CHAPTER NINETY-NINE - SCAPEGOAT

"...oh, of course ma'am, honoured judge. We'll handle it."

Ms. Blue's face was turning black with rage. Tanner felt a twitch of apprehension, looking at her. The woman was... odd, to say the least, and being informed that a number of people were trying to undermine the defence to make sure they could be properly protected, weakening the whole for the sake of the few, had... made her oddness more pronounced. And very slightly threatening. Tanner would be bugging Bayai about this, but... she'd seen how haggard he was, how thin he was becoming, physically and mentally. He was a young officer being tasked with managing a whole colony - even now, she didn't trust Vyuli enough to let men loyal to him run the show when it came to defence, nor did she think the soldiers would ever accept their command. It was funny, she'd never met these two Sersas. They just... existed at the periphery of her mind, already written off as corrupt, tied up with the old regime, useless to her as anything but more hands to hold guns and flamethrowers. Maybe she just didn't want to meet them, because if she did, she'd empathise, sympathise, and gradually be infected with their ways of thinking. She'd thought, barely a... no idea how long, but it wasn't that long ago, that getting to know someone was like being impregnated by them, growing a near-identical twin formed of the objective reality of someone else, and her own subjective reading of them. A creature that, if she was lucky, somewhat resembled the person she was talking to, enough for her to predict and understand them.

And she had a squalling brood of quite sufficient size. Adding more would demand mental energy she just... didn't want to expend. Better to leave them at a distance. Quarantined, effectively. She had enough people running around for her to keep track of, and at this point she barely managed to sleep an hour or so a night. Maybe that was it - knowing someone created an impression, and an awareness of the gaps in that impression. And each gap was a little distortion, a little failure of prediction. And her mind, like all minds, abhorred a vacuum. So it spent time and effort filling the gaps with speculation, forming complex hierarchies of probability, trying to map out what could fill that element of a personality. And here... she had a fatal combination of finding many, many new people, and learning to predict or understand them was a matter of life and death - plus, the scale of what could fill those voids was larger. Back home, the voids were small, she had a good notion of what was reasonable, and what wasn't. Here...

There was a cartel, there were criminals, there were mutants, there were conspiracies, and that meant... well, she had more probabilities.

The explosion of unpredictability was what was keeping her up at night. Probably. Maybe?

Maybe.

Ms. Blue was another unknown. Didn't know her name, because she was useless and still hadn't mustered the willpower to just ask. But she was... she seemed eerily fascinated by Tanner for reasons Tanner couldn't quite fathom, not emotionally. Intellectually, she could see why someone might have a high opinion of her, but... the actual leap from 'high opinion' to the sort of devotion that Ms. Blue demonstrated was utterly beyond her. And now... now she was basically frothing at the lips like a rabid dog, and had stopped paying attention to the redhead mutant who was sitting austerely on the windowsill, staring at the humans with complete disinterest, though her eyes did flicker to study whoever was talking at a given moment.

"Don't... be rough with them. All I need is for the people involved to be gently reprimanded."

Ms. Blue stared at her, and spoke softly, respectfully, almost purring.

"Ma'am, I believe the sentence for sabotaging the defence of the colony during a period of crisis is death. By firing squad, typically. Ma'am."

Tanner blinked.

"...we're not killing them. We're just going to... they're panicked, they're just trying to look out for their families, their friends. The governor was never really on their side, he did his best to defang them at every opportunity. They're afraid - when some of the civilians were afraid, they ran from the colony. This is just... the next outlet. Find the people who are considering going along with the offer, I've already got a list of people making the offers. Be gentle. We're not going to survive this by punishing everyone who steps out of line."

"...ma'am..."

Ms. Blue swallowed, her eyes almost burning with intensity. Oh, gods, was she about to object? Was she-

"You are truly merciful, ma'am. I mean, you didn't kill the woman that led the evacuation, you're not killing anyone involved in this, Lyur's still alive and you're going through the proper process rather than just shooting him and getting it over with, it... I..."

She paused, getting herself under control.

"I apologise for my... bloodthirstiness. I'll be discrete."

Her eyes flicked to the mutant on the windowsill, then back to Tanner, then back to the mutant, and finally, she gazed up with something Tanner wanted to call awe. Her skin crawled. Ms. Blue shifted her weight from foot to foot, clearly wanting to stay, but... she snapped off a smart salute, clicked her heels, and marched off with a very slight blush colouring her cheeks. Tanner was... utterly baffled. The mutant literally wouldn't leave her alone, she'd just stopped trying to get her to leave. And why would the mutant make her admirable, it made her weird, and deeply untrustworthy. Never trust someone who kept hanging around mutants. It was unsanitary, and likely indicated some kind of mental disturbance. Either way.

Yan-Lam brought her some coffee - they were running low on it, Tanner was drinking far too much and they were reusing the same grounds more and more, creating a weaker brew that she had to really chug to get a buzz going. The girl was... a little squinty, and blinked rather a few times as she served things up.

"Tired?"

"Hm? Oh. Little bit, miss. Little bit."

Tanner slumped into a chair, feeling... just a little bit dead.

"I understand. You can head off for a nap, if you like."

"Oh, no, no, that's fine. I prefer working. Keeps my mind occupied."

She passed a cup over, and Tanner noticed she had... quite a few ink stains around her fingers.

"Been writing?"

A hurried few blinks.

"Oh, a little. A little. Reading, mostly. You know. Keeps me busy. Going over... uh... the old case notes."

Tanner tilted her head to one side.

"Why?"

"...curiosity, I suppose. "

A flash of fear. The notes contained details on... everything, really. It was irrational, but she thought Yan-Lam might be figuring out what had happened to the governor, what had really happened, and... no, shush. Yan-Lam knew it was a lie, but she maybe didn't know the full extent of this lie, nor did she know the final details of the case. Lyur wasn't guilty of the governor's murder, but he was guilty of enough. Yan-Lam didn't know about... the nobility's guilt, nor a whole suite of other details.

No, hold on. She did know about the nobility's guilt. Not all the specifics, but she knew they were culpable in the governor's death.

Hated keeping track of lies.

...so, Yan-Lam was fine. At least the risk of others finding out was minimal. The only way of seeing through her cover-up was by getting a confession from the nobles, believing Lyur's protestations of innocence (that he hadn't actually made, surprisingly), or seriously focusing on the limited reports from the mortuary assistant on the governor's body, which revealed wounds that... Lyur shouldn't have been able to make. Of course, this was easier to observe in-person, in the confines of notes it was... rather hard to picture anything. Still. Didn't like the idea. She rose suddenly, draining her coffee in a single gulp, and headed for the door. She could feel time ticking downwards towards the sacrifice. And she'd been putting this off for long enough. For once, she had... basically nothing to do, and the longer she stuck around here, the close she came to going a bit loopy. Because obviously she hadn't gone loopy at all yet. Yan-Lam was silent - she knew Tanner was busy, didn't question her movements at this stage. The mutant dropped down from her perch, and padded noiselessly after her... no, not owner, not master, not keeper, just... her meal ticket. Her debtor, who required supervision to ensure timely and abundant repayments of the time and effort the mutant had invested into her.

Tanner grabbed her axe.

Found comfort in the weight. Push came to shove, she could always turn the mutant girl into a small red puddle. Hm. Wonder if her squashed remains would be the same shade as her hair. The buffalo cape settled around her shoulders, and she relished in the warmth, and the... strange primal feeling of being inside a mostly-intact animal skin.

And... placed a small wooden box into her pocket. A box contained a shrivelled human heart. Gods, she had an axe, a cape of buffalo fur, a shrivelled heart, a mutant attendant, she was thinking about sacrifices, she was practically becoming some sort of deeply unpleasant Fidelizhi god, or one of those figures from the lodge's mystery plays. Or a villain from the Annals of Tenk... or a hero from the Annals of Tenk, everyone in that series wore furs of some description.

...well, no, she was better than them, she had clothes under the fur, didn't strut around in furry undergarments and nothing else. She had propriety, she thought, as she adjusted her unkempt hair, her pelt, her axe, her shrivelled heart, and kept an eye on the mutant dogging her heels.

And she began to descend through the mansion. Towards the cells. Had a few conversations she'd been putting off.

The mansion was... quiet, which was good. Very good. If she was very quiet, then-

Oh, gods, they'd noticed her.

The soldiers stood, snapped to attention, issued a series of perfectly-timed salutes, and avoided looking her directly in the eyes, deferentially lowering their gazes.

Wanted to crawl out of her skin and run away into the wilderness. One of them could wear the skin. Ms. Blue could, she'd definitely not mind. Give her a pair of stilts, let her inhabit her skin, and let her deal with getting saluted by people she barely knew. She didn't even know their names, for crying out loud, though... though would knowing their names make it worse? Oh, gods, they were still saluting, and... they'd polished their boots to a mirror shine, there was a force of mutants coming and they were still polishing their boots to that quality, she'd seen other guards with unpolished boots, so... gods, were they polishing their boots for her? And their faces were shaved, their hair slicked with pomade, their uniforms pressed and immaculate, they looked like they were trying to impress someone, and given that it was literally only her here half the time, that rather narrowed down the list of people they might be trying to impress.

Alright, rely on the might be, maybe they were just bored and polished their boots and arranged their hair and cleaned their uniforms out of boredom. Anything to fill up the time.

She nodded uncomfortably at them.

"Good morning."

"Good morning, ma'am!"

Oh gods they'd done it in unison.

She was... intensely afraid. She had an axe, she was taller than all of them, and she was just going to run away, the mutant trailing her. Come on, surely the mutant would tell them 'this person is not worth respecting to a tremendous degree'. Fearing, maybe. But adored? No, no, please no. She walked away in a calm and orderly fashion. Then broke into a panicked shuffle once she was out of sight. Not a run, that would be... audible. She tended to make things shake when she ran. This was better. Shuffle-shuffle-shuffle...

...she was acting governor.

She was acting governor, she was negotiating issues that were the difference between life and death for most of the colony, and she was still like this.

Somehow, this pleased her.

Despite it all, she still imploded when people praised her.

Praise be.

Her expression was utterly flat as she turned a corner, and saw Mr. Canima standing at the other end, having just emerged from one of the small rooms that dotted the mansion. He had no papers with him, no pens, nothing that would suggest... any kind of work. His tweed suit hung around his frame - for once, not clinging tightly, like he was slowly shrivelling away now that his authority had been taken. She paused, watching him for a moment. He was... moving around a lot more. And with less subtlety. She remembered when he had a habit of appearing and vanishing at will, maybe using the secret passages inside the mansion, and now... now he walked. And quite slowly, too. He turned slightly, noticing her. No idea what he was up to. No idea if he was up to anything, or if he was just trying to walk around a bit more, get some blood into his limbs before the evacuation. He stalked over, and all she could see was an old, tired man. The terror was gone. All that remained was flesh - the ideas, the authority, the mystery, all of that had vanished like smoke in a storm.

Leaving him.

"Good morning, judge."

"Good morning, Mr. Canima."

A pause. The two sized one another up.

"When does the execution take place?"

Tanner froze.

"...I'm still-"

"I would recommend doing it swiftly."

He spoke with mild disinterest, but his eyes remained bright and intelligent. This was... assertive. He hadn't made any demands of this sort since he was deposed. Tanner took a second to formulate an answer.

"May I ask... why?"

Why do it swiftly. And why decide to intervene on this issue, even after everything was said and done. As she thought, though, she realised she knew why. Canima thought Lyur had killed the governor. That was the story Tanner was running with, and... presumably Canima trusted her enough to believe her word, despite the tiny niggling doubts that were surely clustering around his brain, just as they did hers. And revenge was probably the only thing he had left - survival would only buy him a few more years of obscurity, then quiet retirement, then death. He couldn't save the colony, he couldn't keep the governor's work going, but he could definitely avenge him.

"The longer you wait, the more the anticipation builds. Like harvesting a field. If you wait for too long, the rot begins to set in, time runs out, and you need to take whatever can be held in two hands. If you want to achieve a... grand effect, I would suggest taking care of the matter soon."

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"I... see."

There was silence for a second.

"Are you afraid of killing him?"

"Excuse me?"

"I heard the conversation - my legs are stiff, but my ears still function. No hanging. What method would you suggest?"

"What... method would you use?"

"A firing squad has the advantage of anonymity. A handful of soldiers blasting away, it... cultivates collective responsibility. Instead of a single face, you have a dozen."

"...yes. That would…"

She paused.

"But a soldier killing him would, perhaps, send the wrong message."

"Quite. If you're concerned about the opinions of the cartel."

"I... could do the deed myself. Take the focus, the blame."

"Hm."

He studied her.

"That... would have a certain poetry to it. Solidify your authority through a public demonstration. Ordinarily, I would caution against such... theatrics, but in this circumstance, there might be leeway. The governor would never execute someone himself, but for a leader rising in the middle of a crisis..."

He trailed off, still examining her closely. Tanner shivered under the weight of his gaze. Wanted him to object, just a little. To tell her she was stupid, and ought to let someone else handle it. But... who else could? Who could do it without inviting huge quantities of baggage? A soldier killing a cartel member, the cartel killing one of their own... idly, she wondered if Canima could do it, a final act before retirement, but... no, no. They lived in violent times. She'd proved her credibility on several occasions, but mostly by... by drawing people in. By negotiating and integrating. By peacefully widening their forces - she hadn't truly taken a single life. Thus far, she'd only had the threat of violence, a threat she'd thus far not acted on.

The judges had achieved their greatest prominence when they could execute the death penalty themselves, no reference to the Golden Parliament or the old kings of Fidelizh. When you commanded life and death, you became mighty, you became capable of anything. Sister Halima had talked about it on quite a few occasions. The judges couldn't wield true force against people, so their position had naturally diminished. But sometimes you could feel the shadows of the old strength, that hideous power which had let them reign, rather than serve. It soaked into the rocks of the underground labyrinth, where prisoners were hung and thrown into yawning black pits. It lingered in the ashes of their failed cases, where grudges piled high and injustice held sway. She was still just a bureaucrat.

She had to do this. A crisis was coming, she had... had to show that she was capable of this, could stomach bloodshed, could lead them through calamity.

Had to show she was dedicated to the colony. Had to show her power was absolute and unchallengeable. That she was in command, not Vyuli, not Canima, not the Rekidans, not the military, no-one but her.

...she'd demanded power. With this power came the duty to execute the death penalty when necessary. Lyur, even if she discounted the governor's murder, was doubtless deserving of this penalty. Thus, she had a duty to execute him. If she was still a normal judge, she'd be recommending the penalty anyway, now she just had the responsibility of actually ordering it. A degree of separation had been removed, that was all. She had to actually perform the judgements she prescribed, that was all.

That was all.

That was all.

Funny thing was, this was the first time she'd actually recommended the death penalty. She was a junior judge - they never let junior judges handle cases where that might come up. She dealt with property disputes, primarily. Property disputes and petty crimes.

Goodness, she was moving up in the world.

"I'll be on my way, Mr. Canima. Unless there was anything else."

"No, no... please, go about your business. But... do try and take care of the little blackguard soon, won't you? He truly, truly deserves it."

The tiny shrivelled black heart in Tanner's pocket seemed to pulse in agreement. And Tanner felt convinced that he'd taken the heart himself, dried it out, let it grow dark as pitch and tough as old leather. Maybe he just wanted to prove that he could. Maybe he just wanted to know what it felt like. Idly, Tanner thought that if you had your heart carved out, you wouldn't feel a thing from the heart itself. Maybe you would experience a single moment of tremendous emptiness, and immaculate stillness as your blood stopped flowing, no muscle driving it onwards. Maybe. That was always a thought, wasn't it - that people suffering a fatal injury were driving the human experience to new heights, new depths. What did it feel like, to have one's heart removed? What did it feel like, to have the skull split and the brain pulverised? What did it feel like, to be cut in half? Once you got beyond the shock, the immediate pain, once a terrible numbness swept the body... what did you feel? Maybe people with a heart missing experienced great oneness with the world as stillness spread through them, maybe people sawed in half experienced a kind of tremendous relief as all internal pressure ceased and finally, finally, the tight coils of organs could unwind. Maybe. Maybe Lyur would regret his decisions as he was killed. Maybe he would understand, and even repent. Maybe he'd coldly acknowledge what was happening, and only be saddened by the fact that it would only happen once.

She needed to stop thinking.

Canima left her. What had he been doing down here?

Should she ask him to stay in his room?

...no. No. The cells were up ahead. The mansion didn't have many, because the colony didn't have many crimes. Regular criminals could go to the cells in the garrison, which were... more conventional. These were for special criminals. Criminals that Canima wanted to talk to, usually. They were more comfortable, as a result. Carpets. Larger beds. A feeling of unease washed over her - wondered how much these had been used during the silent war. If those carpets had to be rotated over time. About five cells, only two filled, and the doors were such that communication between prisoners was impossible. Tanner checked a small sheet...

Right.

Cell one.

She bent down, and slid open the grate of the heavy metal door, the one at eye-level. A few bars faced her, and between the little dark slits... Tom-Tom. Pyulmila. Sitting on her bed, hands clenched into fists over her knees. Eyes hollow with isolation - they swivelled in Tanner's general direction, taking a few seconds to really focus. The dark slits of the bars seemed to dissect her a little, so she looked like Tom-Tom reduced to slides on a microscope. Tanner stared at her. Tom-Tom stared back. And slowly, carefully, made her way to the door. Stared out with a sort of... caged animal look about her, clawing at the lines of her face. Even a brief period of imprisonment was enough to bring out something a little feral. Tanner... didn't like to think about that. Not at all. If she was in such a condition, she thought that she'd wilt under the weight of constant introspection. The nights were bad enough, and she was seeing odd visions every other hour, even if they were just flickers across the landscape. Day upon day upon day of nothing but her own thoughts, it... she'd become feral, too. If only because it was easier than remaining fully human.

"Good morning."

"Is it morning? Hard to tell. Light's... well."

"Never seems like the sun really sets at the moment. Suppose that's good, it stops the mutants attacking at night."

"Suppose. Drives you a bit potty, though."

"Bit."

"Is everything alright out there? Everyone alive?"

The unmentioned question: 'what are people saying about me?' Something faintly suicidal about the question. The desire to know if anyone would miss you when you were gone. Tanner had thought that a few times, now. In darker moments. Obligation propelled her onwards. Obligation and momentum.

Always momentum.

"Things are still quiet. We're intending to move you tomorrow - send you to the bunkers."

"Promise I won't start a fuss."

"...thanks. But we'll be keeping you under guard, nonetheless."

"Wouldn't even mind if you gave me a rifle and told me to martyr myself."

Tanner grimaced.

"That's the last thing I want. Just... hold tight. We'll be moving you."

"I'm sorry. For everything."

"I know."

There was a small pause. And Tanner felt a question bubbling up in her.

"Do you... can I ask, what were your plans, if you escaped?"

Tom-Tom blinked.

"Oh. Uh. I'd... just keep going. Run south. Do what I could. Keep taking chances, until either I die, or... I don't know, I die of old age, instead. Father's old, I suppose... I just thought that was how you were meant to be. That's the peak. Being an old, weird woman with loads of memories and plenty of stories. Grumpy and whatnot."

A small, desperate laugh.

"Just... keep going until I become father."

"...nothing else?"

A confused blink, this time.

"Not really."

"You don't... want to do something else with your life?"

A shrug.

"Been thinking about that. Don't think there is. I mean... think about it, how many people just do what their parents did? Like, it's got to be most people - pa's a farmer, so you become a farmer. Or you just... follow their model. I figure, what most people realise is they can be rebellious and stuff, then their kids rebel against them, and their kids rebel against them, and eventually we all just come full circle. Maybe you just realise that's the case, and get it over with - instead of starting a loop, you just simplify it to a line. More efficient, and you end up in the same place anyway. And then your parents can give you advice, you can imitate them when you're in doubt, you can use the connections they've built, the business they've created... you know?"

Tanner was silent.

"...just think that's the end of it. Could say 'bog off, dad', and become... I don't know, a fisherwoman for the rest of my life. Not un-fond of fishing. But then my kid, if I had one, would ask 'hey, mum, why are you so content being a little nobody out here, fishing and doing nothing else' and they'd find out about Grandpa Vyuli, and then... well. You know what I mean. Just... life's scary enough. Prefer to just be part of a family business. That way you've got support."

"You're afraid of doing something yourself."

"Little bit."

"So... you're content with being a criminal."

"...content... don't know about that. Father's a 'criminal', sisters were meant to be the same, all our friends do it... it's not just leaving him behind, it's leaving behind a world. You figure, most people just go into the family business, or they stay in their area, and... they seem alright. Just my luck that I ended up in this family business. Would've been a pretty good farmer, I think. If father had been one."

She sighed.

"I suppose that sounds pretty pathetic. Sorry. Why did you... come down here?"

"To talk. Not much else."

"Hm."

Tanner didn't... know what to think. Tom-Tom was self-pitying and frequently irritating. But it was hard to tell who she was, under the layers of socialisation and habit and pretence. Maybe there was a decent person buried under it. Maybe there was just a normal person, flawed as anyone else. If she'd been born to a fishing family, she'd be just fine, would be a normal, normal person. And nothing else. Hm. If Tanner and Tom-Tom had switched places at birth, Tanner genuinely thought they'd have worked out better. Tom-Tom could be a slightly irritating fisherwoman. And Tanner, with her size, could be the thuggish gorilla she was probably destined to be. Took Tanner twenty-three years to climb out of the shell her upbringing had placed her in, to become... whatever she was becoming. And Tom-Tom had just been too weak to do that.

Both of them were just lobsters. Bound up in carapaces they had to shed. Tanner had managed it. And Tom-Tom hadn't. Maybe at this point she never would, and if she managed it, the body underneath would be too deformed, too starved of sunlight, too weak to survive. Like someone who wore a too-tight corset for years and years and years, slowly breaking their bones as time went on.

This was why Tanner didn't talk to the other Sersas. Tom-Tom was occupying this much space in her head - she couldn't add more people at this point, she just couldn't. Her capacity was reached.

Tom-Tom retreated.

Tanner shut the grate.

There was nothing more to be said. Rather, nothing more Tanner would say. Neither of them knew each other. Despite it all, they were still foreign countries with mutually incomprehensible languages. Beyond charades... real communication had been off the table for some time.

The next cell loomed before her.

And she quietly, cautiously opened the grate.

To stare at the oddly damp face of Lyur. His dark eyes flickered open, staring at her with abject coldness. He was lying on the bed, sprawled contentedly with his shirt removed and his bare chest on display, glistening with a faint layer of sweat - the cells were always warm, they were right next to the boilers. His hair seemed to tighten around his head due to the dampness, smooth and dark like the fur of a drowned rat. And his face... his face was just the same as it always was. Captivity hadn't affected it, nor had exile, nor had underground living, nor had anything else. He was one of those men who seemed unchangeable, because he'd already reached his final state, the point where all prototypes were refined into a unified product ready for mass-production. Hard to imagine him older, hard to imagine him younger, hard to imagine him furious, or saddened, or in any state but this. Hard to imagine him expressing tenderness, simply because she'd never known him to do so. His tongue moved over his lips like a small pink leech, and he spoke to the humid silence.

"Is it time?"

Tanner was silent.

Lyur kept going, voice never rising above a vague, sleepy murmur.

"I once heard a story about a man who was punished with two things. Death... and unknown death. The day of the execution was never to be known to him. It would be a total surprise. Thus, he would go to the chopping block without his mind properly prepared. The execution would be within one week, that was all he knew. And he thought... well, it can't be the last day of the week. Because then it wouldn't be a surprise - if he got through all the other days, there'd be no argument, the final day was the day he'd die. So, that was off the table. So... he figured, if that day's off the table, well, the penultimate day also has to be off the table. Because if he got to that day, he'd know the final day wouldn't be chosen, so it couldn't be the penultimate day either! And so on. One by one, he eliminated each and every day - he'd be surprised on none of them, not a single one, because the final day was off, and the penultimate day, and so on and so on."

A pause.

"He was executed on the third day."

Tanner blinked.

"Oh."

"You see, people with total knowledge are more vulnerable to surprise than anyone else."

"I got it."

"Wonderful. That girl, the red-haired one, she understood it too. So, is today the day?"

Tanner hesitated. Idly processed that Yan-Lam had been talking with Lyur. Ought to make sure that didn't keep happening. In a cell, he was quarantined. His voice was sterilised. She didn't want any part of him escaping into the world. A question passed her lips before she could think.

"Where did the heart come from?"

"You'd never believe me."

"It's not... your heart, is it?"

Silence.

"A victim?"

"Hardly matters. You're executing me anyway, one more murder would hardly add much on."

A pause.

"I liked your plan. Cunning. Refreshingly brutal."

"Was this something you wanted? Did you want me to... do this?"

Lyur smiled faintly.

"It has a certain poetic justice to it. But, no, I didn't plan it. I didn't need to. You push a boulder down a hill, the boulder falls down and hits someone, that doesn't mean I schemed to create gravity, or boulder formation, or the geological process that makes hills. Fact is..."

His eye flicked to her, coldly surveying her face.

"...it's not as hard as you think it is."

He sat up, slowly.

"Haven't you ever thought of it?"

"Thought of what."

"Thought of... well. The... appeal of it? I wake up in the morning. I find a man, and I kill him, or I steal his wallet. I buy whichever train ticket I can afford. On the train I steal a suitcase from someone who looks to be my size, and now I have an outfit. In the suitcase is a schedule for a conference, which I attend, and there I meet a woman I get to talking with, and before I know it, we've been together for a few weeks. Then, randomly, I take all the money she has, and go somewhere else. But the police are on me - so I dip to a random station, and stay on as a farmhand for a while. I read what I want. I do what I like. I eat what I can afford."

His smile expanded very slightly.

"Don't you find that kind of life appealing?"

Tanner was silent.

Did she?

Obviously not the... murdering part. Or the thievery. But something... something about what he was saying kept sticking in her brain, whether she liked it or not - and she very much did not. Tanner Magg, wandering around, doing her own thing, not... not weighed down by this place, by her duties, by everything. And... no, no, no. Nonsense. She was a judge, she was an acting governor, she had accepted a whole fleet of duties onto her back and she'd damn well bear them. She'd seized power for herself, hadn't she? Hadn't she? Momentum pressed against her back. Obligation was hooked into her nostrils. Driven forwards and hauled onwards. Retreat had ceased to be an option some time ago. She'd elected to... to become a giant human-eel-thing, moving forwards under her own instincts regardless of what those instincts demanded from her, because...

Because...

...to save the colony, that was it. Saving the colony. Lyur's dark eyes challenged her with their emptiness.

"Why did you come here. To begin with."

"I wandered enough. Eventually you reach the ends of the earth. Or, well, I knew a man who knew a man who knew a woman who knew a man, and I needed a quick route out of Fidelizh. This was... available. Came up, did some business, then it just became too quiet. And here we are."

"Don't you... regret what you've done, if only because it's led you here? You're not escaping. You're not getting pardoned. You're going to be executed."

Lyur shrugged vaguely, eyes sliding away to stare at the ceiling instead.

"Alright."

"Alright?"

"Alright. That's how it goes. Eventually you run out of luck. Foolish to expect otherwise."

"...who were you? Who were your parents?"

Silence.

"Where are you from?"

Silence.

There'd be no answers. She could imagine a child being born, and one day, just... walking away. Hitching a ride on a barge, vanishing from all recorded history, and returning with Lyur's face and Lyur's voice and Lyur's deeds. Born with the disconnected dispassionate aura of a mutant, fundamentally a creature divorced from the natural patterns of life, and... no, that was lazy. A lazy way of understanding him. He was human. Human to the core. He presumably still ate, slept, had physical needs that he satisfied when necessary. He was... she didn't know what he was. But he was human. His heart presumably still slept in his chest. Any other excuse was an act of intellectual and spiritual laziness, a desire to find short-cuts to his existence. It was a simple fact - that a person like him could develop naturally, without the intervention of a god or an underground river.

How many children did he have?

How many carried the sleeping poison of another Lyur?

The Golden Law would never work. Never. Because somewhere, among the seething mass of humanity, there slept people like him. They were human to the core, their disease lacked any cure, and was barely a disease to begin with. But a single wire had been crossed, and they were... like this. Lyur had children, she could be sure of that.

And they were like him. They refuted law. They denied convention. They spat at status quo.

And Tom-Tom slept a cell over. Twisted from a vaguely pathetic young woman into... someone responsible for several deaths, someone driven to doomed extremes. Infected as well. Never to be the same.

"The execution is tomorrow."

The words emerged without her being consciously aware of them. Hadn't intended for it to be tomorrow. Hadn't... known when she was going to do it. But some childish part of her just wanted to assert control. He defied the Golden Law with his existence, he defied the great patterns of culture and history that lay snarled around this place. But she had power over life and death, she had power over his execution. This was her equivalent of slapping him in the face.

"How're you going to do it?"

Tanner didn't respond for a few moments.

"Axe."

"Good choice. Hope the land doesn't get irritated at spilling half-innocent blood. Might get indigestion."

"You've committed enough crimes."

"More than you know."

"You deserve this."

"That I do."

Tanner stared

.

Lyur lay in his bed, and waited.

"Don't... you feel anything? You've got less than twenty-four hours to live. Aren't-"

"Oh, shush."

Tanner would be counting down every second until her death, she wouldn't rest until she was executed - trying to make the most of every last moment she had remaining. And Lyur just... lay there. Lamb to the slaughterhouse... they said that in terms of ignorance, in terms of an innocent heading off unawares to be killed. But... Lyur had talked about a pit of dead buffalo. And Vyuli had talked about how buffalo could become utterly suicidal, seemingly at random. Charging in, and... had they felt regret? Terror? Had they realised, at the moment of closure, that they'd been serving a system with flaws? Or had... no. Some animals couldn't fear death. They just experienced it, and that was all. Cats went off to be alone when they wanted to die. Buffalo could stampede over the edge of a cliff without any greater thought, could wait placidly as a gun picked them off one by one. Did they feel anything but transient terror? A second of kicking at air, then... nothing. No fear of the beyond, no conception of there being a beyond they should fear.

She was watching a biological engine spin onwards. If it continued to spin - good. If it failed - well, it wasn't going to be aware of it for much longer.

She turned on her heel and left, the mutant girl padding around her feet, looking up every now and again, curious at Tanner's twisting expression.

She'd spoken to a man she was about to execute. And somehow it felt like he was winning - because he was just doing everything he was meant to, and she was the one wrestling with motive, with morality, with the great schematic of it all.

She left him in the humid dark.

And in the distance, she swore she could hear him snoring lightly.