CHAPTER SEVEN - THE TANNER-EYGI SCALE OF FLESHLY QUALITY

The bag was fine. Heavy, yes, but... Tanner was good with heavy stuff. She hefted it easily and shambled off to the dormitory, plonking it down just outside - not sure which bed was hers, didn't want to intrude. They didn't have long, really. Surprised she was able to pop out and grab a pie at all, they weren't exactly meant to do that. There was the strange, tense air of rule-breaking around this whole situation. Students at their stage were meant to be strictly regulated, not much time for conversation, even less time for idleness. Event upon event upon event, carving them into proper foundations upon which judges could be built. Tanner had quite liked it. The regulation, the enforcement, the general air of simply being a cog spinning as she was expected. Excelling at this meant being ignored, and that was lovely - excelling being tied up with getting singled out and marked as different was... no, not her thing, not her thing at all. The hallway was eerily barren. For once, she was moving without a crowd around her, and she kept thinking that soon enough she'd step wrong, the sound would echo, and a bunch of howling judges would spill out of the walls to ask her what she was doing and how dare she deviate from the set plan, she should be rushing off to lunch right now, to dine sparsely and efficiently before moving on to the next lecture! She hadn't even thought about going out for lunch, that sounded... expensive, expensive and risky. What if she got lost? What if she had a lovely conversation and lost track of time? What if she came back with her fingers slightly greasy or stained and now she had to deal with that for the rest of the day, marring her work, while nausea churned in her stomach and she felt keenly out of joint with everyone else, and-

"Oy-oy. Pie?"

Eygi had a voice like a bloody foghorn, she did.

She... also had a pie. Apparently. Tanner flinched as a huge mass of pasty and paper was thrust upwards by this strange broken-toothed curly-haired yellow-dressed entity.

"Uh. The bag... I wasn't sure which bed was yours, so I left it outside. I hope that's alright, sorry I didn't ask beforehand. Should've thought of it."

Eygi grinned, her smile barely visible around the edges of the pie now dominating Tanner's vision. Like a pastry with a halo of slightly broken teeth. Goodness, she'd run there and back, she moved fast for a short person.

"Nah, no fuss. I'll show you, come on."

Oh goodness.

Tanner, despite probably being large enough to crush Eygi into a small grapefruit (which she never would, of course), was somehow being dragged around by this actual imp. The bag was retrieved, and she was swiftly hauling it inside, to the eerily silent vision of bed upon bed upon bed with no-one in them. Felt like she was in a hospital after some horrific plague, or in somewhere deserted and abandoned by nature and man, and... urgh, she disliked seeing other people's beds. Eygi's was made, but... still, she could see fringes of undergarments and everything, she wasn't meant to see that, those things were special wedding-day surprises. Not the undergarments themselves, just the sight of them in an unarranged state. You only let someone see how you organised your undergarments after it was too late for them to run away.

"Just there. Pie?"

"Uh. Yes, please. How much was it?"

"Free, innit. Go on, tuck in, I already had one on the way over."

"...you were... running there and back, weren't you?"

"Yeah."

"And you ate the pie on the way back?"

"Yeah."

"How?"

Eygi grinned wider, flecks of pastry visible around her slightly froggish lips.

"With relish, young chum. With relish. And practice. And my mouth. Go on, it's good. They do this thing with blood sausage and everything."

Tanner's eyes were widening. What... manner of creation had been presented to her? Why did blood need to get involved? Wait. Wait.

"Are there eels in this?"

Eygi's smile dimmed very slightly.

"...no? It's... no, it's not an eel pie. I can go back and get an eel pie if you-"

"No, no, no, this is lovely. Thank you for it. Are you sure I can't pay you back? I can, it's not a problem-"

"Eat the pie, for crying out loud."

"...I'll buy you a pie at some point, then. I promise that much."

Eygi was peering up at her much like a scientist with a microscope, but she said nothing. They began to return back to the general thoroughfares of the inner temple, the long, straight corridors illuminated by soft blue light emanating from lacquered tiles. Some of them were from earlier phases of construction, had different designs - one corridor had glowing tiles with little engravings on them, judges poised in the motions of their trade. Reading books, writing judgements with long quills, scratching their chins, arranging their special lenses, examining witnesses... all of them lovingly picked out with the care of someone who'd had ample opportunity to observe these activities, to perform them, and clearly quite enjoyed them. She wondered why this hadn't been applied to other tiles, but... no, probably cheaper. Though she had an image of one eccentric judge carving away at this corridor for as long as he was allowed to, maybe even doing it in secret before the higher-ups did him in for vandalism. Anyway. Pie. Solid thing. About the size of a grapefruit, the same sort of one she could squish Eygi down to the size of if she was so inclined - which she wasn't, and never would be, on account of not being a savage. A sniff - it smelled like a pie. A prod - it felt like a pie, and not an overly greasy one. A nibble. The pastry, at least, tasted good, flaky and slightly chewy. A nibble... then a chomp.

...what on earth was this?

It was meat, she knew that much. But what else? It was pinkish, yes, and there these odd veins of black running through it, which... presumably was the blood sausage. Now, the blood sausage she understood, it was spicy and warming and sat pleasantly in her stomach like a hiker finally returning to a familiar home and a familiar armchair (which was somewhat true in a morbid sort of way), but the meat. Pinkish? Reddish? It was a bit salty, but... was it pork? Beef? Horse? Something elusive and undiscovered? A spark of paranoia - mutant, she was being poisoned, Eygi was a monstrous experimentress who wanted to turn her into an even larger person using contaminated meat, and... no, not that, but it was definitely unlike any meat she'd had before. Eygi grinned.

"Weird, isn't it?"

"What... is it?"

"I have no idea. That place is good, been going for years, they keep saying that it's pork - it's not pork. I've had pork, and that is not pork. It might, in fact, be human."

Tanner's eyes had already widened, now they widened even further. They'd gone from marbles, to conkers, to passable components of an egg-and-spoon race. Who knew what realms evolution could take her to next.

"Oh."

"Oh indeed. And the thing is... I don't mind. If it turned out they were human, I'd mostly be disappointed that the pie shop was about to get closed and burned to the ground. They're good enough for me to not care. Can you fangle my angle, chum?"

Tanner blinked rapidly, her eyes expanding further, reaching their limit and transmitting the expansion to her eyebrows, which climbed up her face like a pair of ambitious caterpillars.

"Oh. I see. I... might? It's rather good."

"And apparently human tastes like pork, so..."

Tanner nibbled at the pie, mostly out of politeness... alright, Eygi had a point. Not about the humans tasting like pork, no idea how she knew that... though her chipped teeth provided ominous (if unlikely) hints. No, it was a pretty damn good pie. Just the right combination of factors, not too greasy, but not too dry, not clinging to the throat and lips, just... doing what it was meant to do. It didn't sit in the stomach like a lead weight, it didn't make her feel slightly funny, it was done before she felt stuffed, and it wasn't repeating on her - the tiny belches that followed any kind of meal were only slightly flavoured with spice, not a hint of rot or decay. Was she defining a good pie by how it wasn't a bad pie? Yes, yes she was, when you thought in terms of catastrophes, good was mostly just defined by their absence. Now, was this pie good enough to justify cannibalism? No. Was it good enough to justify, say, eating some less-favoured animal, like a cat, a dog, or some kind of rodent mashed into paste... well, maybe. Maybe. She'd probably shrug if someone said it was made of horse, and might reconsider getting another one if they said it was made from a clean dog.

This pie was currently hovering around dog-level.

"...that's a good scale to work on."

"Hm?"

Oh, goodness, she wasn't used to talking with people casually. Just mumbled around a piece of pastry mid-train of thought. Dolt. Brute.

"Sorry, sorry, sorry, I meant... well, uh, the scale of... how much you like a piece of meat. Whether or not you'd stop eating it if you found out it was a certain animal. You're at the top of the scale, with humans, or I suppose mutants would be the top of scale, sorry, anyway, and I'm only part of the way there."

"What animal?"

"Dog."

"What kind of dog?"

"...clean? A clean dog is my limit. If it's dirty, I wouldn't keep eating the pie."

Eygi hummed thoughtfully, almost drowned out by the rising sound of people walking and talking in hushed tones - the telltale sounds of students who weren't quite sure about their new colleagues, and weren't going to announce their thoughts to the world. Everything was hushed until proper reconnaissance had been established. She tilted her head from one side to another, like she was shaking her brains up to get them properly functional. Or maybe she was reassembling her brains into new configurations.

"An excellent notion, Tanner. An excellent notion. We'll have to codify this, of course. Establish principles. Scientific ones. Legal ones, even. And it needs a name. The Tanner-Eygi Scale of Flesh Quality? Yes, you get to come first, you came up with it, but I want equal credit. I bought you the pie, right? Probably counts as sponsoring a scientist, or something. Your noble patron, then."

Tanner had...

She'd made a friend.

This was a friendly thing. This was a friend thing that friends did. Came up with stupid systems to gauge the quality of edible flesh. And she'd just had a weird thought about... about brain reassembling. The sauce-bottle theory of cranial arrangements. And... wow, she... her thought-words emerged in an uncontrolled tumble.

"You keep tilting your head from side to side. It's like you're trying to shake your brains like a sauce bottle. Do you think it helps brains if you shake them around? I mean, for babies, obviously not, because they're all squishy and you're not meant to shake them, but do you think adults might need shaking from time to time to make sure they're still functional?"

Eygi stopped walking.

Looked up at Tanner.

"...I'm not letting you pick me up and shake me to try it out, chum."

Tanner froze.

"No, no, no, I didn't... well, we're... coming up with theories?"

Egyi tilted her head to one side, realised what that implied given Tanner's new neurological formulation, and frowned.

"Tanner, it's... yes, I suppose that's a point. Just came out of nowhere, you know? Just let me settle down a bit, process it. Rotate it in my grey cells for a bit."

Tanner had done a social faux pas. And she'd... crumbs, she'd spoken too quickly. Realised how she sounded. Quick. Intense. Odd. And she'd... indicated that she was focusing on her with a degree of intensity that might've been improper and slightly disconcerting, oh, gosh, it'd be like if someone had made a highly personal comment about something she hadn't noticed herself doing - doing something embarrassing for an extended period and not realising it was one of her biggest fears. Eygi was squinting slightly now, with her large, somewhat bulbous eyes. Tanner wondered if she could actually squint all the way, if her eyes were too bulbous, if someone could have eyes that were so bulbous blinking was impossible, or-

No, no, no, see, that was the sort of thing she shouldn't say, and wouldn't.

Dumb ox. Woke up today and chose to be a moron.

"Gods, Tanner, you look like you're about to faint, I didn't mind, just came out of nowhere."

"Sorry, yes. Sorry."

Eygi snorted good-naturedly.

"You're a fruitcake. I've literally known you for less than an hour and you've already proposed a ranking system for flesh grading, then you talked about brain rearrangement, and you also carried my enormous bag to my room."

Two acts of erratic strangeness and one act of monstrous strength. Her track record was the sort possessed by lunatics and axe murderers.

Why were axe murderers so prominent in the imagination? Why axes, why not swords? Was it because axes were almost domestic, but swords weren't, so there was an element of the uncanny? Like getting attacked in your bedroom?

Stop it, Tanner. Don't suddenly talk about axe murderers.

Even if her theories were interesting.

And of course, once she thought that, all she could think about was talking about axe murderers. Feh. Ugh. Damn. And other sounds of that nature. Her opportunity to say something dizzyingly graceful, funny, unrelated to axe murderers and capable of restoring her reputation as a normal person who was restrained in her conversation vanished as they rejoined the flow of people leaving the dining hall, some of them glancing curiously, wondering why the giant hadn't been present. Well, it was because the giant was playing truant. Not really. She didn't even leave the inner temple. But it felt like playing truant, had all the shame and giddy nervousness. So there, and - oh, oh no, she wasn't able to restore her reputation, Eygi was getting lost in the crowd, no, no, no...

Eygi had a bad impression of her.

She didn't know about the years and years Tanner had spent as a very normal and highly restrained person.

In a mad moment, Tanner even wondered if she could ask the lodge to send some sort of... letter of recommendation, a proof of her normality, signed by her local witchcraft-repelling cult. She dismissed the idea quickly as completely insane - it took time to send a letter, time and money, and the risk of annoying the lodge was too great, she didn't want to lose her protection from witchcraft. There was too much at stake right now, she needed witchcraft to bounce off her like a... a... ball, a ball, a soft ball, that was her thought, she hadn't thought of something odd, no she hadn't. Not at all. So... nuts, nuts. The stream was sweeping along, coursing through the corridors towards the next lecture, and her mind was running faster than ever, trying to figure out how to stop Eygi from thinking she was weird and unapproachable, she wasn't, she'd just made a tiny social error and wanted to make up for it. Why couldn't you meet your lifelong friends the day you were born? Then they'd have your full context, and you theirs. If Eygi had known her from childbirth, she'd be aware that Tanner was normal and not weird at all and completely restrained. But all she saw was a tiny sliver of interaction. And now the broken-toothed girl was slipping away with the wrong impression of Tanner. An unrepresentative facet!

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Too late.

The moment was gone.

The stream was unending, and Eygi had already been bustled off to another part, while Tanner was just trying not to whack anyone. Her scalp felt uncomfortably warm. Her back was stiff with tension. Her hands were aching to grab something and clutch it, and she was resisting the urge to knead her skirt again.

Crumbs.

* * *

Lectures passed.

Came and went with smooth ease.

Each hour until she could correct Eygi in some way, make sure she really understood Tanner, and not just the freakish facet Tanner had seen fit to present, passed with agonising slowness. The lectures, admittedly, were interesting. Not the stirring material that Sister Halima had given, but more technical stuff, the basic principles of the law, the areas they were going to address, the basic expectations levelled upon them... she was counting down until dinner. Once dinner hit, she could push through the crowd and make some corrections. It was possible she was over-blowing this, but... but in her head, it felt massive. Eygi had bought her a pie and told her where she slept, that was more than anyone had done in a while. Coming here, out to Fidelizh, there'd been a sense of... resetting. Starting fresh. Yes, there'd been gaining a profession, restraining herself, finding something good to absorb herself in from now until forever... but it'd been nice to imagnie that she could do it fresh. Unburdened. A few days here, and she'd liked sinking into a purpose, not having to think about making enough money, being adherent to a single set of expectations from people who had no prior knowledge of her...

Didn't want to taint things, that was all. She knew how people behaved when they knew she was clumsy enough to snap teacups if she gripped too hard, or that her thoughts whirled too quickly for her to quite hold onto, or that she really, really liked eels... once people developed an impression of her as clumsy, odd, unapproachable, then they just didn't approach her. Back home, she'd been surrounded by that sort of thing. Parents knew that she'd accidentally bruised people when she was growing up, and kept their children away from her. The lodge knew she broke teacups when she was stressed, so they treated her like a child who was always on the verge of destroying valuables. Even when she gutted fish down at the docks, people knew she hated killing eels, they'd seen her playing with live eels like normal people played with puppies or kittens, and immediately had her pegged as a bad egg. Or, at least, a weird egg. Not evil, not malicious, just... well, obviously not all there. She'd left too many bad impressions while she was growing up. Now, she had a chance to start fresh. And thus far she'd done well, left minimal bad impressions on people. Mr. Pocket... she didn't mind that one so much, so long as she never met him again.

But Eygi... Eygi bought her a pie. Possibly made of humans. That wasn't something you got every day.

The lectures twitched by. Still no notes - this was all basic, and they were strangely insistent on no notes until some unspecified point. She didn't even have a pen. Referenced notes, referenced technique, but no pens, and no papers. They just... sat at desks scarred by pens of yore, and Tanner wondered if the pens had all rolled off to die somewhere, and they were simply haunted by their ghosts, their marks on desks, their presence in speech, but the pens had shuffled off to the stationery shop in the sky. Stop it, stop thinking. The moment her mind started rolling, it just didn't stop. She ground her teeth and observed the lecture with aggressive intensity, insistent on understanding every last word. Yes, the arrangement of the judges, the structure of their organisation, the means of referral upwards, the most basic terminology which they would be expected to understand, the core texts for this stage of the course, which would be copied. Law books were expensive, and they weren't going to waste valuable material on basic books that no advanced scholar required. So, they'd be copying them out. The outer temple had copyists who'd provide them with the relevant segments from the exemplar copy, renting them a pecia. These could then be copied in the confines of their rooms, and would slowly form their own handbook, while deepening their knowledge of the text. There would be inspections of their handbooks to ensure a minimum of mistakes. Happily, if of them failed to become full judges, they'd have had immensely useful experience as copyists, ready to serve the outer temple, or simply to act as... well, copyists. Still useful, even with printing presses. Some things were simply easier to do by hand. And no, there was to be no usage of typewriters. Typewriters were useful, but they encouraged laziness, a poor quality of thought, and were ultimately unnecessary. The ideal law was one that could be expressed in a simple, clear axiom. The ideal judgement was as short as possible. Typewriters encouraged laziness, by making writing simple. Copying by hand encouraged brevity of thought, made the weight of a word properly understood.

...and, quite possibly, the sound of hundreds of people typing and typing and typing would turn the entire court into a pack of murderers.

Tanner wasn't sure how she felt about this, but it was nice to think about - helped calm her down. Maybe she was being silly. Maybe she was just being a ludicrous goose. In every metric she was doing well, she was becoming a judge, she had a cape, she was fine. In one solitary metric had she become slightly deficient, and it was easy enough to repair. Calm. Calm. Everything was well. Her teeth slowly unclenched. And all of a sudden, confusion flooded her - the lecturer was taking out a sheet of sample note paper, the sort of style they'd be using, and... it was...

That was unreadable.

That was genuinely unreadable. It was passed aorund the room, but it didn't get any clearer. When it came round to her, she stared for a few seconds, just trying to put it together. The letters were miniscule, to the point that she was surprised any human hand could've executed them. She honestly couldn't read more than a few words without her eyes straining, and that was the easy stuff, the lines around the edges. Towards the middle... she gave it a go, and lost her place almost immediately, slipping from line to line. And it spiralled! The words literally spiralled around the page, looping and looping around in concentric circles until they reached the middle, where a single black square indicated the page was done, nothing more could be written, nothing at all. She knew how to write, of course she did, but... she might be able to fit a few spirals of this onto a page, the idea of packing in anything else was just beyond her. The only concession to readability she could see was that the lines were separated by shading - paler, then darker, on alternating spirals. Meant that the whole page looked like it was striped, like some exotic animal. She passed it onwards, blinking dumbly.

How on Earth was someone meant to write that way? And consistently?

The lesson continued like nothing had happened. Explanations on the services the outer temple could provide, and the limits of their privilege regarding them. What was free, what wasn't, what was subsidised, what was forbidden... alcohol, to her surprise, was allowed, even encouraged... but only with meals. Once they reached a higher level, they were permitted to drink outside of mealtime, but only using judge-approved glasses, which were comically small, barely enough for a snifter of something. Beer was out of the question, then. Shame, her father used to swill grog by the gallon, hugely watered-down beer, and she joined him on the grounds that it was often safer than river water. Tanner's mind was a pendulum oscillating between extremes. Sometimes she was stuck thinking about that page, or whatever the lecturer was talking about, or random reminiscences that kept popping into her mind and fading a moment later, or Eygi, or how she shouldn't be worrying about Eygi. She was wringing her hands underneath the desk, performing every luck-gathering gesture she knew, over and over and over again, planning things out to the tiniest conceivable level. She wondered if her face was growing stiff from not smiling enough - maybe she should practice, loosen her muscles up slightly, then a welcoming, friendly smile would look completely natural and not remotely forced. Hm. Pop into a bathroom, smile in front of a mirror? Or just cover her mouth with her hand and smile here and now? Make sure that she wouldn't pull something when she gave it a go later.

...that was insane. That was an insane idea. Stop it.

Still. Avoid direct eye contact, that alarmed some people. People like Tanner. Give smiling a quick go, but avoid using too many teeth - she was worried that there might be a fleck or two of meat or pastry left between some of the old ivory chompers, and the last thing she wanted was to give the impression of being unsanitary. Hm... well, if that was the case, she ought to leave, wash her hands, they felt unpleasantly tainted at the moment and she liked to have clean hands. Could imagine Eygi grinning, making fun of her for being such a silly goose, and saying 'right, fine, let's shake hands and be done with it'. It might happen. And then Eygi would reach out, Tanner would be compelled to reciprocate, and then Eygi would flinch as she felt grease slipping from Tanner's hand to hers, and the moment would be ruined. And Tanner would presumably then go insane on the spot from sheer stress and would start crying.

All of these events were unlikely.

But none of them were impossible. They were in the realms of physical reality. And that was terrifying enough for Tanner.

The lodge was handling all the supernatural protections, after all. So the realms of non-physical reality were covered. Which left her all the normal things to irreparably screw up.

The lecture rattled onwards, easing its way to a conclusion...

Tanner braced...

And the moment the lecturer closed his mouth for the last time, his information delivered, no questions raised, everything settled, she stood and made for the door with the rest of the students. They were just eager to stretch their legs and move on. She was trying to angle herself correctly to intercept Eygi and have a little chat with her, clarify a few things, make sure that the right impression was left behind. She cultivated luck a little, imagining the ribbons tied around her chest filtering every single breath, imagined little impurities clinging to the bright cloth... stepped out into the hall, ahead of most people. She'd wait here, intercept Eygi, and-

"Ah, splendid. That makes things easier."

She froze.

Sister Halima was here. Smiling at her in an ambiguous sort of way.

Oh crumbs. Crumbs. Authority was paying attention to her. That never meant anything good. And Sister Halima was intimidating up-close. Even if she was shorter than Tanner, she was still... well, professional. Authoritative. Educated. And her cape was lovely.

"Uh. Sister?"

She cringed internally at the sound of her own voice.

"Yes, that's me. Come along, then - won't be long."

She should question this.

She had plans for redeeming herself in the eyes of Eygi. Or, well, appearing more normal by intercepting her outside of a lecture hall and then impressing upon her just how painfully normal Tanner was.

She really should ask why she was needed. What had gone wrong. Was it a money thing? Had all the cash suddenly run out? The woman with the letter had been firm on that topic, she'd said the money would be fine, the arrangements were all made, everything was fine. Was her mother dead? Injured? Ill? Oh, gods, her mother was dead. Her mother was actually dead. And she'd still not managed to reconnect with her, oh gods...

"Yes, Sister."

Halima turned on her heel and marched off, leading a very, very pale Tanner behind her. This was about the pie. She'd violated some important rule and now she was going to get reprimanded. She was heading to a disintegration chamber, like in that one theatrophone play she'd listened to about the grotesque monsters that lived underground. Her face only grew paler. This was the day Tanner Magg died.

Halima stopped.

Smiled.

Pushed a door open.

Gestured for Tanner to enter. Tanner stumped inside, lacing her fingers together nervously, hunching until she slightly resembled a nervous beaver (an impression aided by her tortoiseshell hair). Dark. The door clicked shut behind her. Sister Halima was here with her, and... and there was a soft glow, increasing. The lights turning on. The blue tiles shone from within, and...

"Right, terribly sorry for interrupting you, but I'm sure you'd rather avoid any awkwardness later on."

What?

A table. Halima sat down calmly on one side, a small pile of tools in front of her. Tanner awkwardly sat down on the other side, her feet refusing to settle down flatly, had to remain on tip-toes just in case she had to leap up, and the tension in her legs helped... well, relieve some of the nervous energy buzzing through her.

"We're doing the fittings for quills today, anticipated you might need a bit more time. Never very fun, having one's differences pointed out in front of all of one's peers - so, thought we might as well get it out of the way now, hm?"

She smiled.

Tanner blinked.

Oh.

"Oh, uh, thank you, Sister. Sorry for the inconvenience, I know it can be-"

"Oh, pish-tush. Nonsense. Now, let's have a look at those hands..."

There was an air of effortless detachment about her, like... well, like this really wasn't inconveniencing her at all. Got the feeling that Sister Halima was constantly thinking her way through something, and having to handle this bit of mundane labour wasn't actually stopping her from working. Though... quill fittings? She'd never... well. Anyway. She tried to smile, and her eyes kept flickering between the table (comfortable to look at, but impersonal) and Halima's eyes (uncomfortable, but reflected her genuine gratitude)... settled on her chin and lips, there. Nice balance. Nice lips, too. Sister Halima dragged her hand over the table, beginning to measure it, examine it, wrap little bands around a few of the fingers... Tanner just held as still as possible. Held her breath, too. Didn't want to hit Halima with a big old waft of air scented with possibly-human pie filling.

"So, settling in?"

Sister Halima's voice was mild, light, drifting over the conversation like a seabird flickering from the waves to the air to under the surface and back again. Never committing, equally at home in all three.

"Oh. Uh. Yes, Sister. I think so."

"Good contributions earlier, by the way. Try to keep that up - being able to admit when you're wrong. Good habit to keep while you're studying, hm?"

"Yes, Sister. I'll try."

Halima hummed idly. The measurements continued, and a minute later, things began to escalate - small bands were slowly and firmly fastened around the fingers of her right hand, carefully adjusted to make sure they weren't cutting off circulation, while Halima moved to start measuring her wrist. Tanner's other hand was drumming a nervous pattern over her legs, and she tried to ignore the slight burning that accompanied having someone else touch her skin. She wasn't... good with skin-on-skin contact, and it felt like each touch left a tiny, hot outline on her skin that slowly faded away as the minutes rolled on, already replaced by more patterns. It was more that she could feel Halima's comparitively thin bones and muscles, and... well. Focusing on Eygi helped - had to keep planning out her little redemption. Ought to buy her a pie tomorrow, if she... ha.

"Sorry, do you know if there's a pie shop in the outer temple?"

Halima looked up, blinking a few times.

Oh. It happened again.

"Possibly. I'm not much of a pie person. You'd have to ask someone else."

She'd embarrassed herself. Sounded like a greedy pig. Halima was nice enough to not let the room descend into awkward, strained silence - she talked as she worked.

"Now, this quill is meant to help you with your notes. I imagine you were rather surprised when you saw the standards we tend to expect."

"A little, Sister. Curious how... well, anyone could write that small."

"Quite. Well, we've had our own methods for some time. Part of... well, you understand that we dislike lengthy judgements. If a law is convoluted enough to demand books of interpretation, there's probasbly something wrong with the law, no?"

"...perhaps?"

"Indeed, perhaps. Sometimes true, sometimes false. And when you get to equity... the point is, the perfect law book is a short, simple arrangement of core principles from which flows, in unbroken golden chains, all the miracles of complexity - like I said earlier. It's self-evident, rational, aligned to the unwritten spirit... it barely requires interpretation. Barely requires judges, even - the law is immaculately aligned to behaviour, following it is simple, interpretation is simple, execution is simple. But, well... times change. Once upon a time we could confine things to a handful of texts, now we have to adapt. As times change, we must change with them, and apparently that means writing rather a bit more than we'd otherwise like. Goodness, we used to have to write on parchment and animal hide - the simple expense was enough to make us ration out our words. But these days..."

She shrugged lightly, and Tanner kept smiling, nodding, agreeing.

"Well, these days we have good reason to write more, and all the right means, but it's still... embarrassing, you understand? A little humiliating?"

"...perhaps? I... think I understand, yes. Rather like being... well, naturally healthy for your entire life, and suddenly you fall ill and have to rely on doctors, medicines..."

Halima smiled.

"Quite. Quite. Good comparison, really. As we continue, we must write more predecent, we must adapt, just the rise of population means we have more to handle... you'd think there'd be a cap on how complex things can become, but no. The law is an endless fractal which can become more and more complex, while still remaining confined by the same boundaries. Terrifically frustrating. So... a middle ground. Very small notes. Very thin paper. Shorthand. Keep that in mind, young lady - brevity is the soul of law."

"Yes, Sister. Understood, Sister. Brevity. I'll do my best, Sister."

She nodded rapidly, trying to show just how much she agreed, just how on-board she was with this whole tradition. Well, that explained the why, but...

Well, the how became more apparent. Halima started to extract a few little tools, slowly building a kind of... brace around Tanner's hand and forearm, locked in place around the fingers and wrist. Contoured exactly to her muscles, her bone structure... once the frame was done, she started locking in a few bindings between them, drawing her fingers together like she was holding an invisible pen. And suddenly, the pen became visible - inserted cleanly in, a long, feathered quill, old-fashioned and stained, locking into a series of perfectly designed points.

"...now, it takes time to get used to them, and if the bindings feel too tight, you must contact one of the engineers. Don't want you to lose circulation, can be very unpleasant. Like wearing too-small shoes for too long. Ghastly. Little theurgic device clips to the wrist, powers the motions... it's not about exerting effort yourself, it's about guiding the harness into performing the right strokes. We use a different sort of font here, no curves, all straight lines - and we taper a great deal off. Some judges use shorthand, but for students we're more forgiving. Following?"

"Yes, Sister. Following."

"Good. Now..."

She wrapped a band around Tanner's wrist, clicking it shut with a shiny buckle. Felt almost like she was about to get the thing amputated. More work, and... there. It was odd, trying to move the pen anchored to her fingers. She could barely even feel it, really - like the harness was dissipating the weight, the pressure, all of it. Indeed, when she tried to move, her fingers smoothly shifted a tiny amount, and the motion was reproduced upwards, allowing the pen to move a small, precise distance in a single direction without any deviation. It was slow-going, but she could imagine being able to write small, highly regular letters using this, not sure where the theurgic element came in... ah. A few tiny, tiny cables were gradually attached to the harness, flowing away towards a tiny metallic box. Theurgists kept their arts secret from most people, even if they were basically essential for just about... everything, really. A low hum filled the air, almost reminding her of the hum that came from stagnant pools after hatching season started. The hum of insects whirring away, high-pitched and eerily mechanical. She moved...

And felt nothing. The movement happened, the pen shifted, but... she'd put almost no effort in. None at all.

Goodness.

Mechanical quill. This sort of thing must've... she didn't want to think how much it would cost, she didn't know much about theurgy, but she knew it was expensive. The little metal pieces which allowed the harness to click together were probably some sort of exotic metal, highly purified, and...

Well. Her mind was already buzzing with new ideas, implications. The unfamiliar was oddly freeing - she understood nothing, and she was meant to understand nothing. Her idiocy was expected, anticipated, and completely normal. In a way, that was pleasant. Being an idiot in a room of smart people, being an incompetent surrounded by competence was miserable, and one of her many fears. Being an idiot in company was almost... nice. Like being an oddball in an oddball pit. Not that she was calling Halima an idiot, or Eygi an oddball, but... well, Eygi might qualify as 'moderately peculiar', and she was fairly confident that no other student knew how to use these quills any more than she did.

Anyway.

She should... stop thinking.

"Thank you for setting this up, Sister, it's... very much appreciated, I'm very sorry for taking time out of your day, this was very kind of you, and-"

Halima sat there silently, seeming to be a hundred miles away. Tanner kept going for a little bit, apologising, thanking, smiling, nodding, reassuring her that the harness was fine and she'd report to someone if it was too tight in future and she was certain she'd get used to it soon enough and she really didn't want to take up too much more of her time if at all possible and-

"Hm? Sorry, bit distant, was thinking of something. Quite alright, off you go. No, wait, first, here's how you take it off. Important step. And here's how you put it back on... might want to do that a few times. Don't worry, it's a sturdy little machine, we don't make them to break them. There's quills in the outer temple, just follow all the other students, feels like people need them every other day."

Tanner flushed, nodding quickly.

She felt... calmer. Significantly calmer, really. Settled down quite well.

She'd almost forgotten why she'd left the lecture hall quickly in the first place.

Almost.

Just reminded herself.

She stood quickly enough to almost knock her chair over. One hand lashed around to grab it, haul it back from the brink of catastrophe... could feel the wood straining under her fingers and consciously relaxed them. Not breaking anything. Not broken anything since that barge railing, didn't intend to ruin her clean streak. She had a mission, she was on a mission, she had work to do and not much time to do it in, every moment that slipped by in this place was a minute for Eygi's perception of her to solidify. She had things to do, she had things to do.

Sister Halima looked up at her with faint bemusement written all over her face.

"Thank you, Sister, I won't take any more of your time, very sorry for all of this, thank you again, I'll... be on my way, honoured judge, sorry, Sister, sorry. Thank you for the lecture, too. Very interesting. Looking forward to the next one, definitely. I'll be on my way. Sorry. Thank you."

Oh, gods, shut up, shut up, shut up.

Sister Halima blinked languidly.

"Alright."

A pause.

"You have..."

She gestured vaguely to her lip. Tanner froze. Quickly patted her own face...

A few crumbs of pastry.

Oh gods she'd had pie on her face since before that lecture even started oh gods...

What was that damn lodge doing, this was clearly the work of several witches!