CHAPTER FORTY-NINE - JUDGE A MAN BY THE CATS HE KEEPS

Tanner could already feel herself growing paler from lack of exposure to the sun. A few days of dragging out ledgers, reading through them carefully, scanning everything in sight and using her automatic quill to make incredibly tiny notes all the while. Usually, she only used that style of writing for her judgements, for the things which, by ritual decree, had to be incredibly space-efficient. But she honestly just needed to, now. Making too many notes. Far, far too many. Names upon names upon names, associated with a dozen different other ledgers, some relevant, most profoundly useless. She was trying to track down the bouncers, gather as much evidence as she possibly could before launching into another interrogation. She'd had to scamper around this room like a spider monkey when interrogating Yan-Lam, simply because she'd failed to do proper research. Spurred by panic and stupidity. Couldn't sleep that night, her spine was cringing so intensely. Wouldn't be surprised if she woke up the next morning curled into a perfect circle, feet shoved into her mouth and clamped in place, spine going click-click-click as she tumbled along the stones, eyes blazing with justice, ready to roll around like...

No, there was really no comparison for the image of Tanner the Screaming-Wheel-Judge. The only thing to compare it to was Tanner the Screaming-Wheel-Judge. Species of one, really.

Wonder if there was a Fidelizhi god in there somewhere. How to invite the Screaming-Wheel-Judge onto your back: first, dress in clothes that might need a little washing (ideally, be missing several buttons around the sleeves and trousers). Second, have cheeks clawed by weariness (effect achievable through makeup if time-pressed). Third, have eyes narrowed to a permanent squint from too much reading. Fourth, hunch. Fifth, turn into a screaming human wheel and rotate around scaring small children. If incapable, just scare small children, this was something the Screaming-Wheel-Judge was good at anyway. Also, make it apparent that she's expected to remain on your back, granting you... something, presumably, and make her feel embarrassed about leaving. Now you'll need a damn exorcist to get her off.

She was going slightly funny, wasn't she?

No, she was painfully normal, Marana said she was the sanest one in the room. Tanner had heard a compliment, and she was going to be suckling from that thing like one of those mutants sticking a proboscis into one of those sacs Bayai mentioned. Going to suckle away, she was, for years. Some people held grudges. Tanner held compliments and embarrassments. Both of them lingered with her for years and years, engraved right into the interior of her skull for her thoughts to kiss every so often. Honestly, if you removed the freakish height, she'd legitimately be the sanest woman to have ever emerged from the sanatorium.

See, sanatorium had the word 'sane' in it (almost), which meant all the sane people came from there. As opposed to the insanatorium, which was a completely different place entirely. Check the tax code, very specific delineation between the institutions.

She didn't need to work in this room. Not at all. She could work somewhere else. One of the unused committee rooms or dining rooms. Probably be healthier to work somewhere separate from her chief library, doing it this way meant she could honestly spend the entire day in here. No time for walking, or meandering, or leaving at all. Sometimes she was stuck in here for hours and hours, stuck by choice, and her bladder would start to feel like a live grenade she refused to release. Wound up tapping her foot like a damn sewing machine while her quill went even faster, scribbling down every single note before she had to sprint away holding up her skirts. But she preferred it this way. She was trying to find notes of... not sure what. Everything came back to the bouncers, the door-guards, the people who'd identified and killed Tyer in that final night. And a part of her honestly wondered if... no. No, don't leap to conclusions. Just because the door-guards battered people to death with their sticks, and the governor had been bludgeoned to death, didn't necessarily mean the two were connected. Not all house fires were started by the International Confederacy of Arsonists.

She started by looking into the lists of the dead. This was... hardly impossible. The mortuary kept records, and sometimes dead bodies were shipped back home and showed up, morbidly, in the migration ledgers. Well, at least they weren't just in the cargo ledgers, listed under exports. They were there too, but the fact that they were in both was somewhat gratifying for reasons she... found hard to explain. So, she made lists. Long, long lists of names and numbers. Who was exiled. Who was sent away, dead. Then, cross-reference, find their appearances in the crime ledgers, and see why they were sent away in the first place, or what killed them. Usually, it was the cold. During the early years of the colony, before the governor showed up, there seemed to have been a fair number of deaths due to the cold, with people getting drunk and wandering away from their homes for too long. Each anonymous string of numbers contained more uncertainty than she liked. Died in the wastelands? Died from plunging through one of the frozen streams and seeing which killed them first, the water or the chill? Died a foot from their door, blinded by snow? Died after settling down for a quick nap on the way home and never waking up? Or... alternatively, died to something significantly more unnatural, and thrown into the wasteland to be discovered come the spring, when any fine traces of damage would've been erased?

Again, she wondered how on earth the governor had made use of any of this. It seemed designed to be unreadable for anyone who wasn't a specialist. She was drowning in data, literally drowning, forcing her way through piles of books that detailed numerous different metrics over various chunks of time. When you broke reality down to anonymous data, you couldn't reassemble that data into reality, all you got was piles of data with little to organise them. So... exiles, deaths, crimes. Slowly, she was building a bit of a picture. And it wasn't enormously useful. All she was finding was that bouncers didn't get exiled (cross-reference lists of exiles with lists of bouncers, see if they showed up). To her surprise, there was more turnover with bouncers than she suspected - they seemed to change roles fairly often, but didn't tend to leave the colony. Just... moved into something else. Sometimes they actually came back, after a hiatus of a certain period. Other times, they vanished completely, and new names swooped in to replace them, which did, indeed, appear in all the relevant ledgers. Not much migration after they stopped being bouncers, though, implying they stuck around in the colony. Maybe that was deliberate - rapid changeovers, stopped them from becoming known quantities, kept things nicely anonymised. Stopped bouncers from getting too comfortable with their positions, too. Not that there seemed to be fixed term limits, some lingered for years, others barely lasted a few months.

Hm.

The irritation was the cross-referencing. Usually, only one document had the name and the identification number in close proximity. Every other document would only have the number. So, if she was reviewing the crime ledgers and found a note of some misdeed, she'd then have to search all the way through the migration ledgers for the number, and the associated name. The numbers weren't sequential, either, so there was no easy way to flick around. If someone committed a crime after being here for five years, then their name was buried far back, maybe even in a different volume, leaving her to flip through the pages, paranoid as all hell, flipping back to check everything again, before finally, finally finding what she needed, and then her automatic quill could click-click-scratch-scratch, and another entry would be made on... what was, ultimately, just another ledger. A ledger containing only the information she needed. She'd find herself with a huge list of names/numbers, then she'd be scanning every other ledger, matching them up in batches, scratching names out when they turned out to be irrelevant, and each tilt of her head made her many, many eye-lenses rattle and click, and then her quill would click, and now she was surrounded by rattle-rattle-click-click-click-rattle-click-rattle-click-click and maybe that was why she was going slightly (not not really) funny. Maybe theurgists were meant to deal with this, she'd heard they had machines for... well, data. Not that she really understood it. Doubted they did, honestly. She leaned back in her chair for a moment, thinking.

Those pillars in the cold-houses. Obviously theurgic. And theurgic engines needed theurgists to tend to them. Otherwise, they destabilised, and best case scenario, they stopped working. Worst case, they suffered a major, potentially dangerous fault. Seemed to be deliberate, that. Stopped people rummaging in their machinery. And theurgists were in very short supply indeed. Could charge a lot for their services. A lot. Even the inner temple couldn't keep one on retainer, they had to just hope there weren't too many jobs clogging up the schedules of the few theurgists of the city. Practically had bidding wars over them, just trying to squeeze to the top of the queue. Theurgists lapped it up, obviously. Might find them in engine rooms, in dingy factories, in the dusty corners of the temple, doing work that seemed menial... but they were rich.

Maybe she should've become a theurgist. If she'd had the gift for it, maybe. Maybe. Children in Mahar Jovan said the theurgists kidnapped children and took them away in the night to train. Adults said that was nonsense, but they weren't quite sure how they recruited. Their workshops were always closed. Guarded by the threat of simply leaving. Letting industry collapse in their wake.

She chewed her fingernail, pondering...

"Oh, good gravy, how long have you been in here?"

Tanner twitched, and almost flung a number of papers in the air like a squid ejecting ink to escape. Come to think of it, she did have a certain amount of ink... no, no, bad Tanner. Squids and squiddish beings were bizarre, too squishy, too clingy, no fun, and no fish should have a beak, beaks were for birds.

Flying squid?

No.

They did have those little wing-like fins along their freakish head...

No.

Wonder how many brains they could store in that thing. Presumably many. Maybe being a squid would make this work easier, given all the tentacles, and the augmented brain (bigger was better, except when it came to Tanner, in which case, bigger was actually fairly annoying). No, no, no, the goggles she was wearing could never fit a squid, with their absurdly placed eyes.

"Uh. I'm... not sure. I've been coming home, though."

Marana blinked.

"No, you come home when I'm asleep, you leave before I wake up, I honestly don't know if I've seen you properly in a few days. Have you... just been doing this?"

"Maybe."

A pause. Be defensive.

"What have you been doing, then?"

Drinking and carousing, no doubt?! Associating with other humans, hm?! Getting sunlight, you indecent hussy!

She needed to sleep.

Marana puffed herself out with no small hint of pride. Or she was belching due to all the alcohol she drank. Wonder if a Rekidan misfortune-cage could capture the belches of alcoholics, stop them from corrupting the youth. They did call them spirits, after all, presumably that meant, uh, something.

She needed to sleep.

No, she didn't.

"Well, my deliriously lovely canned sardine, I've been liaising with that moustachioed fellow in the guards, Bayai or something along those lines. The one that you seem fond of."

Tanner looked at her paper, face adamantly flat.

"Shut up."

"Oh, I don't judge, though he's not my type. Anyhow. Checking houses, checking individuals... you know, those houses? The ones that could be accessed by others?"

Tanner perked up.

"Find anything?"

"Of course not, nothing's that easy. Of the houses where the murder might have taken place, all the people involved have airtight alibis. No evidence of breaking and entering, so they'd need to have a key, and all the people with keys can be counted on one hand with fingers left over. I have a list of them, of course. Just for future reference."

Well, she'd never expected that angle to go anywhere, it was much too obvious. Still. She exchanged a worried glance with Marana - they both knew at least one source of keys to every damn house in the colony. Somewhere in this building, presumably. Maybe hidden with Mr. Canima, or in some secretive compartment, kept far away from prying eyes and fingers. Needed to talk with him. Marana suddenly leant forwards, examining Tanner with her slightly bloodshot eyes, marred by years of... let's say spiritual habits.

Tanner was so funny.

"Goodness, you look like something that-"

"Please."

Tanner was also feeling a bit delicate right now.

"...well, just this once. Everyone deserves one reprieve. Now, what have you actually achieved in here?"

Tanner looked down at her notes.

"I'm trying to find any evidence of the bouncers doing something like this in the past."

"Any luck?"

"No. Not really. Found some interesting things, but..."

Marana hummed... then clicked her fingers loudly. As if on cue, a familiar red-headed chambermaid came scuttling in, boots eerily quiet on the floor, bonnet flapping like a butterfly's wings. She had a tray of tea and... gods, more dried meats. She'd eaten so many dried meats, she felt like she was going to start growing a second layer of skin made entirely out of ham. Her stomach rumbled. No, no, not eating. Eating was for later. She just worked, she maybe ate a tiny thing or two in the evening, she slept for a few hours in her home, then downed a shot of revitalising citrinitas and headed back to work. Come to think of it, it was woefully inefficient to sleep at home when she could just sleep in here. In the same building as Mr. Canima, who she occasionally glimpsed stalking through the hallways, never dignifying her with a single glance. Anyway. Tea, tea she could work with. Yan-Lam poured her a small cup, pushing it across the paper-laden desk - a ceramic ship amidst a papery sea. Tanner sipped it. Paused, running it around her mouth.

That was enough of a break.

"By every god that walks, crawls, slithers or slides, Tanner, settle down. You're going to pop something, if you haven't already."

"I'm close."

"To popping something?"

"No, the... you know what I mean."

Marana smiled lightly.

"Are you, darling dearest?"

"I think I am. I just need time. If I have time, I can work through this. If I work through this, I can just build up a massive basis of information, and everything will become clear. I investigated a case that ended with two bouncers. The governor took over. Then he died. Connected, has to be. They might have a concrete, recent motive for hurting him, and trust me, Marana, I tried looking for anyone who might have a motive, and if I did that, I'd be insane now. They'd put me in the insanatorium."

The maid blinked.

"...what makes it in?"

Tanner wanted to glare at her mouth, but her nose was in the way. Bastard thing. Unnecessary. Why didn't people just smell through their tongues, then they could be more efficient? No, wait, obvious answer - because then passionately kissing people would mean smelling their throats, and that sounded ghastly. Unless they drank a lot of perfume beforehand. Knock back a shot of aroma, then kiss passionately before the smell faded and you had to smell last night's stew.

The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

She sipped her tea aggressively. Silence, mind. Tanner peered at her pages again, just trying to centre her thoughts... right. Hm. Still putting together a vision of who had been banished, why they'd been banished, and if there was anything complicating matters. Her eyes drifted from side to side, magnified into great, shapeless jellyfish-things by her innumerable lenses, and... oh, right, people were still here. Anyway.

The maid coughed.

"...honoured judge, if I could... possibly ask, that ledger of cat immigration papers, did you... find the cat you were looking for?"

Tanner murmured absent-mindedly.

"No. None of the cats in the ledger had human teeth."

"Oh."

A pause.

"Alright."

"Keep your eyes peeled. Could be relevant."

"Yes, honoured judge."

Another pause. Tanner glanced up suddenly, staring at the chambermaid and her alcoholic chaperone. The maid. She'd definitely been... a brick wall to interrogation, but it raised the question, how much had she been hiding? Tanner stared. The girl seemed riveted in place, like a deer standing on a train track, staring dumbly as the lights came closer and closer, aware that it should move but incapable of doing so. Another thought. Tanner was continually cursing her own inability to properly prioritise - her thoughts flickered to idea after idea, strand after strand, dropping them once something more potent was found. Like a miner building a new tunnel every time the slightest gleam of gold was sighted, abandoning it and changing direction once a new gleam appeared in the corner of her vision. The problem was... well... the governor and the colony formed a single, massive system. His death was connected to that system. Everything was relevant. Nothing was truly pointless. Already, she was convinced she'd missed vital details, little entries in the ledgers that her weary eyes had glossed over, but would in fact hold the key to this damn case. Tyer. Mr. Lam. The cat. The bouncers. The unlocked drawers in the governor's office. How much else? The cast-iron decorations...

She stood, very, very suddenly.

"Do you have a room?"

The girl paled.

"Yes, honoured judge. I have a room. For sleeping."

"Do you keep a cage in there?"

"...no, honoured judge, I... haven't built one."

She leaned closer.

"Do you have something made of cast-iron hanging on your wall? Something with a design like... a figure, or an animal, dissolved down to their most basic features and motifs, swirling around like milk when you first add it to tea?"

Steady on.

The girl's voice was very high, and very nervous.

"No, honoured judge, I do not, my room doesn't have... one of those."

"Why?"

"...because it doesn't?"

"Does it have any significance?"

"I don't know?"

"Why does everyone else have one, but your father and you?"

Her voice was rising to a squeak.

"I don't know?"

Tanner sat down heavily, and looked at Marana, who was clearly struggling not to laugh... before seeing how nervous the chambermaid was, then a flicker of concern ran across her wine-soaked features.

"Marana, could you... check?"

"You're interested in these things, aren't you."

"Every house has one. Every inn. When they don't, it's noticeable. Tom-Tom's house had a faded patch on the wall where something might have hung in the past - why doesn't she have one, and if she did, why did she remove it?"

"Cultural feature?"

Tanner twitched.

"Maybe. But no-one explains them."

"Some cultural features are awkward to explain. Honestly, some can be more a matter of habit than anything else, and-"

"Yan-Lam, what do your cages mean?"

"They trap misfortune, honoured judge."

"Why don't they use nails?"

"Purity of construction, metal is sterile and can't absorb things, wood can. When you chop wood from a tree, you kill it, and create a void for misfortune to live in - and because it's made into a cage, it's trapped."

"That was easy. Why can't the others do that?"

A moment of silence. Marana hummed.

"...good point. Very good point. Tell you what, I'll look into it, and you, darling dearest delectable, sit here and finish your tea before you get back to work on... this."

Tanner nodded jerkily.

"I'll keep working, you look into this."

"And you drink tea."

"Hrmph."

"Tea. Drink it."

The chambermaid shivered, and spoke seemingly automatically.

"I would recommend the tea, honoured judge. It... can be calming."

Tanner glanced at her, feeling a familiar spasm in her stomach.

"...you knew the governor, right?"

The spasm returned as the chambermaid's face fell. Dammit, Tanner. Again? At this point, her ideal friend was probably someone who just appeared out of nowhere, had no past to dredge up, and no feelings to hurt. She wanted a shop mannequin with a face drawn on, who occasionally bought her pies. She wanted Eygi. Eygi in her letters, Eygi the mute confessor who accepted everything Tanner gave to her. Anyway.

"Yes, honoured judge. I did."

"Well?"

"He was a good employer. And his staff was small. It was... not entirely surprising when he fraternised with the staff more than other employers would."

"Did he ever... have this sort of situation? Too much to get through? Stressed?"

Her voice wasn't pleading. She was being very, very conscious of keeping her tone neutral, and her face flat and stoic. Honestly, she... hm. They were looking at her oddly, and Tanner kept her face still. How much of her stress was she wearing on her face? In her voice? She glanced down. No, no, she was wearing her stress everywhere. Two missing buttons on her sleeve. A crease in her cape. Presumably she had bags under her eyes. Not sure, she hadn't looked into a mirror for a while. Hair was likely a disaster, too. The chambermaid considered the question, and rolled it around a little before replying, her voice solemn.

"He... at times, I believe, things could go a little... hot for him. But he never had breakdowns, and I don't think I ever heard him yell at his colleagues. He tended to just ask for a larger quantity of tea, and occasionally took a walk."

Well.

Damn shame he'd been murdered. Otherwise, he sounded like the ideal investigator for his murder. Calm. Efficient. Well-informed. Well-connected. Professional and infused with experience in much more stressful situations.

Moron. Stop thinking moronic thoughts.

The conversation was over. The chambermaid drifted away to attend to her own duties, which mostly involved doing something to occupy herself for the day, and Marana strode off to find out about the cast-iron matter. Tanner was... it was silly, but she was genuinely curious about those things. Maybe they indicated some form of allegiance to a greater organisation (absurd), maybe they were being used to smuggle things around (ridiculous), maybe they contained intricate mechanisms that, when properly assembled, could turn them into a theurgic device of terrible power, capable of exploding the whole colony and everyone in it (...probably not true). Every thread was linked, she was pulling, pulling...

She sipped her tea.

Took a long, shuddering breath.

...and idly recalled another thread. One she'd had a little pull at, but had contented herself with leaving be until things further developed. Her memory room expanded before her, and she remembered something that Sister Halima had once said during her pupillage.

'Motive is never perfect. You can't just draw a straight line from cause to effect, because even if thoughts move that way, actions don't necessarily do so. That being said, forming a chain of logic is a compelling argument for a judgement. Draw up the links connecting small to large, and you can use lesser pieces of evidence to address a significantly greater problem. A boy steals, by the laws of Fidelizh he's punished with a brief period of incarceration, he comes into contact with other criminals, he's later known to have become less petty in his actions, and has found himself a job. Success story. Then, he's vaguely connected to a significantly more major, significant crime scene. Now, if you reinforce this chain with negative character references from family or friends, perhaps examine his belongings for signs of unusual prosperity, interrogate the owners of establishments he frequents, see how free he is with money. And slowly, we get from very little to quite a lot. With the smarter sort of lawbreaker, this is particularly important - their clumsiest moves are always earlier on.'

'And it's much the same with serial murderers.'

She drew the book of... cat immigration papers out of her large pocket, and flipped through. Ignoring the living cats. Paying attention to the dead ones. Idle thought, but it made for good teatime reading - lists of dead cats. The governor's personal interest in the animals seemed to have paid off. A handful of dead cats... one of them was simply old, died of natural causes. Another froze. Repeated stories, really. Not that many cats, but... ah. One. Cause of death was... recorded as an accident. She read further. Rather nasty accident, really... the terse report was that the poor creature was sleeping on top of one of the bins outside the Breach, and a work crew didn't notice it. Dumped a load of rocks and assorted junk...

She flinched internally, and felt a little pit of sadness open up, a kind of meandering melancholy that wondered why the universe had been created if things like this happened. Odd, how animals elicited that sort of response. Poor animal. Seemed like a nice creature, too.

But the owner... she examined her notes, her little incomplete ledger of exiles...

No, nothing there.

But if she examined the immigration ledger - she'd grown rather good at flicking rapidly to find a specific name, it was juggling a dozen names at once that gave her a headache - then she could find evidence of departure. A man called... Law-Nat. Local, then. Recorded reasons for emigration... well, no wonder she hadn't noticed anything, it was the same as a hundred other people. Didn't like the cold. Or, rather, 'irreconcilable differences with colonial conditions'. Made sense. Man loses his cat, decides to head back home in a huff, losing yet another reason to stay in this bleak wasteland. An unfortunate story. But... then she started referencing Law-Nat with the crime ledgers, and something else turned up. Three crimes reported. All minor. All the same type. A form of kerfuffle at an inn, clashing with a bouncer, followed by a quick arrest and a quick release. And then she noted a tiny little number, right at the end of the chain of near-nonsense that described the crime. A modifier.

Sober.

An intoxicated clash with a bouncer was easily forgiven, if the incident didn't repeat itself. A drunk getting frisky was punished by the bouncer, not much need for imprisonment. But this was a sober clash, and... hm. Hm. Quick release, apparently. Why? Shouldn't that be significantly more serious?

Three sober clashes with a bouncer.

A cat suddenly dying.

A swift departure from the colony.

She consulted the list of bouncers past and present, noting those who were on active duty during the right range of time. Not many, the colony never needed a huge number at once. Just over twenty, rotated through different inns so they weren't just working constantly. Now, though, she kept an eye on the past - had they been rotated in after a hiatus, like she'd observed? Yes, yes, a few were in that position, and she was able to start connecting bouncers to the migration ledger with greater specificity. The tea was gone, the light was fading, but still she worked, wasting far too much time researching random points. After a while, the lighting in the room worsened to the point that she, reluctantly, abandoned it and headed for the governor's office. One entrance, easy to watch. She sat in his chair. And immediately her back felt like straightening, her shoulders felt like squaring. And her automatic quill moved with ever-greater fluency. Like she was letting the governor ride on her back, like a Fidelizhi god. Sit in his office, sit like he did, speak like he did, write like he did... maybe that would incarnate some of his calm. Not sure if she wanted his scarred fingers embedded in her shoulders, but...

Well.

The list started to narrow. Twenty three bouncers active during this period. Connected the names to their identification numbers in the migration ledger. Determined when they came here, and when they left. Few seemed to do the latter. Connected the identification numbers to the crime ledger, where she could start to put together... well, something. Maybe that was another reason for the impenetrability of the records - it stopped people from seeing, easily, the crimes of people they disliked. Had to go through a whole annoying process to find it out. Maybe that was designed to stop grudges forming, or gossip developing a physical anchor. Old misdeeds emerging like weeds into the garden of someone's life. Now... let's see. Had these bouncers done anything unfortunate? Any misdeeds? She narrowed the dates down to when they were rotated out from the service, then worked backwards, seeing if there was an immediate cause to effect, something that might suggest a tad bit of brutality. Obviously, most wasn't recorded. Doubted that there'd be a blaring sign reading 'this person kills cats', though that would be rather nice. For evidential purposes. Not because the world needed more cat-killers. Nothing major, nothing major, but...

She considered calling for the chambermaid.

But it was growing late. Girl needed rest. In her room with no cage, and no cast-iron hangings on the walls.

Marana hadn't reported in.

So Tanner went downstairs, passed a handful of sleepy soldiers who snapped to attention at the sight of the judicial hermit emerging like a mole from a burrow (and equally as peepy-eyed, plus her cape had a slightly moleskin look to it, and she did keep her hands in front of herself in that slightly embarrassed way that surfaced moles tended to have). Headed into the storm... nuts, they were starting earlier than usual. The statue of the enormous woman on the city walls seemed to be looking at her incredulously as she ran as quickly as possible for the mortuary, her face numb in moments, her steaming breath wafting before her and then slapping her in the face as she ran through it less than a second later, her skirts hitched up and her hair oddly reflective from the lenses she'd pushed up out of her eyes.

Didn't matter.

Had to check.

The mortuary wasn't open, and she slammed her fist on the door until the whole damn artifice rattled alarmingly... she heard noises, and spoke, trying to catch their attention.

"Oh, ah, hello, it's Tanner, Judge Tanner, I was…"

Stop being so quiet, she was acting like this was a polite conversation.

"This is..."

She coughed.

"This is Judge Tanner, could you please open the door?"

A pudgy hand could be vaguely sensed turning a series of keys, and Tanner found herself faced with the plump assistant, his eyes flicking around nervously. Tanner nodded politely, smiled slightly, and then pushed her way past with all the tact she could possibly muster... and there she stood, warming herself by the fire, melting snow dripping down her dress in frigid rivers. She spoke before the assistant had any ability to.

"I need to know if you keep records."

The assistant blinked.

He seemed almost indignant.

"Yes, honoured judge, we, ah, keep records. Extensive ones."

"Are there copies here?"

"The full copies, yes, the full ones. I send shorter reports to the governor, but..."

Tanner ignored that. The shorter reports were irrelevant. Thing is - crime reporting was poor out here. A judge would record everything for the sake of a proper judgement, but out here, that sort of principle was... inconsistently applied, shall we say. She needed something more specific. The assistant rambled his sleepy way into a backroom, stuffed with wooden filing cabinets, in which slumbered a tremendous quantity of thick brown paper files.

"Any specifications?"

Tanner peered over his shoulder.

"From... that year, to that year, if possible."

A few minutes later, and she had a pile of folders arranged in front of her on a rickety, overcrowded, underused desk. The files were... pleasingly detailed. The condition of a body, and, most importantly, where it was discovered, and suspected cause of death. The assistant bumbled away to... his plate of cold cuts (Tanner's stomach rumbled), and left her alone with her work. She scanned rapidly. Immediately set aside the files which had plain, easy to understand causes that couldn't be related to the case. Old age and disease, primarily. Then... right. In the condensed files, some things could be hidden. But here, the data was slightly clearer. Of course, if she hadn't established the right dates, and what she was looking for in the first place... she scanned injuries. Bludgeoning. Bruises. Anything similar. She scanned the locations. Inns, specifically. Obviously, there weren't exactly bodies piling up in the inns, but, if there was any alcohol in the system, the files noted where they'd been drinking, and how much had been reportedly consumed. Seemed to be a governor thing, making sure people weren't indulging in too much black market hooch, instead of going through the official channels. Now... during the range of time in which the twenty-three bouncers were active, there were a fair number of bodies. Removing illness and workplace injuries... focus on the ones who'd been at inns... and she had something. Two bodies, specifically. Both of them dead from cold. Fairly drunk, some limited bruising where a bouncer had shoved them out of the inn due to raucous behaviour, and they'd died in the snow on the way back home. One, after curling up in a back garden, too drunk to realise the shelter was insufficient. One getting so completely lost that he wandered... out towards the city, where he'd died and been discovered later.

Both of them expelled from the same inn.

And when she checked how much alcohol was apparently in their systems... seemed quite drunk indeed. She called to the assistant.

"Sorry, small question - these bodies, the alcohol in their systems. Are these precise?"

The assistant hummed, scratching his many chins and blinking sleepily.

"...well, we... assumed the measurements were accurate. When the body dies and decays, it produces ethanol as part of the process, and the methods we use can... be a little affected by this fact. Naturally, with some bodies it can be... a little difficult to determine time of death. Both of these were discovered fairly soon after death, though, so most of the alcohol would be ingested. Not post-mortem."

Tanner blinked.

Checked the files. During winter, people could vanish easily, there wasn't much work to be done, and it wasn't uncommon for people to just... stay inside and stay warm. Might take time for them to even be realised as missing, let alone found. She checked again. A back garden, and the city. How could...

"How did you know they were discovered soon after death?"

"...well, we compared the, ah, details given by the innkeeper, the door-guard, and then just... worked out based on that."

"So you're not certain."

"Not entirely. The cold, it can interfere with these things, as can drunkenness. Interferes with temperature decline, interferes with decay... the easiest method is eyewitness reports."

"You don't have other methods?"

He shuffled.

"...well..."

He hadn't bothered to check. Shoddy practice, foiling her again. She turned away, considering the files. Needed to check the address on that back garden, but that inn... the files, at least, recorded who was bouncer on that night.

And on both of these occasions, it was the same person.

And if she checked again...

That bouncer had been the one assaulted by a sober man, whose cat was later found dead. Crushed into a paste.

...why would a cat be sleeping outdoors on a pile of rubble, in this weather?

Unless it wasn't.

Unless it had been killed, then planted there, concealed, and the body ruined completely when another load of rubble was dumped in. Hard to find traces of injuries at that point, after all, not when so many other injuries had been piled on top.

She absent-mindedly reached for one of the cold cuts, gnawing on it slightly as her mind focused. Oh, crumbs, she'd stolen a man's cold cuts. That was rude of her. No, no, the assistant had bumbled off, she was safe. Don't do it again, though. Rude.

She did it again.

She was very hungry.

And he wouldn't notice two strips of cured ham vanishing from his plate, would he?

Not at all. Not at all.

She took one more.

Oh, she was sinful.

The same bouncer, involved in all of these encounters. And if she checked her notes... no, this bouncer didn't appear to have been exiled from the colony, but he was no longer a bouncer. Moved out of the service, apparently. Interesting. Could still interview him, then. Not that she thought he was a murderer, necessarily, but... you found the small details, then you built up to the big ones. Every grand argument was rooted upon particularities. Bouncers were connected to the Tyer business. The governor had died while investigating that business. And here, in front of her eyes, were indirect indications of a bouncer being involved in something shady - could be murder, could simply be a little trace of sadism, dereliction of duty, that sort of thing. Doubted these two bodies had been murdered. But it was conceivable that the people were sent outdoors, alone, in an unfit state to get home, on a truly ghastly night, by a bouncer who was perhaps a little too rough. They died, and it was just a sad accident due to a negligent door-guard. Or...

...then again, an older body could register as a drunk one, at least, using the methods the mortuary assistant used.

Could be fresh bodies, pickled with liquor.

Could be older bodies, sober bodies, reported in a slap-dash fashion, and thus passing under the governor's eyes.

Unless...

She called over.

"Did the governor come down here, out of interest? Before he died?"

"Hm?"

He bumbled back in.

"...no, I don't believe he did, no, not at all. Though... well, there are other people with keys to this place. I'm not always on duty."

Maybe he was here. Or sent an envoy to deal with it.

Maybe she was following his trail, in some obscure fashion. A different route , yes, but... maybe she was angling in the same broad direction. And through the trees, she could see the blood-slicked snow of his own path, following different chains of logic, reaching different conclusions, but always moving forwards, in the most important way.

Her attention was broken by a hand hammering at the door, the wood rattling with each strike like the crashing of thunder.

A voice bellowing.

"Open up, big boy!"

A pause.

"Got another body! Need you ready to process the damn thing!"

Tanner blinked.

Stole another cold cut

And rose to her feet in as dignified a fashion as she could.

Time to inspect another corpse.