CHAPTER FOUR - TRICOLOUR GIANT

By all rights, she should feel at home. She was half-Maharite. Descended from Fidelizhi immigrants. And apparently at least some people back in Mahar wanted to come back to Fidelizh, reinstate the king, take over again. Enough for Fidelizh to be worried about it, anyway. And yet, as she stepped into the great flow of humanity, all she could feel was a rising tide of nervousness. She was surrounded by a pantheon of gods. People wore deliberately torn jackets and trousers to symbolise the god they were allowing to inhabit them for now, whose qualities they desired to incarnate, their hats were filled with odd charms and ribbons... the air was thick with the scent of cheroots. Huge cigars, brown paper wrapped around odd, near-translucent leaves, burned to produce a haze of grey-blue smoke which smelled of too many things to count. She walked within a great cloud layer. All a bit too overwhelming. She was taller than everyone around her, but it felt like she was still drowning in the great mass.

The crowds were a flowing, seething river, and Tanner waded through them with difficulty, trying to reach the streets she needed. Felt like she was a foreign organism inside a body which didn't particularly want her around. Less like moving, more like being digesed, the crowd squeezing, contracting, pushing, shoving... directing her along with painful motions. She had to wade through the bodies, wrapped up in strange clothes. Towering above most of them, yet still... still feeling her age. Alone and afraid, yet towering and domineering. It became hard to pick people apart, and she instinctually started to hunch her shoulders and power through, keenly aware of her bag slapping against her leg with each straining motion. The legs of the crowd were like the legs of a colossal centipede, one fused organism. The arms were like infinite cilia, heads and hair like waving sensory fronds. Squirming organisms moving between the vast god-towers, decorated with faces and other anatomical features. Felt like she was swimming in a waking nightmare, surrounded by a choking haze, struggling just to stay upright.

Keenly aware of how she could break free if she started hitting things. Wouldn't be hard. She had a big bag on her, enough to crack some jaws. Just start smacking, and she'd clear some room. Who'd stop her? Who'd... no, no, remember. Restraint. Not becoming of a judge, not becoming of a lodge member. She tried to imagine her clothes, embroidered with filters to take away the bad luck of the world, like a kind of... of shield. Like the tough, rubbery skin of a sea creature, over which water flowed easily, never soaking inwards. Resistant. Unyielding. She soldiered onwards, forcing her way through the pulsing crowds, shuddering slightly whenever someone brushed a little too close, keenly aware of all the eyes on her. The unfamiliar smells, sounds, sights. Just slither through, pack ritual and habit around herself like layers of armour, her clothes filtering out bad luck, the lodge filtering out witchcraft, expectation filtering out her own hesitation.

And just as suddenly as it began...

Free.

Silence reigned around her. The crowd was still nearby, but... she'd broken from the main river, entered to a lesser tributary. A smaller road, winding between more reasonably-sized structures. She was alone - not totally, but compared to just a few minutes ago...

Her boots echoed loudly as she walked, and she kept her head low. Didn't want to meet people's eyes. Tired. Much too tired. Could feel a dull ache beginning in her arm where she'd been carrying her bag for too long, made her feel larger and clumsier than she really was. People steered clear of her, thankfully. The city was... well, it was dense, and almost mottled. The city seemed to prefer to build upwards rather than outwards, maximising what they had rather than just claiming more land in all directions. It was dense, and it emanated. Sometimes she'd walk down long, straight avenues for long, long minutes, uncertain of when she'd have to turn, how to gauge distances, all the little marks of familiarity she'd long-since grown accustomed to. Her mental map of the city was still forming - it only existed as a string of instructions in a letter, nothing more. No idea where things were in reference to one another. But... yes, long straight avenues, flanked by building upon building, and then just as suddenly, she'd turn a corner, and the streets would become older. Curving, winding, passing into smaller, shadowed courtyards where small, packed shops filled the air with steam. A more aromatic haze than the crowd had produced. Older men and women gave her odd looks as she stumbled through, checking her letter every other second, terrified of losing her way.

Little pockets of old city, surrounded by expansive grids lined with huge god-towers, weighed down by slowly rotating sails. And while the central river, the Irizah, had been drained... new rivers had taken its place. Dust. Dust, rising up from the drained bed, nothing to anchor it in place. Flowing through the narrow courtyards in little eddies and currents, propelled by the slightest movement of the breeze. She became a tricoloured individual as she walked, like some sort of living national flag - her head reached into the haze of steam and smoke from drinking shops and cheroots respectively, seeping into her face and her hair, leaving her feeling a steely grey. Her torso was in the open air, and remained untouched. And her lower legs were slowly turned a dull, monotonous brown by the rushing rivers of dust, the ghost of the river-that-had-been.

The Judges were in one of the old pockets, the lingering places where Fidelizh felt its age. She could tell by the curving of the streets, the sagging of the buildings, and the faceless statues. Kings, maybe - they had the crowns for it. The defaced features of kings worn smooth by rain. Wounds turned to scars turned to unblemished surfaces. Age swallowed Tanner whole, and the constant, erratic breezes from the turning windmills above made her feel perpetually off-balance. Clutched her letter so tightly she was afraid of tearing it by accident. Invitation to study. Acceptance of application. Confirmation of her results in the preliminaries, taken in a dull and dusty hall rented out for the occasion. She was meant to be here, she had everything she needed, no mistakes had been made. Kept checking, though. Sometimes she even stopped simply to unclasp her bag, check that she had all her necessities. Did a weird jig every few minutes where she patted all of her pockets - wallet, letters, little watch, mints, tiny phrasebook, documents, documents... and then she'd do it all over again a minute or so later, terrified that something had fluttered away while she was distracted.

She turned...

And almost ran into a wall.

...uh.

Um.

That... wall wasn't meant to be there. She checked the letter, checked the vague directions, tried to piece together where she'd... a small, cold pit formed in her stomach. Oh. She was... was she lost? No, definitely not lost, just had to retrace her steps and she'd be fine. She walked backwards, boots clicking, before turning on her heel and moving forwards as quickly as she dared. But... but one problem was coming up. She'd been walking along with faint confidence, or at least, not the same kind of absolute paranoia. All distances felt longer when she was nervous. All. Had she turned off here? Or... had she turned off here, and she was just imagining that she'd walked further than she really had? The buildings surrounding her were forbiddingly anonymous, the windows dark, the silence choking. Her face became absolutely flat as her nervousness rose. Nope, not this way, and... and she was afraid to make any turnings, because if she did, without any reference to where she meant to be, she'd just be getting lost in the urban labyrinth even more. She was in one of the little mottled stretches of old city, where the streets wound through infinite little courtyards, and faceless kings loomed from little recessed pedestals.

Oh no.

She might very well be lost.

Lost in a foreign city.

More than fear, she felt... angry at herself. Idiot. Should've just been able to navigate the handful of miles to the inner temple, moron. Or, maybe she could've thought about things like trains, or even one of those horse-drawn cabs, the option was available, she had money, but no. Bumpkin, immediately thought of walking because she hadn't been able to afford a proper train before, or anything of that sort. No idea if Fidelizh even really did trains for this sort of distance. Idiot, idiot. Her bag weighed her down as she staggered cautiously in one direction, then another, then another, then another... never committing. Afraid of moving when she didn't know what would come next. For all she knew, she'd run into the bad part of town. For all she knew, she was already in the bad part of town, and this was just an off-hour. The god-towers seemed to leer down at her menacingly, the stoic faces twisting and distorting as the painted windmill sails moving closer and further away, never resolving at a properly comfortable angle. No, she was... the lodge was doing the witchcraft thing, and her gloves were still lucky. Should've brought more lucky objects, though. Glasses, maybe, then her sight would be blessed with luck. Or one of those little fashionable hair-needles that apparently helped bless thoughts with luck.

She stumbled...

And entered another courtyard. One among many. A faceless king, torso smashed up until it seemed like he'd been disembowled, loomed sadly over affairs - high-up enough to resist other acts of vandalism. Smooth grey stones below, and towering houses all around. Fidelizh built these places strangely, seemed to like using far too many tiles on the roofs, and used sharp, sharp blinds for the narrow little windows. Like they didn't want people poking around inside their houses at all, not with their eyes, and based on the thickness of the walls, not with their ears. Everything had to be insulated and sealed. Like the lodges in Jovan, but... not quite, those were just private, these places looked like little fortresses against the outside world. None seemed occupied at the moment, and the etiquette around knocking on random doors was beyond her. Though... if she had no other option... go on. Just ask. Ask a little question. Inconvenience someone very slightly, and learn how to get to her new home. It was very important she get there today, all she had to do was ask a little, little question, bother someone temporarily.

She stepped forwards.

Just bother someone a little bit. Ask a little question they didn't expect to get asked, approach a stranger near their home, loom in their doorway like a solid mass of brutish stupidity, looking all sweaty and lost and slightly unstable, with a very heavy bag, so she might even be a roving transient. Just ask a little question, and hope that there wasn't some... some child in there who'd wake up when she knocked on the door, wailing and driving his parents to madness. Or maybe the person inside was just weird. Maybe she'd knock, the door would open, and Mr. Pocket would be there to talk about more of his dead relatives, and he'd invite her in and then she'd have to deal with being inside a stranger's house with strange smells and strange everything and-

She stepped backwards.

Nope. Not knocking.

...but she was lost. She didn't know how to move on.

Stepped forwards...

And she was going to make someone feel uncomfortable, she'd leave a bad impression, she knew that Fidelizh had loads of people coming in from the devastated lands north of Tulavanta, camping out in the shantytowns, maybe the person on the other side wouldn't even understand her language and maybe they'd just start yelling at her because they thought she was here looking for a handout and maybe she'd be able to explain but there'd be a long, painful moment of confusion and non-comprehension and bad impressions and she was large so she naturally gave bad impressions and-

She stepped back.

Heard slight whispering.

Turned sharply, her bag slapping painfully against her knees as she did so. She hauled it up a little, holding it protectively in front of herself, breathing heavily through her nose and-

Oh.

...that was a drinking-house?

Wait, wait, what did they... right, in Mahar Jovan, they just called them drinking-houses, but... what did they use in Fidelizh? Kaff, that was it. Local kaff, then.

It didn't look like a kaff, though, it looked like just another house, but based on the people looking out through the unshuttered window...

She blushed. Tucked her hair behind her ears, and shuffled a bit - yes, she was just doing some... weird exercises, that was all. The only reason for the step-in-step-out dance she'd been doing, that was it. Hm, actually, kaff, could pop in, ask a question, and... no, they'd seen her acting like a country bumpkin. No, her reputation with them was unsalvageable, might as well leave before they summoned the authorities, maybe the ominous-sounding Erlize, whoever they were, and whatever they were. If she got arrested on her first day in this place...

"You... need help?"

Someone had opened the front door to the kaff - looked like it was one of those places you actually had to make an effort to enter, you couldn't just swan around and drift in, you needed to commit. Couldn't even see a sign above the place - was it just... anyway. A waitress was looking at her strangely, while wearing a bizarrely lurid blue sash around her waist, plus a pair of pince-nez which... almost looked aquamarine. No idea. None. No, wait, maybe she was... Fidelizh had a habit of incarnating their gods into themselves, letting the god ride around on their back to grant boons in exchange for doing certain things which emulated the god in question. Almost like reverse reincarnation - metaphor she'd heard from... anyway, anyway. Time for that later. The waitress was looking at her oddly, and Tanner blinked a few times before replying.

"Oh, I'm very sorry, I think I might be slightly lost."

The waitress hummed.

"Right, where to?"

"Inner temple. Judges. Sorry, it's my first time in the-"

"You want to take that entrance out, then turn left, then..."

She paused.

"...hm. I'm... gosh, this is embarrassing, I've never really needed to go there. Look, step inside, should be someone here who knows more."

Tanner stumped closer.

"Gosh, you're tall."

"...yes. Yes, I am."

"Not mutated, are you?"

"No, no, no, definitely not, never been mutated, miss. Ah, well, there was a skin tag on my wrist, I did a lot of fish gutting, accidentally touched a few, just snipped it all off like I'm meant to, sterilised it, did everything I was meant to do, I'm sorry, that's really the only time I've been, uh, sorry, I-"

The waitress was snorting with laughter.

"Gods, calm down, not going to whip out the flamethrowers. Come on, have a sit down, you massive berk."

Berk?

Local dialect. Goodness. What a strange place this was... 'berk', what an odd word. She winced visibly as the little stairs leading to the front door strained under her weight, creaking like something about to collapse and send her sprawling with the waitress demanding repayment for vandalism, and... she winced again as she ducked to fit through the door, hunching into herself to try and reduce her profile. It was one of those houses with narrow corridors and narrow staircases, the kind she absolutely dominated when she entered them. She had important things to think about and ask about, but right now all she could consider was the chairs. If they were too small and delicate, if they'd strain and shatter, if she'd have room to stand in such a way that she didn't loom... she'd broken one chair in her life, one, and she'd woken up night after night afterwards in a cold sweat. Crumbs, she was thinking about it again, she was already getting goose-flesh up and down her arms.

The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

Thank every god for sleeves.

The kaff was small, but... homely. It was odd, Fidelizh was a city with the largest, most gaudy towers she'd ever seen, a religion which incentivised people to dress up ludicrously in order to become gods, and yet... this kaff was small, cloistered, kept away from the general public. Away from prying eyes, certainly - if those shutters hadn't been opened up to get some fresh air, she'd never have known there even was a kaff. Maybe half a dozen other people, most of them clustered around game boards filled with little odd-shaped pieces. They were, as she'd expected, dressed up like circus clowns from back home - all bright colours and strange arrangements. Most of them looked well-to-do, healthy and hale, but their clothes... there was a man with a solid gold pocket watch, and a suit which bordered on the shabby. She could see the places where it'd almost worn down to nothing, held together by threads. Four men, two women, all giving her wary looks. The waitress slipped into the back, gesturing before she went for Tanner to sit down, take a load off her feet. Chair looked stable enough, though she'd be perching on it like a stool... hm, second thought. She did perch - resting on her feet more than anything, barely using the chair to stabilise herself. Didn't want to put too much weight on the thing.

The kaff was completely silent.

The people kept giving her looks as she settled.

Right. She knew what needed to be done. Knew it like she knew the backs of her hands, gloves or no gloves.

"Rather... muggy weather, isn't it?"

See, you needed to take the initiative with things like this. Once a goodly awkward silence set in, clearing it was like trying to scrape bacon fat out of a narrow drain. Especially with groups. Either she made a good impression as a chatty person, or she made a bad impression as a withdrawn oaf. And she'd already blundered once today. Twice, if she counted almost bribing the official at the office. Thrice, if she counted getting lost. Four times if she counted that business with the doors. Four times... quice? Quarice? The diners looked at one another - she only just now saw what they were actually eating. Combination of black, pungent stuff in little cups, the kind she was good at shattering accidentally, and orange stuff in glasses which looked almost luminescent. Food was just... well, finger food. Scones and whatnot. Gods, she was hungry. One of the ladies coughed.

"Ah. Yes. Muggy. Terribly warm."

One of the men nodded thoughtfully.

"Warm."

The other lady sipped some of the strange orange liquid and hummed.

"Yes, quite warm, indeed."

Another man shook his head sadly.

"Not cold, not cold at all."

A third man grunted.

"Wouldn't say it was cold, no. Warm, warm without a doubt."

Tanner nodded solemnly.

"Quite warm."

The first lady laughed slightly.

"Yes, ra-ther warm, ra-ther warm, not good weather for coats."

The other lady nodded seriously.

"Nor for boots, I'd say."

The final man raised a finger.

"But not quite sandal weather, honestly. I mean, not quite weather for sandals. Solid shoes... but not boots, that's true. But also not sandals."

Tanner was having an amazing time, this was the easiest conversation she'd had all day. She just had to keep nodding and talking about the weather. And not break her chair. And find her way to her new home. The usual. The waitress stepped quietly out of the backrooms, a glass of that strange orange liquid in her hand, a small cheroot clenched between her teeth. She wasn't smoking it, thankfully - just chewing slightly, relishing in the small droplets of thick brown liquid that emerged from the strange, broad leaves. Tanner took the glass, relishing in the coolness of it, the way it perspired slightly in the damp heat of Fidelizh... quickly scanned the room. Still mumbling about the weather, but this time they were comparing it to different years, which seemed like a very good idea - not like they were going to run out of years anytime soon, after all. Small-talk was just a perpetual motion machine for conversation, if you hooked yourself into it you could keep going and going and going forever without actually saying anything, and that suited Tanner just fine. Small-talk was the greatest gift ever given to the chronically nervous. Socially acceptable rambling, really.

And... yes, they were drinking the stuff in her hand. It was for drinking, not... uh, dipping one's fingers in, or pouring into the eye socket, or something equally weird. Not that she'd want to pour it into her eye socket, but once you found out that was expected, it was rather hard to say no.

A sip.

For a second, nothing.

Then her eyes widened.

That one sip felt like a blazing, ice-cold comet plummeting right down her throat, a little chip of razor-sharp burning magnesium slicing right to her core. Her stomach felt like it was on fire, her pores felt like they were swelling and bursting like the calderas of volcanoes mid-eruption. A great exhalation seemed to come out of her lungs, hotter and stronger than any she'd done before, almost making her teeth rattle from the force (or so she imagined), and... it was like being blasted from head to foot, inside and out, with high-quality sandpaper while also being lit on fire.

And just as soon as it began, it stopped.

Her lips felt numb.

But her entire existence felt incomparably... renewed. Like Tanner Magg had been systematically disintegrated and rebuilt, like she'd been subject to some arcane theurgic experiment that you weren't really meant to do on humans.

The world felt a little bit newer, honestly. Had to take it all in again, make sure nothing had exploded.

The others were still talking about the weather, this time in the bitter winter of three years ago. The world hadn't exploded. She stared strangely at the liquid, wondering what on earth it was actually meant to be, and how this was legal for human consumption in large quantities. Her eyes were wide as one of the other ladies in the kaff downed half her glass in a single gulp, simply wriggling slightly rather than performing the more expected motion of spontaneous human combustion. The waitress suddenly caught her attention by speaking louder than usual, the kaff's conversation falling silent.

"Right, who knows the directions to the central temple, the one all the judges live in. Been ages since I've been."

A pause.

And a whole suite of murmuring started up. Embarrassment at inconveniencing a bunch of people at once flooded through Tanner, and she curled up slightly into her chair, as much as she dared, holding her glass like a little stress toy, squeezing tight enough to almost snap it. Almost. But not quite. Not sure if she wanted another sip, but... she tried it, and the explosion in her stomach was slightly lesser this time, but only slightly. Suppressed by the cringing running through her, probably - hard for substances to affect her when she was probably squeezing all her blood vessels shut at once through sheer tension. They mumbled, chattered, muttered, gossiped, seemed to have a hundred different opinions at once and resolved none of them, just moved on to more. It was weird, it was... surely they'd know? The waitress clicked her tongue in agitation, switching the cheroot to the other side of her mouth, and her voice dropped lower.

"Sorry, not a good time to ask them. Most of them would be having an afternoon ziz at this point, they're not really... engaged. And most of us stay clear of that place if we can help it."

One of the women heard this, and raised her glass of eerie orange liquid into something like a salute, or a dramatic gesture.

"You'll know an honourable person when they have no gold under their fingernails, mam told me that, hasn't let me down yet."

Tanner shrank slightly under the attention, nodding and smiling quickly enough to almost send her hair into paroxysms. No idea what she was talking about. Well, Judges of the Golden Door, but... anyway. Anyway. Stop nodding. Keep smiling. Sip at the chemically volatile substance someone had decided was fit for human consumption. The waitress snorted slightly.

"Right, you look foreign, sorry. Citrinitas does that to you."

"Beg your pardon, miss?"

"Bit of a zap, you know? Sorry, should've warned you. Like it?"

She sipped politely, one eye spasming just a little.

"Uh. It's... it's... definitely interesting, miss."

"Gods, you're polite. It's like getting a giant block of spiky ice shoved down the cleft of your arse to wake you up from a lovely dreamy sleep, that's what it's like."

Yes, yes, exactly, that was it, it was exactly like this experience which Tanner had never experienced but could clearly visualise. But it was also like drinking a too-hot cup of tea and only realising once it was in the old mouth-hole and needed to complete the rest of its voyage downwards, lest it be spat and sprayed and openly displayed. Arse-ice and throat-spice. Hah.

Oh, gods, she couldn't say any of that out loud. Weakly smiled in a shameful sort of way, and tried to keep doing what she was meant to do.

"...uh. Yes. Miss. I... suppose?"

The waitress snorted again, turning to the backrooms, where another waitress was leaning against the doorframe, eyes half-lidded and bloodshot from the fumes of the kitchen.

"Look at this one, isn't she polite? She's calling me miss and everything. Why're you looking for the judges, then? Oh, actually - want something else? Food?"

Tanner shook her head silently, nervous of committing. A second later, she actually vocalised her refusal, the polite thing to do.

"No, thank you, miss. I'm here to join them, actually. Job, that sort of thing. It's a living. Just, you know, had to go out and earn a crust somehow. Get a profession."

She'd said the same thing in four slightly different ways in the gabbling fashion of the perennially nervous. Idiot. Dolt. The waitress smiled lightly, sharing a quick glance with the other waitress, who vanished into the backrooms from which a plume of steam was perpetually emanating. It felt like all of Fidelizh was defined by vapours of some description - dust, cheroot smoke, kaff steam. The windmills circulated it all around, driving the city into a perpetual whirl of haze. And on a hot day, while they were wrapped up in fairly heavy clothes, this group of people had chosen to stay inside a cramped kaff with heavy shutters, drinking liquid that practically fizzed with energy, little fingers of steam slowly picking their way around the door-frame leading to the kitchen, exploring the heavy air with some interest. The first waitress, still chewing her cheroot, suddenly replied:

"Hm, judging and whatnot, hm? Well, nice for some. Decent living, I'm told. Nice capes, must say, ve-ry nice capes. Didn't know they got foreigners coming in to join them, thought it was a bit of a local game."

Tanner shook her head, feeling the citrinitas popping as she did so.

"No, no, there's judges in Mahar Jovan too, miss. Not so many. But some. Recruit people, send them down here for training, then send us back out again. Bit like a heartbeat, I suppose. This... citrinitas? It's very good, miss, thank you for it."

The waitress blinked. Tanner twitched slightly.

"It's delicious. Never had anything like it before. Thank you."

There, that felt appropriately polite. The waitress smiled lopsidedly, cheroot moving like a conductor's baton as she did so.

"Is everyone in Mahar Jovan so-"

Tall?

"-polite? Sounding about as courteous as the nobles in those radio plays, you know the ones. Ones."

She didn't. But she felt rather flattered, and that made her feel more embarrassed than ever. Crumbs.

"Uh. I... well, my mother raised me to be polite, miss."

There, there, deflect compliments. That settled her a bit.

"Well, should get more of your lot down. Wouldn't be wanting for niceness, I'll say that."

Oh, gods, it was getting worse... she'd already deflected compliments to her mother, what was she going to do now? Well, sipping at the citrinitas probably wouldn't hurt. She looked around for desperate inspiration... alright, Tanner had to revise one opinion. She'd thought it was odd that people on such a hot day would bottle themselves up in a place like this. Now she was realising that they weren't bottled up at all - this was simply how they unwound. It felt like being in one of those moral illustrations of the sins of the opium den or the cocaine lair. People were contentedly sagged in their chairs, drinking what they pleased, talking mindlessly and without any thought. They sounded identical to one another in their meandering murmurs. This was a place for unwinding, not bottling. Why they chose to do it in a place so... secluded was beyond her, didn't look especially fun. Well, the citrinitas was quite fun, the rest didn't. Well, citrinitas and board games. But nothing besides.

"Oh. Thank you. That's... very kind. I'm sure everyone back home would be very flattered to hear that, you're too kind to us. Sorry."

"...tell you what, though, surprised you people manage to get anything done, what with being polite all the time. You've said sorry about two hundred times since you came in. Wait, wait, just remembered - Mahar or Jovan, which one?"

"Both, miss. Mother's from Mahar, father's from Jovan."

"That very usual?"

A part of Tanner bristled, and another part smoothed it down like an agitated cat.

"...not especially, no. The bridges, you see. Lot of time to get over them. Courting someone from your own city is very good for saving time, miss."

"Hah. That's... alright, that's quite funny. Fair enough. Right, quick lesson, north bank of Fidelizh is for intelligent, sophisticated, ludicrously attractive people with brilliant physiques and brains big enough that you might mistake them for small mountains. That also applies to our tits, incidentally, myself being a sad exception. South bank is full of savages, and you should take a machete if you go down there, full colonial-style."

Oh. She... didn't know that, actually. Did all rivers just make humans less reasonable? Or were rivers just convenient points along which to perform the most basic of all human functions, the division of in from out, self from other, one from two? Nah, must be the rivers. Rivers were just nasty things. But Fidelizh had dammed their river, did that mean one day they'd become reasonable and join together in brotherly love?

But she was already asking a more nuanced, reasonable question, before she could probably phrase her outstanding joke. Jokes were lower priority. And a moment later, the timing was gone. Pointless saying it.

"Oh. I see. What do they do on the south bank?"

The waitress leaned forward conspiratorially.

"Well, don't tell a south banker I said this, but..."

She leaned further forward, the strange scent of her unlit cheroot filling Tanner's nostrils. Smelled like something she'd find in a temple, all rich and cloying and overwhelming. The sort of scent you offered up to gods. Which... well, in Fidelizh, wasn't too far from the truth.

"They have silly accents, most of them are seeing their cousin for reasons one shouldn't visit one's cousin in civilised society, and... uh..."

She tilted her head.

"...well, it's more of a general sense, you know? They're wrong-uns. Nowt more to it. You'll get a feeling for it, just check their cheroots, they roll them the wrong way."

Tanner didn't even know the right way, but she nodded nonetheless, noting this information down in her reference-book of arbitrary dislike. The lodge still comprised 90% of the entries on 'this is a group you should dislike and this is why', but, well, it was always good to diversify one's assets, even in small ways, right?

"Also, their sports are weird. They play too much slackball, not enough bladderbat."

Slackball bad, bladderbat good. Alright. More notes.

"...right. Right. I understand. What about the people in the middle?"

"Hm?"

"The... dam. The town down there. Where do they fit, miss?"

She tried to keep her face open and guileless - she was being open and guileless, so she had every reason to appear so. The idea of seeming provocative or nosy by accident, and leaving a bad impression, was just... well, it was easier to make it obvious what she was thinking. Much, much easier. Gods, this was better than Mr. Pocket, she was actually able to think about this stuff, last time she'd just been struggling to remain vaguely civil. The waitress drew back slightly, shrugging vaguely.

"Right. Well, you're... foreign, so I guess you wouldn't know. They're from up north. Came down here during the Great War, we dammed up the river 'cause we needed to, they got to live at the bottom. The golden boys in Parliament keep saying they'll send them back north, and some of them have headed off to work on the colonies, but... anyway, young lady like you, don't go down there. Erlize take care of that place, keep things quiet, and they're... not too fond of people poking around where they don't belong. Polite young lady like you, best to steer clear. Right? Gods, heard they found some lad in there just a week ago, went down to poke around some of their drinking holes, they found him hung up from a bloody meat hook."

Tanner was frozen, citrinitas forgotten in her hand. The waitress patted her feebly on the shoulder.

"Come on, perk up. You'll be fine, just don't head down there. Erlize keep people nice and sequestered."

Again, that word. Erlize. Some sort of... police force? Something along those lines? She sipped slightly at the glass, forcing herself to just act like none of that had remotely alarmed her. She was large, she was pretty good at keeping herself safe, but still. Still. Nothing to make her feel reassured about going outside again like hearing about some horrific, recent crime. Stay out of the riverbed shantytown, then. Got it. She nodded a few times, but the waitress seemed to realise she'd unnerved Tanner. Cracked a small smile, shrugged lightly.

"But, hell, judges are fine. No-one bothers judges, even the trainee ones. Bit like trying to rob a prison, isn't it? Anyway..."

She moved suddenly, poking one of the customers, extracting a few bits of information. Her face fell. The man in question just burbled a long line of speculations and suppositions which never really went anywhere, and the waitress cut him off abruptly.

"Right, they're still a bit useless. So, take that entrance out there, then turn left, and then take the third right. It won't get you there, but it'll put you near a main road. See, what you're going to do, my foreign friend, is look out for anyone wearing an orange scarf with tweed patches. Alright? It's... the fifth today, moon's waxing, so that means people getting ridden by Wheeling-Yellow-Dancer are meant to be helpful to strangers, you won't be bothering them if you ask for help. Most are probably retired or on break anyhow, they won't mind interruptions. One of them will take you along, but ask if you can stick to the main roads - don't wander off with strangers, right? And if he lets his god slip off and starts getting mean or testy, you smack him with your bag and yell for the Erlize, they'll probably be watching anyhow. Right?"

"Uh.

"Orange scarf. Tweed patches. Wheeling-Yellow-Dancer. And hit 'em in the todger if they get frisky, then yell for the Erlize."

"Yes, miss. Orange. Tweed. Dancer. Tod... bag. Bag. Understood, miss."

She nodded with more force than she meant to - the citrinitas kept popping up and down her throat and stomach, each little explosion releasing a tiny burst of energy. Gosh, she hoped this wasn't alcoholic. Speaking of which... she started reaching for her wallet, making little mumbles of thanks and gratitude and apologies for inconvenience while smiling nervously...

"Gods, no. Not charging you for advice everyone bloody knows already, that's just rank. Anyhow, good luck with that judging business. Come on back if you need a drink."

Tanner dipped her large head in a small bow.

"Thank you, miss. Very much appreciate it, miss. I'll make sure to come back, that citrinitas was lovely. Thanks again for that, it was wonderful. Thanks. Sorry. I'll go, but thank you, miss."

The waitress was chomping hard on her cheroot to restrain her laughter.

"Gods, get on out before you start apologising for using up our air."

Oh gods was the air in here limited? Was she-

She was joking.

Right.

Tanner did what she usually did in such scenarios - smiled as broadly and winningly as possible. See, the bigger the smile, the bigger the impact of it, the more gratitude and happiness it expressed. Her face was naturally flat, bordering on the expressionless, especially when she was at her most emotional. Had to force herself to really smile at things, and, well, smiling was the sort of thing you didn't do by halves.

The waitress blinked, snorted slightly, and accompanied her to the door, leaving behind the six diners with their increasingly meandering conversation, now delving into the different types of paving stone one could find. It felt... was this how people in Fidelizh relaxed? They had to wear their roles, and then they had to overact relaxation? Couldn't unwind normally? Or was this sort of empty, empty conversation the sort of thing which was comforting when the rest of the time you had to conform to the behaviours your god visited upon you?

Was giving up one's control to the ministry of a kaff such a big step that it needed to be kept out of the public eye?

Not for the first time, she wished she had the expertise of that woman with the letter. She'd been startlingly well-versed in this sort of... cultural talk.

Well.

Time to go and find someone with an orange scarf (including tweed patches, because an orange scarf without tweed patches probably meant they were a notorious serial killer who prided himself on hunting down very frightened giants), because that meant they had the right sort of god riding around on their back as dictated by the phases of the moon.

Fidelizh was...

...it was a place, all right.