CHAPTER NINETY-EIGHT - IRONSKY INTERVIEWS

The sky was iron.

The snow was coming.

Midwinter was here. And they were just enjoying the last few days of silent snow before the howling began, weather so intense and hostile to human life that, no matter what, they'd have to enter some kind of bunker. The mutants could sometimes be seen lumbering around in the snow, moving stones and fuel, helping with the overall effort, yet forbidden from even coming near the food supplies, nor the water, nor the medicine, nor the booze. Great primordial shadows in the snow, known only by the slow, mournful songs they hummed from time to time, the light chatter of their strange language, the flash of their red hair, their red cloaks. Sometimes, Tanner thought, you could almost confuse them for the wall-statues. They had the same austere faces, when they weren't mottled by mutation. And in front of them, it was easy to feel... small, dwarfed by age, by experience, by power. And like the statues, with their faces that changed depending on wherever the light was falling at that time, there was an inscrutable strangeness to their appearance. Were they angry? Were they happy? Were they sad? Were they slipping towards madness, or did sanity yet hold sway? What were their thoughts on any given person they looked upon?

Impossible to say. Their language remained incomprehensible, and their faces continued to hide a great wealth of truths. For all they represented... they had no desire to share their secrets.

Overall, in terms of a broad forecast... things were shifting. Things were definitely shifting. The civilians moved with more purpose, some of their paranoia forgotten, helping out whenever the weather permitted. The soldiers were whistling. Even the cartel was strangely motivated. Bloodlust had been suppressed by the dominance of purpose, and the promise of an execution. Of course the news had leaked - Vyuli had arranged it with her beforehand, very professional of him. Lyur had killed the governor, and was to be executed in the near future. Within this act of murder, there was the sealing of the compact with the nobles, the cartel, the colony itself... and somehow, perversely, the promise of the act was enough to make the colony work a little more frenziedly. There was a sense of renewal, the same feeling the earth must feel when there was a wildfire. Terrible devastation, burning and carnage on an enormous scale... but the ash provided fertiliser, the cleared undergrowth provided opportunities. Yes, yes, the natural world provided all sorts of lovely parallels for existence, in Tanner's mind. In her odd, odd mind. Yes, from chaos and disorder could arise renewal, wonderful lesson. All terrible things could pass in time, another lovely parable from nature.

Tanner derived many lessons from nature - from eels, she learned to keep moving forward, even when someone cut her head off. From eels, she learned to trust her instincts and never, ever stop, even as her body shifted to a form which was biologically unsustainable, because that was what an eel did. From eels, she learned to be adaptable, to slither on land as well as water. Eels were a much better source of advice than anything else, really. Forests? Yes, there was the wildfire business, but also - 'feed upon the dead, for they are succulent' was generally frowned upon, 'grow tall and strangle the growth of others to stop them competing' was a little gauche, and 'the world is one enormous enemy which must be competed with, crushed, wiped out, starved to death or purged' was considered somewhat peculiar. Point was, she was operating like an eel, and she was doing fine.

Not... staying awake at night, frothing with energy, incapable of sleeping while the prospect of the execution hung over her. Tal-Sar had awakened the bloodlust of this country by spilling the blood of a kingly animal (something she wasn't telling the nobles about, they were probably the only people in the world who'd consider Tal-Sar's act to be worth punishing), maybe Lyur had just... emerged from the snow when that happened, or crawled from the bear's carcass, naked and slick with womb-fluids. Maybe he'd smelled the blood in the air, and his heart had shrivelled and detached, allowing him to cough it up. Maybe killing Lyur would actually soothe the hungry land. Put it back to sleep. Maybe the injustice of the act would just awaken more violence, would bring the red tide closer and closer. The rational justifications of the act were absolute - killing Lyur would be an objectively good act, he was a monster, and his death would satisfy a whole host of factions. Not a single force in the colony would object. Rationally, it was already decided.

And when she was confronted with the fact that this act was totally reasonable, and by no means monstrous, barely even inching into the realms of 'slightly corrupt', after she'd already committed worse acts of corruption, that would have a significantly more intense impact over the long-term...

When confronted with a wall of unyielding rationale, her mind fled to the spiritual and the symbolic. And so she remained awake at night, sweat beading her forehead, sometimes not even managing to lie down - just sitting on the edge of the small couch she was using as a bed, hunched over. Waiting for the sun. Not that the sun ever really left - there was always a faint glow from the horizon. The mutants could come at any moment, there'd be no warning. They'd received all the warnings they were going to get - the mutants fleeing ahead of the red tide, the slight increase in ambient contamination, the extermination of the riverside settlement, and Lantha. They'd received more warnings than they reasonably deserved, honestly. Now... now they just waited. Her mind flickered between memories, and... one rose to the forefront. How many days had it been? How... the days blended together into a grey haze. Never moving a step forwards, nor backwards. She stared down at her hands, hair falling in long, tangled locks.

How many days?

Had it even been one?

When would the evacuations begin? The city loomed beyond, the statues glared at her impassively. Her mouth tasted perpetually of copper, the decontamination pills doing their bloody work on her insides. Her skin was marked with tiny scars where she'd clipped away the skin tags which inevitably came from exposure, no matter how many precautions one took. She ran a hand over her face, and it came away damp with sweat.

A memory emerged from the haze.

She shivered.

Welcomed it.

* * *

She'd been... that was it, she'd been observing some of the defences being constructed. The goal was to deny the mutants access to any kind of defences. Once the garrison was abandoned, it was abandoned, there'd be nothing to claim and nothing to hold, all facilities compromised, everything done with the understanding that the whole place might need to be burned to the ground afterwards. Mutant and contamination could squirm into the walls, into the pipes, infest every plank of wood, crawl over the stone in a living bed of lichen, fill the air with so much rot that no-one could ever live again. Bayai had even noted, in a dark tone of voice, that they might need to burn the whole colony. Shift the position of the colony a few miles away, maybe even to the other side of the city. Which meant a good deal of effort had to be spent moving things around to the bunkers within Rekida - guns, ammunition, clothing, vast sealed crates of pointless odds-and-ends that would be useless in the siege, but would be sorely missed in the months to come. The summer uniforms, for instance. The non-lethal weaponry they had for law enforcement. Great quantities of pomade - the men liked the stuff, and Bayai was of the opinion that malicious disobedience was stored in the hair.

"See, if you don't keep your hair under control, then the disobedience leaks out. Chaotic hair... it's like undergrowth. A well-trimmed lawn is hardly going to contain much besides grass and small insects, but chaotic, dense undergrowth can hold... animals, vast varieties of plant life, innumerable insects, fungi, soldiers waiting in ambush, pit traps, bear traps, bears..."

He smiled in a slightly helpless way.

Tanner tried to smile back. Found it easier these days, smiling. Her face was perpetually stiff with tension, yet her muscles were always aching to move, to express the seemingly boundless well of energy that lurked inside her.

"Do moustaches contribute?"

"Oh, definitely. Without a shadow of a whisper of a doubt - but it's a gamble, see. More opportunities to restrain your chaotic disobedience, and more opportunities to unleash it. Someone with a neatly trimmed, waxed moustache has, in all likelihood, never once entertained the thought of breaking the law. Someone with a wild beard, though, is probably a dangerous lunatic. The most dangerous lunatics always have beards, in my experience."

"Even female lunatics?"

"Oh, especially female lunatics. Madness makes you spontaneously grow a beard, no matter what."

"Can't argue with that, I suppose."

He hummed in satisfaction, before letting out a single, slightly strangled laugh. He was stressed. Tanner was stressed. Everyone was stressed. And yet, that stress was holding them together. Stress and momentum - that was the key, because stress alone would just paralyse, cultivate indecision and filly-fallying and whatnot. Momentum alone would just turn one into a burning comet that explodes into a haze of dust after crashing into a wall. But combining the two... well. It worked. Barely. Tanner, personally, was being whipped onwards by a tide of precedent - she'd already come this far, done this much, and quitting wasn't an option, so she had to keep moving. And all that held her together was this motion, and the internal fire that came from productive stress.

Sure, it meant she couldn't sleep.

But it also meant she could function. And at the end of all of this, she could have a heart attack with absolute contentment. Sympathy wasn't an option. If they confessed to one another that they were both barely functioning and were mostly just moving on instinct, the internal tension would unwind, the momentum would cease, and they'd drown in doubt. Tanner had no idea what she was doing. Bayai didn't either. The individual tasks of the day seemed completely rational and reasonable - move this, lift that, say this - but the overall pattern was incomprehensible. She moved with the bright calm of an animal, shuffling from place to place, understanding the motions but never the pattern. What had Vyuli said... buffalo sometimes did incomprehensible things, they behaved bizarrely and even suicidally, and yet Tanner thought, no, she knew that they understood perfectly what they were doing. They moved, they bellowed, they charged, they breathed, the mechanics were all faultless.

And from faultless mechanical action, emerged nonsense. If the buffalo looked up and realised the full scope of their existence, the deep permeation of mechanical madness, they'd probably... the herd would explode and implode simultaneously, they'd charge, they'd fight, they'd lose the unerring natural confidence that allowed them to survive, and then they'd tear themselves to pieces in a fit of terror.

If every eel had to question the meaning of their natural drives, to slot them into a broader pattern which they could agree or disagree with, eels as a species would be gone in a handful of generations. What rational animal would... destroy its own stomach, before swimming across the sea to mate, and then promptly starve to death? What rational animal would go on the voyages they went on?

Be the eel, Tanner, she told herself. Be the eel.

It coiled around the base of her spine, and slid up, vertebra by vertebra, numbing every nerve. Tiny, needle-sharp teeth pressed into organs too deeply buried to be capable of feeling pain. Could feel it at the entrance to her skull, black and slimy, twitching in the festering matter of her body. Great dark eyes stared sightlessly at the oozing mass of her brain. Aching to enter the cerebral ocean. There was a mutant flexibility in it, a mutant's ability to contort and reshape beyond all natural limits. A dappled stomach pressed against her lungs, her displaced bones rattled around like the bones cast by oracles, and a long, long tail was curled into her intestines, following the natural passages. There was certainty in this creature. There was unyielding resolve.

There was a calm brighter than any other. There was the willpower to cross an ocean, to disintegrate all unnecessary organs, let them melt away in a yellow haze. There was the noble brutality of a tyrant.

She blinked.

These thoughts came more and more frequently.

Sometimes she hallucinated. Visions, really. A colour would swirl over a wall for a moment, the snow would seem to explode with stars... once or twice she saw candle-flames burning on random objects, particularly trees and chairs. Staring at the ceiling at night, she thought she could see the vague outlines of a mural, figures with strangely distorted limbs and colour that created great depths. The black shrivelled heart that Lyur had carried around was stored in a box, and sometimes she thought she could hear it beating, slithering to the side of the wood and tapping it gently, eager to emerge and... she never reacted to these things. Not once. If she did, she'd be insane. No, she was just stressed, overworked, had little sleep, and physically was going through decontamination, which always made things odd. Her mind was inching closer to... something, and she wasn't quite sure what. The gyre had widened to such a point that it could never be bound together again, had acquired a self-sustaining momentum that denied restraint.

A sound from outside caught her attention, and Bayai accompanied her as she marched off to investigate. It was a soldier, announcing his return from... oh. Ah.

They'd returned from the towers. She'd ordered someone to do that, hadn't she? Yes, yes, she must've... and that placed these events not long after they determined to execute Lyur. Chronology snapped into place. The mutants had shown the soldiers the tunnels they needed to use to navigate out to the towers, accelerating their progress significantly, but there was more to do than just hopping back and forth - they had to clear out their equipment, bring back their rations, ensure that nothing was being left behind that they minded losing forever.

And last but not least...

The two civilians who were out there. Beldol. And Tal-Sar. Beldol was pale and shivering, despite the multiple layers she was wrapped up in, and she stared at every shadow like it was hiding someone. She said nothing, and avoided Tanner's gaze. For her, this was probably just one long surreal nightmare, chaos piling upon chaos piling upon chaos, and at no stage had she possessed even a scrap of control. Tanner felt a tiny surge of... relief, oddly enough. She'd been living that nightmare for quite a while now. Then, she'd smacked the nightmare in the face and seized control, demanded agency when the world tried to take it away. Seeing Beldol shiver and twitch made her realise that... this was her alternative. This was how she could've ended up. Seeing someone doing the opposite to what she was doing, and turning out significantly worse was... unpleasantly validating.

Beldol looked like she might be hallucinating eels entering her spine, but she had those hallucinations without the right to control a colony and organise its defence.

So there.

And next to her was Tal-Sar. Red hair livid against the snow. Hard-bitten, hard-nosed, a giant folio of attractive noblewomen tucked under one arm and wrapped in many, many layers of brown paper. He shrank into himself a little, just on instinct... then his eyes sharpened, and he glared up at Tanner.

"Been a while."

"...it has. Are you doing well, sir?"

"Doing grand. About to get disembowelled by something, most likely. How's the girl?"

"Oh, she's..."

Not sleeping enough, not eating enough, and keeps asking when Lyur is going to die.

"...fine."

"Hm. Don't mean to be an ungrateful sod, but..."

He stepped closer.

"Are you mental?"

Tanner blinked. The eel around her spine slithered a little more.

"I don't believe so."

"Soldiers told me you brought in some... what, mutants? And now we're meant to work with them?"

He stepped closer again, glaring up with a low-simmering fury that... honestly frightened her more than any kind of explosive tantrum.

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

"You brought the nobles back, you gibbering idiot."

"...they were already here. I just... asked them for help defending the colony."

She felt a twist of guilt in her stomach, and Bayai coughed uncomfortably, before shuffling off to lead Beldol gently into the garrison's comfortingly secure interior. The woman went compliantly, not even a whisper of petty rebellion on her face. And thus, Tal-Sar and Tanner were alone in the street, the snow falling endlessly from the iron-hued sky, flecking both of them in moments - their hair glittered with tiny crystals, the contours of their clothes were filled by snow, their eyelashes shed tiny rains of flakes every time they blinked. Breath fogged up, and in the haze there seemed to be a pleasing anonymity, like they were removing the rest of the world in a warm, pale fog. Creating a place just for the two of them to... tear each other to pieces, presumably. Tal-Sar gritted his teeth, a vein protruded from the side of his head, and...

And Tanner smelled the General before she saw him, let alone heard him.

Ever since he'd returned to civilisation, he'd become preoccupied with his scent - anything to get rid of the nightmarish stench of the underground river. Right now, he positively reeked of almonds and rosewater, and his hair was carefully groomed and oiled over his head, releasing yet more odour - this time lemon. At his side, loping along like a loyal hound, was All-Name. Tanner froze.

Oh, crumbs. Crumbs. Don't tell him about the bear.

The General loomed above, and steam rose from his skin, the heat of his body melting the snow into long, frigid rivulets that vaguely resembled sweat. Even as his face was still with calm, and his eyes were flat and thoughtful, he seemed to be on the verge of frenzy, ready to unleash his terrible, terrible strength.

And when he spoke, he spoke with a soft, soft voice that made Tanner squirm inside her skin. All-Name translated placidly and quietly - solely for Tanner's benefit. When she remembered the conversation, she remembered the rapid patter of dialogue between the two, such that All-Name immediately gave up saying 'my General says' or 'the other fellow says'. Simply repeated their words, and by doing so gave them both the same voice, placid and polite, standing in stark contrast to the contents of the words themselves.

"Does this one understand our language?"

Tal-Sar shivered, but refused to back down from glaring at the General.

"I understand."

"What is your name, then? I would offer mine, but I'm afraid I lost the right when I adopted my... current form."

"Tal-Sar."

A small smile spread over the General's enormous face.

"A slave name. To what house were you born?"

"...my father and mother were both in the house of the Fifth Spear."

"An honourable house. Fortuitous birth. I must tell you, however - your masters are dead, and their line has been extinguished. They were butchered to the last in the fall of the city."

"Good."

The General's smile widened further.

"The lady of the house smothered her children to stop them from being taken by the red tide. They died alone, in the dark and the cold, their fires left unlit, for there were no slaves to gather wood nor to stoke the flames. They died gnawing at the crusts of bread, for the kitchens were unstaffed."

Tal-Sar growled a little.

"Not apologising, you damn mutant. Lady of the house split my mother's face open with her nails once, fit of rage. Took away her looks. Firstborn was a sadist, and he deserved getting torn apart in the siege. Better than he warranted, you ask me. You kick us enough, we leave, if we stayed and somehow survived, we'd just be back under your boot heel."

The General studied him carefully, and slowly moved his enormous arm behind his back, hunching slightly and appearing almost... elderly, for a moment. Tal-Sar stepped back quickly, and Tanner... hm, was there some ritual significance in the gesture of placing a hand behind one's back? Did it mean 'I'm reaching for a knife, and I'm about to cut your throat' or 'I'm capable of making as many rude gestures as I like, and you can't see me doing it' or 'I'm signalling to the people behind me to kill you'?

Could.

Or he could just be startled by the movement of such a large creature.

"Why did you choose to return? Why did the coward come back to the land he betrayed?"

Tal-Sar looked almost feral for a second.

"Because I thought your lot were all dead. Thought I'd live my last days in the land of my birth, stripped of all the people that made me run from it in the first place. I never betrayed this place. I just betrayed you."

"You left this place to moulder and fester. You severed our culture - we have spoken to others of the returned, you didn't even teach them our language. Their ignorance is forgivable. Your deeds are not. Our gods would be forgotten, our art abandoned... the land is more than just the water, and the stone, and the air. The land is the pulsing vitality of thought, the web which binds us together, and you attacked this. Severed it."

He approached slightly, voice never rising beyond an accusatory murmur.

"You betrayed Rekida by running away. Your blood will never be spilled in this place, not by my hands. You are too unclean to sacrifice."

"I'm crying at the thought of you not killing me. And if you don't feel like killing me - what happened to your slaves? You had some, must've done. Can't even remember which general you are, your face is too mutated, but you were a noble, so you had slaves. Where did they go?"

A pause.

"They ran."

"Why?"

"Because others ran. I treated my slaves well, clothed them properly, fed them, housed them, did all that a master should. But they were... enthralled by their emotions too easily, and when the calamity came, and others began to run... they followed the crowd. A slip of their self-control, and once they passed the city walls they could hardly stop. I pity them - and do not pronounce them as woeful wretches, but as... people dragged on by mind-forged manacles they fixed around their own limbs. For all their running, I hope they lived."

Tal-Sar stared.

His mouth moved for a moment, soundless.

If the General wasn't so tall, if Tanner wasn't so close, she honestly thought he might have attacked the General right then and there. Using his nails and teeth if necessary. All-Name actually looked a little afraid of him, shrinking back from the quivering, furious man who was more than twice his age and was, by his own admission, only expecting to live a few more years. The General shrugged vaguely.

"One lingered, however. Only one. And I raised him into my family to honour his loyalty."

Tal-Sar's voice was low and deadly.

"How long did he get to enjoy that?"

"He died a week into the siege. Acquitted himself honourably, and died without a single blemish on his name."

"Sounds about right. Promote someone who's probably going to die anyway. That's all we'd have gotten from you if we'd stayed - some token reward, then back to the kitchens, back to the barracks. Back to those dark, stinking rooms you made us sleep in."

The General hummed thoughtfully, his eyes starting to almost glow with an inner fire.

"The coward runs and calls it bravery. How many thousands of you died on the way south? How many lived to see the end? And when you reach it... you abandon your language, your heritage, your culture, your gods, and you become rootless. Your only fate is to be smoothed into something utterly uniform. To lose all distinction and uniqueness. You deny your children any place in a greater schematic, because of... a petty grudge."

"You enslaved us. For hundreds of years. Born in the dark, living in the dark, dying in the dark, and all the while you got whatever you damn well wanted."

"And when the time came, we fought for our city, we stood our ground and battled to the end. And you ran."

"We lived."

"What kind of life?"

"A free one. One without you."

"A rootless life, a wandering life, a life without purpose or honour. You have built a new people - and they are founded on cowardice and abandonment."

"And a life with you would be a chained life, one where we get nothing but the scraps from your table. There's a reason we left."

"Cowardice."

"Bitterness."

"Your thoughts would have meaning if we'd run away too. We didn't. We stood our ground. When the time came, when all others fled, we remained. And here we are again. Doing what we must."

The General moved quickly, his hand emerging from behind his back... to pat Tal-Sar gently on the shoulder.

"I suggest you evacuate with the others. And mind your way - the snow is treacherous for those of your age."

Tal-Sar was silent. Quivering with anger. The General smiled a little... then turned on his heel and left, All-Name sidling along beside him like a loyal hunting dog. Tanner had no idea what to think. The General was... the problem was, he was smug, he was odd, he probably had no moral qualms with enslaving others, and even if he had the 'excuse' of being raised in a culture that encouraged the practice, it... there was no way of mincing words, in Fidelizh, the General would be a monster. In civilisation, he'd be a monster. But out here, he was human enough. The binary state of survive/perish didn't leave room for that kind of moralising over one's bedfellows. He was an essential ally. And she hoped, gods, she hoped he wouldn't live to see the end of. Wanted him to die valiantly defending the city, and then her thoughts could be concluded, solidified and filed away in the back of her memory-room. That was it. That was all she wanted. Because seeing Tal-Sar shiver with undisguised fury and hatred was... uncomfortable.

"Are you... alright?"

"You didn't believe him?"

His voice was low and dangerous.

"...no, I don't... agree with him. In any other circumstance, I have no doubt I'd consider him to be... evil, or at least, not someone I want to work with. But here..."

"Strange bedfellows. I get it."

A pause.

"You don't... know what it was like. He'll say it was fine. That we lived comfortably. I don't think... he even saw things, really. I don't think any of them did. I think that was the first thing they did as children, they cut out that part of them that saw what was happening, because if they didn't, they'd have burned the city down to the ground to try and wipe out the stain. Had to cut that part out. And it never grows back. Maybe he treated his slaves well. Gave them good clothes, maybe even more freedom than most. But if he wanted them to do something, they had to do it. If he wanted to treat them well, he could. If he felt like abusing them, he could. You live, day in, day out, knowing that the person who owns you can just... tear you apart one day, and that would be the end of it. Lady of my house scratched my mother's face, and the next day, sent a doctor to check on her. Made it clear she was apologising. But she only apologised because she felt guilty - there was no punishment, there was nothing but what she granted. If she wanted to do worse, she could. Sometimes they'd be decent. Then sometimes the mask slips. And you see what they had to cut out of themselves to stay functional."

Iron-breathed men and iron-breathed women. Murderers in the confines of their mind, everything already locking together. The act of murder had already been conceived and accepted - the only barrier was a physical one. And once you realised that a murderer was sleeping in someone's head, and only crude, blunt reality with all its challenges was holding that murderer in place... well, it changed things. Tanner could feel it on Vyuli, on many of the bouncers, on Canima... and probably many more. With people like that, all you had was the assurance that they wouldn't kill, because it didn't benefit them, they didn't necessarily want to kill her, they were confident they'd fail, or confident they'd be extensively punished afterwards. It was a thought that... the Golden Law espoused and denied. The idea of a self-evident and perfect law meant that some people were skull-bound murderers who had to be restrained, yet there was also a belief that the Golden Law could drain away all murderous instincts, by providing a thousand defusing mechanisms and calming thoughts. The Golden Law both punished the murderer, and drained the will to murder.

Canima had frightened her, once, because she could smell the iron on his breath, and knew that he could murder her and no-one would know about it - or he could ruin her life to a degree that might as well be murder. His tools were more diverse and more accessible than anyone else's. And over time, she'd seen that arsenal shrink, saw how tiny it really was, and the number of types of murder he could inflict diminished as the situation changed.

The idea of being in a situation where... someone could have the iron breath of a murderer, and there were no restrictions, no restraints, no punishing mechanism...

She shivered. And spoke very quietly.

"I'm sorry."

Tal-Sar sighed a little, some of the anger draining from him at the sight of Tanner's expression.

"...they'll be dead soon, anyway."

"I'd imagine so."

"Might as well... let them do something good. But don't you think that this is... one long ego trip for them?"

"Hm?"

"I mean... shove the whole colony into bunkers. Watch over us. Protect us from threats. It's like they're back in charge, and the situation is such that we can't run this time. They get to prove themselves right, at least in the confines of their own heads."

Tanner blinked.

"...you're sounding very... stable today."

"What's that supposed to mean."

"Last time, you were talking about the great bloodletting, about how the earth cried out for revenge, you..."

"I was alone in a chained tower. I was funny. Just... being funny is a luxury, girl. Being funny is something you become when you can, and right now... not giving them the damn satisfaction of acting like an old fool. Even held back from drinking water today, didn't want them to know I've got a bladder the size of a damn thimble."

His voice was a low, continuous mutter.

Tanner felt odd.

Felt... strange, seeing someone she'd classified as a strange, rambling old man become highly articulate, downright intelligent, and completely restrained. Bound back into a state of normality by stress and necessity, a desire to not be seen as odd, and...

Oh. Wow. It was odd seeing this from the outside.

If the others knew about how odd she was getting...

No-one did. No-one would. Just wasn't an option. Tal-Sar said nothing else. Just began to sidle away towards an inn, ready for a drink. Tanner almost joined him on instinct... but liquor wouldn't help. She'd need to drink a great deal to feel anything, and her mind needed to stay sharp. She sighed... and started to walk away. Back to work. Back to preparing for the sacrifice. And then, to her surprise... something came to stop her.

Tanner blinked.

The mutant girl didn't. She just stared.

How on earth had she gotten so close to... no, no, they probably thought she was just another Rekidan, and the girl had definitely exploited that belief. Mimicking voices was a fast-developing talent for her - less an act of innovation than of remembrance, waking up old muscles, exerting old instincts. No intelligence in it, though. No actual speech. Tanner studied the mutant, wondering what... was actually going to happen. Was she going to attack? Was this where it ended? Or...

The mutant moved forwards on all fours, and perched near Tanner's legs. Staring outwards.

"Oh."

A pause.

"...are you just... following me?"

Silence, and the girl's lips moved, experimenting with... oh gods.

"Follow."

Descriptive. Meaningless, coming from her, but... what, did she think Tanner was going to sod off and leave her without a meal? Did she think Tanner was going to feed her to the other Rekidans? Or was she just afraid of hanging around people that would gladly kill her, regarding her as a shameful degeneration of a noble? Maybe all the above. And a healthy desire to be close to the start of the carnage. Tanner walked back to the mansion in silence, pondering the work she had left to do today... and the mutant followed with placid ease, ignoring the cold, the other humans, everything. Now, Tanner knew how this looked - like she had a dog following her around. Really, it was more like having a vulture perched on her shoulder.

Indeed, as the day went on... the mutant never left.

And the grey haze of meaningless time pressed in once more around the memory. Cutting it off. A single bright point of attention amidst endless paranoia and preparation, everything defined by what it was leading towards, not existing in and of itself.

And always, the mutant was at her side.

Waiting.

* * *

Back in the present, Tanner was still sitting, hunched. Playing over old memories like they were still happening in front of her. Which, in a way, they were. The process she was going through was... non-linear. Whether she moved a box first, second, or third in her order of operations was basically irrelevant. Every task was unmoored. All that mattered was that they were completed. The colony, right now, was an engine in which any part could be moved around without reference to the other, defying all conventional laws of physics. And with this... there came a shapelessness which defied organisation. Tal-Sar could've come in the morning, afternoon, or evening. He could've come while she was doing one job, or another job. He could've arrived without her knowledge, and everything would have played out exactly the same. So what did it matter if it was yesterday? Or earlier today? Or a week ago? A year ago? Sixteen weekends? She ran a hand over her face, ignoring the glittering eyes of the mutant in the corner, loyally remaining at her side. Confident in her ability to create more violence. Time was nothing. All that lingered were two events. The death of Lyur. And the attack on the colony. These events dictated all others. Everything fed into them, and during them, she was sure, time would resume. The past was a grey haze, the present was a chaotic jumble of events loosed from the strict boundaries of chronology, and the future... the future was a dark, dark sky, punctuated by two stars.

Only two. And soon, one would wink out.

And then that, too, would start to flicker...

And then what?

No. Stop thinking about that.

She glanced out of the window, looking at the snow-covered landscape... for a second her vision flickered, and she thought she could see the snow moving like water, crashing in great waves and billows, spraying up glittering crystalline foam towards a sky brimming with stars... she thought she could see the houses slipping below the surface, drowning amidst an ocean of purest white... she thought she could see things swimming amidst the snow, strange creatures somewhere between seals and moles, clawing at the liquid frost, staring all about with huge clusters of black, shimmering eyes, and she could see it rising, rising, the silvery moon raining liquid snow, the moon a coin, the moon a gate, the moon the single flaw in a dam... every star a tiny gap, and once the dam was flawed enough, the stars would break, the moon would expand, and an ocean of interminable snow would flow down and surround all the world. The underground rivers would fill, and there'd be silence, for once, silence... a sea of snow over a foundation of mud frozen solid...

Tanner pinched the bridge of her nose.

Not sleeping enough. Too stressed.

Marana was here.

Tanner barely glanced, just focused on pinching her nose until it felt like she was about to break something.

"...Tanner?"

"Yes? What is it?"

"Done the investigations you asked."

"Find anything?"

Weariness made her curt. Marana's voice was hesitant, and the woman refused to come too far into the room, afraid of the mutant who watched her from a corner.

"Yes, a little. Some of the owners... they're not looking into escaping, they know that's suicide, but they've been making... overtures. Want to hire some soldiers to protect them specifically, to abandon their posts and hunker down with the household. They think the mutants will get in, inevitably, and that there's a possibility of... them being killed. Even if the colony survives, the mutants might get them, or the cartel, or just anyone who wants to get a pound of flesh. So..."

"Hiring private security."

"More or less."

Tanner sighed.

"I'll ask around. See what I can do."

"They're afraid, Tanner. Very afraid."

"So is everyone else. Doesn't mean they get to bribe soldiers to abandon their posts. I'll ask about how to stop this happening - could you write down names, there's some paper over there."

She gestured vaguely, still concentrating on returning to reality.

"Tanner, you... really ought to get some sleep."

"I know."

"And you definitely shouldn't be sleeping near a mutant. Unsanitary."

"I know."

"Would you like me to find a soldier, see if he can remove it?"

"No, thank you. Just... leave it be. I'm interacting with plenty of mutants already. Plus, she's a good warning system. When the mutants get close, she'll scarper."

"There are better warning systems."

"I'm aware."

Why was she still here? Why was... oh, good. Marana was writing hurriedly, and in the dark Tanner couldn't see her face. Just her hands, which shook very slightly. There was an undeniable tension between the two. Silly tension. Tanner had already forgiven her for the Eygi business, not that there was much to forgive. Marana could've let it end there, but she had to try and make Tanner feel doubt in her current course, her current way of thinking. Doubt was death at the moment. Shouldn't have tried to plant it. Not that there was malice in the act, but... still. Marana was clearly affected by it.

There was nothing else said.

Even when Marana finished, she just went for the door and left, face still in shadow.

Tanner didn't react.

She was just trying to stop the snow-ocean from coming back.

And in the corner, the mutant moved her mouth silently, forming the shadow of words.

And her eyes gleamed like coins.

Like the twin stars of sacrifice and survival. The only two stars Tanner was following.

The only two stars left in the sky.