seemingly to the core, slotted together without reference to nail or drill. Seemed to have helped it hang together. Oh, the years had made the wood swell and distort, but all the wood had swelled and distorted, there was no nail to move out of joint with the wood it secured. It was uniform deformation. And uniform deformation was... well, hardly deformation at all. Numerous benches were scattered around... quite a lot of benches, really, low and fashioned from stone, with slots for matting to be inserted, now filled in with cheap planks of wood. Seemed a little cramped for an inn, but... well, maybe this was a storeroom of some variety, not a proper place to eat. Didn't explain the counter, though. And who would hang a cage like that in a storeroom, when they looked fairly hard to make, and according to Mr. Lam, were designed to be burned? She hummed, tilting her head to one side...

A clunk.

Marana was retrieving... cured meats from under the counter, and... oh. Goodness.

Cheese.

A little wheel of actual cheese, threaded with fine little veins of blue mould. Goodness. When was the last time she'd seen cheese?

And a pie.

Where did she find a pie.

Why did she have a pie.

Tanner wanted that pie.

Tanner was approaching the pie before she could think. And Marana grinned at her.

"Don't worry, there's alcohol if you feel like it. But eat up, you look awful."

Tanner hesitated.

"Who... actually prepared all of this?"

"Turns out that the soldiers like using this place from time to time. They kitted it out with a few amenities, use it as a kind of break room. Stopped using it when the work moved away from this part of the city, but the place was still cleared out, and they didn't move any of the things they'd brought in. So... well. Just became a happy little spot for a handful of people, really. Started out using it... hm, wouldn't be too long ago, I think. Not long ago at all, may well explain why the governor hasn't come down like a tonne of scarred bricky-wicks."

Tanner hummed.

An inn, without a bouncer, without regulation? Governor definitely wouldn't be happy about a place like this existing. No, no, wait, knowing him, he probably already knew it existed, and permitted it out of necessity. A little amount of permitted rule-breaking, a privilege afforded so long as it wasn't abused. Maybe a kind of test... or maybe a gift, given gladly. Illusion of omniscience had taken root in her, apparently. Just a little, and just as Marana said. Either way. It was warm. It was sheltered. A little oil lamp was lit up, filling the room with the gentle flickering of its long, thin flame. She had a board of food in front of her. And delicately, tastefully, she had a few nibbles. A tiny slice of cheese. A tiny section of pie - game pie, seemed like, she could detect hints of venison in it. Goodness, quite the luxury. A little bread. All done in tiny quantities, she wasn't going to dine to excess, not even here. Marana watched her silently, before pulling aside to grab a heavy stone bottle, to pour a little cup of the odd, acrid, liquorice-scented liquor of the Ina trees which littered this place's outskirts. The trees with pom-pom branches covered in sharp green needles, and roots that formed rigid cages to snuggle under the snow. Tanner didn't have any. Not interested in drinking. They didn't talk for a while, just sat in contented silence. Tanner had already expelled herself for Eygi, in a now-burned letter. Not much else to be said after all of... that.

Still.

A knock came from the door, and Marana yelled over while Tanner froze.

"Come in! We're both here!"

The door swung, a blast of cold entered, and... in strode Sersa Bayai, brushing snow from his moustache and kicking it from his sturdy boots.

Goodness.

"Afternoon, all. Mind if I...?"

He trailed off, and Tanner nodded silently. Goodness gracious. He smiled tightly, sun-tanned face wrinkling as he did so, and strode over boldly, seeming to fill up the space with absolute ease, far beyond the expanse of his own body. He sat, legs spread wide, as if to accommodate a long sword at his waist - nothing of the sort there now. Just a pistol and a knife. He took a little slice of cheese, mulling it over for a moment.

And he shared a glance with Marana.

"Holding up then, honoured judge?"

Tanner shrugged, before freezing. Rude response. Be more explicit.

"I'm... persevering. Doing well. How's the garrison?"

"Mourning. Colonial duty's quiet. Not exactly usual for one of us to get his throat cut. Still. We're paid to be ready to die, so... we'll manage."

A pause. Tanner swallowed down a little piece of venison pie, relishing in the thickness of the pastry, made from suet, presumably. A letter to Eygi, then a pie, just like the one's they used to share. First time someone outside her family had really taken her aside to buy her food out of genuine friendliness. Funny, how these things worked out. She kept her voice low, but... she had to ask.

"How are things at the governor's mansion? I haven't been... asked to come back, so..."

"Ah."

Bayai coughed brashly, and soldiered on, even as his face reddened a little.

"Tense. I believe. The... young lady you're curious about, she's still there, still working. Last time I was there, she was serving tea, as usual. Seemed content to remain there."

"Functional?"

"She's still working, and I think the governor wouldn't force her to serve tea if she was feeling truly distraught. Some people cope with loss in... productive ways. Reflects well on her, I'd say. And you're... on your feet, I see."

"By a given definition."

"Reflects well on you, if you don't mind me saying. Seen hardened soldiers react worse to less."

Tanner smiled, but her mind was fixed on Yan-Lam. Given that she only had a father in the colony, maybe she was already used to losing parents, already had coping mechanisms in place .Wanted to talk with her, but... as the governor had said. Didn't want to be a self-flagellating, self-pitying narcissist, using a young chambermaid as a way to feel more virtuous. When she went, she wanted the girl to be in a decent state, and for her own motives to be clear. A genuine apology on her lips, and not something designed to confirm her own feelings of guilt, relish in her own imperfections. Not that she thought she was malicious, even unconsciously, she just... well. The judge who'd handled her father's case after his accident had been a dignified, reasonable individual, who'd treated the matter with the utmost seriousness, but not with the fiery air of a moral crusader. It'd seemed, truly and utterly, like he was doing this simply because it was right, and as a judge, his function in such circumstances was well-established. Something quite nice about that, as opposed to someone who treated it as a kind of ego trip, a way of exalting their own sense of righteousness. Made her and her mother feel less like helpless beggars scrambling for any hint of revenge, felt more like people, getting what they were owed.

Anyway.

"...wanted to stop by here, incidentally. Have a talk."

Tanner blinked.

"...about what, exactly? Sorry if I seem rude, it's..."

"No, no, every right to be direct on matters like this."

He smiled faintly, moustache exaggerating the expression by curling alongside the lip it shadowed.

"Your... associate and I had a talk. Not long ago. About this beastly business. Three murders in one night, and... you're not the only one to feel... somewhat ill-at-ease. The governor has every right to conduct his business as he pleases, every right to enforce the law as he deems appropriate, but... this is an ugly matter. A very ugly matter. Rubs me up the wrong way."

A pause.

"And I, for one, would be interested to see some of the angles you were interested in. You mentioned them, that night. During the meeting with the governor and his... adjutant. Conflicts in terms of evidence. In terms of personalities, history. Discrepancies. To me, that all sounded interesting, no clue what the others were getting at. I respect their decision, but..."

Tanner stared at him.

"Oh."

"Now, no, this is by no means some invitation to a moral crusade. But I truly believe something is happening. And if that something stands likely to bring injury or death to my men, I have no reason to stand by and allow it to happen. Do you... know how things work around here, in terms of commanders?"

"I... must say I don't."

"Governor likes commanding us directly. He's the highest ranking bloke here, no-one equivalent. Just governor... then a huge gap... then me. Technically, only two other chaps at my level. Stops red-faced commanders from bothering him. 'course, does mean I don't have someone above me to help out. I'm young, youngest commander here, my fellows are decent, but they're quiet. Used to the status quo. Don't want to rock the boat. Me, I see soldiers older than me running around risking their necks, man's got to earn their respect. No way of earning respect, to sit back and let them get killed. Now, maybe I'm just green, maybe I... lack perspective, like the others..."

Tanner interrupted.

"I'm aware. The governor talked about how things used to be. Not that there were riots, but... well, I can see why older commanders might see things as they are now as a vastly preferable alternative."

"Precisely. But my fellows, they see it in comparison to what was. What I have as a reference are hinterland colonies. The city of Fidelizh itself. And this state of affairs... there's something rotten in it. They might be happy with the peace. I'm not. I want to... see the wheels within wheels the governor talked about. Not to interfere with their running. Not to dismantle them. Not to commit treason in any way, shape or form, nor to subvert the governor's authority. Simply to understand things better. And, perhaps, contribute more effectively to the colony's well-being."

Goodness, was that what she sounded like when she loudly stated that she had nothing at all to hide from the Erlize? No wonder Marana had been a little annoyed at her. Not that Tanner was annoyed at Sersa Bayai. If anything, the way he spoke, the rising cadence, the strict rhythm, the barely suppressed emotion, the refrains of loyalty to his men, to his governor... goodness gracious. She found herself nodding along towards the end, agreeing with every word. A slight flush built along her collarbone, and she was thankful for her thick coat and scarf, even as her face remained as static as ever.

"I understand. I completely understand."

"Well, that, and at least get out of their way. Easy to get run over by wheels when you're not able to see 'em, hm?"

"Quite."

A pause.

"But I'm not... entirely sure if the governor would approve. I mean... conducting an investigation like this..."

Marana spoke her piece, suddenly.

"Well, there's the crux of this little arrangement betwixt the three of us in this cage-shadowed cantina. The pivotal point is that we... wouldn't necessarily say anything. This wouldn't be a formal investigation."

An informal investigation?

There was nothing more dangerous than a judge pursuing an informal investigation. A judge driven by their own conscience to violate the boundaries of the order was a judge willing to allow conscience to override law. And morality without law was... was a castle built on clouds, it collapsed immediately and rained bricks on everyone's heads. It was being an actor without a stage or a theatre, in short, just a shrieking madman on the street in tights. Judges did not moonlight. They didn't fiddle with loose ends. No private enterprise for judges, none. It was too close to vigilantism. To... to becoming a zealot. Judges were the mechanical executors of a legal inevitability, the invention of a perfect, self-evident, immaculate law, so simple that a child could understand it, meaning that a child could be law-abiding from the moment they could understand speech. The only lawbreakers in this world were infants. Judges were mechanical executors, they weren't zealots, they weren't priests, they weren't a sect, a cult, a religion, or a gang of vigilantes. To leave the labyrinth and do mucky business on one's own time was to spurn this duty. And to spurn this duty was to cease to be a judge.

She was aghast. Horrified. Offended.

...intrigued.

Slightly allured.

Femadol 25, name still unknown, and her conflicting account. Fyeln and his positive view of Tyer. The last word: 'please'. The pale stretch of wood in Tom-Tom's house where something had hung. The strange circumstances around the cold-house. The governor's silent war. The bruise around the chambermaid's arm. The reason for the assault on Mr. Lam as opposed to anyone else.

The cages and the cast-iron decorations.

The bouncers, with their dark eyes and willingness to murder. The overseers, keeping Tyer and Femadol 25 apart from one another during their time in the city.

Little loose ends. Things she should leave alone.

...hm.

"...how, speaking hypothetically, could this be... investigated?"

Marana smiled lightly.

"Informally. Very informally. We wouldn't be writing out judgements, we might not arrest anyone, we might even violate the occasional rule or regulation. The goal here, I do so believe, isn't to pursue a crusade - just to understand. Now, if we end up finding a pile of awful crimes, so be it. If we find the wheels-within-wheels the governor thinks he set into motion, wonderful. Or we find nothing, and we're back to where we were to start with. So, a choice between: pleasant resolution, expanded understanding, or status quo. And if I don't deceive myself, there's nary a single mention of catastrophe, disaster, calamity, or widespread ruin in any of those possibilities. Hm?"

Bayai coughed again, clearly a little uncomfortable with this sort of insubordination.

"...I assure you, I dislike going outside the structure. I'll provide no soldiers, but... I might be able to help, in a few ways. As a private citizen, and as a soldier. Maybe you find yourself in need of a weapon. Or a patrol to conveniently happen on a certain site. Or a concerned citizen who's name rhymes with 'Shmayai' bumping into you on the way to a social engagement. Not in uniform, obviously. But... armed, perhaps. Dangerous times, wouldn't expect a man to walk around unarmed."

He smiled guiltily. Tanner felt like she was plotting a midnight feast in the dormitory back in the inner temple (she'd never done this, but it appeared in some of the school novels she'd read back then, always sounded fun, if messy and full of complex logistics).

A slight smile spread across her own face.

"...well. As a private civilian, naturally the legal framework changes. No vigilantism. No mobs. Nothing formal. But... well, private civilians are allowed to have eyes. Ears. Noses, sometimes."

A pause. Her smile vanished.

"To clarify, legally, you're allowed to always have a nose. In fact, someone removing your nose against your will is considered quite a serious offence - aggravated assault and disfigurement with a deadly weapon."

Marana snorted.

"You complete fruitcake, you really don't switch off, do you?"

Tanner's collar flushed a little more, and she adjusted her scarf to cover it up, hunching over her pie a little more.

Well, everyone's pie. Not her pie. That would be selfish.

They talked a little more, about this and that, about practicalities and pragmatisms, the little nitty-gritty elements of an informal investigation. Not even an investigation, just polite inquiries. Tanner wasn't sure of the legal framework here, but... well, she could check. And, push came to shove, so long as she was just asking questions without the authority of a judge on her shoulders, she should be fine. Qualified as social engagements, in that case. Meant keeping the cape at home, though.

For once, she was feeling a tad more optimistic.

Might even be able to remove some of the guilt she felt over that awful night.

Maybe.

...and ultimately, the governor was denying her from doing her proper duties as a judge. Sister Halima would approve of stiffening her back and doing her job anyway. To refuse to consign this case to the urns, burned up and memorialised as a case where justice wasn't done, where injustice reigned supreme and the Golden Law's progress was inhibited.

The three of them left separately. To avoid attracting suspicion. Sersa Bayai left first, nodding politely to the others. And ten minutes later, Tanner and Marana were leaving, Tanner with a slightly more full stomach than usual.

And all was well.

Until they reached the Breach.

Until they saw a very, very pale-faced Sersa Bayai standing there, seeming to sway in the breeze.

Eyes wide.

Another soldier in front of him, equally pale.

Only one word slipped from between his lips.

And it brought the world crashing down.

"Governor."