CHAPTER ONE - TO THE BOSOM OF MOTHER IRIZAH

The barge heaved like a living thing, sides gleaming like the shell of an obscure sea-creature, the stacks like primordial pillars at the bottom of the ocean. In one direction, the two-yet-one city. In the other, a city where gods ride men like jockeys.

And on the barge stood a giant.

And all she could think about was the world she was leaving behind. All the tangled memories that lingered behind her, a thicket that strained to hold her in place... and piece by piece, snapped away, leaving the thicket rising high in the distance like a monument in a ruined landscape.

Another thread of memory strained... and the giant followed it.

Saw where it ended.

And in the moment before it snapped, she tried to memorise every last detail.

* * *

A child walks into a playground.

She's taller than her peers. Much, much taller. Despite having seen only nine winters, she's rivalling some of the adults. The playground is a dusty jungle, an overgrown building site awkwardly converted. It's much like the child, in a way. Both are designed for bigger duties, and have had to uncomfortably crouch down, hunch over, smooth over the rough patches and hope for the best. Heaps of rocks yanked out of the ground by sweating workmen are now coated in dirt and grass, but every so often you can see where a sharp flint pokes through. Some of them a little darkened, marked by children who've fallen on them. The pit it was removed from is now stuffed with grass and moss. Springy enough that some children dare each other to jump inside when the parents aren't watching. Most ignore the dare. The pit's deep enough to get lost in, and the undergrowth thick enough that you could easily be tangled. The nightmare of some spider or grass snake living down there is still keen in their heads. The child's mouth twists slightly as she looks at the pit. Remembers taking the dare, once.

It's the one and only time she's had to look up at someone her own age.

And even then, she was still coming up to their waists.

She is strange-looking. All the children say so. Wears dresses meant for people twice her age, bought from old junk shops. Her mother wraps long colourful bands of cloth around the chest to hold it tight, otherwise it flaps around like the loosed sail of a ship. She clomps around on home-made boots, still wet with adhesive where the soles have flapped free. Nothing else fits her. The adults give her looks as she moves. Not hostile. But there's always the nervousness that she'll play too much, be a tad bit too rough. Her dress is stained with patches of green where she's gone too far before, expressed her limitless energy like most children do. What if, they're all wondering, she goes too far again. What if she hits someone. What if she falls on someone. What if she tackles someone to the ground and all we hear are the sharp crack-snap of bones splitting, and the sort of anguished howl that awakens all manner of urgent evolutionary instincts? The girl keeps her head down as she moves, one boot squishing faintly as the adhesive oozes in the noonday sun.

It's not an ill-founded fear.

Sometimes the girl holds someone's hand and realises how thin and brittle all those little bones are. Sometimes she's shoved, and is completely unmoved. Wonders if shoving back will produce the same lack of reaction. She keeps her arms tightly by her sides, gripping her dress into small bunches as she lopes clumsily after the others, wincing slightly each time her boot makes an embarrassing noise. Doesn't want to hurt them, but... she shivers, in the shoulders. Wants to run faster. Wants to do more. Can't, not if she wants to come back here. Sometimes she looks at the adults around the ground, and sees the fashions a few wear - the bonnets tied tightly under the jaw, pinching the flesh up slightly on either side (as is the fashion). The dresses fastened tightly around the waist with the bones of dead river-things, narrowing the figure to a waspish one (as is the fashion). Fish and bugs. Bunch of fish and bugs. Narrow faces, everyone in the city of Mahar Jovan has narrow faces, always. She doesn't know why, her mama says that it's because the east-bankers are all money-pinching oddballs who hate the sky for keeping the sun to itself, and hate the ocean for hoarding all the fish. She wonders if they used to be bigger, all of them. If they crushed themselves down, pinching their necks and their waists and their faces like that. If some of them used to be as tall as her, but managed to decrease it, somehow.

The others are finally starting to let her in. Always takes a moment of hesitation before they allow it. She listens with slight distraction - aware of where her hands are, yes. Aware of where her feet are, yes. Aware of where her hair is going - she wants a bonnet, desperately, anything to keep the hair under control. It's just something else to mind. The others shy off slightly, afraid of her treading on them. Doesn't mind that, it's an understandable reaction - mama said so. They keep one eye on her at all times, just in case she's about to say something in her low, slow way and they'll all have to listen to stay on her good side. Doesn't mind that, it's an understandable reaction, according to mama. She tries to smile at one of them. A small flinch, and a shy smile returned. Right. Yes. Her face wasn't helping. The girl knows that her face... well, it rarely helps, does it? Has a strange quality to it. It's not ugly, not remotely (not in her mama's professional opinion), but it has a quality of... strangeness. Stillness. That's it. She has a stillness which unnerves. When she's neutral, she seems to be emotionless. When she smiles or frowns, people giggle at the strange shapes her mouth and eyes make, the way her face wrinkles up like some sort of ape. Making her look like some rude prototype of a human, unformed and clumsy. She isn't. But her face is somewhere between statuesque and clownish. Not sure where it wants to end up when small emotions look intimidating and austere, and big emotions make her look like an actor's mask.

The others allow her along.

The adults watch them carefully. The fun has declined, a little. No more distractions - they don't want the girl to hurt the others.

She keeps her hands at her side. She knows how it looks when she swings them freely.

Her tortoiseshell hell clings to her face and shields her from the sun. Casting her face into shadow and making her seem odd, almost primordial. Like something that had just loped out of a cave and still feared the sky.

Mama will want her back soon. But, for now... for now.

For now, Tanner Magg shrinks into herself, ignores the wary looks of the nearby parents, and tries to act her age.

* * *

Tanner shivered.

Thinking back, after all this time... she could see why some of the mothers at that playground had looked so tetchy. These bone-corsets tend to make one slightly poorly disposed towards the rest of the world. What did the scholars say... right, when you went up high enough in an airship, and you didn't have proper support from oxygen tanks, there was a fair likelihood of simply keeling over. No air to breathe, not good air. Too thin, too cold. If you went up high enough, there might be nothing at all. All the air clustered tightly around the world like a blanket, none shared with the rest of the cosmos. Well, if that was the case, then wearing a tight corset was like making the entire world unfamiliar. Hard to breathe. And the body, realising this, told the brain that they were clearly on an alien world and ought to be on their toes. So of course you became poorly-disposed towards all of existence. Your entire body was telling you that the world was wrong, after all.

She sighed slightly, ignoring the nervous glances from the other passengers on the barge.

Missed Mahar Jovan. Well, missed Mahar. Jovan she could take or leave. No... no, she actually still preferred something unpleasant-and-known. Fidelizh, up ahead, was an unseen bucket that could contain all sorts of nasty fish. Gosh, fish. Her mind was flickering through all sorts of memories today - good, bad, from her childhood, from her adolescence... right before she left. The scent of fish pervaded all of them. Taste of fish, too. Fishcakes, fish relish, fish pie, tinned salted fish, fish soup, fish stew, fried fish, poached fish, whole fish to crunch down bones and all... The stiff river breeze cut into her, and she strained slightly, uncomfortable in her best clothes. She flinched for a moment - mama... no, mother was very, very adamant about never straining her best clothes. Always scolded her when she slipped up, and... no. Nothing. No mother around today. Nothing but herself, her uncomfortable clothes, and her too-heavy suitcase - too heavy even for her. And she was no shrinking violet, no sir. She was a... uh... swelling geranium. Tanner Magg was a swelling damn geranium, is what she was.

Thought was a gift better bestowed on others.

The barge shifted under her feet, but she remained planted firmly in place. Hard to move Tanner, something she was faintly proud of. Another random thought penetrated her melancholy - no-one liked seeing their parents weak or emotional. Now, she couldn't promise anything on the emotions, but she liked to think that she would never seem weak to any prospective brood-of-hers.

...that was rather nice to think about, actually. Rather nice. Made a good contrast.

She could see her home vanishing, the last traces of the only city she'd really known. Mahar Jovan. City of Two Kings. Two cities on two banks, awkwardly merged by a vascular system of bridges and boats. She was a west banker, Mahar, and liked it that way. She liked the endless domes, lined by leering gargoyles which directed water over the crowds in the lightest of showers - blessing them water running from their golden hands. She liked their coins, with a much better-looking king, with a rather excellent moustache. In fact... yes, she had some notes in her pocket. The face of proud kings staring out from soaring landscapes. She ruffled through the notes quickly, trying to keep them out of the wind. The king crew younger as she flicked through, reaching older notes, the numbers at the bottom getting smaller and smaller. From middle-aged to young, from young to almost boyish, his moustache small and curling. The notes full of little icons of flags from all the territories - Mahar, Jovan, the major colonies, Krodaw, the Western Marches, the Golden Chain which ran along the Tulavanta River... she flicked from boyish to old. The flags declined. The landscapes simplified. The boyish face turned older and more solemn. His eyes, simply represented as they were, became darker and slightly sadder.

She liked that face. Liked those landscapes. Liked the history of the place, if only because she knew it.

If she thought about it, she even found she liked the throat-jewels that the old priests wore, sewn delicately into the skin with little pieces of gold thread. The silly rituals and ornaments which had baffled her in her childhood now seemed... well, they seemed homely. And with homeliness came significance. What had... right, mother had taught her about it. All that came into the world was blessed by passage and motion, the priests said. A voice that passes delicately over a jewel is a holier voice than any other. Water passing through golden hands was blessed water. She clenched her fists slightly as she thought, feeling the delicate satin crunch around her fingers. Not quite gold, but mother said it was best to take them. Make sure everything she touched had a little sprinkle of luck about it, just while she got settled. Purify the foreign spirits of a new city.

She'd... well, Tanner had known nothing but Mahar Jovan, and couldn't say that she loved it, because how did you love something which was so core to your personality, to your sense of self? Home was one of those things you couldn't say you loved, might as well say you loved your liver, or your small intestine. Certainly, she'd rather not lack either of them, but she couldn't say she woke up every morning and blessed her liver senseless for having the good grace of sticking around.

...hm. Maybe she should. Damn fine thing, a liver.

Presumably.

Fidelizh sounded... odd, by comparison to her liver- no, home, to her home. Stop thinking about liver. Sharp towers instead of gentle domes. A Golden Parliament instead of the Retinue of Whalebone Teeth. And... and a job, no, a vocation, instead of whatever lay for her back home. Dim uncertainty receded into mild resignation. Whatever was back home, it was gone. Out of her life. So... stop worrying about it. Give it a go, at least. Give...

Give judging a go. Walk through the golden door, and... judge. The thoughts were still unnatural, felt like they'd squeak if she turned them around too quickly, like a fresh pair of boots. And like a fresh pair of boots, they pinched. Pinched and squeaked - the thought was like a rat, then. She rat-thought of judges, doors, and all the things ahead.

The barge was stirring beneath her like an animal, carrying them over the silty, choppy waters of the river Irizah, a tributary of the enormous Tulavanta. The same river for both cities, and... and she could see detritus floating in it. Growing thinner as they advanced slowly, the steam engine moaning in exertion. She saw chunks of trash from Mahar Jovan, mostly. Bottles with labels she recognised, beer she remembered father drinking on the wharf when mother wasn't looking. Cases, shattered and rotten, emblazoned with the marks of familiar trading companies, selling things she'd seen in a hundred little shops and stands, or clutched in a thousand manicured hands. Cigars, cigarettes, cigarillos, big barrels for wine and stronger substances, cases for ammunition and arms, long glittering lines of fishing reel and netting, posters torn and soaked, the water drinking up the ink and leaving behind pulp pale as a puckered hand, skeletons and carcasses from animals eaten and thrown aside, all the things Mahar Jovan ate up and threw down the river like food down a throat. The carcasses - the leering sockets of cow skulls, greasy where meat had left a mark, large fish turned to delicate traceries of white filament-bones, mouths open in endless surprise, chickens like unfleshed angels with wings spread wide to swim limply against the current - were mounted by mournful black birds. Like... like judges, really, in their black capes, with their eyes covered by focusing-lenses and their mouths full of coarse croaks known only to the flock and to no-one else. Each one standing delicately on their charge, accompanying them into the dark of the yonder. And as the barge went on, the detritus thinned out. The trash sinking, or drifting to the banks. The carcasses being picked too clean to care about, or being snapped below by the larger things beneath the waves, the bottles filling with silty water and plummeting down, down, down. Bit by bit, she was leaving her home behind. Even the trash was slipping away, and she saw a fish skeleton gaping mournfully as it sank away for the last time.

Blup.

Gone.

Youngest person on the barge. Fifteen.

Fifteen. Practically an adult.

And all she could think about was her childhood. Not very fitting for someone who was also the largest on the damn boat.

Her eyes were dark as she gazed into the water...

* * *

"...no luck down by the riverside today. None. Got anything in the pot?"

"Eels. Don't tell Tanner."

"Right, right. Cor, tiring looking for work, isn't it? I mean, you think it's going to be all lazing around, soaking up the sun, but you're running back and forth every other minute, not stopping, always worried about taking someone's time up... sorry, Tanner- ow."

Tanner's wrapped her father up in a hug. He's almost shorter than her now. Both her parents are. Father's in his old clothes again, the ones which always smell like damp. Good for work, bad for hugs. His hands are calloused, smelling strongly of tobacco - the back of his hand is stained a light brown where he sprinkles his snuff. A pair of eyes dark as a mole's fur narrow, his mouth barely twitches into a smile, but she knows he's pleased to see her. One of his toes is poking out of his socks - years later, she still remembers it. Mama never lets him wear his boots in the house, not when she spends all day keeping it clean. And his grey socks are full of holes. One big toe, like a small pink worm with a dull yellow head, sticks out and wiggles slightly when he moves. She unconsciously shuffles back from him, doesn't want to step on it. They end up hunched over, stretching out like they're imitating a bridge, as Tanner backs off to keep Father's toe safe. Mama looked over her shoulder with pursed lips, the skin around her eyes crinkling slightly. Father laughs quietly and claps her on the head, ruffling her hair back and forth. She does one of her small smiles, at first. Been practising in the mirror. Doesn't like it when she looks clownish. Father stares at her for a second... then pokes her softly in the shoulder.

"Go on, proper smile."

She does nothing. Father snorts.

"Tanner, proper smile. 'afore I send y'out to get the coal scuttle."

She can do the coal scuttle. She's good with that. Big enough. Need to take off her bands, though, they stain something awful. No reaction.

"Now, girl of mine, I see me buckets on buckets of fish every damn - pardon - day, and I won't have me a girl who runs around with a face like one of them dead pods they pull out of the old pumps from time to time. Hm?"

Tanner cracks a smile. A little bigger. Father pokes her in the side, and the smile suddenly springs outwards as she crouches back, shrinking into herself and suddenly becoming... well, the size of a girl her age. Her entire face crinkles up, her eyes turn into tiny dark lines, her smile almost reaches her ears. Father slaps her on the shoulder, snorting like a bull in that way he does instead of laughing, and Mama sucks her teeth in disapproval. Dinner's stew and yesterday's bread - big chunks of flaking fish in broth choked by huge leaves of cabbage. The bread's good, at least. She likes to have something to gnaw on. Food that's too soft makes her feel like she's being fed by a mother bird - one of the girls at the ground showed her it, once, the way the bird shivered and quaked and vomited up a whole chunk of damp matter for the squalling featherless chicks to eat.

Rather hard to like boiled fish at that point.

They sit around a table black as coal, round and slightly uneasy on its legs. The light above hangs flickering, dripping a loose string of oil to the table now and again like... well, like the mother bird she's trying very hard not to think about as a piece of fish flakes apart on her tongue without the need for a single bite. She stares at her parents, hunching her shoulders - at the table, she's much taller. Silence pervades for a second as Father eats and eats, throat pulsing as he gulps down broth. Mama doesn't bother to shoot him disapproving looks like she usually would. Can tell from the way Father occasionally stops and just stares at the lamp, dark eyes flickering with the light like a pair of anti-stars, only taking and never giving.

She chews.

And Father sighs.

"I'll be going out tomorrow, then. Clarant thinks there might be something to do up and around the fisheries, says they've got a few lads about to get called up for service. Might be some work up there, gutting and the like. If y'can smell me when I come down the road tomorrow night, I've had a good time."

Tanner suddenly speaks.

This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

Her voice has a low quality. Careful. Considerate. For someone as tall and strong as her, she has a surprisingly small voice... but it rumbles through her, and she knows that one day she'll be able to bellow. A whisper with the echo of a roar.

"Service?"

Mama looks up with the sharpness of a crane spying movement in the water.

"Elbows."

She withdraws them quickly, and asks again, her large, blue eyes staring thoughtfully at Father. He coughs slightly, wiping his mouth with a sleeve when Mama isn't looking (the confidentiality makes her smile internally, nice to be in on the joke).

"...well, Tanner. Yes. Service. Lads are heading out to the colonies this time, I would think. Clarant's got a mate down with the corps, two of them go to the same boozer. They're saying brief, but... well, long as it gives me and Clarant time to head up and start gutting, we're fine."

"Not eels?"

"...no, Tanner. Not eels. Trout. Mackerel. The like."

Good.

Didn't like the idea of her Father killing eels. Lovely things.

Her head tilts to one side slightly.

"Colonies?"

"Riots or something. My girl, when you're old enough, you'll be sick of that sort of thing, every day they're angry, and every day we're talking about 'em. If it's not the colonies, it's the savages out west, or the mutants up north, or the... well, whatever you like. My point, my girl, is don't learn to read, and don't wash your ears. 'Cause the news is depressing and the earwax will stop you hearing others talk of it."

Mama gives him a look.

"Don't corrupt the youth, darling."

"What? Nowt wrong with refusing to clean out one's ears. If we weren't meant to have wax in them, we wouldn't have any. Hm. Actually. Is wax holy? Does it purify sound or anything?"

Father is an east banker. Father makes bad jokes about west bankers, makes him very unpopular. Tanner laughs, but she knows she shouldn't, and this makes her laugh harder - she has a bad laugh, all snorts and half-chokes. A laugh afraid to reach its proper volume. Mama tuts.

"Some wax, my darling, some. Not all."

"Well, maybe for west bankers... hm, maybe all that wax makes all the sound out here all holy and whatnot. What do you think, Tanner?"

She keeps her face consciously still, knowing mama is watching her grimly, waiting to chastise her. The silence draws out... and father shrugs.

"Alright, keep your peace, wise move, wise move. That being said..."

He leans in, and his voice becomes a stage whisper. He points at one of the low-burning yellow candles on the table, held in a candlestick shaped like a fish, mouth held wide to receive the wax.

"Well, 'course she'd complain, if I stopped clearing out my ears we wouldn't have any candles, would we?"

Father makes bad jokes.

Tanner laughs anyway.

Mama pokes him with the blunt end of a fork, glaring.

"No corrupting the youth with your filth, love. No, Tanner, the candles aren't made... anyhow. Anyhow."

Father grins lopsidedly, shovelling a little more food into his mouth.

"Right. Right. You should be out there, though. Soon. Gutting fish with your pa, huh?"

She wrinkles her nose. Father's voice lowers suddenly, becoming downright axiomatic.

"Don't be high and mighty, my girl. No shame in doing honest work. And when vacancies come up... trust me, Tanner, you'll be over the moon when you hear people calling for that, over the bloody - pardon - moon. Where there's a vacancy, there's hope. Even with fish gutting. But, uh, stay away from soldiering. The more vacancies in the army, the more worried you should be. The more vacancies in the fishery, the happier you should be. And the more vacancies in the wedding registry, the damn - pardon - happier you should be. Know I was."

She nods solemnly. Commits his rambling axioms to heart like she was copying out a pecia from school.

Mama sniffs in her familiar way.

"Silly business. But he's right. Fishery's good, honest work. Nothing good about marching off to smack some colonials around. Mind you don't marry a soldier either, Tanner. Never home. Don't trust the uniforms, even if they're very smart, and no matter how bright the boots are."

She nods thoughtfully at this. But doesn't quite commit it to heart. She's got boots, those things are hard to keep shiny. In her mind, anyone with good shiny boots probably has some kind of good idea about things. Father grins slightly.

"Didn't hear you complaining."

"Shush. That was entirely different."

"I was barefoot. But I think my uniform was nice enough."

"Shush. The brood's present."

"Right, right."

He gives the sort of smile to Tanner which she returns shyly... before he nudges her suddenly in the side. Her smile snaps wider immediately as she shrivels inward a little to shield the old vitals, her spoon almost flying out of her hands. Another snap of annoyance from Mama, insisting that if anything should be spilled then it'll be the duty of whoever's responsible to clean it up, then set a night watch for any rats or ants or vermin-of-any-sort which might make an incursion. Tanner fights to get herself back under control, brushing her hair behind her ears. Come on, stop smiling, stop smil- oh, right, focus on the hair. If she's not being awkward about her height or her strength or her face, she's awkward about her hair. Tortoiseshell, all browns and blondes. Like the hide of a stray cat or some other mongrel animal. When it's winter, her hair darkens to the shade of a chestnut. When it's summer, her hair brightens until it's the shade of wheat.

Pity that she has so much hair, if she didn't, she might get a consistent colour.

Still growing her way through last winter...

She focuses on the strands, uses it to ground herself. Reduces her smile. Settles back to her stew as Father starts to talk loudly about some dock story. The one about... oh, she always lost track once he talked about all the different knots and masts and random objects and ranks. But she liked his voice. Even when she understood only half of what he talked about, she liked the calm, confident rumble, the way his little dark eyes shone in the oil lamp's light, the way he ran her fingers down the tusks of his moustache and drew them to neat points, before settling back to enjoy a pipe and a little ale while Mama tidied up the bowls and things.

That night, the girl tucks herself next to her father on the narrow couch, and falls asleep cradled in his too-small arms, her hair almost drowning him, and her dress' colourful bands unlaced and fluttering over the empty fireplace.

* * *

The barge again. Nothing else to focus on. Well, she has a few dog-eared books, but... no, not for now. Mind is too scattered, though you wouldn't know it to look at her. Some people showed their expressions openly, but the more emotional Tanner became, the less her face moved. Took effort to get to that point. Used to be more open about things. No, present. Focus. Past was gone, present was now. A good philosophical statement, in that it was a blindingly obvious statement of fact. Focus on the world around her. The barge, with its boards straining under her weight. Her clothes, still too tight. She wasn't fat, she could say that much, but she was tall, broad, strong, built like she was meant to be hauling boxes for a living. Or ploughing a field with a bit between her teeth, more likely. Damn height, she was meant to just be an early grower. Should've tapered off, the rest of her peers catching up. But they never did. Tanner had simply grown more. At fifteen, she towered over everyone on this barge, well, the few she'd been able to compare herself to. They kept a distance. A couple, man and woman, the woman young and blonde and with... ah, she had those new ear-decorations all the fashionable people had. Holy metal, to sweeten all sounds. Ringed around the ear and formed a kind of trumpet, needed to be anchored with a stud in the lobe.

Tanner self-consciously brushed a lock of hair over her own ears. All she had were her gloves. And those were family heirlooms. No silver ears, no jewelled throat, no golden spectacles, no whale-bone teeth, no delicate nose-grilles, no theurgic stomach-needles, nothing. She experienced the world as only the profane could. The first colonies of Fidelizh were visible at this point, with strange architecture, and odd folk wandering around with unadorned hands and ears. A few looked over at the barge as it passed, and she saw a small child sitting on the edge of a long, rickety jetty. Wearing a comically large bowler hat which could've served as a bucket, and an overcoat with long white strips along the sleeves. He looked... and jerked suddenly, adjusting the hat until it fell slightly over his eyes, and shuffling the sleeves of his overcoat until the strips fell just so into the crook of his elbow. His face pulled down into a frown, and he glowered at the barge as it passed. Nothing about his clothing was designed to purify him. She'd heard about this - about how the Fidelizhi let their gods ride on their backs, invited by clothing, by behaviour, by words. Like they were luring a god in through imitation. Not a glove in sight. And... already she felt homesick.

Shouldn't. She was fifteen.

Basically an adult.

The girl with the silvered ears laughed behind her hand - oh. Oh. She was doing the gesture. Fingers slightly parted, her glove shining with high-quality fabric - the air from the laugh passing between purifying threads. Didn't really lessen the sting, no matter how the gloves made her laugh more purified. What was it, then? Was it the way Tanner's hair was blowing in the river breeze? Or was it the stiff clothing which she knew was her best, she knew, but.. but maybe it wasn't as good as theirs. It wasn't, she knew it wasn't. She hunched into herself, feeling like a child again, needed to keep her arms tight to her sides to avoid hurting others, definitely needed to watch her feet... fixed her eyes on the village by the river, placed her hands over one another in front of her waist, then clenched her jaw until it seemed like she was about to grow tusks from either side of her face. Just focus on the colonies. Focus on... on the sort of place she'd be living. For a long time. Gods... gods, she wanted to go back home. Wanted mother to sit her down in her own chair, at her own table, with all the little things she'd spent a lifetime accumulating. A few men were in the river up ahead, wading up to their knees, dragging huge nets in... ah. Strung them across, caught fish, then hauled the nets in regularly. The black threads were full of wriggling, silvery creatures... the fishermen wore heavy gas masks over their faces, lenses like the eyes of insects, and wheezed incessantly. Shambling like waterlogged pilgrims through the current with their enormous rubber coats and gloves. Crashing through the small waves, foam hissing around their legs. Could see one of the fish was mutated.

...father had talked about those.

Had.

* * *

"Now, my girl, just... slide the knife right there, underneath the belly, from the fin to the head... you see, what you want to do is rip out all the guts at once, really just tear out the whole spine, the whole thing. Bosses don't like it when their customers have to pick out even more, so we do it all at once, nice and clean..."

Tanner has her tongue stuck out one side of her mouth as she focuses, narrowing both eyes to tiny slits. The fish is a huge, silvery thing, cold as a corpse despite only being killed recently. Her father's voice is soothing, a low, reassuring murmur that seems to overlap over itself, merging with the babbling of the river below. Rising when he needs her to listen, and lowering when he just wants her to relax and keep on working steadily. The flesh slithers between her fingers, the organs are tiny and dark, the spine is a row of gleaming white fangs poking out of anonymous grey matter... she rips... and a pile of sterile, bloodless gore falls into a deep, stinking bucket. She doesn't realise how tightly her breath has been held all this time, and she finally takes in a breath... only to gag as the stink of fish enters her nose with all the subtlety of a bull surrounded by red silk.

"There's my girl!"

A heavy gloved hand claps her on the back.

"There's my girl, that's a good, clean cut right there. Now, get yourself some practice, and we'll have this pile done soon enough."

She smiles shyly. She can feel it building up in her hands already - muscle memory, memories of restraint and force. Violence, Tanner imagines, is all about those two things. Really, when she's... her, everything's about those two things. How much force can the fish handle, and how much does it require? A few mutilated fish lie on the dock where she's misjudged, but... but this one worked. Father hums an old river-song as he works steadily at his pile, and Tanner picks up another fish of her own, tongue already in the appointed position as she focuses. Her knife is crude and shoddy, the knife slightly blunter than it ought to be, stop her from chopping off one her fingers by accident. But there's still the required band of cloth around the handle. Killing, touching the dead, all these things demand the purity of a proper medium. Mama tells her this, regularly. Murmurs moral lessons as she learns to sew. Wrap a cloth around the handle to stop the invisible things which live in dead flesh from crawling up and gnawing. Wrap a cloth around the handle of the bucket for the same reason. Never wash good cloth in the open river, never. That's where the invisible things breed and fester, and they are not to be allowed to sully good cloth. She recites the precepts over and over and over as she focuses... a slit... a gash... another tear, and she feels a kind of savage relish appearing as she finds the sweet spot. Like tuning an instrument. Too tight, and it all goes wrong. Too loose, and nothing happens. But just right...

Just right.

Father hums in approval. His own knife is as long as his forearm, gleaming brightly. After every few slices, he wipes it with a long cloth hanging from his waist, embroidered with the sign of the open mouth - feed the invisible things to the hungry spirits, that's another precept. Satisfies their hunger, and gets rid of the rotting things. She works, works...

"Hup, hold there."

She freezes.

Father snatches a fish from her pile, grumbling.

"Bad. Sorry about that, Tanner. Thought Clarant said this batch had been checked..."

The fish before her is... oh. Oh. Mutant. Bad. Very bad. She backs away immediately, holding her breath. Too many teeth, too many eyes. A mouth running down the belly, filled with sharp, spine-like fangs. It looks wrong... and it smells sweet, crackling, like the alcohol mama keeps under the boards. No rot to be seen. And... and she sees gills pulsing wetly.

"Learning to draw air, see? Still figuring it out."

He hesitates... then flicks his knife across the throat, cutting it, before hurling the fish end over end into the river.

"That'll keep it quiet, I think. Hopefully. Hard to do much moving once you've cut the spines. Alright there, my girl?"

She nods silently.

"...come on, speak up. Keep at things like that and I'll forget what your voice sounds like. Go on, did the thing scare you?"

Obviously not. Obviously not. Why would it scare her? Not like it's...

No. Nothing about it to scare her.

...she's... going to ask if she can drink milk tonight. Nothing with water in it. She clutches the cloth around her knife, wishes she had a good embroidered one like father. He's already running the knife through a lantern hanging near the dock, sterilising the blade... she sees the blood trying to crawl up it, just a little. Trying to escape the heat. When it's cleansed, it seems to wriggle.

"Now, keep your hair on. Just a freaky little fish. Cut the spine, they can't move. Throw 'em back in, they can't swim, something else comes up and eats them, job done."

A snort.

"And those pretty little fellers over there, they'll handle anything bigger."

Right.

A dark shape looms on the horizon. A hulk. Bristling with harpoons. A floating building, really. Metal and mutant-bone, armed with harpoons and cannons, with burning liquid in iron jars. Returned from purging the northern banks of the great Tulavanta, raining fire upon the mutant, driving them back into the north. Well, that's what mama said. The sight of thick, greasy smoke on the horizon was unnerving to Tanner... and to all those who survived the Great War, it was beyond cheering. Apparently. Lots of work to be done on a craft like that, and the inns were packed around here, with hunters and sailors, with soldiers and soldier-priests, with men and women slightly mottled by drops of contamination that warped the flesh and twisted the muscle. No crows swarm around it. Nothing dares come close to something that reeks that much, and the engine growls like a living thing, smoke rising from it as it burns the bodies of the mutants to fuel itself. She settles back down to the fish with a shiver. Just... work. Stomach the unpleasantness, and work, and...

A small mewling.

A cat, crawling up the dock. Small. Black, with white paws, like it's wearing an array of neat little socks. Eyes bristle with hunger, flicker between the fish and the gutters. It hesitates, mewls again, backs off... stares...

Tanner ignores it, clenching her jaw.

"Here, puss. Have some of those botches."

Her jaw clenched harder. Her botches. The fish she didn't gut right. No, no, he's not being mocking, he's just... feeding a cat. It slowly approaches... sniffing... before lunging to grab one of the half-ruined things on the dock, whole body tense as a wire as it hauls it back easily to safety. Tanner wants to give it a little scratch, just behind the ears. She almost reaches... but then she sees those little muscles cording and straining, sees the little, delicate features of the creature's face... no. No, maybe not. She knows how those things feel under her fingers, how... she's not a violent person, she doesn't want to hurt things, but they just feel so delicate. Her heart just seizes up, her lungs begin to strain slightly, her muscles twitch and her entire back begins to ache from tension. No, no, touching cats is stressful, they feel like they'll break too easily, and then she imagines a broken neck lolling and a little pink tongue protruding and the awful, awful, awful yowl of an injured animal, and...

"Tanner?"

She looks up.

"Yes, father?"

"Look like you're pondering something."

"...no. Not really."

Her voice is quiet and ashamed. She hunches like a gargoyle over her fish, focuses intently on the silver scales parting like a flawless dress being snipped down the back, and-

"Listen, lass. You're a good girl, you're not going to hurt anything if you're careful."

"Hm."

"Surprises me, honestly. Cats, they're... well, look at that thing. Pretty as a button. And... what's that wretched thing you like?"

"Eels."

Her voice is a sharp snap. He knows she likes eels, he's aware she likes eels, so... he's getting her to react.

Bah.

"Eels. Right. That's it. Eels and whatnot. So, no cats, all eels?"

She shrugs.

"Eels don't break. All squirmy and tough. Pick them up, they just twist everywhere."

She likes to think you could wring an eel like a wet towel and it's be fine. She knows it's not true, but... she looks down into the dark water. Imagines a few eels down there, maybe migrating up to where they can properly grow. Might be some little see-through ones, right at the bottom... little babies clambering up the riverbed before they can darken and toughen. Fresh out of the sea. Father snorts.

"Sure. Ugly though, aren't they?"

Her eyes snap up, anger involuntarily rising.

"No. They're lovely. Nice little faces. The baby ones look like glass, the big ones look like river stones, all dappled."

"Just big wet snakes, though, aren't they?"

He's still teasing, and she's still rising to the bait. Fish ignored and allowed to dangle from her hand like some primitive slingshot.

"No. Snakes are all... thin and nasty. And they bite, poisonous bites. Eels are good, just... those little eyes they've got, the little bulgy ones, they're all... human, I think. Gentle. And there's those big graceful fins, and they're not poisonous or nothing, and those little smiles some of them have, they look like... well, they look happy to see you and everything, and they're clever, and they're... you know, they're not flashy, father, they're not all stupid and shiny and everything, they're just nice. Nice little jaws, some of them are just like little needles, and... they just travel and travel, and they're clever about travelling, I read that, they're clever. Crawl around on land and then back in the sea and back into rivers, they're explorers. They're small, delicate, squirmy explorers. And snakes are all dry and dusty and hissy, or they like killing humans, eels are different. No problem with humans, all shy and slimy. They just slither around and eat things and they're clever. And tough. And pretty."

"Like you?"

"Shut up."

"Oy."

"...sorry."

Eels are fantastic. She bloody likes eels. All slithery and whatnot. Won't eat them, refuses to eat them. Just remembers... years and years ago, finding one in a bucket near the dock. All abandoned. Probably just left behind, it wasn't too big, quite dark. Maybe it was hiding at the bottom or something, everyone missed it. And she picked it up, held it, and it just... squirmed around her fingers, wrapped around them, let them go, slithered and slithered and never bit or hurt her, it was just... innocent, in a way. It felt like finding something undiscovered. Cats, like the one which was still gnawing on its fish a little way away, had grown up with humans, knew humans, experienced humans. They were part of the human story, in a way. No way of disentangling them, and... they were shaped for humans to hold, to pet, to keep and feed and love. Eels weren't. They were born where no human could go, crawled in places no human would tread, and might well live out their lives without ever knowing there was such a thing as a human. Their world was their own. And when an eel breached the surface and felt human hands wrapping around it, her hands... they were both strangers. Both of them equally out of their depth.

She just liked them. Liked seeing all the wriggles. Some people liked seeing dogs shake themselves or cats roll on their backs, but Tanner liked eel-wriggles. Liked the way they felt like silk under her fingers, slithering all about and knowing no friction.

...she had read about them. Born out in the middle of nowhere, swimming to some random place, just... swimming and swimming, crawling and climbing, and... then just finding a random spot which was home. There was no reason why this patch of mud should be home, and no other patch should be. There was no possible reason for them to be there, but they chose it and now it was home. No arguments.

What wasn't to like about that?

"Feeling better, Tanner?"

...nuts.

He'd managed it.

Again.

"Cheating."

"Yup. Now, keep on going with them fish, hm? Don't want to have to eat eels because we couldn't gut enough fish for the market and the stew-pot both, now don't we?"

She guts like her life depends on it. She guts those guts with gusto and... uh, guts. Gutsy gut gutting with gusto.

And in the distance, the song of the mutant-spearers carries over the breeze, a low, rumbling bellow of warlike chants and hums and barks, the songs that come from throats stained with inhumanity by the choking fumes of their kills.

And she doesn't pay them a single bit of attention.

* * *

Tanner leans against the railing of the barge, and her face remains completely flat... but she's smiling inside. That'd been a good day. Mama... Mother, Mama was childish, and she was fifteen, which meant mother was the correct form of address. Mother had been grumpy when they got back, though. Had her sit down and get to knitting, needed to help repair some of her own clothes - she moved too fast sometimes, tore the seams, and Mother insisted that she learn how to repair them. Good skill. But the first ten minutes had just been Mother with a tiny penknife and her tongue stuck out in concentration as she helped get all the little bones out from underneath Tanner's nails. Gosh, that'd been... wow, that'd been years ago. Years, and she could still feel the penknife under her nails, and the satisfying feeling of little spinal pieces coming slipping out to the ground, before she could get back to sewing. She'd disliked sewing, disliked it from the start, she did. Too delicate, too quiet, too removed from the things she liked - the river, the fish, the eels. Father was the same. He'd always said that philosophers could talk about what they liked, and the priests could ramble, but there was nothing quite like having a knife in your hand, standing in the open air, and feeling an honest ache in your back. Visceral simplicity. She still held by that, even now. Something viscerally nice about doing something that made your back ache and kept your eyes from narrowing and pinching from lack of good light. Not that she... disliked being around Mother.

The thing one learned the most, being her size, living in her city, was to endure. Be calm, be collected, don't overreact. When she overreacted or was too emotional, people thought she was about to hit them, and... and that was just about the worst thing she could imagine. The couple near her, the young ones, shuffled off over the deck to examine so other piece of water. And in the distance, she could see the sharp towers of Fidelizh gradually, gradually approaching - would still take a while to get there. The briars of memory were tightening and snapping, one after the other... dinners at home, gutting fish with Father, sewing with Mother, playing with other children. The lodge. Her memories were coming, earliest first. And always, they came back to her parents. Always.

She remembered lodges. Initiations. Standing terrified in a white shift while her aunts and uncles muttered to one another of her suitability, terrified of their stares, terrified of being ignored, wanting to go home but knowing that this was her home. Wanting her family - but this was her family. Surrounded by portraits and shrines to old family members. The world beyond was full of witchcraft and hostility - the lodge was safety. Wanted to run, but knew it would just expose her to greater danger. Her mother glancing down, unwilling to meet her eyes as the mutters turned to questions, to interrogations, to demands, as her aunts moved closer...

Happier memories came next.

She remembered plunging her hands into a bucket of eels and laughing, one of her rare, full-throated laughs, at the feeling of all those slithery bodies moving in a tight, curious vortex...

She remembered...

She remembered Father.

Her grip on the railing tightened a little. Her jaw clenched very, very slightly. A satin-gloved hand reached up to tug her wide-brimmed hat over her eyes, shading them from the dim grey sun.

And a voice suddenly spoke, a voice in a language she didn't know.

"Cakhschali? Mashkalixbazulun?"

And Tanner turned to see a man wearing a mask of purest white...

Long, thin hands clad in soft gloves...

And eyes black as pitch.