CHAPTER SEVENTY-NINE - SPELUNKING SPECULATIONS

It was as she expected. Couldn't really complain, when she'd been dreading this for some time. Mr. Canima had apparently looked over the documents, read the demands that Vyuli had thrust in his general direction... and according to Sersa Bayai, he'd just... sagged. Slumped back in his chair, and stared at the papers. Tanner was deeply glad she hadn't been there to see that. Deeply, deeply glad. Seemed like anyone she interacted with for long enough lost any true aura. It disintegrated, was replaced by the messy undulations of reality. Like her eyes were scalpels, and the longer she looked, the more she dissected. And the more she dissected, the more she saw. The less the whole thing seemed. Her memory drifted, as if often did... but this time, it was to something unusual. One of her older memories. Childhood. Passing by a slaughterhouse. Tanner at that time had been smaller, shorter. Still large for her age, but the explosive bursts of growth hadn't quite reached their peak yet. And certain animals still towered over her. The burly, muscled oxen that occasionally were used to haul goods into town, the sweating, stamping horses that snorted their way through the streets... the larger fish that seemed strong enough to break na arm if they thrashed enough, the birds that seemed liable to carry off small children. The fear of them had died once she became large enough, but in her youth they'd had a certain hold of her. For years, she just... thought her increasing size had dimmed her childish nervousness...

A lie. One of those lies created by ignorance. A memory could sink into the deep of the mind, but it could still leave ripples, have an influence on everything around it. Like those underground rivers that roiled under her feet. Most of the contamination in them was never coming to the surface, most of their structure would remain so buried that it might as well be non-existent. But the influence... subtle as it was, there was an influence. And now, listening to Sersa Bayai, she found one of those underground rivers surfacing, revealing its contours upon the landscape of her brain.

Outside a slaughterhouse. Seeing a cow butchered - long-since dead, but... she saw oxen hauling around carts, she saw the gleaming of their horns, the twitching of their muscles, the sheer unyielding vitality of them. And now... well. The creature had been hung up and skinned, ready to be cut apart into meat for packing. Without the hide, it was smaller, much smaller. Yellow layers of fat were stretched thin over the burnished knots of msucle that protruded underneath. Sometimes, there were small clots of blood, like morning dew. The guts had been taken out, and lay on the ground, thicker than her forearm, blue-and-white and gleaming in the light. Hooves almost comically small for supporting such a creature. And it all looked... there was nothing to be afraid of, with a creature like that. Saw how small it was, really. How messy. How... crude. The stink had been tremendous, and her mother had hurried her along upon seeing her staring. The memory had faded, but it left an impression. Dissect something, understand it inside and out, and it shrank. Diminishing from the blazing sun of summer to the dim orange disk of winter, cold and unfriendly. Easy to bear, but... so much smaller for it.

The more time she spent in the colony, the more she realised that Mr. Canima wasn't some terrifying spider that moved silently and had no emotions, he was... tired. An old man doing a job that would've been deeply stressful for someone half his age. Mr. Vyuli was a lunatic, yes, but he wasn't some kind of... blistering genius, a prophet-firebrand leading his people to greater glory. He was a criminal trying to... to do something with his old age. Maybe recapturing the old days of Nalser, maybe trying to leave a better legacy, maybe just... finding something to do, now that he was in the twilight of his life. Maybe just trying to challenge himself, return to the simplicity of the flight south from his original home, the simple distinction between being alive and being dead. Nothing more complex than seeing another day. Maybe he was just pushing himself, to prove he could still achieve something like that. But... all of this, the more understanding, the more experience, it reduced all of them.

And the more they were reduced, the closer they came to herself. The closer they came to herself, the more unlikely their survival seemed. She knew herself. Mostly. And she knew she was a... a damn coward, a shambolic excuse for a human being, still incapable of asking people's names if she forgot during their first encounter, but at least she was dedicated to her job and would do it until she died. But her dying for her job only mattered if... the people around her would do their jobs. She knew herself, and if the peole around her were like her, then everyone here was going to die. Whole colony. Wiped out.

She desperately hoped she didn't understand Vyuli, Canima, or all the rest. Desperately hoped they had vast hidden depths, and... she could believe that they did, almost. Almost.

Mr. Canima had heard the ultimatum in silence. No acceptance. He knew the consequences. But no rejection. Just a... kind of aged stillness. Sersa Bayai had left shortly afterwards, unsure of what to do, imagining he'd want time to think about it.

And that left Tanner here. Sweat trickling down the back of her neck from nervousness. Didn't want to see him again. Didn't want to dissect Canima further with her eyes, and reduce him until he wasn't there at all. Let her just... just be a soldier, set her eyes forward, put on her boots, and march wherever she was told. Not even glancing at her commander, just listening to the bark of his voice. Just her be ignorant. Let him deal with this, and she'd deal with anything else, so long as it was small, it was hers. She knocked quietly regardless, shivering as she did so.

The door opened on its own. Unlocked.

That alone made her skin crawl.

Mr. Canima was sitting at his tiny desk in his odd little room where he presumably worked, ate, and slept. His own nest. He didn't look up for a few moments, just stared down at the desk with the neatly copied papers arrayed in front of him. He seemed almost feverish for a moment, his skin had that odd clammy aura to it which she saw on other people going through illnesses. His thin hair seemed to be soaking it up too, and it was easing towards being lank and limp. He was very still. Very still indeed, like one of those... predators which remained in place for long periods, saving their energy for a final burst. His tweed suit clung oddly... and a second later, he looked up. Eyes sharpened. His entire body tightened in a moment. A hand passed over his forehead, and his skin seemed healthier. Through his hair, and it was neater. His back moved, and his suit snapped back into place. And Canima was back, thin and tough and inscrutable, a being of competency and professionalism. A reservoir of confidence, a dense packet of secrets tied up in tweed. His cufflinks glittered, and with them came the promise of interrogations, disappearances. The markers of the organisation that had... well, begun this.

Tanner bowed her head politely.

"Sir. I apologise for not coming immediately. I trust you-"

"Yes, I received the documents."

"...is there a response you'd like me to convey?"

Mr. Canima drummed his fingers lightly on the table - hadn't cut his nails for a little bit, and instead of a thump-thump-thump, there was a click-click-click, like the impressions of a typewriter. No response for a few long seconds, and his eyebrows slowly drew down, furrowing a little. Tanner waited. The night was starting to march on a bit, but neither of them seemed inclined to sleep. Tanner had only wandered around a bit, woken herself back up, wondered if this was why Mr. Canima was being so still. Conserving energy, stopping himself from needing to sleep so much. A minute passed with agonising slowness, and Tanner swallowed.

"...may I have a brief, sir? Not... necessarily a proper response, sir, just... a tactic. I could delay?"

No idea how she'd delay, but she could give it a go. Would do a better job if Canima spoke. The man slowly leaned forwards, bunching the fingers of one hand and pressing it against his forehead, the tips making slight craters in the tight flesh of his skull. The other hand kept tapping away. The light was dimming rapidly outside, the snowstorms were coming stronger and stronger. The mutants would likely come in midwinter, she thought. When the nights were at their longest, the sun was at its coldest, the snow was at its thickest. The apex of hostility to human life, the point where they might as well be on some cruel, cold moon where no human footprint existed. Ideal time for a tide of inhumanity, then. Another minute. And slowly, Canima spoke, his voice dry as dust.

"Delaying would... lead to issues. His belief is that this is... a test. Yes, a test. If I give myself up, I believe the mutants are coming. If I remain here, clearly my belief in them is less than absolute. A delaying tactic would paralyse the colony. Developments would happen slowly. He'd have too much time to get his troops his order."

"...I could send a flat refusal?"

"War. Immediate and catastrophic."

"Do you think his... I mean, they're criminals, sir. The bouncers, I mean. Would they be able to fight against trained soldiers?"

He looked up, eyes hard.

"If we use our guns, no. They'd lose. Immediately. But they could retreat. Strangle us by starving us. And the civilians... they may dislike Vyuli, they may dislike his door-guards and their activities, but he's a known factor. I'm part of the Erlize. I'm sure most of them believe I would kill them all if I was ordered to do so by the Golden Parliament. If I demonstrate a willingness to purge a large number of them, I demonstrate a willingness to purge them all. And then it takes a few lone actors striking pre-emptively at soldiers to... start a bloodbath. We'd win any military engagement. Kill ten of them for every one of us. And we'd still lose."

Tanner shivered. She'd known this. Of course she'd known this. But it was spelled out for her, she hadn't made any mistakes, this was... just the way it was. A professional said so, not her own amateurish diagnosis.

"I see."

A pause.

"...should I send a reply?"

Said it three times. This was nagging. She was nagging. Canima's eyes narrowed momentarily, as if annoyed... then his fingers resumed their tapping, and he fell silent. No, no, please, not more silence and uncertainty, give her orders, don't just leave her holding the baby gormlessly, give her something. A few moments passed before he spoke again.

"Give me... time. He won't expect an immediate answer. He didn't demand one. Give me time. As for yourself, go downstairs. Get back to work."

He didn't seem overly concerned with it, nor with her. She was tangential to the greater problems of the colony, just the unlucky sod who had to relay messages for her. She asked quietly:

"On the governor's murder?"

"If you must."

Research whoever you want, seemed to be the message. It makes no difference at this stage. Anyone would do. But Tanner thought... no, no, she was doing something valuable, wasn't she? Yes, yes. The fundamental issue was... was the colony getting along, rallying together. They were going to be stuffed into bunkers together, any tensions would be exacerbated, and the cartel might well move to hurt people. The governor's death loomed over it all. If the mutants had killed him, which Tanner douhted, then... well, maybe that could rally people. If the cartel was responsible, the people might well turn on them, the governor seemed to have been well-liked. If someone in the cartel did it, without the knowledge of Vyuli, it might shake his faith in his own ranks, the tight-knit nature of the group that made him confident in seizing control. Shake the faith of the people in the group, too. Turn them from rulers to pariahs overnight. And if... no, consider every option. What if it was a lone madman? What if, gods forbid, it was a soldier, or some... sort of agent of the Erlize, acting in the name of the Golden Parliament to wipe out a troublemaker, or a personal enemy, agitated for personal reasons to the point of murder. There were options there, but...

She needed to solve this. Canima could deal with the rest. Right?

She stared at his oddly waxy face.

He could do this. All she had to do was her job. Follow her orders. Do as a judge ought to. It wasn't the place of judges to... to question things like this. He, legally, could rule the colony. And that was it. Her thoughts ought to end at that point.

His fingers kept drumming.

And when she bid him goodbye... he said nothing at all. Just stared at the papers.

Seeming to have aged twenty years in the span of two days.

* * *

Marana was waiting for her downstairs. Didn't ask her how it'd gone, thankfully. But... Tanner sighed. Had to tell her about the mutants. It'd be irresponsible otherwise. Yan-Lam was dozing in a chair, the hour being quite late, but Marana just as dazed as she always was these days. Tanner removed her cape as she entered the waiting room, and marched unhesitatingly into the governor's office. Yan-Lam stirred as she walked past, and immediately trotted after her loyally, rubbing the sleep from her eyes with cursory irritation. Annoyed at her own lack of stamina, like expecting a child to stay awake throughout the night with little food to sustain them was reasonable, somehow. She sat down heavily in the governor's chair, rubbing the bridge of her nose. The snow was falling thickly enough that... well, there was a kind of security. Moving people around in this weather was hard. The only factors to consider tonight were the people in the mansion, the rest of the colony was... well, it was like being in an archipelago, a chain of islands surrounded by stretches of ocean. Any travel between these little islets of warmth and shelter demanded a punishing trek through churning waves of snow, punishing gales that scraped the skin with delicate crystals, and a sky blacker than coal, from which no guiding starlight could emerge. In a way, there was safety there. She existed in a closed system.

Her two... assistants stood in front of her. Marana swaying slightly from side to side, eyes glazed over. She was on something again, her mind had slipped out through the needle wounds. No wonder. A chaotic colony on the verge of collapse... must be awakening some deeply unpleasant memories. Had been, for some time now. Tanner took a deep breath... and began.

"Don't let this leave this room. It has to stay between the three of us. Mr. Canima knows, Sersa Bayai knows, and the cartel leader knows. There's a group of mutants likely approaching to assault the colony. They're behaving strangely, according to someone who survived them. Attacking in a more organised fashion, making use of mutants with more adaptations - older and smarter. Working together without cannibalising each other at the first sign of weakness. We're not... sure why any of this is happening. Currently, we think they're heading for the city to try and get access to the crater in the middle, dig through it. But given how unusually they're behaving, we don't think they'll just leave the humans alive, like they normally do. We think there might be trouble."

Yan-Lam blinked in confusion, tilted her head to one side, then the other, agitating her brain to wake it back up.. seemed remarkably calm. Of course she was calm, she was young, she didn't... hadn't seen the mutants Tanner had seen, and Tanner had no doubt that she'd only seen the tip of a very ugly iceberg. Inexperienced enough, ignorant enough to be calm. Marana, though... Marana's eyes sharpened. A shiver ran through her from head to foot... and she shuffled to find herself a chair to flop into, her face frozen into a bleary smile. No words from either of them. Tanner clicked her papers on the table, straightening them all out, withdrawing her master document of all relevant information on the governor case.

"Mr. Canima is handling that side of things, but we're trying to keep people from panicking. Until such a time, we... ought to get on with our work."

Yan-Lam blinked again, and rather a few more times in quick succession. Marana let out a small, strangled, humourless laugh.

Tanner gritted her teeth.

"The governor's death is still a pressing issue, and we should-"

"I'm going to die here."

The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

Marana said very softly. Tanner stared.

"Now, there's... no reason to be pessimistic."

She clapped her hands, forcing herself to smile brightly. Based on how Yan-Lam's eyes widened, it wasn't as reassuring as she hoped.

"The soldiers are well-armed, we have food to survive any siege, there are bunkers for sheltering the whole population, and-"

"Are we assuming the mutants killed the governor?"

"I doubt it. Some of the evidence doesn't add up, and I have things to investigate."

Marana looked up, and stared at Tanner. Her eyes were deeply sad. Reminded her far too much of Vyuli's. Tanner shivered... and powered on. Yan-Lam glanced between the two of them, clearly trying to figure out what was the appropriate response. Young, and her mind was focused on the case, she had no space in her brain for anything else at present. After a while, with crisis after crisis, you stopped treating them all as cohesive blocks and... had to start leaving a few to fade into the peripheries. Cognitive triage. Tanner was twenty-three, she could manage to stuff a bit more into her brain than Yan-Lam, but even so... even so, there was a limit to what her mind could reasonably piece together. After a while, things faded. Maybe Mr. Canima was struggling with the same. Just... putting too many priorities in his brain, and eventually cracking under the weight. Take in every crisis, and the mind was forced to useless generalisations. Give them the focus they deserved, appreciate the complexity, and... the mind could only handle a few.

The mutants were just too big. Too much to imagine.

Yan-Lam brought her own chair forwards, and sat down primly, head held high. Refusing to look at Marana, and trying, somehow, to emulate Tanner's way of sitting. Uncanny, watching her move around so... decisively. Either way. Tanner had work to do, even as Marana sloped off, eyes half-lidded, fingers twitching for... something. Wanted to go after her, drag her back, ask her questions, just... keep her here, where she was safe. Where she was a known variable. Couldn't, though. Had work, had to work. The more she focused on other things, the more her heart raced, the more terrified she felt. Had to stay... stay concentrated. Stick her head in the sand and work - nothing wrong with sticking your head in the sand when your hair was on fire, and right now, everything was on fire, or threatened to be.

Soon would be.

"...right. Let's start."

And she began her job.

The only thing she could do, besides panic and wait for the end.

The governor's body was irregular, had potentially been moved from a previous location, and had died in a noticeably odd way. If the mutants were smart enough to figure out political assassination, which seemed... conceivable, then they'd be smart enough to know not to leave distinctly mutant-like wounds. Same reason they didn't attack the carriages coming into the colony with their larger members, they seemed to literally throw lesser mutants into the fray, let them handle it. They understood the concept of cover, there was no way they'd kill the governor without providing a good excuse, ideally something that implicated other humans, or wild, unaligned mutants. The resource discrepancies were much larger than they should be in certain areas, there was no way the cartel was taking this much, and no way the governor would've overlooked it unless he was also siphoning something. So, why? Why would he siphon precious resources away?

And why would he lie about the snow fields?

Canima would never talk. He was too... bureaucratic, too devoted to his duty. Much as she was. Maybe that was why she still had a lingering flicker of trust for the man. If he survived this, then any leaks of information under his command would be used to destroy him. And with that, the governor's legacy would be truly dead, with all his close allies gone and his chief enemy lingering. Odd, that he'd be so attached, that he'd... be willing to... hm. He'd been willing to shirk so much at this point in terms of scruples, hadn't he? Willing to... turn a blind eye to Mr. Gulyai in Fidelizh scrubbing people of their pasts, willing to turn a blind eye to what was, in the end, corruption on a large scale, orchestrated by the governor. And he'd known, obviously he'd known, there was no way he didn't. He'd just... never seen the nastier side-effects. No wonder there was only one fully qualified Erlize officer in the whole place, the governor and Canima had wanted to avoid scrutiny. She had to add this to her estimation of him - he was a man with genuine loyalty for his governor. Might explain more of his strain - he wasn't just dealing with catastrophes, he was dealing with the loss of his friend. Not that she'd ever ask him about that, and not that he'd ever express it openly. Both of them were far too... cloistered. No, no, oystered. Clammed up and unwilling to open, especially when prodded.

Pair of oysters, they were.

So, he was willing to cover that up, sure. And even when that was exposed, when Tanner might be able to bring a case against him for corruption (not that she would), he wasn't spilling the beans and giving her a fuller context. Meaning, either he had no idea what was happening, or, alternatively, there was something he still had to lose. Some secret he still had to preserve, even after so much had changed. There was a secret, she was sure of it, some missing piece of vital contextualising information, but... all she could see were the borders. Vast borders, influencing everything around them. Something was happening, and she honestly had no idea what it was, even conceiving of what lay inside those borders was basically impossible.

And at the heart of it was a dead governor that refused to offer up an explanation. Who had enough complicating evidence to make no solution fit cleanly.

She glanced at Yan-Lam, placidly reading through a ledger, going through the discrepancies and seeing if there were any notable spikes or troughs.

"There are tunnels."

The chambermaid looked up slowly.

"...alright."

A pause, and a flush rose in her cheeks.

"I mean, alright, honoured judge. Sorry."

"It's fine, just... there are tunnels. All over the place, really. There's some excavated under the cold-houses, but there's more than that. They excavated them, then linked up with a much broader, pre-existing network."

Another reason they needed the cartel's assistance. They couldn't map all those tunnels, and cunning mutants would definitely use them to move around, shelter from bombardments, sneak closer to the city without tripping alarms... worse, they might even be able to enter the city without poking their heads above ground at all, forcing them into a close-range battle and... stop it, focus on the murder, not... all the potential future murders.

Anyway.

"And... one of those tunnels, at minimum, goes into the mansion. That's how they got Dyen out. But Canima blocked up those tunnels, I think. Stopped more people getting in. But he didn't say anything."

Tanner leant forwards, forming her fingers into a thoughtful steeple.

"Obviously I can't ask him, not... as things are, but it raises two possibilities."

Yan-Lam nodded rapidly, a smile spreading across her face as she interrupted, enthusiasm overpowering her usual politeness.

"Well, miss, either he didn't know about them and wanted to save face, or he did know about them and wanted to cover them up for his own reasons."

Tanner smiled faintly back, trying to be encouraging.

"And if he wanted to save face, then he'd have no reason to hide it now, really. And... he doesn't seem the type to cover this up. So, it was just like the migration ledger. He and the governor-"

Again, an excited interruption.

"Oh, I know, I know, because they were already doing corrupt things, and when the... c... what's-"

"The cartel."

"Cartel, right, right, when the cartel started doing it, they were able to hide underneath the existing corruption, and by the time they got too big, the governor couldn't go after them without going after himself. If he even knew about them, that is."

Tanner nodded.

"Quite. I'm sure he suspected, but... they were, generally, subtle. Easy enough for them to siphon food for themselves, to stockpile it for future conflict. Never became too noticeable. The only areas where they were unsubtle, like with the migration records, they could piggyback on the governor's foundations. So - why not do that again?"

Yan-Lam blinked, and yawned despite herself, weariness catching up. She covered her mouth immediately, apologising through the yawn, managing a good few 'sorry's before she got herself back under control.

"...do... right, piggyback on... so, you think there were already tunnels here, or something secret. The cartel found out, tapped into them. Canima then found out they'd tapped into them when they got Dyen. And then panicked, plugging it all up and making it seem like he'd exploded or something."

Another flush as she realised how rude she was being, and she promptly folded her hands over her lap, sat up straight, held her nose high, and kept her eyes wide and attentive. The very picture of an aware and awake assistant. Well, if it wasn't for how skinny she was getting, and the bags under her eyes which said... unpleasant things about her lack of sleep. Gods, Tanner needed to sit her down and tell her to stop imitating her own habits. Tanner's habits were the habits of someone who was likely going to get killed one of these days. Also, someone much larger. But... no time, no time, genuinely needed the help, needed the company. Marana wasn't here, Sersa Bayai was busy, and thinking of Eygi was... sometimes it worked, and sometimes she felt a nauseating twist in her stomach, and Lyur's words kept echoing in her head, echoing from behind a picture of Eygi, smirking, in the basement of a chained tower.

Any. Way.

"Exactly. So... obviously, I can't ask him. I would, if I could. But he's... I think he's not going to stop me if I investigate, but he's not going to help me. Maybe that's his excuse, if he survives this. I found out things, but I did it on my own, and he was too busy to stop me, lacked proper authority, I don't know. Maybe. The point is... why not poke around?"

"For tunnels?"

"For something."

And then an idea struck her.

Facts clicked together. Quite a series of them, in fact. A chain of logic extending since before she came to this colony.

Knew what she had to do.

"Yan-Lam, I'm going to need to step out. Not for too long, I hope. I just need to go to the city and back."

The chambermaid stood up sharply, wobbling a little.

"I can-"

"No, stay here, hold down the fort. I know what I have to do. But..."

She paused, reached for the desk, started writing down various instructions. A list, really - just because Yan-Lam was so tired, and might forget small details. Needed a few things. And needed Yan-Lam to get a few things in turn, mostly for herself. And with that, she was off, stalking confidently from the office with a chambermaid trotting loyally behind her. Off to do her business. Yan-Lam scanned the list in her hands, before running off as quickly as her legs could take her. Tanner found Marana sitting in a couch in the waiting room, just... trying to mull over existence, most likely. Tanner strode over and placed a hand on her shoulder, energy fizzing through her, reviving her from the drowsiness that was clawing around her eyes. No better time for this idea than now, any other time and there'd be complications. Act fast, or not at all. Act fast, or wait for another catastrophe to distract her attention. Seemed to be a common trend with this investigation.

Marana glanced up blearily.

"Hm? Are they attacking yet?"

"Not yet. Just wanted you to do a small job for me."

"Please don't send me back to those factory owners, I'd be a ghastly bore at the moment."

"No, no, they're... honestly, they're borderline irrelevant, no-one would follow them into battle, their influence is fairly low... governor did a good job defanging them, I suppose."

And the cartel, too. Both governors, working in tandem to make sure power didn't flow to the business owners, to keep it with either the Fidelizhi establishment, or the cartel. Left the company owners as rather lame ducks, really. Marana had seemed to notice that, with their confined style of living, their dreary dinners, their rising paranoia... they had never seemed like powerful people. The moment the governor had died, they'd flocked to the mansion in droves, just huddling around the fire and begging for governance. The moment one barked a little, Canima had shut him down with a few words, and nothing more. Rather like a piece of food chewed between two rows of teeth, the companies increasingly run by overseers who were loyal to the cartel, their management increasingly subordinate to the governor's will. Marana's... gods, the feeling of impending doom that she'd felt, it made a hell of a lot more sense. It was one thing to be powerful and see a disaster coming, it was another to just... be powerless, watching the storm come closer and closer, incapable of stopping it. Should've known there was something wrong with the system here the moment she heard about that attitude among people that, in Fidelizh, would've been damn powerful movers and shakers.

"Well. Wonderful. So, what do you want?"

"I want you to... listen, you'll have my authority here. No drinking for the rest of tonight, no... narcotics. I'm sorry, I need you clear."

Marana hummed... leaned to the side, and plucked a large bottle of wine from next to the sofa.

"Afraid I've already-"

Tanner snatched the bottle, glared at it, glared at Marana... and thought about what her plan was. How mad it was.

Might as well.

She raised the bottle to her lips and drank, directly from the top.

Marana's eyes widened, her mouth fell open to yell in outrage at disgracing such a bottle...

No point.

Tanner was already half done. Tasted like... vinegar, really, Tanner didn't get wine. More wine than she'd ever had before, admittedly.

Another few glugs, the last, silty dregs of the bottle, glittering like ruby sand...

Gone completely. Tanner gasped slightly as she removed the bottle from her mouth, using her sleeve to wipe away a little excess from her lips. Glared.

"There. You can open another tomorrow."

"...are you alright?"

"I feel nothing."

Almost correct, she had a tiny tingle in her stomach, but that was it. Alcohol didn't affect her, reason she wasn't an alcoholic. Marana seemed genuinely stunned. Her mouth was slightly open. Something very gratifying in that, honestly. Very gratifying indeed. Beaten at her own game - must be rather like the tastefully flirtatious belle of the ball swanning around, expecting glorification from her admirers, only to find that Carmalana Slurp, who lived under the bridge and had a mouth that could suck the Irizah dry, had completely overtaken her little niche by virtue of her combination of willingness, eagerness, and a chest the size of-

Shut the fuck up, Tanner.

She wasn't allowed to think now. No more thinking from Tanner Magg.

Oh, gods, she'd sworn in the confines of her head. Her thoughts were swearing. And she was thinking about... about vulgar topics. Oh, gods, did drinking half a bottle of wine while sleep deprived and very hungry indeed make her vulgar?

A full bottle might make her say vulgar things, not just think them.

Hmph. At least she could walk properly. She nodded curtly at Marana.

"Now. Go downstairs, and try and arrange for the soldiers to not guard the... kitchen entrance for a while. And stay out of our way generally. This floor is off-limits, same as Canima's floor is. Ideally, get them to remain in the vestibule, I don't want any of them coming near here. And remind them that I'm... going to be doing some delicate work, and I can do whatever I need to do in service of the colony. So, no interruptions, and no protests."

Marana nodded slowly.

"...right. I'll do my best. What are you doing, though?"

Yan-Lam came trooping back in, a handful of bits and bobs in her hands. She placed them delicately on a table before retreating, red-faced, to find yet more. Marana stared.

"Gas masks?"

Indeed. Gas masks. Large ones. One intended for herself, the other... a more variable size, heavily adjustable model. The filters were fresh, and Yan-Lam had delivered a few replacements as well. The masks were new, made out of fresh brown leather, with gleaming metal and glass lenses around the eyes that seemed unpleasant beetle-like. The nozzles at the front twisted them into the shape of impossible animals, divorced from any natural shape. It'd be uncomfortable, but... necessary. Marana moved to pick one up, but Yan-Lam returned, as if on cue, with more. Tanner gestured vaguely.

"One for you. One for Yan-Lam. Do you have the gloves?"

"Yes, miss. Heaviest I could find, real gauntlets, promise."

"And-"

"Getting the rest now, miss. One moment."

Marana's eyes were suddenly very alert indeed.

"Are you running away?"

Tanner froze.

Turned slowly.

Her face was absolutely still with anger.

"No. I am not running away. Nor will I."

Pointless idea. Even if the colony was evacuated, they'd have to struggle through midwinter snow for several days, with limited shelter and animals that'd be dying on the journey, ripe picking for any mutant that wanted to kill them quickly and easily (id est, the entire invading force), and even if they made it, they'd have to deal with a tiny settlement not adapted for their sort of numbers, rivers that might be frozen over completely, or would be too shallow due to the ice locking up most of the water. No boats, no water, no shelter. They'd just die of cold rather than of claws. No, could still die of claws, it was an option if they were ambushed. They'd just be exceptionally cold in the process of being clawed to death.

Might as well be warm while dying, right?

"So, where are you going?"

Tanner straightened her back. Looked down imperiously.

"The city. I need to find something."

Marana blinked.

Paused.

And nodded obediently, before rushing off to do her job.

Well. Good.

* * *

The city was silent. Tanner stole out of the mansion like a thief, walking into the darkness and the storm. No better time than now. Her gas mask hung loosely at her waist, and her gloves barely kept her hands above freezing. Silence, save for the howling of winds. No human voice, no human movement. The darkness was all-consuming, the silence even more so. No sign of the moon, no sign of the stars. And no sign of any watchers. Visibility was down to within a few feet of herself, and she immediately felt a low pulse of fear. The same cold that had almost killed her. Diving back into a world hostile to any form of human life, where survival was no longer truly feasible. Like drowning, really. No matter how confident of a swimmer you were, there was always the basic fact that this was not a place for humans. And no matter what humans did, it would always resist their entry. And as the tide came in and went out, shifting land from habitable and human-friendly to uninhabitable and opposed to all land-dwelling life... so did winter march over the world. Hard to even imagine Rekida being built, let alone inhabited for so very long.

A sudden comparison came to mind, as she looked into the darkness, where wall-gods loomed down with eyes packed with ice, ice that slaves would've scraped out with blackening fingers once upon a time. She'd heard of... of submersibles. They were new, terribly new, theurgists mostly built them and sometimes allowed others to use them... huge pieces of iron, lowered into the depths of rivers and oceans. The only way to stay alive in such conditions - to take a piece of home, trap it in iron, and hold it all so tightly that nothing could escape. And even then... even then, survival wasn't a certainty. The Rekidans with their walls and belief in dominating the world around them... the Nalseri, and their hammer-cartels, founded around close-knit groups...

Both of them defined by the cold. By the fact that their own country tried to kill them for part of the year. Like a seaside community suddenly being thrust underwater every twelve months, left to flounder in the deep.

In conditions of absolute hardship, everything became defined by it. A yoke that broke culture into shape. Dominate the world, chain the world, enslave and control. Shelter from the dark, cluster around single points, be it a cast-iron totem or a campfire, stay together and enforce loyalty with an iron hammer.

The mutants were coming. They'd bring hardship. Intense hardship. Pressure on every single system, strain on every relationship.

Idly, she wondered what would come out of it. How this hardship would break the colony, what shapes would emerge from the ordeal.

Maybe a culture of us-against-them. A culture of hunting the mutant, not just controlling the world, but fighting it, crusading against it. Vyuli had been broken by hardship into something cruel and unyielding, devoted to survival, to victory, to challenge. Locked into the simple dichotomy of win-and-live, or lose-and-die. No middle-ground, no compromise, no acceptance of status quo.

She set out into the snow. Towards the city. The cold wrapped around her immediately, and narrowed her thoughts to binary opposites. March onwards, stay behind. Survive the cold, die in the cold. Nothing complex, nothing long-term. Certainty crystallised. Wondered if Vyuli experienced this, from time to time. When he was about to torture her, when he issued his ultimatum, when he came here in the first place. Shivered at the thought.

And gripped the leash hanging from her belt tightly. Reminding herself it was there.

The city beckoned. No sign of the statues in the gloom. So with no reference point but her own memory...

She wandered into the dark.