CHAPTER SEVENTY-FOUR - PERMISSION TO SLEEP
"...I don't believe we ought to leave this to... any of the men, do you, Sersa?"
"No, sir."
"Fetch some protective gear, won't you? I believe we can handle this ourselves. Bring one of the metal urns. Burn the body, inter the ashes. Bury the urn away from any water supplies. The amount of contamination in her is sufficient to warrant the intensive treatment."
"Yes, sir."
Mr. Canima turned very slightly, staring at Sersa Bayai. His entire body seemed to have changed. Gone was the slow-moving, deliberate, entirely considered pace of the old days. Now... now he seemed slightly jerky, reminded Tanner of one of the cranes that sheltered around the steam fissures. A human movement was made of a thousand tiny choices and variations, a song being constantly improvised. But this... well, movements were done one at a time. No variation. No improvisation. One movement, then another, then another, then another, in precise sequence. Did it reflect decisiveness in action, lack of imagination, or... fear of allowing too much variation? Placing a tourniquet on randomness, just trying to bind the world a little tighter. But for all the control you placed... what did it matter. The governor thought he'd controlled the colony, and the colony had killed him. Never been his to begin with. Vyuli thought he controlled it, but he just ruled an army of thugs, some houses of food, he couldn't command the weather or the tides, couldn't stop one of his own men from going on a psychotic rampage, manipulating his daughter into becoming a scapegoat. Masking sadistic, deliberate carnage as incompetence. Incompetence pinned on someone else. Mr. Canima... what did he control? What did anyone? He was trying to control his own movements, but it was just... a tourniquet over a haemorrhaging wound. Nothing but.
Maybe Tal-Sar was right. Maybe killing that bear had brought a bloody tide to them. If she started believing in invisible laws of impossible relations, believed that the gods of this country were made strange and angry by the deaths of their worshippers, the invasion of their sanctuaries... no, no, the land had just been let off the leash. Turned wild by long years of loneliness. Grown wary of other folk. Grown eremitic and savage, snow-blinded and cold-scarred. Believe in invisible, mutable laws, and they almost seemed to fit the outlines of the chaos. The tides which moved without human intervention. If a tide moved, and no-one saw it, then the tide still moved.
Tanner felt numb.
Barely known Lantha. Stared at the body. Still alive. The heart was still beating. Like she'd said. They'd killed nothing but the brain. The body lived, and was slowly going to repair itself. Could see strange, pale, spongy matter starting to pulse outwards, like icebergs of fat, moving through the arteries towards the brain. Ready to fill it back in with matter devoid of memory. There was no death for a mutant, save for fire. Only rebirths. Tanner... in her last moments, she'd actually felt genuine kinship. The same... weariness that came with confession, the same aching desire for rest, the same... gods, she... didn't even know her last name. Did people in Apo have last names? The body was stark in the snow, sharply illuminated... she'd barely bled. Clotted too quickly. Blood was thicker than it should be. Again, the body wasn't dead, to it, this was just... a larger-than-usual injury. Treat it like any other. Clot the blood. Repair the wound. Regrow lost tissue. Move on. Not really dead. They'd just taken the memories which hurt. Hadn't known her.
World didn't operate the way it should. She should be getting to know people, exploring their identity, exploring their history, having long, intimate talks about their lives. Their lives should align with her own, and they should only leave it when they'd given up everything, revealed every piece of information worth knowing. And everything was worth knowing. Lantha had a whole drama happening in her head, a whole litany of history... how much of that history had just died in front of her? How much was known? How many now lived who could say they knew Lantha? She didn't. She hadn't. Acquaintance on a boat. Then... she'd seen her a few hours ago. Less than a single day, and she was gone. Didn't feel right. Should've stuck around a little, told more stories, shared lessons... she'd just talked about a few anecdotes, sung her last song, and died.
Didn't know her last name. Didn't know the name of her dead husband. Didn't know the names of most people on the boat. Lantha was characterised by absence. By the outlines of a life.
Did she know Marana? Did she know Yan-Lam? Did she know Sersa Bayai? She glanced around, feeling suddenly very hollow. Didn't know anyone. Didn't even know herself. She just... she made brief contact with people, received an impression, a few indications of who they might be, and they she slipped away. Incapable of drawing any closer. Didn't even know that Eygi had gotten married. She didn't, now she came to think about it, know a single person. Her head was already full of her, the idea of cramming the entirety of another person inside, it... there was a simple impossibility there, a simple problem of space. If she... if she confessed each and every one of her thoughts, let them burst out of her in a never-ending wave, she'd speak until her tongue snapped free, until her jaw sagged and fell from its hinges, exhausted beyond belief. She'd speak until the day she died. And then, people would have to filter that through their own understanding, their own priorities, and they might not even remember more than a few choice vignettes. If anything at all. If Marana died tonight, she'd be mostly a stranger, Tanner wouldn't know anything about her childhood, about her sister, about... so very much that had undoubtedly shaped her. Yan-Lam... she knew even less about her. Sersa Bayai was a mystery as well. If all three of them died tonight, and lay sprawled on the snow next to Lantha, they'd be strangers. And she wouldn't be able to say that she really, truly knew them. And none of them, if she died, could say they truly knew her, either. Gods... she'd liked it when Sersa Bayai touched her shoulder, but she didn't know if he had any friends, what his favourite books were, how he woke up in the morning, what he thought when he looked in the mirror... and if he told her, it'd be going through the bureaucratic process that converted thought into speech, wouldn't it? Mangled along the way. She wouldn't know Sersa Bayai. She'd just know his self-portrait. A little flattering. A little selective.
Inside her head was a storm, inside everyone's head was a storm, and it was only a storm so long as it lingered exactly where it was. Release it, and it changed. No idea what shape it might take. Could be a breeze, a gale, a single clap of thunder, or a rush of ice-cold water. But if you did release it, then you could start pretending that inside your head there was a gale, a clap of thunder, or whatever emerged. But you never saw the primary point. You only saw the closest emanation. And then you made a leap of logic, you deluded yourself, and you moved on.
Tanner had always thought that. But now... looking at that body, she felt keenly saddened by that belief. Saddened... and maybe a little afraid. Seen the shadowy ink-and-paper-and-speech Tanner on the horizon, birthed from the sun. Saw how it needed revision. Amendments. A second draft before it could be submitted for publication. And looking at Lantha, she thought it was... a terribly hollow thing.
But it was all she'd leave behind. Hollow or not, it was all she had. It would live so much longer than she would, reach so many more people, that it was, in many senses, more real than her.
And Lantha's body seemed to make all of that reality dwindle away in the face of the fact that... that Tanner hadn't known her. And never would. Never could.
Maybe that was the trick - to let a confession fester inside you. Secrets, knowledge, history, things that had to be known, that no-one else did. Maybe if you let it grow and eat everything around it, sculpting your memories in its direction, chaining your instincts to its overwhelming purpose... maybe if you hollowed yourself out and filled yourself with secrets, like Tal-Sar, like Lantha, like she was doing, you could become a recognisable person, for once. Your confession would be your last song. And then there'd be nothing left to give. And you could slink away into the dark, confident that you'd narrowed yourself down to a white-hot bullet, and expelled it into the world.
The terror, of course, was slinking away into the dark, and finding that you survived the experience. Seeing the white-hot bullet scorch away, beautiful and refined, and... dimming. Cooling. Vanishing from sight. And you lingered. But there was nothing left - no confession left to give. So... maybe the idea was to keep going with her own methods. To hollow herself out, and replace it with machinery. With the law, with her purpose. Not mindless, but... routinised. In harmony with the world. A being of equilibrium. Maybe that was it. The gyre of her mind was widening, poles spinning further and further apart. So... let it. Let it go to its furthest extremes, then let it launch free, and then slink away. Purified, in some way.
...she didn't know what she was thinking about. Her thoughts were disjointed. And when she died, all of them would go with her. Even now, the precise outlines of her thoughts were becoming hazy, fading to... general inclinations. The Tanner who thought this was dying. Soon, she'd be dead. Lantha had died a thousand times before she'd been shot. By the end, had she known herself?
Could anyone have known Lantha?
Mr. Canima twitched in her direction.
"Honoured judge. I suggest you head back to the colony. We can provide guards, of course. I'll see you as soon as I can."
"I can help with the grave."
His eyes narrowed very slightly.
"You've been exposed enough. Get some pills from the infirmary. Rest. You've been through a great deal."
Tanner gritted her teeth.
"Please. I'd like to dig her grave. I'd-"
"You're injured. You're no use to me, or this colony, if you allow those injuries to fester. Go. Find some pills. Get your wounds properly bandaged and sterilised. Bathe. Wear clothes that aren't stained in blood. Sit down for longer than a few minutes. And then, yes, we can talk."
Tanner snapped slightly, though her voice never rose, and her face never changed. Sersa Bayai had gone away to fetch the tools for cremation and burial. She had no reason to hold back.
"Why is there steam out in the ice fields? There's no rivers, Mr. Canima. I was out there, I found none. Why aren't we meant to go out there?"
She froze as the last few words left her mouth. Shouldn't have spoken. Her eyes flicked down to the body, and her resolve stiffened. Yes, she should have said this. And should've said it sooner.
Mr. Canima sized her up.
"Go. Rest. Bathe. Take the tablets. Have your wounds tended to. Eat something. And then we can talk."
"Mr. Canima, I-"
His voice rose.
Mr. Canima's voice rose.
She'd never heard it doing that before. Couldn't even imagine it happening, and it felt like an unknown species of wild animal was charging directly at her, incomprehension mixing with fear into a nauseating haze.
"We will talk when I wish to talk. Your investigation was admirable. Your conclusions are... interesting. There will be steps. I will enjoy receiving your advice on these coming steps. But I will receive your advice when I wish to receive it, not a moment before. Go. Leave the body to myself and Sersa Bayai."
Tanner blinked.
Something angry stirred in her gut. Something very angry indeed. Once she'd gone through all the fear, all the nightmares of the tunnels, the cartel, Lyur, the cold... the confession. Once she'd been worn down over and over and over...
Interesting to see what lay underneath.
Interesting to see how it burned.
For a second, she imagined how brittle Mr. Canima was. She'd been able to count his ribs, his vertebrae, she'd enumerated him, and seen how slender he was. Would he snap, if she dragged him into a hug, wrapped her arms around him and squeezed? How long would he last? She'd torn her way out of ropes, survived the cold for longer than she should, fought three full-grown men at once, one old man wouldn't be a challenge. The knife at her waist gleamed in the unrelenting light of a winter noon, light of the sun reflecting from the snow and entering the knife from even more directions, until it seemed like it was made out of something insubstantial, something burning...
She took a deep breath.
Swallowed down the anger. Didn't dispel it. Couldn't. But she packed it down tight, refused to let go...
And nodded politely.
"I understand, sir."
He blinked. Seemed a little surprised.
"Good. On your way."
Tanner tried to stride off confidently, like she was perfectly in control... stumbled. Stumbled and shambled. Her legs weren't even burning at this stage, they were too numb for that. She'd been tied up, then she'd sprinted through tunnels, then through snow, then back through snow. Small rest when she collapsed. That was it. Her collarbone flushed with embarrassment as she shambled away towards the colony, pulling her bloody cape around herself. Idly, she wondered if she could keep this. She didn't... it... she didn't like the experience of wearing this much fur, but Lantha had given it to her. Lantha was about to be burned and buried in an urn, like they did with the failed cases of the Golden Door. Didn't want... she'd never known Lantha, but she didn't want to lose something given by her.
She walked quietly through the gate, the eyes of confused guards locked on her, some of them murmuring to one another... and immediately, a familiar creature zipped out of the gate-house, legs kicking up high to stay out of the snow. Ms. Blue... still didn't know her actual name, embarrassingly. The woman glued herself to Tanner's side, saluting and clicking her heels with unusual vigour.
"Honoured judge, ma'am, do you require an escort? Ma'am. Honoured judge."
Another salute. Another set of clicked heels. Tanner wasn't... sure what was happening. But her thoughts were scattered. She nodded vaguely, made vague sounds of acceptance, and kept moving. The woman easily kept pace with the exhausted giantess, marching steadily at her side, rifle over her shoulder... could take the soldier out of the parade ground, but you couldn't take the parade ground out of Ms. Blue, apparently. Her eyes scanned the streets in a way she probably intended to be professional and detached, but... they kept twitching to stare at Tanner with an expression that the judge didn't quite understand. Not sure if she wanted to, either. Tanner should really say something to her, just... 'hello', 'what's your name', 'how do you deal with death', 'do you ever really know the people around you, or yourself', 'what's your favourite colour'. That sort of thing. But her mouth refused to operate. Running on fumes at this point, nothing in her but the desire to get to the mansion. See Marana. See Yan-Lam. Make sure they were alright.
She paused.
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"Is there anyone in town who can... turn this thing into an actual cape?"
Ms. Blue blinked. Blinked rather a few times. And then nervously laughed. Tanner looked down sharply, and the laughter stopped.
"What is it? Did I say something funny?"
"No, honoured judge, ma'am. No, just... you... asked for a tanner."
A pause.
"I think your name's Tanner."
Oh.
Ha.
She cracked a tiny smile, mostly because the soldier was looking terrifically alarmed at having laughed at a judge. They walked on in silence. The colony was... it felt like a graveyard. No-one was leaving their home. Everyone was just buckling down and waiting for the storm to blow over. They'd... if mutants were coming, and she thought they were, then these people would have to evacuate. Immediately. If evacuations were even possible at this stage. No-one knew, not one of them knew what she knew. But they'd all known something she hadn't - the cartel. Yan-Lam hadn't known, her father hadn't told her, but... gods, how known was the cartel? How many people here had committed tiny acts of treason and sabotage by not telling a soul about the secretive group clawing their way towards control of the colony? The control of the cold-houses would've been impossible if the governor had known - a hard, harsh part of her was whispering that each of these black windows hid a criminal. Someone who'd hidden a crime, hidden many crimes, if only by not talking to the authorities. Watched as people were driven away, as the bouncers asserted more control, as their overseers became the same people who regulated their social activities... how many knew? Really knew, not just... indebted, offered a reprieve, unaware of the broader scale of things.
They should've asked questions. They should've challenged. What had the governor said about Herxiel? Sin as something that build up around the joints of the mind, like grime around a machine's gears. Sin was entropy. Crime was much the same. It built up when complexity improved, when a chain extended to a sufficient number of links. Enough companies, enough trade routes, enough businesses, enough people, enough interlocking hierarchies and simmering dramas.
And if that was the case, then the people here had watched as the grime built up. And by never saying a word, they'd encouraged it.
Culpable. All of them. Every last soul.
No-one here was innocent.
Stop it. Nonsense. People were innocent, they were just scared, or beaten into keeping their heads down. The Erlize had practically trained them to be this way, done it by cracking down on dissent over and over, invading their lives on a whim, ruining them or making them vanish from sight. Interrogation upon interrogation had made all of them develop a habit of keeping their mouths shut.
The Erlize had shut their mouths. And in the silence, the cartel had flourished.
The mansion came closer. Beacon of stability. One place she thought she understood. Tunnels in it, though. Mr. Canima had covered it up... gods, she'd forgotten to ask him about that. Too concerned with secrecy to give her the evidence she needed to do her damn job. If she'd had those pages in the migration ledger, she could've seen the silent war the governor had waged, could've seen the two destroyed cartels spelled out in careful ink. And if she'd seen that, conjecturing a third would be simple...
No... no, no, she was assuming that all roads led here. She hadn't known about the cartel until she'd met them, the leaps of logic to reach that point...
"Honoured judge, we may want to go by another route."
Ms. Blue's voice rattled out with a military cadence. Tanner came back to herself, looked around blearily...
Oh. They were near some of the inns. Little cluster of them.
Tanner gritted her teeth.
And kept walking. This was the easiest route to the mansion. And she was back. She was alive. If they wanted her dead, nowhere in this place was safe. Safe route, unsafe route... meaningless categories. Everything was dangerous.
The inns passed by...
And Tanner's ears pricked. Footsteps.
People moving.
She glanced around, saw nothing. But could hear the soft crunch-crunch of compacting snow.
Ms. Blue twitched, and her rifle slipped into her hands. Her entire demeanour shifted once she had a weapon - more professional, more competent. No wide-eyed interest in Tanner's goings-on. Good. Tanner kept walking... then suddenly leaned forwards, wincing as she bent for the ground, picking up a long, tough log from a nearby wood-store, brushing snow from it as she kept on walking. Hadn't missed a beat. The steps increased.
They were sending a few, then.
Guns would be foolish. The colony was a tinderbox, if they shot her, they'd have to deal with the consequences of declaring war in broad daylight. The cartel leader might be willing to do that. Would the rank and file? Would these ordinary criminals be willing to go to war against trained, experienced soldiers in the name of a crazy old man?
Maybe.
But she doubted the old man would know of her survival for a little while. Down there in the dark, took time for data to reach him.
Suddenly, she stopped.
And as anticipated, five shapes came out from the array of streets behind them, the labyrinth of back gardens and side-passages, alleys weaving through the dense construction. The sky overhead was almost invisible beneath the clustering roofs. Only the flickering of lamps, and the tiny, whisper-thin gaps between roofs, provided illumination. Good place to kill someone, but...
She turned.
And confronted the five shadows.
Ms. Blue's rifle snapped up, and Tanner gently pushed it down.
She didn't glare at the five men. Five bouncers. Each with a truncheon. All of them clearly a little nervous. All of them murderers. Criminals. Didn't glare. Just watched them with the detachment of the exhausted.
She sighed. And spoke wearily.
"I'm going to the mansion. Go and talk to Vyuli before you do anything stupid."
The man in front spat. She didn't know this one, not his face. Half-shaved - somebody had been interrupted by her arrival, hm? One side, raw and clawed by a razor, the other, bristling with curly beard-hair. And his shirt was soaked where he'd tugged it on over a damp body. Made him look like a newborn in swaddling cloth, oddly enough. A very beardy newborn, but...
Hell. He was a murderer like all the others. What else mattered.
"Maybe we did talk to him. Maybe he wants you gone. Don't try anything. You're surrounded."
Tanner walked forwards quietly, indicating Ms. Blue to stay still. The woman kept her rifle close, finger itching for the trigger. Bright blue eyes as wide as could be.
"Tell him I'm sorry for taking his knife, but I'll need to confiscate it as evidence."
"...are you fucking deaf, woman? You're surrounded. Lucky we haven't killed you already."
Tanner sighed.
"If you wanted me dead, you'd shoot me. Now, don't do anything stupid. Turn around. Leave."
"Fuck off."
Tanner didn't even twitch at the vulgarity. The man gritted his teeth at her flat, unyielding face. Was she nervous? Something in her was just too tired to feel nervous, so there was nothing but the hollowness of exhaustion and cold. The thing the chill had torn out of her in the fields. A weary woman had no ideals, philosophies, or principles. Damn few emotions, too. And she was very, very weary.
"Coming back in pieces, then."
"I'm not coming back."
"Not a fucking option. Boys!"
The others moved...
Tanner moved faster.
Her body suddenly awoke with adrenaline. The anger at Mr. Canima, the anger at the colony... it blazed, and like liquid fire, it filled all the hollowness inside. The thing stolen by the chill, the mourning of Lantha, the exhaustion, all of it served as nothing but cavities for the anger to fill up. Muscles lost all weariness, and moved smoothly. It was a snap - a sudden shift from peace to war, calm to anger. Getting too easy, but... the feeling of pounds shedding from her frame in moments, melting away like candle-wax in the face of unendurable heat, her spine a wick ignited by adrenaline. Felt like her clothes should drop free from her emaciated frame, everything slimming, burning, until she was as smooth and flawless as the statues above, the ones that frostbitten slaves had clawed the snow from in the midwinter bleakness. Imagined herself, briefly, losing her dress to this change. Losing the pelt. Imagined her mouth sealing like a healed wound, scabbing over with scars. Imagined her eyes filling with snow. Imagined her throat tightening into a single red thread. Tanner had tried, for years, to hollow herself out and replace it with legal machinery, with the process. Foolish. Should've just squeezed. Compressed herself until all the extraneous detail spilled out like a sea cucumber's guts. Eels did that - they were thin, optimised, specialised. No hollowness to be filled - no space for improvement or revision. She refined herself in a single second. Her log swung.
Five men. Close to her. Surrounding her. Aspirant giant-slayers. A thought - the mystery plays, the lodge members with blunt spears prodding her off stage to banish the old, usher in the new. Blunt truncheons all around. In the plays, the only real threat was her embarrassment, her humiliation. But the refinement had squeezed that out of her. So what threat remained?
Ms. Blue didn't shoot. Not an idiot, wouldn't fire unless she was sure Tanner wouldn't be hurt. A Kal, right? Fresh recruit. Inexperienced. Usually on armoury duty. Not ready to shoot. To take a life. A walking parade ground stuffed in a uniform.
Tanner's log swung.
The half-shaved man went down immediately, a handful of teeth spraying from his bloody lips, gleaming in the snow... and invisible a moment later, save for the comet-trails of blood they left behind them. His mouth was too full of blood for him to scream in pain, so he gurgled madly, hands flying to his lips, truncheon slipping from unresisting hands. Four.
Swung again.
Another man gone. Clutching his stomach, falling backwards, all the air driven out of him. All strength draining from his limbs as he felt his core being compromised. He clutched himself desperately... but his breathing was irregular, diaphragm not drawing breath properly, face going pale... he vomited up a stew of beer, falling to his knees as he did so. Made sense. Squeeze a sack too much, the contents had to come out somehow. Three.
Swung again.
This time she heard a snap, and another man shrieked, his arm flopping uselessly to his side. Elbow, she thought. Maybe. Not sure. The truncheon fell from fingers no longer capable of contracting properly. He didn't fall to the ground, though. Backed away, fumbling in his belt with his left hand, trying for a knife... Tanner didn't swing at him again. Just shoved him in the chest with her other hand, sending him crashing into the side of a building. He slid down the wood, eyes wide, nostrils flaring as he tried to draw breath. Two.
The other two were faster. One managed to slam his truncheon into her back... didn't feel a thing. A dull impact through the buffalo pelt. But she'd been hurt worse in the last day. Three men trying to brutalise her. And one of them had almost garotted her to death. This was nothing. She knew what she was capable of - and it exceeded his capacity to give.
Swung.
His capacity to take was lower than hers. Her capacity to give was higher than his. This was made apparent when he, too, collapsed to the ground clutching his stomach, face turning purple as he tried to avoid screaming by clenching his teeth, veins popping around his forehead like cables. Not killing them. Not killing a single one.
One remaining.
He didn't go for the truncheon. Just drew a knife and tried to get anything, to leave any sort of mark. Always the way. Fight the others, and the last man standing saw it all get worse and worse while he plotted an attack. In the house, it'd been the man with the drugged rags. Here...
Just someone with a knife.
Not even as big as her own.
Her log snapped across his wrist like a teacher's switch, and with a yelp, he dropped the knife to the ground. Looked up at her, backing off a few steps. Backed off some more. Tanner stared at him.
"Tell him I will talk to him later."
And with that, she turned on her heel and left.
Felt better than she wanted to admit. But... no, no, it wasn't good, it wasn't bad, it was a chore. A judge would be passionless in this scenario. A judge shouldn't have fought at all, should've been protected by the unassailable law. Unassailable law hadn't stopped Lyur. Unassailable law couldn't. No, no... anyway. She strode back to Ms. Blue, and walked past her without a word. Took the soldier a few seconds to realise she ought to follow, and she did, rifle still in her hands, finger still inching for the trigger. Walked away to the tune of four men groaning in pain, some rolling in the snow as they tried to get their breathing back under control. Sickly smell of regurgitated beer was in the air... should be gone soon enough. Too tired to feel very happy at what she'd done. Just... resigned.
Resigned.
Ms. Blue took a few streets to get her voice back.
"What... uh... honoured... what..."
Tanner didn't answer. Too tired.
"...are you... what god do you have on your back today, ma'am?"
Tanner blinked.
"Don't have one. Not right now."
"...oh. Alright."
Was she trying to figure out if the buffalo pelt was some sort of obscure thing? There was enough knowledge in her head right now without factoring in esoteric secrets. Tanner could barely stand up right now, she wasn't thinking about letting a god ride on her back. Should, really. Definitely a time for it. No more questions were posed to her, but... ah, crumbs. Crumbs, crumbs... she checked the log quickly. A bit splintered, but still functional. One tooth embedded in it... she picked it out between two fingers, then quickly walked back to the scene of the fight, ignoring the struggling bouncers as she slotted the log back into the wood-store. It was winter, people needed firewood, and she could get a truncheon elsewhere. Should really get this house some compensation for... hm, no, no, the log was still burnable, the only damage was a few splinters.
Good.
The half-shaved man stared at her blankly as she left. Again. Having returned her weapon to the person she'd borrowed it from, like a normal person would.
Headed for the mansion as quickly as possible. Ignored the startled yells of the guards, gestured for Ms. Blue to remain with them.
Headed up the stairs as fast as her exhausted legs could take her without breaching the realms of indecency. Headed for the door to the waiting room, which seemed to strain with the force of the blockages behind it.
Wiped blood from her knuckles onto her skirt. Adjusted her filthy, raw pelt...
And knocked politely.
No reply. Nothing but a slight shifting in the barricade.
"It's m-"
She'd barely managed to say anything before the door was wrenched open, disturbing a fair few chairs that'd been used to block it, and Yan-Lam shot out like a bullet from a gun, eyes wide, face pale, hair in complete disarray. She struggled to come to a halt in front of Tanner, looking her up, down, up, down, left, right... everything save for circling around her and sniffing like a dog. She froze. Crossed her hands in front of her stomach, primly, and nodded shakily. Her voice wavered as she tried to sound professional.
"Miss... Tanner, it's... wonderful to... see.... see..."
She swallowed.
"Honoured judge, it's wonderful to see you. I hope... y-you're..."
She failed.
Tanner almost stumbled backwards as the girl glued herself completely to her, a red-haired barnacle that refused to move, and cried rather a lot. She sobbed into the front of Tanner's dress, and Tanner just... just stood there. Unsure of what to do.
She'd worked with Yan-Lam. Liked her well enough. Felt guilty for failing her.
Thought Yan-Lam saw her... not like this.
No, no, be rational. She'd lost her father. The governor. It wasn't unreasonable for her to be terrified of losing everyone who was positively inclined towards her. Not unreasonable at all - Tanner was simply the first person to present herself. She was just...
"Oh, gods, I thought you were dead, I thought you... you were gone, thought they'd take you, gods, you're alive, you're alive, you're alive... I'm so sorry, I should have stayed, I should have helped you, I'm sorry, please, I..."
She stopped talking. Just clung tighter. Tanner raised her hand, about to pat her on the head... no, no, that would be rude, demeaning, she... was it the right thing to do? Was it expected? She was completely frozen. Had no idea how to respond.
And Marana's voice came undulating out of the darkness of the waiting room.
"Go on."
Tanner hesitated...
And patted the girl on the head very, very gently. There was no response but a further tightening of the arms - Tanner could almost feel them, now. Slowly, carefully, Marana came out to join them, picking her way through the nest of chairs they were using as a barricade. She looked awful. Tanner stared at her for a second before looking away, aware she shouldn't stare. The woman had been stabbed in the side. It was bandaged, but... but she'd been stabbed. Bruised, too. Tanner could imagine it happening - maybe one bouncer going for her, the others heading for Tanner. Marana fighting back, biting, kicking, scratching, every dirty trick... the bouncer growing angry, maybe losing his truncheon, going for his knife. Getting one good hit in before Marana could escape, fleeing with blood dripping down her side. Tanner opened her mouth to ask if she was alright, but... Marana was already speaking in a low, slightly husky voice. Her eyes were half-lidded and moved slowly.
She was under the influence of laudanum. Tanner couldn't even judge her for it.
"I dare say we're all coming a bit apart at the seams, darling. Love the new cape. Is that trim damp, or is that just the anaesthetics at work?"
"Damp."
"Did somebody kill a buffalo?"
"No."
She was patting Yan-Lam's head automatically at this point, not sure when she was meant to stop. Marana smiled vaguely, seeming to only slightly see her.
"Your wound…"
"Numbed, don't worry. Bandaged and stitched. Skin starts sagging when you age, part of me thinks it heals slower for that reason. Feels the pressure relaxing, immediately thinks 'wonderful, now I can have some time off'. Have to really encourage it to get back to work. I'm aching for retirement, darling. That's what my wound tells me. And you. Your wounds. How on... earth did you get those?"
Her voice shifted from a dreamy ramble to something more firm, even concerned as she studied Tanner's crude bandages. Oh. Right. Ought to get those looked at. Well. She could handle a little longer. Marana drew a little closer, limping very slightly as she did so... and carefully, she reached up to pat Tanner on the cheek affectionately.
"You're a little undone, aren't you?"
Tanner was silent.
"Well. I think we all are. You know, when we came out here, I thought I'd be teaching you how to have a little fun."
"You said... tutor me in the ways of righteousness. Whatever that meant."
"It meant becoming cultured, my loveliest sponge. But I think you're... well, I think at this stage, what you need is a sit down, a boring cup of tea, and-"
"Work. I have work. Still things that... need to be done."
Marana blinked, and Tanner was vaguely aware of Yan-Lam's sobs coming to a stop.
"It's not over?"
"No. Not at all."
"Do you have to participate in it?"
"Yes."
"Really?"
"Yes."
Marana and Tanner looked at one another, one staring up with bleary eyes, the other staring down with eyes that ached to close. Not sure what was going to happen. Not sure how she was going to tell them about... about everything. Knew she should head to infirmary. It'd be the most polite thing, to find a doctor on their own terms. But... but weariness was tugging at her limbs, and she stumbled into the room, assisted by Yan-Lam, who clung to her arm and seemed reluctant to let her go for even a moment. Tanner wanted to tell her to cling to someone else. Tanner was resigned to dying here, she wasn't a good person to feel attached to. Gods... none of them knew. None of them knew the truth. She slumped to a chair, and sat down heavily, barely managing to remove her pelt before she did so. She stared at the ceiling. Head devoid of thoughts, for once. And slowly, Marana knelt beside the chair, and placed a hand over Tanner's.
"You remind me of my father. Same air of a captain going down with his ship. "
She smiled, sadly.
"By the end, even the Sleepless had an odd sort of respect for him."
"Hm."
"Sleep well. I'll fetch everything you need, don't worry."
"...no, no, I'll... head over. Just give me a second to rest. Be ready in a second."
Marana snorted.
"Nonsense. I'll fetch a doctor."
"No, it's... it's a little way to get here, inconvenient. Rude. Don't want to cause trouble. Just help me up, I'll head down there..."
She struggled to haul herself to her feet... and Marana placed two firm hands on her shoulders. Took almost no effort to keep her in the chair. A stabbed middle-aged laudanum-addled woman could manage it, and that was about as low as it got.
"You stay right there, you little osprey. Yan-Lam, darling dearest, could you go and tell one of the guards to fetch a doctor? Immediately. Wounds and wilderness exposure. Chop-chop."
The girl nodded several times in quick succession and dashed off, boots inaudible, as always. Tanner let out a long, shuddering breath. The two lingered in silence for a moment... until Tanner broke it by asking a small, quiet question.
"Can you tell me it's alright to sleep."
Marana blinked, and her smile widened a little. Didn't affect her tone, which remained soft and conciliatory.
"You can sleep if you'd like to, Tanner."
Tanner mumbled wearily.
"Say it's alright for me to."
"It's perfectly fine. No-one would blame you. Most would have passed out by now. You falling asleep is completely acceptable."
"Thank you."
"You can even eat, if you want. Drink, too."
But Tanner was already drifting away.
And in a moment, she was gone. Lying by a dark fire in a dark room filled with ledgers, with a barricade of chairs at one end, and the office of a dead man at the other. The smell of chemicals lingered all around. Marana holding her hand as she fell into the dreamless dark.
And for the first time, she didn't think about those dark eyes in the tunnel. The knives. The bones and the dust. The cold. Lantha.
And the last thing she heard before going under was Marana humming to her.