CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED AND TEN - NOW WE ARE TWO
Vyuli was dead, then.
Plans tried to stir in her mind, like... the tiny tadpoles that bred and died in brackish water, too weak to do much more than thrash around a little, then perish. If every tadpole succeeded in becoming a frog, the world would probably be buried in the damn things. Thus did her mind lose track of the thoughts, letting them bloom, take one or two steps forward, then fade away back into the subconscious. Something meditative about it, but only if she was doing it consciously. As it was... she was just burned out. Kept looking at random points and focusing on them senselessly, eyes failing to stir even as the world kept moving around her. Kept seeing after-images of the burning night, with the diseased corpses mounting higher and higher... even now, the boneyard spread around her in all directions. Like she'd wrenched the underground river's orchard up to the surface, brought up some fertile seeds on her coat, spread them around with each step she took. Black ribs curled into charred crescents, like she was looking at a burned armoury of bows heaped after some great, heroic battle. Burning the weapons to honour the gods, whoever those might be.
The cracked skulls grinned at her, some toothless, some so broken they were unrecognisable. And some were so delicate that they broke apart when the snowflakes kissed their carbonised surface. And where they split, black dust would enter the air, a loose haze that clung to her coat and her boots, perpetual reminders of the massacre. The swarm of insects was a little more scarce, and they didn't touch the bones. No point. Everything worth taking had been burned up. She could see the remains of the dead soldiers, too - standing titan-like, their armour fusing as the heat applied to it, immobile and sagging. The lenses of the masks had split from the heat, and the metal frames had drooped, until it seemed like they were just bizarre animals that had closed their eyes as the night drew on. The salamander had simply evaporated, the gelatinous matter had softened, melted... then congealed once more as the cold drew in, and patches of strange, cloudy material littered the ground, tiny icebergs which contained bones and their dust alike. Inside one there hung a chunk of something nearly intact, sheltered from the blaze. A single hand, turned to leather by smallpox sores. In the light, she could see where flesh had shrivelled from dying in the cold, where it'd been reinflated by the parasite lurking within.
Maybe that was why the north had been where the Great War started. The earth was full of the dead, preserved, good shells, good meat, nice and stable. The cold could isolate whole cities and leave them ripe for a siege. And the land was... thirsty, it clearly brooded sullenly with a taste for violence and bloodshed. The crow-winds blew here. Maybe that'd brought the red tide with it, too. Once you soaked a land in enough blood, did the land ever forget? Maybe down south, but here... the snow would lock it up in the soil, and when the thaw came, red mists would emerge, a slow trickle of moisture tinted crimson, and the stink of copper would fill the air from mountain to coast. A reminder that what had been could be again, that the land never forgot a single thing, and then humans would see the long violent chain, they would smell it, taste it with every breath they took in. And then it would start all over again. When you gave people precedent, everything became easier, thought could cease and automation could start.
This land had automated violence. She was convinced of it. And when people forgot, the thaw would remind them. The hunger would remind them. This was a long that didn't forget a sin, and never failed to remind people of it.
The snow was falling to cover the ash. If enough fell, the ash might well be sealed up, and remain there. Until someone dug down, maybe to make a well, and every dorp of water would stink of the night where she'd crushed skull upon skull upon skull upon skull, and burned every last body. Maybe they'd find a fused suit of armour containing a human.
And the ash would reawaken the fire.
"Right. I'll... handle this."
She paused.
"One second."
The General blinked. And she raised a single finger, indicating her intent. He nodded slowly, and remained still as she went off to the bunker. The one Yan-Lam lived in, Marana lived in, the mutant and Tom-Tom... opened up the speaker grille, and licked her lips.
"Hello?"
There was a tinny sound of pattering feet...
And a familiar voice cried out, a little louder than necessary.
"Miss? It's you?"
"It's me."
"Oh, we heard the most awful-"
"It's fine. I need you to give me my buffalo cloak."
"...why? I mean, if you... put it on, won't you... lose it, the readings from the detector are high..."
"Just... bring it to the entrance hall, then seal up the other doors. Unlock this one. I'll come in, grab the cloak, be out before I can contaminate the place too much. Get one of the soldiers to scour it once you're done."
"Are you alright, miss? You don't sound..."
Rested? Sane? Calm? Normal? The sentence didn't go anywhere, and the silence of the grille was a hungry one that demanded filling.
"I'm fine. I promise. How's... everything?"
A pause.
"The mutant is quiet. She never moves, now. Never makes any sounds. Marana is just sleeping, I can wake her up if you like. Spends most of her time sleeping, honestly. Wakes up, slides around a bit, sleeps... never seems rested afterward, though. Caught her talking to herself the other day, curled up in her cot, just muttering into the wall. No idea what she was saying, but... you know. Anyway. Soldiers are tense, but glad they're on interior guard duty. Not many want to go outside."
Fair. But... not sustainable. The bunkers had soldiers as a last line of defence, as a means of keeping things under control, as a source of fresh, uncontaminated reinforcements if things really went downhill out here. They knew they'd be conscripted soon enough. Knew that they'd emerge to replace the fallen, leaving their comrades in the filtered darkness. As far as she knew, they intended to draw lots for whoever had to go out.
In the end, they were tomorrow's garrison. The soldiers out here were going to experience mutations afterwards, no doubt about it. Some would die now, some would have curtailed careers and early retirements, some were destined for asylums, some might make a quick career as mutant-hunters, if they wanted to go out in a blaze of glory. The soldiers in the bunkers were the garrison that would be managing the colony afterwards, once the dust had settled and the snow had melted. Because having a bunch of shell-shocked, slightly mutated, possibly unstable veterans doing guard duty was... always going to be a recipe for disaster.
Anyway. They knew this. Everyone knew this. And she could imagine how... tightened they'd be, listening to the conflict outside, wondering if there were losses, wondering if holes in the line would need to be filled soon enough... a tightness as they prepared for combat, as they shaved their faces as clean as possible to stop the gas masks chafing on stubble, as they cropped their hair every day simply for the sake of staying clean, as they examined each weapon they owned as if it was already determining the difference between life and death...
Better than the grey wasting she'd seen them undergoing during the week-long wait for these few days of nightmare.
"What about the prisoner?"
Recently orphaned prisoner. Gods, couldn't let her know, not until things were settled... well, she could let her know, it was on the table. Just didn't know how much Tom-Tom still cared for the old man. Did she hate him for being a weird old lunatic who tortured people and had basically no moral qualms and had forced her into a life she clearly disliked... or did she still have some affection. And if she did, was it enough to make her do something stu-
Yes. Yes it was. Impressing him had made her engage with the Lam debacle. Emulating him had made her start the evacuation debacle. Avenging him would obviously justify intense stupidity.
"She's... quiet. Doesn't try and talk."
A coldness in the girl's voice that alarmed Tanner a little.
"Right. Well."
A pause.
"Stay safe."
"Thank you, miss. I'll fetch your cape."
A minute later, it was in her hands, and she stepped back into the cold and allowed the metal door to slam shut behind her. Her footsteps on the floor had been ashy black, damp with melting snow. The gore slicking her coat was... apparent, to put it bluntly, in the soft yellow lights of the hallway. She'd run from those lights, grabbed the coat, turned on her heel and ran, maybe not physically, but mentally. The terror of the bath had suddenly woken up at the base of her spine, and inched up each vertebra, squirming through the spinal fluid like an eel migrating upstream... the terror of unwinding, of seeing the gore streaking her, of seeing the way every piece of fabric was in some way stiffened by spilled liquid, of smelling herself, understanding herself, becoming herself once again. And Tanner Magg was someone who could barely manage to get people's names due to simple awkwardness, she wasn't... ready for being this blood-streaked priestess, axe in hand and each breath rattling through a military filter. If she stopped for too long, she'd become someone vulnerable.
Keep the wound open until it scarred. Right now, it'd only scabbed. And that was easy enough to pick away, now wasn't it?
Tanner, the living scab, walked back into the snow, tossing the cloak back around her shoulders.
Warm.
And it settled the role of judge back onto her. No, not judge - the form of a judge, but the substance of something quite different, something stranger and more primal. The shape of the law, animated by fire. She gave a few sharp orders to the men. Remain here. Draw reinforcements from the bunker if necessary. Eat up, warm up, sleep in shifts if necessary. The mutants might attack again during the day, take advantage of their exhaustion and lack of rest - expect an attack to come at random, and in absolute silence. Communicate with other units via the Rekidans, never travel alone, remember how to spot infiltrators, take your pills, see how much fuel there is remaining.
They ought to be denying the orders. Ought to question them, maybe to complain or shuffle around disconsolately. But they all just... nodded, robotically, the snow packing into the contours of their gas masks and giving them strangely human lines in the leather, glass and metal. When you cooled metal enough, flesh stuck to it, resisted leaving. Maybe they were freezing into their armour at this point, contamination speeding it along, The snow was drowning the boneyard, giving it a kind of innocence, smoothing it all away... but when the General walked off, her trailing behind, axe over her shoulder, the crunching was unmistakeable. Time was turning backwards, she realised. The snow made the world pure, at least until the thaw came along. The snow quarantined the ash and the skulls, with their fontanelles parted like a flower's petals...
The General said nothing as he walked along, sniffing idly at the air.
Tanner wondered how he was holding up against the ambient contamination. If... no, no, he was growing a little larger, his skin was slightly thicker, and she could see a faint trickle of blood where he'd taken pills which reacted violently to his internals. Like he said - the issue was keeping the contamination below the neck, if you could manage that, you could... mostly stay functional. Could even see odd piercings in the flesh around his jaw where he'd clearly done a little of that, and ragged red wounds lingered along his spinal column. She tilted her head to one side, opened her mouth to speak...
Quietly, he raised two fingers.
Two more dead in the night, then. Dead or mad - the latter was basically the former, so long as they were killed afterwards.
Hoped All-Name was alright.
Vyuli's bunker wasn't too far away - none of the bunkers were, really. Allowed for quick reinforcement and resupplying. There was an eerie silence around it, and she realised there were... no soldiers guarding it.
Idiots.
Probably arranged for them to leave. Probably drew them indoors.
Bracing for something stupid. Convinced they could defend themselves. She idly wondered who'd killed Vyuli... the list of suspects was technically infinite, given how many people likely despised him, but... her list was currently quite small. Canima was a possibility. But if he was, then he was already dead. A knife driven up to the hilt would kill a young man, and he was... not that. Not that at all. A secret passage into the bunker, though - that implied foreknowledge, fore-planning. The knife removed the possibility of it being a mutant - the blade would be screaming of contamination, would stink of it, and the regular old detectors would've gone mad at the mere presence of a mutant in the first place. Could've been an infiltrator, of course, but... hm. Alright. She had a scapegoat if necessary. An infiltrator - wouldn't set off so many alarms as a regular mutant, would resemble a soldier without being one, could easily redirect.
Injustice was an instinct like any other. Easy to slip into, once she'd developed it. Learned that she wouldn't be immediately punished.
Could be Canima. Could be others. And if in doubt, it was an infiltrator. Maybe even the one she'd killed personally.
Regardless.
She slammed the haft of her axe into the door, ringing it like a bell. Just like she'd done at the cold-house. A voice crackled over the speaker grille, the metal turning it whiny and petulant. Appropriate. It was the old man, and he sounded... agitated.
"Judge-woman?"
"Speaking. Vyuli's dead, then."
"Shh! Who else is there with you?"
"General. No-one else. Why did you send the soldiers away?"
"Told them to handle somewhere else, bastards already don't like us-"
Couldn't imagine why.
"-happy for the excuse to go somewhere else, guard something else, clear out and patrol and whatnot."
Tanner stared, thinking.
"What are you intending to do, exactly?"
The old man's voice began to tremble a little. Come to think of it, had she made up a name for him? Mr. Squint? Mr. Twitch? Or had she contented herself with 'old man'? The time when she'd have come up with his name was... so distant it was barely worth imagining, different life, different Tanner. Different world. Could imagine his squinting, twitching eyes glaring at her, though. Glaring at the door, watering with intensity, his whole frame shivering.
"You're out for us. All of you. Lured us into an agreement, then punished us, all of us, killed our boss when he was working with you. Damn fools you are, damn fools, damn monsters. We worked with you, we trusted you, we put our lives in your hands, and you... you put a tunnel in our bunker to get inside, you plan this out, then you come and kill us. You come and you kill us. Who's next? Are the other bunkers even... even sheltering our boys, or did you kill those the second the doors closed? We're not opening this door, woman. Not for a second. You put... damn politics over survival, you idiots, you-"
A long, rattling cough, like he was trying to hack up a lung.
"You... listen here, we're keeping things quiet, we are. We're not trying to... be starting a war, or nothing. Telegram's been cut. But here's the thing, see. Here's the thing. We've got boys. We've got boys in your garrison, you know we do. So what's going to be happening, see, is this. Our boys are going to make sure we're all fine and dandy. We get to kick out any damn soul we want from this bunker, and we get to put all our boys in this bunker, see? We keep this place, we defend this place, and you give us all the resources we need. In exchange, we don't take this whole damn colony with-"
Tanner sighed.
And the voice trailed off.
"You're capable of hearing me through this door, yes?"
"I-"
"And you can hear through the walls? There was a battle last night around my own bunker, apparently the people inside could hear it."
"...suppose so, we heard some... business going on out there, not that-"
Tanner bellowed.
Her voice roared out of her throat, and the old man shut up with a squeak of instinctual fright. There was... gods, she could feel herself flaying her own throat by doing this, she could feel where decontamination pills had made it raw already, made her voice turn to something hoarse and feral, something which sounded barely human. She bellowed with every muscle at once, she bellowed with her cloak, with her armour, and her gas mask reverberated with the sound until she was deafening herself as she deafened everything around her. Even the muffling snow couldn't stop it. Wouldn't be surprised if patrols throughout the city were glancing up, wondering what on earth that damn sound was. A tension in her jaws, built up over a whole night of swinging her axe, strained... and snapped, and she felt suddenly capable of moving her jaw wider than it'd ever gone, like one of the gorgonopsids which dwelled along the Tulavanta.
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The precedent had been set.
She now knew the motions of screaming with authority, rather than terror.
And if she chose to, she could do it again.
Another art of tyranny was in her. The shadowy thing riding on her back became more detailed, more filled-in. Closer to reality.
"Everyone in the bunker. Your boss is dead. Vyuli is dead. I will investigate this, when there's time. Right now - you have a choice. You came here because the governor offered to wipe your slates clean - he didn't, the records were always kept. You came here because Vyuli offered to pay you, to give you advancement in his organisation. With his death, his organisation is gone. How many of you want to re-establish Nalser? How many of you remember Nalser? How many of you can even speak the language, how many of you think of the hammer and the eye with anything approaching real belief? If you still hold that belief - then say so. Say you want to replace him. Say you want to rule his organisation, and lead it as he'd want it led."
A pause. A ravenous silence emerged, and she could imagine it dragging the berath out of the people inside like a hungry vacuum, demanding a response, demanding something. And then she flooded the absence again.
"I've burned your records. The governor's mansion is gone. Canima is gone. Vyuli is gone. I'm still here. If someone wants to be Vyuli, to really be him, then step up to the grille and talk. And if the rest of you want to follow that person - come to the grille and say so."
Another hungry pause.
"And if you don't. If you just want to see next spring and go home, absolved of everything. If you never want to see a single damn snowflake again in your life, if you want to huddle around a fire and eat fresh food that hasn't been dried, if you want warmth, if you want family, if you want to be back in a place where mutants are a distant threat, if you want this to end - then stay silent."
She turned.
Bellowed one last thing.
"I'll be back in five minutes."
She removed her watch from her coat... wiped snow from the glass, peered through the frost-clawed crystal... hm. A little slow, minute-wise, but second to second it was accurate enough. The General watched her walk away with an odd look in his eyes. Something... was he sizing her up as someone that was his equal, in some way? Probably didn't understand a word she'd said, was just wondering if he'd need to ask his men to slaughter everyone in that bunker. Either way. Tanner walked around the bunker quickly, scanning the snow for any clues. The one advantage in this case was that everyone who wasn't a soldier was sealed inside the bunkers. Fleeing suspects were obvious. She didn't expect to find much... then again, not like anyone in the bunker had gone looking for clues, and the old man had said that he hadn't been spreading the news of Vyuli's death unnecessarily. So, quite possibly this was a virgin crime scene, nothing to worry about but the fresh-fallen snow. To the credit of the killer, there was no obvious mark where they'd entered or exited. Still, the bunkers had identical designs on the inside, and she could guess where Vyuli had been hiding out - telegram room, the most private place in the building save for the cells, and a position of command. So... if someone got to him there... no, they'd been intercepted on the way out, the tunnel wouldn't connect...
She prowled around like a hungry wolf, the ticking of her watch barely audible yet keenly listened for.
Tanner truly believed what she'd said, incidentally.
She'd met the bouncers. She'd met Vyuli. Vyuli was having an end-of-life crisis - he wanted to bring back a world of his youth that he saw slipping away. Only he knew the design of that world, viscerally, emotionally, spiritually. In the minds of others, it could only ever be a structure of weightless light, reshaping itself constantly, losing any reference to reality after a generation or two. The Rekidans had accepted their fate. Death, madness, and being forgotten. They'd chosen to go out on their own terms, by raising All-Name, and then charging into battle to seek glorious deaths. Like the mutant-hunters, really. Odd - Vyuli's evil was a pettier, more starving one. It was evil born of what he saw as necessity, as a desperate drive to survive and continue. The Rekidans were unrepentant slavers and oppressors who'd formed a caste system so brutal that the slaves had chosen to run through mutant-infested tundra with minimal resources and guidance simply to escape them, had forgotten their language and culture without much hesitation. Their evil was so much more... broad, while Vyuli's was so small. Yet the Rekidans were defending the city without complaint, and Vyuli had intruded on the struggle to survive with his petty priorities, his mad dreams. Vyuli had sat perched in his bunker until someone had killed him, and the General was out here with her, having fought at her side on the wall - one of the last to retreat, if she remembered correctly.
Golden Law didn't feel adequate to this situation. It lacked the muddy reality, for all its pretensions at it.
Right... the bunker. If the telegram room was here, then... assume the murderer didn't need to go too far to escape...
There.
She could see a slight divot in the snow. Very slight, invisible if she wasn't looking specifically for it. This tunnel didn't exist in the other bunkers, she was fairly sure. Needed to fill them in if that was the case. But it was possible that Canima had known where Vyuli would be going - blind as he was, he wasn't a total idiot, he could read, he could bribe - and had this little feature installed. Or, again, every bunker had one. The General ambled at her side, and she once more resented the langauge barrier. Wished she could just tlel him to warn everyone else about the potential vulnerability. The...
Well, it was a potential vulnerability. It still had a filter in place, it was no more exposed than the other vents... just was slightly enlarged for a human, and hidden from the bunker's inhabitants. Filter designed to be removed, yes, but if you knew where it was, maybe you could remove that capacity.
It was only a vulnerability if you thought a human was coming to kill you. Mutants...
Well, for them, there were plenty of vulnerabilities.
And if she followed the ground, the clock still ticking...
A few blood stains.
Tiny. Just dots of red, quickly being concealed.
Droplets emerging between fingers. Someone had been stabbed. Deep. Was clutching the wound to stop the bleeding, to avoid leaving a trail, but there was only so much one could do. The trail only lasted a brief few seconds, though - then there was the chaos of last night's defence, the melted, charred remains of mutants, the broken bodies... looked like they'd suffered an attack from more of the living barricades that had outlived their purpose and might as well be removed in a suicidal attack. Hard to tell which one, though. Too profoundly brutalised. So... ah. Ah. Someone wearing a military uniform had done the deed, she was sure of that much. Entering in under the cover of the battle, leaving and escaping in a similar fashion. Underneath the gas mask and the armour, there was really no way of telling people apart until they opened their mouths, unless you were particularly obsessive about body language. Canima would be in a good position to get one of them, or in a good position to order a soldier to do something. Even if his authority was diminished to near-nothingness, it wasn't gone. If he just had one very impressionable soldier, easy to intimidate, easy to bribe, easy to pull in with stories of rewards in Fidelizh... not sure how that would work, but she could imagine Canima finding a way. Even if it meant holding a note to his body as he froze to death, found by a later expedition and sent home to the relevant authorities.
Hm...
Map of the city appeared in her mind, every map she'd memorised, and... standing here, looking out from this point, thinking of where this murderer might've gone... there was really only one option. She strode confidently towards one of the street entrances. Still had a few minutes to go before she needed to bother the cartel again. The General loped at her side, uncharacteristically silent... though he did place his hand behind his back in a slightly officious fashion. Comical humanity on a form becoming increasingly monstrous.
Ignored the murals around her. Ignored the stained and shredded sandbags. Ignored the charred corpses - she'd seen enough of them to become immune, and when a carbonised limb lay in her path, she casually kicked it aside to let it smash itself into ashes against a wall. Didn't even feel anything, let alone an impact. The trail...
The trail reappeared once she got beyond the chaos.
The soldier had stopped holding the wound so tightly - strength draining from the hand, maybe. Exhaustion setting in. Not so much paranoia about someone following the trail or seeing the wound, once the rest of the soldiers had vanished from sight. And... into a side-street. Her heart quickened, the thrill of the hunt returning. Something...
Gods, something honest.
She loped along with the General, both of them rushing in the relaxed way that burned-out soldiers had, where energy had to burn slowly, and the body moved accordingly. Knew how to exploit every trick - how to ride momentum, how to angle the foot, how to hold things so they didn't obstruct movement, how to set a pace where breathing could occur uninterrupted and unhurried. Yet her heartbeat continued to rise in fever and rhythm. It was... it was like chasing Tyer, but better- she almost already knew who she was looking for, now just required confirmation. If Canima - lock him up for later. If a proxy - interrogate, then lock up for later. If dead - note it down and ask someone to come and either burn it or turn rubble over it as a crude grave.
Her nostrils flared.
Come on, come on... the trail was thickening, she swore she could smell the blood, could detect the adrenaline in it... her head was buzzing, in the absence of the great concentrations of insects she'd invented their sound just to give her thoughts the agitation they needed...
She turned a corner...
And stopped.
Stared.
...what?
The... yes, there was someone there. Slumped against some rubble, breathing rapidly, hands clenched over a crude dressing...
But... those bars...
It was one of the Sersas. One of the corrupt ones, surely. In the cartel's pay, maybe seeking revenge for a lack of payment, for the ruination of their career due to associating with Vyuli... the gas mask looked up, flat lenses staring with insect calm that she was certain the eyes beneath didn't share.
And a voice emerged.
"Hey, Tanner."
Tanner was very, very still.
Her voice had a low current of... disbelief to it.
"Bayai?"
A pause.
"Why... would you..."
She trailed off. The figure shook slightly, and Bayai's familiar voice emerged once again. Stop being familiar, become strange, become someone else, become a skilled and cruel imitator. Not him. Why him? He was... on her side, he understood how she thought, he'd walked with her in the snow and talked idly before everything went to hell, he'd been in that cantina with her when they considered planning out a further investigation, he was on her side. The one Sersa she could trust, the others were corrupt, not him, please, just not him.
He was the only friend she had out here on the front lines. The others were locked away.
It was just him.
"...you know, you... never asked who my uncle was."
Tanner blinked.
He... had mentioned that he had an uncle, hadn't he? Said... right, right. He said he'd had convalescent leave, once. Stayed in an uncle's place near Tuz-Drakkat for a while, out in the countryside. And... and he'd...
No.
"Who's your uncle."
"Canima."
"...but-"
He'd said that he had a sister, hadn't he? A sister, who was briefly courted by the governor. She'd assumed that he'd brought her up to... give himself an excuse for working with the theurgists, even when it compromised the colony. He'd been protecting his sister, who presumably still lived in Fidelizh, from reprisals. Protecting her, and...
Her children.
...oh gods. This was... why he'd been so...
So despairing. Why a trained and toughened Erlize officer had broken down.
He thought his nephew was going to die.
And he'd become startlingly active over the few days leading to the confinement... he'd vanished while everyone else went inside...
"...you didn't think it was odd, when I approached you in the middle of a random field on a snowy day?"
A pause.
"Not that I regretted it. You're... good conversation."
"You were spying."
"Same reason I asked to get involved in your investigation. Uncle said I ought to get inside your tent, make sure you weren't doing anything dangerous, like seek revenge. All that got thrown out of the window when the governor died, of course..."
When he'd walked to Tanner over the snow, Tanner had thought to herself that... he might be Erlize. Not for any reason, just a sudden feeling. Seen him marching over, felt a sudden flash of remembrance, and thought he was Erlize. Because he looked vaguely, vaguely like Canima. Washed away by time, as Canima shrivelled and decayed and he remained strong and unyielding, as she got to know him and all the ways he wasn't like Canima... give a bald, thin man some hair, a moustache, the ability to smile, and muscle... you made him near-unrecognisable.
Still cursed herself for being stupid.
Of course he hadn't approached her for her scintillating conversation.
He'd approached because she was a target.
"Promise, though, everything changed after the governor. I was honest with you about damn near everything."
"...Canima was able to block up the tunnels from the interrogation room because of you, wasn't he?"
"I... may have helped. Made sure my men weren't around to see anything, got in before anyone else to make sure the hidden doors were properly hidden."
Contaminating evidence to help his uncle.
"And I promise, I didn't know about the theurgists, the underground river, none of that. I was just..."
He shrugged, and winced as the motion strained his wound.
"He's my uncle. He said I could take a commission out here... promotion, more responsibility, better pay... the kind of... simplicity I wanted. Just got more complicated. Promise, I didn't... want to hurt you at all. Wasn't spying, neither. Governor and Canima just felt less paranoid when they knew I was keeping an eye on you. Was more for protection than anything else. Promise, didn't want to hurt you, and I only... witthheld truth twice. About who my uncle was. And about the interrogation room. Didn't obstruct, didn't do any of that, I was on your side. Just... had an uncle who could... who asked favours. That was it. I promise."
The justifications stuttered out from cold lips. Sounded genuine. Or was she just deluding herself, hoping that...
Marana had associated with her out of guilt, out of pity.
Eygi had never been her friend at all.
Yan-Lam was a child obsessed with the person avenging her father.
Ms. Blue was an unnerving cultist.
And Bayai was a spy tasked with keeping an eye on her.
Gods... what did she have?
What did she have...
"And you killed Vyuli for him."
"...last thing he wanted done."
"Where's he now?"
Bayai gestured vaguely...
Tanner stared at a heap of snow...
No. Not just a heap.
The General loped over and brushed a little away, his face flat and uncomprehending, not particularly attached to whatever was happening. Irritated, maybe, at the petty human drama in the middle of a war for survival (for the humans) and glory (for the Rekidans). The snow fanned away...
A body.
Preserved by the cold.
An old, shrivelled man... with the back of his head removed.
Tanner froze.
He was... he was sitting with his back stretched out. A rifle was in his mouth. His foot was exposed, out of the shoe, out of the sock, the toe hooked around the trigger... the snow had taken away the blood, had turned the exposed flesh blue and black, had frozen it and buried it and hidden it, even the crater of the wound had been filled in until it almost looked like he was just sleeping, save for the red icicles that spread down from his lips, and...
"Why."
Couldn't even manage to put inflection into her voice.
Barely registered all the details of the body. When Lam had died, she saw everything. And never forgot it.
Now... she saw an old man's suicide, and she just...
Turned away.
"...overestimated me. A bit. Thought... he could do it himself, realised quick that wouldn't work, he was too weak, not much strength left in him. Asked me to help. Showed me how to get in. Thought I'd get out quickly enough... was wrong. Got hit. Still, none of them saw me. That's good enough. He thought... if we pinned it on him, said he did it, then... things would be fine. He needed Vyuli dead. Vyuli was the maggot inside the governor's legacy. Canima couldn't stay alive, he was ruined, his career was done, the theurgists would tear him apart... like this, it all ends. He goes out on his own terms. Takes care of one last enemy. Avoids... avoids the theurgists getting retribution. On me. On my mother."
"Why?"
"No point in it. Wouldn't do anything. Canima would be dead - that'd be good enough for them. Just... a bit slow."
"Will you live?"
"Should. Bandaged it. Need to get inside, though."
A pause, as he struggled to catch his breath, exhausted even by this short conversation.
"Into a bunker. Need the clean air. Just going to rot otherwise. Might already be too late. Maybe. Think I... cauterised it all. Uniform's melted into the skin, keeping the air out. Not perfect."
"...you won't be able to talk to your men. The telegram lines have been cut. You'll be stuck in there."
"Leaving you in charge, I know. Well. Always were in charge. I'm sorry. Vyuli's dead, the other Sersas are probably... just fine. I'm sorry. I had to do it."
"You didn't. You could've turned him down."
"Let my old, sad uncle go and try to kill Vyuli. Couldn't have slept with that hanging over me."
He'd been... he'd been loyal. Even like this, she couldn't help but find it perversely admirable. She stared sightlessly.
"You said you... liked the binary of surviving and not surviving. The simplicity."
"...still do."
"Then why-"
"It's over. The cartel's headless. My uncle is dead. The governor is dead. The theurgists are yours. There's nothing else left. Just... you, and the mutants. That's it. I had to... do what he asked. Couldn't refuse. Not when he'd just try and do it himself, try and die, try and freeze to death, try and fail and make everything worse. Had to. Wish... I could just fight."
He smiled behind his mask. She could feel it.
"...wish I could just fight."
Tanner sighed.
"But... you couldn't. You had to settle this."
"...you understand. Thought you would. Get the feeling you'd have liked it if you just stayed home and did your job normally forever. Never thought about all of this."
Tanner didn't answer.
She looked vaguely at the General, mimed carrying. The General nodded slowly, and stumped over to haul Bayai roughly. Not Sersa Bayai. Just Bayai. He was abandoning her here. He was abandoning her because he had to do his uncle's last wish. Just had to do it. Had to kill Vyuli. Had to be a spy, had to be monitoring her all this time. She didn't say anything as he was carried off, groaning softly, holding his hands over the wound. The clues had been there - subtle, but present. Seeing him on the horizon and immediately thinking Erlize. The suspiciously flawless clean-up of the interrogation room's tunnels, too quick for Canima alone. The reason he'd approached her in the first place, known where she was going, known to intercept her. The reason he'd been in that cantina proposing a little conspiracy. The clues had been there, and she'd just ignored them, never followed up, never rotated them in her brain like she did everything else.
Overlooked them. Like she'd overlooked all the clues with Eygi.
When someone was... even making overtures at being her friend, she became an idiot, didn't she?
...she wouldn't be an idiot for the rest of this siege.
Her only... if she tried, she could call Marana and Yan-Lam friends. In a strange, not perfectly accurate way. Marana had concealed things, had pitied her... and Yan-Lam was a mourning child with no-one else to rely on. Like saying a fish was a shameless addict for water. A fish flopping around on a dock, drowning on air, was just... experiencing a kind of delirium tremens. They were locked up. Bayai was going to join them. She spoke slowly, indicating locations, drawing a small map in the snow... he understood. The General loped away, and she didn't say goodbye to Bayai.
Couldn't bring herself to.
Well.
Time to get back to work.
She marched to the bunker. Couldn't even say she was... despairing. She wasn't about to have a tantrum, or shed tears. She felt a little angry, certainly. If anything, though...
She was glad that he'd made things so simple.
Live or die. Nothing else. The theurgists were hers until spring. The cartel was maybe about to disintegrate. The soldiers were on her side. The governor's legacy had broken for good, broke when the mansion was erased in that first terrible blast that had immolated the hills. Her head buzzed, felt too full, felt too tight. But her stomach was... so compact it was hard to imagine ever eating anything again. Like there was no stomach, just layers of muscle and bone in interlocking cables. She left Canima's body in the snow, toe wrapped around the trigger of a rifle. She left the General to haul Bayai back to Tanner's own bunker, for medical care. Despite it all, she didn't hate him. No energy for that. Just... wished he'd been honest earlier. Could've had some wonderful drama over it, had long walks and serious discussions, had periods of freezing over and thawing out...
Washed away in the crimson tide.
They'd had nearly ten minutes in the bunker.
More than they deserved.
She knocked.
And a voice hissed out of the grate.
"Gods, finally..."
There it was.
Gods.
She knew which gods they were talking about. Fidelizhi gods. Not Nalseri. They didn't swear by the hammer and the eye. The faith had died with Vyuli. If he'd only been less.. him, they could've died with some dignity.
Silence from the other side. Did they think she'd been tormenting them? Giving them chance after chance after chance, tempting them to challenge her, tempting them, and forcing them to really reckon with their own ambitions, to stew in their cowardice...
Wasn't even the old man talking. Probably a bouncer.
"I'll ask the soldiers to come back to the bunker to guard you. And tell the old man I want word sent to the other bouncers scattered throughout the city - they're to stay quiet, keep the peace, and wait for the mutants to be dead before trying anything."
The voice which came out was shockingly demure and... submissive.
"Yes, ma'am. Understood."
Ma'am.
The cult of ma'am had spread further. The bouncers were now claimed. The cartel was claimed. The cartel was utterly, utterly dead - and what remained served her.
...she could've just killed Vyuli herself and done this. Couldn't she?
Absolute control.
Gods...
"...ma'am, can we ask, did you find..."
"It was Canima. He's already dead. Committed suicide before he made it more than a few streets away, died on his own terms rather than bleeding out."
The voice laughed suddenly, a sharp, sad sound.
"That's... fair. Two old weird men killing one another because of... politics and money. Glad they took care of each other, me."
"No loyalty to him?"
"...I was one of the evacuees. Ma'am. He paid me, and... he couldn't stop the mutants. Nor could Canima. Glad you're in charge."
She didn't want to be, she didn't want to be, and...
She forced a small smile onto her face, having to wrench her cheeks upwards to do so. Her voice remained flat, of course. That never changed. Doubted it could, at this point. Maybe her voice would never leave this state ever again.
"Thank you. Stay safe."
"We'll do our best, ma'am. And, ah, you... want us to get rid of the old lad? He's still calling us traitors, had to lock him in a cupboard."
Tanner paled.
"No, no, don't. Leave him. He'll calm down."
"...as you say, boss."
And in silence, Tanner Magg, acting governor of Rekida, honorary Erlize officer, de facto chief judge of the Golden Door's Rekidan branch, de facto commander of the Fidelizhi colonial garrison, boss of the Nalseri cartel, chief negotiator with the Rekidan nobility and bearer of their axe...
Walked away.
And did her best not to think about what had just happened.