CHAPTER NINETY - ANARETA

Tanner was... in a position, to put it mildly. Now, admittedly, this wasn't the worst interrogation she'd ever done. She'd 'interrogated' Tom-Tom when she first emerged out of the snowy night, and had somehow failed to pick it apart, to question her sufficiently, to figure out that the entire thing was a cock-and-bull story. Hm. Odd phrase. Cock and bull. What was untrustworthy about cockerels and large bovines? Maybe it was a fighting thing, like... maybe at some stage there'd been a cockfighting and a bull-fighting ring, and some duplicitous scoundrel made a habit of... painting his cockerels until they looked healthy, or exaggerating their performance, their stamina, their ferocity? And somehow this had entered into the common cultural lexicon of the universe? Did Rekida have the phrase 'cock-and-bull', or would it be something like... well, 'ah, that's a sham, what a slavish story' or 'how absurd, that's a total vagrant crane of a tale'. A crane-and-slave story. Hm. Come to think of it, Yan-Lam wouldn't know, Tal-Sar might not tell her, and she couldn't ask this bunch, not without coming across as distinctly freakish and unprofessional.

Beating one of them half to death and shoving a truncheon down his throat had really set her up as a professional person, and she didn't want to spoil the impression.

Her gas mask filter rattled, and she clicked in a new one absent-mindedly, while preparing her documents. Files. Automatic quill, appropriately adjusted to make sure it fit over her gloves. Papers, which... gods, they were a little stained, need to copy out all her findings later. Her mind was full of ordinary thoughts, her hands were performing ordinary actions, everything was utterly ordinary and she could fit in perfectly and-

The general shifted in front of her.

...and she was back in the hollowed out remains of an underground river, surrounded by a creaking forest that wanted to eat the people she was interviewing, and she was interviewing Rekidan nobles who had fled below the earth. She'd beaten one of them half to death, and her knuckles were still sore, her heart still pulsing a little faster than it should. Nothing was ordinary. She'd thought things she shouldn't have thought, done things she should've held back from, at no stage was this ordinary. Everything was exhausted, yet everything was blisteringly alive. She felt like if she peeled off the coat, the protective gear, the mask... if all of it went, she might not even look the same underneath, some other creature might clamber out, something smoother and stranger and deadlier, something capable of incredible violence, and capable of enjoying it, just a little.

No. Never enjoyed it.

...she could start shooting these things, and no-one would stand around to judge her. No-one would know what she'd done. She could say they attacked first. She could, and everyone would believe her back on the surface. A part of her remembered the tunnels under the cold-house, where she'd... she should have died, it would've been an ending, a conclusion to her life and everything it represented. But she'd endured. Committed to living at any cost. And immediately she'd found out about the mutant invasion, things had changed, she'd discovered secrets, and now was here. In a place that defied sanity, where the air was poison and the spinal trees were hungry. If she went berserk and died down here, there'd be an... ending, wouldn't there? The nobles would either be wiped out, would be crippled without the chance of recovery, would try and attack the surface and die due to their diminished numbers... she could martyr herself here, and be remembered well. If she killed enough people, she'd be remembered wonderfully, as a hero, a paragon of her profession, a noble sacrifice to the greater good.

And she could sleep. She could stop. No more worrying about... everything, no more obligations, no slow decline, no continuous string of little defeats, no erosion of who she was.

If she died down here, she wouldn't have to bring the version of Tanner that could beat a man half to death while thinking about rutting animals back to the surface. That version of Tanner would be born and die down here. No-one else would know that she had ever existed.

The coat seemed too tight. Straining to contain whatever had come out in that fight. If she got to the surface, she'd have to take the coat off, and let... that thing out again. When dogs went rabid, you didn't pet them gently and let them into the nearest nursery, you stayed far away and shot the thing. Maybe if she claimed she was contaminated, starting to mutate horrifically, losing her mind, a soldier up on the surface would do the same for her. Maybe she was being contaminated, even now, and...

Oh, what was the use. She had a job. Come on, finish line wasn't too far off.

The general opposite her knelt gently on the ground, moving with surprising delicacy for someone so large and malformed. His twisted face, with its bright, intelligent eyes, settled into a contemplative expression. He was a mutant, he was on his way to insanity, he was in a horrific underground river, yet he still composed himself with as much dignity as he could. Tanner forced herself to be very still, and very precise - to match him, in some way. The table creaked a little as she leant on it, and the boy who translated for the general moved to prop a few rocks against the warped legs - the thing looked both old and decaying, she wouldn't be surprised if she could peel away chunks of it away with all the ease of demolishing a sponge cake.

Go through the motions. Do her damn job.

"May I have your name, please?"

The boy spoke quickly to the general, murmuring in his ear. A rumble emerged from the mutant, and the boy translated as fast as possible, his eyes flicking up to stare at the dark that loomed above them, his attention monopolised by the act of translation. Wait, stop - not a boy, he was older, just... well, clearly sun-starved and malnourished. Made him shorter and thinner than he ought to be, though his voice was deep enough to suggest his real age.

"The general would rather not."

Wonderful.

"May I ask why?"

"...he is drunk on the river's pitch. It would be shameful to sully the name of his forefathers by attaching it to himself as he is. And to use only the forename would... be improper."

He spoke haltingly, accent making the words a little hard to understand. Trying his best, though - how had he learned the language? How had... wait. A small question bloomed in her mind.

"I apologise for the digression, but... when I was near here, in the snow field, I remember someone wearing red coming to... help me, before I passed out. Gave me a buffalo horn full of coals and brought me closer to a steam vent. Was that one of you?"

The three glanced at one another - the brutalised mutant, the general, and the boy. Hm, no, should give them real names, even if they wouldn't supply any. Mr. Ape, for the one she'd brutalised, with the long, simian arms. The General, for the general. And Boy, for the... boy. The fact that humans didn't broadcast their thoughts to other humans was one of the greatest gifts evolution had ever given her species. Boy spoke, his voice... startlingly hesitant.

"...that was me."

Tanner blinked.

Stronger than he looked, apparently.

"I... went to the surface to scavenge for some supplies. We use the witchcraft machine to get up and down during the winter, no-one bothers us."

Right, right. Made sense. Another incident where creating one conspiracy allowed for other conspiracies to fester in its shadow. Allow the theurgists to live out here, cover up their existence, make sure that no-one came close to the fissures where the steam of their engines could escape during winter, and bang. The ancient nobility of the city could live undetected, and move around with no-one to see them. If the theurgists weren't around, it was quite possible that this group would've been discovered long, long ago. Seemed to be a theme with the colony.

"Thank you. It was appreciated."

To her surprise, the General didn't look irritated when Boy explained everything to him. If anything, there was a hint of... pride in his expression. And when he spoke, there was a rolling, poetic tone to it all, like he was reciting an axiom or parable. Boy shifted uncomfortably, and translated quickly, eager to get it over with.

"...the general notes that... he is glad that I saved you, and wishes for me to let you know that there will be no reprimands or punishments. He is of the opinion that there is poetry to saving one who would eventually find us, and there is dignity in fashioning the weapon which cuts our throats."

Oh.

She looked down, embarrassed, and got back to work without further ado. The General let out a small, rumbling laugh, cutting it off before it could become mocking.

"...well. To begin, could you... explain why you came down here in the first place?"

The General spoke for some time, pausing to make sure that Boy was following along and remembering all the important details. Tanner waited patiently, though her feet were curling inside her boots, like clenching a fist but... less noticeable.

"...the general wishes for me to inform you that... we came to this current location roughly two weeks ago. Before that, we occupied a different part of the river for roughly two months. Before that, we were in the tunnels. Before that, we were on the surface for many years, and before that we occupied fortifications some distance away from the city. And before that, was... before the war."

Tanner wrote quickly, and spoke quietly.

"Why did you move?"

"In order... the arrival of the foreigners drove us underground. The movement of the foreigners into the tunnels drove us deeper. The arrival of the witch-men drove us deeper still, and their movements, along with the hazards of this place have driven us to greater distances in order to escape detection."

Well. That... painted a picture. No point asking why they hadn't been more open, they were mutants, destined to go mad, and even before that they were a threat to everyone due to the contamination which festered in them. And, they were the remnants of an aristocracy that... hadn't made friends, really. The Fidelizhi would regard them as competition, the Rekidans would regard them as monsters, the Nalseri would see them as threats to their elaborate scam. No easier way of highlighting who was a Rekidan and who wasn't, than by bringing up actual Rekidans from before the war.

"Has anyone detected you?"

A flash of pride across Boy's face.

"No-one. Not a soul. We fled underground when the first foreign scouts came, we learned the signs of approach and learned to stay away. Anyone who came too close to our homes, who posed a genuine threat... those, we sometimes had to kill, though we always regretted it, and avoided it whenever possible."

And the governor hadn't noticed this, nor had the cartel, because everyone was involved in collusion and disappearances. Could imagine a body showing up in the snow, utterly dead, and the governor thinking 'hm, maybe the bouncers did this', while the cartel shrugged and went 'suppose the governor had a grudge against that one', and everything proceeded as normal. Conspiracy nesting inside conspiracy nesting inside conspiracy - when you dumped a big enough rock on the ground, you couldn't be surprised when insects started to breed underneath it.

"How many are you?"

"...twenty five of the sane, at least seventy of the mad, though some wander off, and some... devour one another."

Tanner stiffened. Nearly a hundred.

"And where are the mad, exactly?"

"Deeper in the earth. We... keep them isolated from one another, if we can. They know that we avoid killing them unless we are forced to do so, and they shelter around our homes when chaos reigns. Sometimes we must execute them, if their madness swells, if their bodies change until they bring shame to their houses, if they become threats."

Nearly a hundred mutants. She wrote down the numbers in a steady hand, but her eyes were starting to dart around a little more. How had they... no, no, she could see the fissures in the rock, and the river was a vast place indeed. Plenty of places to hide. And, as mutants, they wouldn't be dependent on food or water to survive, and the aching cold would be less of a concern. Still. It'd be miserable. Dark. Dangerous. How many had come down, and how many now lived? Of the 'sane', how many were truly sane, and how many were close to total insanity? She steered clear of those questions for now - those were questions of tactical importance, for all she knew, the General would see it as trying to fish for information in the coming conflict. Which it was, but... steer clear, work her way to it, use it to end the interview.

"Could you describe the night of the governor's death?"

Silence for a few moments, only the creaking and slithering of the bone orchard filling the air. The Boy translated in a hushed tone, his eyes dropping lower, expression invisible behind his gas mask.

"...it was... difficult."

A pause.

"We were being pushed. Each day it was harder to find supplies. Food for me. Gas mask filters. Medical tools for working on the others, removing the growths which breed across their skin. Pills to help slow the progression of their madness. Tools to drive back the accursed ones that live down here. We do not... need some of them, we could endure without much, but... if we lack weapons, we must rely on our strength alone to drive back our enemies. And that means getting close to them, mutating ourselves further in order to win. Without treatments, the madness comes faster, it is harder to defend ourselves as more and more must be exiled for our safety..."

Tanner studied him for a moment, looking for any hint of duplicity. None. The Boy was being totally earnest, speaking for himself, the General remaining silent. Allowing his servant to tell the story as he pleased. They'd planned out this part of the conversation in advance, clearly. A second... and the Boy soldiered on, a hint of anger entering his voice.

"This is our home, judge. This is our land. We stood and defended it when the red tide came for us. We survived by... by standing our ground. When the red tide came, they..."

He trailed off. The General quietly interjected, guiding him through the words, something oddly paternal crossing his malformed features. He was saying we, but... he wasn't remotely old enough to have actually fought. The others, though... mutation could sustain them as the years wore on.

"...when the red tide came, the slaves fled. We remained. Stood our ground to defend our home, as the gods would demand. Only a few of us survived. We... were not in the city, the city's defenders were butchered to the last, but we endured in a fortress beyond it. We stood as a rock in the tide, breaking what we could while remaining unbroken ourselves. The mutants died by the thousand. In time, they didn't... didn't even try to get inside, they remained beyond and waited. We could not emerge without being slaughtered, they could not invade without being slaughtered. We held strong when the city was sacked, and our people were taken to be converted. We held strong when they tore apart our walls and violated our temples. We held strong, and remained until the air was pungent with rot and our flesh began to rebel."

"How... long did you hold that position?"

"The entirety of the war. We didn't give in, not once, not even when our filters were black with dust, our guns turned to heaps of slag, our swords snapped in our hands, our cannons melted from the heat of constant use, and we were reduced to licking the dew from the walls, eating our boots and whatever rats we could catch."

The author's narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

"And... despite the mutations, you... managed to stay sane?"

A pause. Remembered what Lantha said, how the mutants seemed to get inside her head, actually controlling, forcing compliance rather than just cooperating in the tense, unstable way mutants occasionality did. Something more... regimented.

"You managed to stay outside of their control?"

"Their collars only come down when the mind is completely lost. And we never allowed our own to live once they felt the collars clawing around their necks. The art of controlling mutation is a long-held one, judge. In days of old, we would dose the slaves, bring them to greater heights of power, and allow them to fight one another. The practice was forgotten, went out of fashion, but in our fortress, we rediscovered it. Stripped it out of old books, regained expertise through experimentation. Learned the arts of the enemy so we might better combat them."

Right, right. Lantha had been in a similar situation. Selective mutations, isolating limbs, using precise doses of highly refined contamination... she'd had a surprisingly intact mind despite having one of the most mutated bodies Tanner had ever seen. And that had been, apparently, fairly accidental - she was meant to lose her mind, she just had the good fortune of that process happening after the bodily work. This bunch would be more... dedicated to keeping their minds intact.

...seventy of them were completely insane, though. The General looked especially mutated, too.

The process was just a delaying tactic. And it was clearly reaching some sort of expiry date.

And she'd overlooked the part where the Boy mentioned using this art to make slaves into better fighters. The casual brutality of the place making it slip into the back of her mind as just another bit of nastiness. Put it next to all the others.

"I see. Please, continue."

Took a second for their train of thought to resume.

"We... fought the red tide. The other fortresses fell, the chained towers were emptied. Our food ran out. Many of us perished. When the tide retreated from the city, to go and defend their homes elsewhere, we... had been reduced. Some were intact, in body and mind, but not many. My... parents were among that number."

Tanner nodded along.

"And the... girl I brought with me?"

"Part of one of the other communities. The arrival of the foreigners cut us off from almost all of them."

"How many healthy Rekidans would you say-"

"I am alone."

Silence as Tanner processed that.

Something clicked.

"If you're... un-mutated, and sane, could I... possibly have your name? For my records."

Shouldn't be taboo, right? The General listened as the Boy translated the request, and nodded solemnly.

"I am All-Name."

Tanner blinked.

"It is shameful for the great houses of Rekida to perish with their last scions drunk on poison, losing humanity in the dark and the cold. More honour in... adopting a last scion who has humanity remaining. My full name is... long. When the last of the nobility are gone, I will go into the wasteland and find my end in as honourable a fashion as I can muster. The noble lines of Rekida will not end with monsters and madness."

He spoke in a steady, stately voice, something of the ritual formulation about it all. Slightly archaic, words not quite fitting for someone as young as him. His shoulders were stiff with tension, his head was held high with some sort of pride.

...he was a caretaker. A human, taking care of a bunch of mutants as they succumbed to madness, and then... he was meant to go and die, she didn't get the feeling that he was meant to ever have children or raise a family. In him was a better ending for a bunch of noble lines, and nothing else. Born to die, really. Maybe nobles could only marry other nobles, maybe... she glanced down at the girl, who was remaining a little distance from the table, watching with callous, inhuman eyes. Waiting for a bloodbath to nurture herself on, sizing up the mutants to see what she wanted to eat, what she wanted to discard.

Wondered if All-Name and the girl had known one another, before all of this. Seemed doubtful, but...

Anyway.

"I see. So... you represent one community of Rekidans, but there were others?"

"Not any more."

"Are you certain of that, or-"

"Certain. There were... there was us, then there were two others, both much smaller. One fled for the mountains to try and escape that way, to find shelter. I believe they died some time ago, killed by a bad winter. The other was in a different part of the underground, and were exposed to too much rot. We were lucky. They were not."

The last of the old Rekidans. Odd to think that... well, down here, there were more Rekidans than on the surface.

"Please. Continue to describe the governor's death."

All-Name grimaced a little, and the General patted him lightly on the back with his enormous arm, delicate enough to avoid knocking him over.

"... we were furious. There was nothing they wouldn't take from us. If we showed ourselves, we would be burned, killed. Not enough of us. Not enough of us sane. Nothing good in dying like animals. First, they took the surface, set up their colony, drove us underground. But we could live with this. We could endure the hardship. The land would reject them, we knew it would. One day. But... then they came for us. They invaded the city, desecrated our shrines. They entered our tunnels, and drove us deeper. Even when we had to come here, to places where rot was endless, they sent a witch-engine to invade further. We can only go so far before the conditions are... too harsh for us to endure while remaining sane. We stand at the edge of a cliff, and the colony is pushing us over."

"...and you decided to act."

"I decided to act."

Tanner blinked. Not the General? Not one of the others? All-Name?

"The governor had an office underground. We knew the tunnels, knew there was a place where they came close. I had... one of the others help me dig. We only worked when he was away, only then. Got closer. The General found out when we were about to make the final push..."

The General spoke softly, and All-Name swallowed down a lump in his throat.

"He said he would do the deed. To give proper dignity to an enemy. To prevent me from... becoming a murderer. He says it is improper to shed blood when so young. And I must remain dignified, so the honour of the nobility could remain in their last scion. Said I should be spotless. The murder would happen, it had to happen, he knew we could only endure so many humiliations, eventually one of us would go and kill the governor, or one of his fellows. He... simply did the ugly deed before we did. Got it over with."

The governor' wounds...

Well, this made things fall into place a little more. The governor had been confronted by... an enormous creature that had picked him up and crushed him. The wounds had suggested quite a bit of brutality, and the General was definitely capable of such a thing. Murdered him, and then...

"Were you pursued?"

"A man came into the tunnels, but he left swiftly and blocked it all up. I don't know why."

Tanner sighed.

"...you didn't try and cover your tracks?"

All-Name blinked.

"...a little? We concealed our footprints, but..."

There was definitely a trail that could've been followed. Definitely. Canima had investigated, seen the body, seen the tunnels, figured out that any investigation would necessitate going down there and finding the theurgists... so he'd bricked it up, moved the body, done all he could to keep people from finding things out. Layers of lies, conflicting priorities, schemes turning on themselves... and all because of a very simple problem. The Rekidan nobility had been driven underground, and forced to cede more and more territory. They were humiliated, despite having, in their mind, earned the right to the city by actually trying to defend it during the Great War. Their quiet decline had been stolen, replaced by darkness, damp, slow madness, misery... they'd lost their retirement, and they struck at the man they saw as responsible.

Like too much steam in a too small space. Eventually, something had to give.

She wrote this all down with absolute professionalism.

Internally, though... not sure if she wanted to scream or laugh. Compressed under higher and higher levels of stress, strangled by webs of conspiracy they had no awareness of and no control over, scooped out of their quiet existence and plunged into chaos, eventually driven to the point where murder became not just plausible, but inevitable.

Good gods, she never thought she'd feel... such a strong sense of kinship with the deeply brutal aristocracy of a dead city.

And yet, here she was.

She asked a few more questions, but... the broad details were confirmed. And she finally put together the very last points of her investigation.

Her quill stopped moving.

...it was done?

It was done.

The investigation of the governor's death was over.

And if she'd investigated nothing, things would have played out the same. Even if she'd found nothing and no-one, madness would eventually consume the mutants down here, and the murderers would, in effect, die. Justice would be served. The people who created the conditions... none of them were individually guilty. Mr. Canima had been acting according to pre-existing arrangements and doctrines. The governor had been trying to make the best of a doomed colony. The cartel weren't personally guilty for the governor's murder, but they'd still contributed to it. The theurgists... who knew what they were doing, but they were just being theurgists. Unaware that they were making the pressure climb higher and higher.

The entire colony was guilty.

And no-one was. She could even see herself saying that punishment was pointless - the General was a mutant, he was already dying, the most appropriate punishment would just be to leave him alone, to die a quiet, ignominious death.

Something inside her strained a little as she stared at this document.

This pile of ink and paper and nothing.

The others were staring at her, clearly wondering what she was thinking.

Tanner Magg had... she'd...

Slowly, she started writing in very small handwriting, on a new piece of paper. Because she was a professional, and had no intention of ranting out loud. So, like a completely ordinary person, she wrote it all down in letters too tiny for anyone else to read.

This entire investigation was pointless.

We're all going to be killed by mutants, after losing ourselves to a civil war waged with people that once defended this city against the mutants. Whoever wins our civil war will have the privilege of dying a little later. Everyone involved in this colony is guilty of the governor's death. And no-one is. I could've stayed at home and all of this would have played out exactly the same. I have strained the law to justify elements of my investigation, I have almost died on several occasions, I was almost tortured to death, Marana is drinking citrinitas by the bottle, Eygi was never my friend and probably loathes me for being such a bore, Yan-Lam is developing unhealthy habits, and we're all going to die.

She paused.

And wrote something else.

The law is useless. The judges are useless. Mr. Canima is an old fool. The theurgists are arrogant bastards. The governor was an over-controlling neurotic. Vyuli is delusional. Tom-Tom is a misguided idiot. Lyur is insane. The soldiers are commanded by two corrupt officers and one young man who has too little experience - and this is the case because of the governor's neurosis and Vyuli's delusions.

I am going to die, having completed an investigation that anyone can see is totally pointless. Canima will probably order me to burn all my documents to keep things secret. And in a few months, the criminals will have died of natural causes.

This is my legacy. This document comprises the last great work I will ever make.

The thing that was straining inside her wound tighter, tighter...

And something snapped.

Something she hadn't thought could snap.

Some core restraint that had been there for... oh, a very, very long time.

She quietly folded the papers away into her bag, placing the automatic quill beside them.. And rose to her feet, towering above the three Rekidans. Mr. Ape, the one she'd brutalised, shivered - he could detect something in the air, something that he might well remember from when she almost killed him. The girl slipped a little closer, eyes eager with hunger. She could detect it too. She knew something was coming.

Tanner spoke lightly.

"There will be no hostilities."

All-Name blinked, and stuttered as he translated. The General looked surprised, and spoke rapidly, losing the stately cadence he usually had.

"I... you are a judge, yes? Your role is the punishment of the guilty?"

"In a sense."

"...we are guilty. We will not go voluntarily to our execution, we intend to die fighting, and-"

"No, you're not. You're going to die anyway, because a horde of mutants is currently approaching, and they'll wipe out anyone that stands in their way. They're behaving unusually - think of them as Great War mutants, in terms of priorities."

All-Name gaped.

Translated slowly.

The General looked pale.

There was something utterly gratifying about that. Tanner kept on going as she adjusted her coat, before swapping in another mask filter.

"You're not going to be punished. No, you see, what we're going to do, is we're all going back to the surface. I will lie through my teeth, and you'll be fine. Then, the sane members of your community will help defend the colony."

The General rose, looming above Tanner, but... she felt like she was still looking down at him. The feeling in her stomach had changed. For once, she didn't feel the twists and spasms which had plagued her since she arrived, since she committed to this case. All she felt was fire. All-Name translated quickly, speaking almost in unison with the General.

"You are not the leader of the colony. You do not have authority to-"

Tanner interrupted, her voice never going beyond a calm, professional tone, even as her skin seethed with little sparks, and she felt... felt like she was fighting, losing everything excessive, smoothing over blemishes and crushing herself down to an engine of efficiency. Could feel the edges of her skull pressing tightly against her sin. Could feel her brain burning.

"I have the authority. The only people who would question me are an old man who inhibited this investigation at every turn, and helped bring the colony to its current state... and another old man, who did exactly the same. I am a judge. I interpret the law, and execute it. One of the old men is a criminal. The other is an incompetent who is endangering the safety of the colony, and thus is unfit to rule. I have all the authority I need."

"You claim to be a judge, yet you are violating your law by-"

"The law is my concern."

Translation:

Balls to the law. She had work to do.

"Bring as many sane ones as you can. I don't want to make too many trips back and forth."

"If mutants are coming, if the red tide is returning, then... we do not have the forces to resist it, we-"

Tanner's voice intruded once more.

"I've heard a very large number of highly compelling arguments for doing nothing, General. The governor took away investigations and mismanaged them. Mr. Canima has made it clear that the preservation of certain secrets should take precedent, and I should keep my nose out of matters. Mr. Vyuli has made it clear that persevering will get me killed, and he's attempted this on several occasions. Marana would argue that the colony is a doomed ship anyway, so I should buckle down with her and drown my sorrows. The theurgists would caution me to stay away from everything involving them, on pain of ruining my career. I've been warned, cautioned, obscured, cut out, and warded away. I have heard a hundred reasons for doing nothing."

Her eyes were hard as marble. The mutant at her feet actually backed away a little. Scenting something dangerous.

"I have accepted the authority of others, because they knew better than me, and I ought to stick to my current position. Even when I opposed them, I still deferred to their authority and their ability to manage things. And on each occasion, they have failed, they have lost control, they have allowed the bloodshed to continue."

She stepped a little closer, and the General met her eyes unblinkingly, even as his enormous fist tightened.

"I have forborne this, because I thought they could handle things. They have not."

The General stared.

"So you're coming back to the surface with me, and we're going to try to save the colony. That's your punishment for killing the governor."

All-Name translated quickly, tripping over his words from time to time as he tried to translate while wrestling with the urge to stay quiet, to listen and nod and comply. Tanner finished speaking... and something had gone out of her. Something big. This was her confession, she realised. All the confessions she'd extracted, even this one, which was... not a confession, just a calm arrangement of the reasons why a war was inevitable. All the confessions, and now she got to do one for herself. How she really felt. How an unrestrained Tanner was. Balls to the law. The law hadn't helped her here, all it'd done was saddle her with responsibilities and stifle her ability to act. She'd had to break it already in order to do her investigation properly, to get anywhere meaningful. The law failed when applied to conditions of such profound unreason and anarchy. The mutants obeyed no law but their own. The colony had been a twisting mound of exceptions, a single vast criminal that, like all criminals, eventually collapsed under the weight of contradictions. Lyur defied the notion of the Golden Law by being irredeemably monstrous, by being ungovernable and untameable. No law would ever convince him to stop being Lyur. No matter how self-evidently perfect.

She had no faith in the Golden Law.

And with that tenet broken, the others followed suit.

The law was hers. It was a tool.

And she'd use it however she damn well pleased. Everyone else did, and they used it to ruin things, to create the conditions of catastrophe, to stare at a charging elephant and do nothing.

The General spoke quietly. All-Name matched his tone, sometimes dropping so low that he became almost inaudible.

"...they will butcher us on the surface. Hunt us down like dogs."

"No. They won't."

She had a divine confidence in this fact. Already had a plan spinning into motion, started unconsciously, now deliberately elaborated to completion.

"Is there no-one else up there who holds command?"

"No-one that can keep it."

"What do we stand to gain? What-"

"You get to live. You get to defend your city again. And when all of this is over, if any of us are still alive, you'll have all the comfort you could ask for, you'll get to die in your own homes."

"But can you guarant-"

Tanner snapped, voice rising for the first time.

"I will guarantee it."

"But if others object, if there is outcry, if your superiors-"

Tanner said nothing. Just stared.

And the General stopped talking.

A strange expression crossed his face... and he reached out with the enormous hand that had crushed the governor to death...

To slap her on the shoulder. Tremendous force, would've sent anyone else to the ground. Not her. She didn't even flinch.

And in a halting, uncertain voice...

"Axe."

The others stiffened. It took a second, but Mr. Ape shuffled off into the darkness.... while the General kept talking, slipping back to his own language.

"He... accepts. And he offers you a... sign of our allegiance, and the compact that binds us together."

Mr. Ape returned, hauling something over his shoulder. Something...

Something very large indeed.

A vast axe. Long metal haft, decorated with the twisting symbols of Rekida. A double-bladed head, blunt as a stone, more fit to crush than to slice. Decorated with the figures of two wall-gods stretching a serpent between them. It was ornate. It was... deeply ornate, and had a hypnotic antiquity to it, a feeling of age that granted it significance. The hammer of the cartel seemed almost quaint compared to this - they assembled their hammer only occasionally, used it as a totem, as a single monument. This... this bore scars from use, the handle was well-worn and wrapped in cloth, the blades were stained where they'd been at work. This was a living object. It was the first Rekidan object she'd seen that wasn't dead and sterile and devoid of any known meaning. This was real, and the reverence with which the others looked upon it made it grow more and more real with each passing moment, until it was a surprise that the world could bear its weight. Mr. Ape struggled to lift it over his shoulder, and as he came close...

He extended the handle. His eyes locked on hers, and he chewed at the inside of his cheek. Nervous beyond measure. He ground out one word.

"Take."

The General nodded at his subordinate, and spoke in a... distinctly more flowery fashion.

"The General grants you, for the duration of our agreement, the labrys of his house. It has crushed the skulls of countless accursed ones, and has stood to witness the rise and fall of Rekida. Within it dwell gods that would flay you if you were to breach our sacred trust... and were we to breach that trust, the axe would become anathema to us, would reject us as unworthy. By this rite, we are chained."

Tanner reached out, hesitantly...

And took the axe.

Barely felt the weight.

And under her gas mask...

A small, small smile crossed her lips.