CHAPTER SEVENTY-TWO - THE CAUSEWAY

Lantha was faster than Tanner. That was unusual. Very unusual. She always remained a distance ahead of her, far enough into the pale haze of the perpetual snowfall that it was hard to see her beyond a vague, shambling shape... no, not shambling. Some part of her mind felt like clumsiness was a necessary condition of largeness. If you were big, you shambled, you clumped, you stomped. You hunched to go through doors, held things delicately, were constantly aware of the fragility of the world. Understandable fragility, of course. The world wasn't designed for aberrant creatures. People made things for other people, they didn't make them for the furthest extremes. Otherwise all belts would be enormous cords of steel-reinforced cloth, all buildings would need doors fit for wagons, all cups would need to be made of inch-thick stone. She'd told herself this a hundred thousand times, learned to accept it completely, to resist any urge to be annoyed. The world didn't ask for her to be in it, stomping all over its carefully designed systems and standards. If you were like her, you were clumsy.

Lantha seemed to be trying to refute that.

She moved with lazy smoothness, all her limbs working in perfect harmony with one another. The snow barely seemed to touch her, and Tanner wouldn't be surprised if she was gliding over the surface. If she didn't see the footprints, she might've even suspected that was the case. And even so, the footprints were light, careful, betraying the size of the woman that made them. In the snow, without anything to break or people to alarm, her size seemed... strangely fitting. Didn't matter that she was almost as tall as Tanner, didn't matter that she could probably tear Tanner apart limb from limb, out here she simply strode through the landscape, conquering hills in less time than a shorter person, devouring distances with Tanner struggling to match her pace, wading through snow and shivering beneath her bleeding pelt. A flash of jealousy. Did contamination just... humans weren't meant to be as large as Tanner, they weren't, and the world was very effective at pointing that out to her. Did contamination actually... make this sort of size work? Align all the muscles, click together all the bones, reshape things and refine things until a giant woman could just glide through the snow like it was nobody's business. She might be going mad. Might be about to die. But in the last part of her life, she was achieving a level of physical togetherness that Tanner found... indescribably enviable.

Probably wouldn't break a teacup when she picked it up, too. Excellent manual dexterity, excellent delicacy, probably could crochet like nobody's business...

...shut up, Tanner. The woman was losing her mind. Contamination wasn't something to be jealous of.

Not jealous of the contamination. Jealous of its positive effects. Jealous of that stride, that certainty, that smoothness. She was jealous of the completeness that Lantha seemed to emanate with every step she took.

"Coat... al-right?"

The woman grunted out, not looking over her shoulder. Tanner twitched slightly, but her face remained still.

"Very warm. Thank you."

A little damp, too. Probably edible, to boot. But it'd be rude to mention that.

"So... we go... we go this way?"

"If we go this way, we might be shot on sight. There's a criminal group which wants me dead, and I doubt they'll ask questions before firing."

"Sounds like... they control things around here. Run the show. Sounds like they've mounted the colony like a randy dog in heat."

Tanner, to her credit, didn't blush when she said that. The cold was already making her cheeks redden slightly, and making everything else so pale that she looked rather like a pile of strawberries and cream.

"They're... powerful. But I don't think they're in control of everything. Most people in the colony were compelled to come here by them, but they're not loyal. I think if there's any loyalty, it's just... better the fiend you know."

"That's stupid."

"Hm."

"So, going the long way?"

"We might need to. Circle around the wall, come to one of the gates. If we see soldiers, that's good - the soldiers seem to be more loyal to the governor. Or at least, not immediately hostile."

"And that's about all we can ask for. Not-totally-hostile to a dead man."

"In essence."

A low, throaty, gurgling chuckle oozed into the air.

"My husband would've loved this. Loved this sort of place, everyone acting all shifty, all suspicious, all important. See, he'd see people acting that way, big lady, then he'd go and hug them. Big old hug. He'd smile at strangers. He'd get in conversations while in queues. People in Apo hated it. Stuffed-shirts that they are - if you ever go to Apo, big woman, you smile at everyone in sight, makes them beyond uncomfortable. You know, in Apo, they actually put blindfolds on babbies."

Tanner blinked. Babb... no, no, she meant babies. Apo had an odd accent.

"...why?"

"No-one should see a lady sweating and panting and with all her bits out and about for the world to ogle at, eh? Got to preserve... pre-serve her modesty, yes..."

Her voice stumbled a little on 'preserve', slipping into something more sibilant, the 's' extending more than it should. What animals had she integrated? What was she starting to become? Was that coat going to remain a coat, or was it going to be an actual pelt, fibres slithering into her skin, contamination binding it together, allowing her to grow more... not that she needed it, of course. But contamination was a fickle thing.

"So... so yes, they blindfold babies, stop them from infringing the mooo-desty of their mooo-thers."

Tanner didn't even know you could roll your 'o's.

"What about..."

Tanner trailed off, embarrassed.

"What about suckling? 'till they get weaned... nah, Apo has suckling veils. Hides your face. Babbies are stupid, see. No brains. Just softness. Hide the face, they forget their mama's there. That way, you don't see your mama's teats, you just see teats, have a splendid time, then mama reappears like magic. Weaning happens early, and stupid little babby goes through life thinking that teats just sort of appear sometimes. I left that place for a reason. Veils were pretty nice, though. My mama had a nice old silk one, all blue and spangly. Better than the ones who had veils that looked like wolves and stuff - associate the sight of teats with giant wild animals, keep the kiddies all modest when they grow up. Go in on their wedding night, unbutton their ladies' dress, then run away screaming when the big pale nightmares from their infancy show back up. In Apo, you shag in the dark. There's a reason I left that place."

Tanner thought it sounded quite reasonable, honestly. Like a city designed by the deeply uncomfortable. A whole city of Tanners, walking around blushing whenever they saw anything compromising, fainting when they heard naughty talk, and spontaneously combusting on sighting a nipple. Sounded like a city of very, very sane people who probably had excellent manners. Presumably.

Judges didn't have jurisdiction in Apo, she thought, but... no, they did have consultancy offices. Imagined a world where she'd been sent there instead.

No. Remain on the present. Getting lost in boggy hypotheticals was pointless. And destructive. She had a whetstone to jam her face into, jumping into a swamp didn't feature in her future, no sir.

"I see."

And they moved on. Tanner was freezing, but... well, she had a goal, now. And a certain level of confidence. The snow fields were hazardous for their cold, but not for the rivers she'd thought existed. She was still careful, but there wasn't the shyness she'd shown before, the fear that a single wrong step would send her into a watery grave, would chill her to the point where no amount of walking could stir her blood back into motion. Toe-killing cold, in short. Now... now, she had a coat (albeit a bloody one), a companion, coals burning in a buffalo horn, and the knowledge that she'd come in the way she was leaving. Done the route once. And hadn't died. Come close, but no cigar. Still... steam issuing out of fissures... was this connected to the mutants, somehow? No, no, the governor had told people to stay away from here, maybe he was hiding something, maybe... she was putting together a plan. A mad plan, yes, but still a plan. Rotated it around in her skull as she walked. Lantha spoke every so often, giving little anecdotes, most of them rambling. Didn't talk about the boat. Didn't talk about the mutants.

And once more, Tanner wondered how she'd survived, while all the others had perished. How she'd gotten so mutated, what had tipped her over the edge. When Tanner had first met her, she'd been... mutated, yes, but it was treated mutation. The mutation of slow, constant exposure to airborne contamination, to stray droplets making their way past filters and protective clothing, to the little scraps that endured past the conventional treatments. Tanner probably had some of those same remnants - but she'd had less time to accumulate them, fewer opportunities in general. What had shifted? What had turned her from slow erosion to rapid change, to... this? Size wasn't just a single metric, her spine would need to lengthen, her bones would need to extend and harden and broaden, her entire musculature would need to shift, Tanner was very, very aware of how being large fed into absolutely everything else, how it wasn't just a single switch you flipped between 'normal' and 'gigantic'.

Whatever had happened to her, it was drastic.

Had an image of Lantha deliberately taking contamination, anything to make herself larger, faster, stronger. Powerful enough to escape the mutants behind her and get to the colony, immune to conventional hungers and thirsts, to the cold which gnawed at any kind of life that trespassed in its silent lands

Dosing herself so she would go mad at the slowest possible rate. Did mutant-hunters have that kind of expertise?

Did anyone?

Well. Mutants. The intelligent ones, at least. Either way.

"Who... d'you want me to speak to, big lady?"

"Mr. Canima. Leader of the local Erlize."

A pause.

"He's... more or less the entirety of the local Erlize."

"Think you can trust... freak like that?"

Tanner considered.

She... well, she feared him, and things that she feared were easy to respect, to trust in a way. Lyur terrified her, and she trusted that he wouldn't slip on a patch of ice and bash his head open by accident. That wouldn't be a way for him to go. She trusted he wouldn't get into a lover's quarrel and declare his undying love for an elegantly rouged maiden. Likewise Canima. She respected him, because he terrified her, and she couldn't ascribe incompetence to him. An incompetent wasn't someone to be afraid of. She was afraid, so he wasn't incompetent. Simple. But he'd... well. Just think. Think for a moment. He'd been involved in destroying evidence for years, working with the governor to cover up the fact that they needed to tear this colony apart when they arrived. A silent war to wipe out two cartels. Pity that they hadn't managed to get rid of the third. Cleared the way for it to expand, really. Come to think of it... Marana loved rambling about Krodaw. Well, loved was the wrong word, but... she'd talked about how the Sleepless wiped out opposition, but the colony had helped. Get all the fighting men to go off to war, and what was left behind? Defenceless hinterlands. Villages ripe for 'protection' by certain militias, like the Sleepless.

Clearing the ground for the weeds to grow more fully.

She had an idle thought. Would Mr. Canima work with the cartel, with that... that old man if he thought it would keep the colony going?

A shiver ran through her. If the mutants were coming, if an attack was coming, then the cartel...

Gods, what if the cartel needed to stay? What if... if that old man, with the knife, with his sad eyes, with his sharp teeth chipped from gnawing on roots and leather and human meat when he was fleeing south, with his dreams of a new homeland, what if he had to stay?

No. No. They'd... killed people, they'd allowed Lyur to do all of this. Someone needed to hang. She might not do it. She wouldn't do it. But someone had to hang for all the bloodshed, she... there couldn't just be a criminal organisation running around, murdering people to keep themselves going. Not just a criminal organisation, a... bunch of criminals bound under an insane old man who wanted to restore his homeland by cannibalising another city. Where was the endgame? What happened when he had enough people? Enough self-sufficiency? Would he just butcher every single Fidelizhi citizen in this place, if there were any left, and declare himself king?

There was no way the cartel continued to exist without inflicting more and more violence, escalating higher and higher as they came closer to victory. Doubted they'd ever find it. The old man would die... who could say if his dream would continue? The others were just violent criminals, his daughter, his one daughter, was incompetent and clearly not well-respected, his dynasty died with him... no, there'd be no victory, just a vast, bloated criminal group that would split, feud, war, expand, and turn the colony into a ruin.

Trying to escape the shantytown, and he'd just brought along the worst fruits of it. Shouldn't be surprised when the shantytown's rotten fruits planted an equally rotten garden wherever they fell.

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No... no, stop it, that was a highly unprofessional line of thinking. Most of the colony would be like anywhere else. Full of normal people trying to live their lives in peace and quiet. Tear out the cartel, and she imagined the colony would recover, shift towards normality, towards functionality.

Gods, she hoped she lived long enough to see the cartel burning...

But they had the cold-houses. They had forces of their own. If they wanted to, they could drag the whole colony down with them.

Let Mr. Canima deal with it. Tanner Magg was a judge. She judged when asked to do so. Mr. Canima would know. Mr. Canima was more in control.

She was happy to dive down whatever hallway of razorblades awaited her, but don't make her choose which corridor of razorblades she wanted to fall through. Don't make her gauge the rustiness, the sharpness, the quantity, the length... just give her an ordeal. She deserved one.

They walked onwards.

Tanner didn't know how to talk to Lantha. Lantha would ramble, Tanner would respond, but whenever she did, she felt like... she was saying the wrong thing. The conversations would end quickly, dwindle into nothingness until Lantha could come up with another anecdote. She'd heard other people talking about the same thing for hours and hours and hours, an entire day of talking, but she just lacked the ability. Couldn't keep one of these conversations going for longer than... four or five exchanges. Mind would already be twitching to new, random things, things she couldn't talk about...

Just keep moving. Ignore the numbness. Ignore the pain in her arm and her legs and her wrists. Ignore it all.

And move.

* * *

Took them... not quite as much time as she thought to get back. When she'd interrogated Tom-Tom, Pyulmila, whatever she should think of her as, it'd been night. Her imprisonment had carried her through to the early hours of the morning, and her flight across the hills had driven her towards afternoon. By the time noon set upon them, they were in the shadow of the city, the statues leering out of the fog to glare down at them, mouths curled into mocking snarls... at least, at this time of day. The colony was inaudible, invisible, the haze stole away anything that wasn't titanic. Anything human-sized was eaten up in seconds, all sound stifled. Perfect place for conspiracies, now she thought about it. In the middle of nowhere, where a whole season was defined by silence and stillness, you tended not to notice when things were going wrong until it was too late. Everything moved slowly, conserving energy, so once they struck... you were long-since surrounded, and your chance to escape had long-since faded. Funny - the mutants did the same thing. Slow-moving, gradual, almost conspiratorial... then lunging once the moment was perfect, and all risks had been eliminated. In conditions like these, maybe all things eventually took the same shape. People. Criminals. Civilisations. Mutants. Animals.

Bound to their roads by chains of solid ice.

Tanner started taking the lead, increasingly. Directing the two of them. Her memory-room had a map of the colony embedded in it, and she was being very careful about distances now, no mistakes, not one. Keep a safe distance from the walls of the colony, but remain close enough to rush there in the event of danger. Keep going to the other side, until they could get to one of the other gates, avoiding the cold-house she'd escaped from. Sometimes Tanner lead, and Lantha followed. Sometimes, on long stretches, Lantha's huge form would plough great valleys in the snow for Tanner to follow through, speeding their progress significantly.

Suddenly, Tanner stopped.

Lantha marched ahead for a few moments, muttering vaguely to herself on a dozen topics at once... and paused when Tanner's footsteps ceased to reach her.

She turned. Only a pair of weary, weary eyes visible within the confines of her hood, and she pulled her coat tighter around herself. Only her arm was truly exposed. Her arm, with the fused fingers, the mottled flesh, the smooth lengths of muscle... Tanner shivered under her gaze, some evolutionary instinct telling her to run at all costs. The scent of contamination was reaching her, and it spurred the urge higher and higher. She shifted... and the coat shifted with her, revealing... just a tiny stretch of collarbone, bared to the wind. Saw tiny holes. Tiny black beads where primitive eyes were growing. And strange growths, like antennae, cilia... no, too sharp. Like tiny lightning bolts, frozen into black hairs, twitching and shivering in the wind, tasting the air...

She covered it up immediately, and grunted, her voice rumbling in the cavernous mass of her chest.

"Time?"

"Time."

"Lead on. I'll hold back."

The clawed fingers twitched, like she wanted to reach out and pat Tanner's shoulder. Glad she resisted the urge. Gods, would she... Tanner didn't like physical contact, but Lantha clearly differed with her on that point. And no-one would touch her without gloves for the rest of her life. Even after death, she wouldn't be touched by anyone, not skin-on-skin, not unless they had to.

"Thank you. For... taking me to the steam. Taking me back. Wouldn't have made it alone, Ms. Lantha."

"Do you have a lover, Tanner?"

First time she'd used her name. And it was to ask that question.

"I do not."

"Get one. While you can. Get some love, wait for the end of the world."

She shivered.

"...can't remember the names of the crew. Not all of them. Should. Should make you remember them, all of them, memorialise or... something. Promise you will. Promise you'll find... documents, or something. There must be some. Must be. We were always signing them. Find their names."

"I will, I promise. I'll be back shortly, and-"

"I know. Just..."

She sighed.

"Got too much leaking out of my ears right now. Can't remember my old mama, just her suckling veil. Pa... nothing of him. Nothing. Dying, earliest first... just remember that request. Could you?"

"I promise."

"Good. Good. Wish I could give you a gun. You look like you need one."

Tanner shivered.

"That's quite alright. I prefer a truncheon, anyhow."

A blink of confusion - too many eyes blinking, she could see the oil-slick shimmers of strange lids snapping shut and opening again

"...why?"

"I prefer the... flexibility. If I shoot, I'm trying to kill someone, but a truncheon can incapacitate. Not my job to kill people."

Didn't want it to be her job, at least.

"Foolish."

A pause.

"...no, with mutants... with mutants, you either burn them, big lady, or you blow them up. Point is, no blood, or keep the blood far away. If you want to bludgeon one, what you do, is you crack it right in the skull. Do that over, and over, and over, and over. Do it until the brains leak out. Most people... no chance, mutant tears them apart before they can do it. You... keep your distance. Hit them over the head. Nowhere else. Just the head, or whatever looks like a head. Might work."

"...thank you for the advice, miss."

"Go on. Before I forget who you are."

Tanner scarpered as quickly as she could, leaving the woman alone in the snow, standing easily amidst the cold. Tanner felt the chill immediately seep into her bones, clawing at her skin... honestly, not sure if she could've made the journey back alone. Not with her wounds, or... well, it helped to have someone carving through the snow in front, immune to most of the things presently killing Tanner. The walls approached swiftly, faster than she liked, bursting out of the fog like a vast black iceberg. She... yes! She'd gotten the distances right, oh, her memory room was good! The gate, right there, one she'd used when she went out to find Tal-Sar, the exact opposite side of the colony to the cartel's known cold-house - far away from most of the cold-houses, actually. Presumably that was safe. Presumably those shadows on the walls were soldiers, and nothing else. She stumped closer, feeling clumsy and alone...

Paused.

Stared.

The shadows on the wall stared back.

Slowly, she raised her hands, and yelled. The loudest sound she'd heard in hours, and it boomed over the hills, crashing like a wave against the wall.

"Hello!"

One of the shadows almost seemed to jump out of its skin, and a feeble voice crawled over the wind towards her. Almost like it was ashamed of having to follow her, to be fair, tremendous yell. Felt some odd pride in that.

"Are you a ghost?"

Tanner blinked.

"No! I'm not!"

"But you're dead! Everyone says you're dead!"

"I promise I'm alive!"

A second of silence...

And the gate creaked open. Before she could come closer, a figure dashed out, small and low, and for a second Tanner thought it was Yan-Lam... no, no, a bit too large. Someone else. Wearing a military uniform. What? Didn't recognise the figure, but it was clattering over with all the certainty of a hunting dog let loose from the chain. Oh gods. Oh gods, it was a bouncer, it was someone under the cartel's control, the knife, the knife. They weren't taking her back. They were not going to put her back in that labyrinth, not with that old man and his sad eyes. Her wounds burned, reminders, her entire body screaming do not let this thing take her back down there. She wasn't strong enough to escape again, her stomach was empty, the cold had scooped out some vital core from her, she was exhausted beyond belief, she couldn't.... couldn't...

The soldier screeched to a halt in front of her, kicking up snow as... oh, she did. Female soldier. Unusual, those. A pair of bright blue eyes stared up from a face that seemed to have more freckles than was strictly reasonable, a peaked cap holding back a small mop of mud-brown hair. The woman stared up.

Tanner stared down.

"Oh my gods. You're alive. How did... they said you'd..."

A cough of embarrassment, and a sharp salute thwacked against her forehead, while her heels struggled to click in the deep snow. Wait, she knew that salute. Wait, she knew that voice. Didn't know the name, but... the overly enthusiastic Kal who'd come to her after the attempted poisoning. Offered to make her a suit of protective gear, given that they didn't really stock 'stinkingly enormous' as a standard size. Forgot to ask her name. Too embarrassed to. Had to be Ms. Blue, then.

Ms. Blue was practically jumping from foot to foot, and Tanner was getting the feeling that all the protective gear she'd worn last time had been the only thing stopping her from jittering incessantly. Maybe that was why she wore it.

"I'm alive."

Tanner said simply.

"...where were you, honoured judge, ma'am, miss, honoured... where, just... what?"

"Had to go outside of the colony. Back now."

"Where? We've been watching the gates, you couldn't have-"

"Wrong side."

"...you came from the snow fields? With all the frozen rivers? Ma'am? Honoured judge?"

She struggled to click her heels again, seemingly just to get some energy out of herself.

"Yes."

The blue eyes widened to the size of eggs.

"My gods. How did you... it's been a day, and..."

She saw the coat. Her voice became very small indeed.

"...honoured judge, ma'am, did you... escape into the snow fields, kill a buffalo with nothing but a knife, skin it, wear it, sleep in its entrails until it was warm enough to move, then marched here on foot?"

Her voice dropped to a whisper.

"It's like something out of Tenk..."

Somehow being compared to a barbarian who couldn't even use proper grammar was significantly more perturbing than anything else.

"I prefer Princess Yalerilli, personally. Could you fetch Sersa Bayai for me? It's very urgent."

Ms. Blue almost jumped a foot in the air.

"Oh, gods, you really did... and you're... wow, you like..."

She paused, blushing slightly.

"I prefer Lepilomanila."

Terrible taste. What an awful opinion. Before Tanner could retort - and correct her on the idea that she'd... what, skinned a buffalo alive, slept in its guts, something along those lines - the woman was sprinting away over the snow, barely seeming to touch the ground. Well. That worked. Needed Bayai, needed to talk with him, immediately. She glanced over her shoulder... yes, yes, could vaguely see the shadow or Lantha. Just so long as none of the guards spotted her, she was fine. Didn't know if she could... crumbs. Thought. Civilisation was here, she was back, and that meant consequences. Meaning, she needed decontamination pills. Too much proximity with a mutant, needed to vomit up some blood to cure herself, stop her from becoming.... becoming a smooth, perfect, utterly harmonious giant with all blemishes soldered away and all deformities healed, moving with the near-liquid ease of a trained acrobat. And irreparably insane. Remember that part. Remember that.

She had an ordeal to endure.

Sersa Bayai came out in record time, still pulling a napkin out of his shirt. He looked... gods, he looked harried, eyes slightly sunken, hair uncombed, uniform slightly rumpled. He looked like he was suffering the first casualties of the war of stress - slipping standards of personal deportment. She was very familiar indeed. Gods, had she looked this rumpled when she was doing her research?

He stared at her.

She stared back. Tried to smile.

He looked her up and down.

Seemed to be wrestling with his thoughts. What was she meant to say? 'I'm alive'. 'Hello'. 'You've got some mustard around your lip'. 'One of your soldiers had bad taste in characters'. No, she could just start screaming 'mutants mutants mutants mutants mutants'. No, no, no, no, one thing at a time. 'Cartel cartel cartel cartel cartel'. Then she could shriek about mutants. Before she could submit her application for issuance of speech (typed out in the brain department, flung between the ministries of decorum and rationality, amended in committee, then sent down for planning permission from the tongue-and-lung division, then bounced back and forth a few times and filled out in triplicate before the proverbial trigger was pulled)...

"Good gods. Really alive."

He saluted wearily.

"Honoured judge. Good to have you back."

Tanner wanted to ask something reasonable. But something else burst out before she could stop herself.

"Who died?"

He blinked, flinched slightly from the intensity of her gaze.

"...one of my boys, beaten bloody. Died in his sleep. Happens sometimes, they get hit in the head, complications show up much later... other lad lived, had his arm snapped. Looks to be on the mend. Your friends, they're... I heard Ms. Marana was wounded, but she's alive, up in the mansion. Scrappy sort, bit a few of them. My thought is, fact that you were occupying their attention helped her get away. They thought she was lower priority, and when they could turn to her, she'd already escaped. The maid... my boys said she was a proper shantytowner, half-rat, half-human, she smelled trouble second it came close and crawled out of the window, ran non-stop back to the mansion and collapsed inside a pantry she wedged shut with a crowbar. Took us two hours to find her. Hour of convincing didn't get her out, not from any of us, not even from Ms. Marana. Three hours of leaving her alone... we came back, she was gone. No-one noticed her leaving. Think she holed up with the other, we've got guards up there, but last I heard, neither were taking visitors. Barricaded the doors to the waiting room. Mr. Canima ordered us to leave them be."

Tanner's muscles went through spasm after spasm, one direction, another, another, all of it concealed by her dress, her sickeningly bloody coat. Should stay here and attend to her duty. Should stay. She looked down, and shivered.

"I need to... speak with Mr. Canima. Immediately. It's deeply urgent."

No, find Marana, find Yan-Lam, find them, find them, see how shaken they are, let them know you're alive, see what marks you left on the world, see who would have mourned you.

No, stop it, not being selfish today, they were alive, let them know she was alive, but... had to stay out here, had to stay. She wanted to go, with all her heart, she wanted to see if her companions were... holding up, in some fashion. The shadowy figure she'd seen when she was hallucinating, the other Tanner, the one of ink and paper and stories and reputation, it still held sway here among many, still had to exorcise the damn thing, shove it back inside the sun. She had work left to do, that... that thing was just a first draft, she'd seen the flaws, she had amendments!

She hadn't proof-read it yet!

Bayai nodded.

"I'll find him, he'll want to talk with you."

"Is... everything alright? In the colony?"

"Tense. No-one knows what to do. No-one's working, no-one's going to inns... shantytowners are doing what they always do. Hunker down and wait for the shooting to stop."

"Has anyone been arrested?"

"Anyone we might want to arrest hasn't shown their face. Mr. Canima still wants us to hold back. Avoid searching every house, plundering every corner. Doesn't want a war. Not even sure who we'd be warring with, but... my boys are angry. Very angry. Have to keep them confined, don't want them starting street fights with anyone they don't like the look of."

Mr. Canima wasn't going to get anywhere by being tactful. What was going to happen was, he would use his normal methods, and he'd find that the cartel had spread itself far enough, and to such a degree of strength, that he couldn't drag it out without being rough. You could tear up a sapling, but it was a hell of a lot harder to dig up a tree stump. After a point, you had to rip, and deal with all the other things that came up. Would an Erlize officer accept that? Would he accept the grim necessity? She could give recommendations, certainly, but... anyway. Anyway. Above her pay grade. Not sure what that grade was, or even how much she was paid. Focus on her immediate duty. Deliver information, then recommendations if prompted. But only if prompted.

"I... understand. And have there been any disappearances?"

"Wouldn't know. We're... patrolling in larger numbers, but we're not adjusting our routes. Quiet reminder - we're still here, try not to ignore us, but we're not going to war yet. Yet. Have to say... my lads, they're calling for blood. Two of their own dead, one injured... some of them are raw recruits, some of them are mutant-hunters, not all of them are good at this policing malarkey. Liable to shoot before they ask questions. Keeping the troublemakers out of the firing line, don't worry, but we're strained. Could definitely do with some more information on what the hell we're going against."

A pause. He seemed to gather his strength for a moment, like he was about to embark on something strenuous.

"May I ask something, honoured... may I ask something, Tanner?"

"Yes?"

"...what happened to you?"

His voice dropped, a hint of steel entering it.

"Who did this to you?"

Tanner stared. Something inside her stomach twisted. Dark eyes. Sad eyes. Tunnels of meat and bone and spice. The cold. The shadows. Cruel words carried on winter winds. The fear that lived in her mind. She hadn't slept since she woke up from being knocked out. Hours and hours of walking and the cold and... if she stopped moving, started thinking about what had almost happened to her, about how... how so many people in the colony were bound to the forces which had almost done those things. If she stopped moving, she'd never move again. Same as outside the walls. Stop moving, and her blood would go 'ah, splendid, time to rest', and then her hands and feet would blacken and snap off like fresh carrots, she'd go mad, fall asleep and never wake up. Had to keep moving to keep her blood flowing.

"I'll explain everything to Mr. Canima, if he allows you to stay, I'll explain to you too. But I need to talk with him."

"Did you kill a buffalo to get that thing, it looks raw..."

"Please, it's very urgent. Relates to the people who attacked me and the others, all the investigating I've done, everything."

They had her papers. The cartel had her papers, albeit censored by bloodstains. She had the weight of knowledge in her. The thing Tal-Sar had talked about, the poisonous, infectious knowledge that ached to be released. The cartel knew most of what she knew, her life had been preserved by those bloodstains and the uncertainty they generated, by the implication that there were more papers out there with more information, maybe in the hands of dangerous people like Mr. Canima. A thought - if she hadn't escaped when she did, they might've figured out that Canima had nothing resembling her complete notes, and they could kill her with impunity. Might only have taken them a few hours. Maybe a day. She'd have suffered throughout the entire period, but... stop thinking about the tunnels. Inside her was the entirety of the investigation, every discrepancy, every suspect, every crime, every number. Engraved into her memory-room until it was fit to burst. Now, add the cartel, add Lyur, add the bloody history of Rekida, add the steam-fissures, add the strange figure that had saved her and blessed her with a burning horn, add the mutants. Inside her slumbered more knowledge than she wanted to bear, she had to spread it, relieve her disease by infecting someone else. Tal-Sar... gods, needed to find him and bring him in, needed to...

Needed to delegate to Mr. Canima. Couldn't handle this on her own. But that didn't mean she was lazy, she wanted the ordeal to come, she deserved it, but... let him decide the hall of razor blades that would belong to her. By every god that dwelled in the sky, sea and soil, absolve her of choosing. Bayai coughed.

"...one thing. I promise. Did you... one of my boys managed to see you... did you fight some of the people who attacked the house?"

Tanner's collarbone flushed slightly.

"I did."

"Three full-grown men, he said."

"I was drugged, so... I lost."

"But three."

"I believe there may have been three."

"Gods."

Her flush climbed up slightly, and she wasn't entirely sure how she felt about... being looked at with something resembling... approval and respect. Real approval and respect, peer to peer, not someone appreciating something foreign or unfamiliar. Engaging with him on his own level. Very odd. Very odd. No, she wasn't a brute, but... goodness, he was smiling at her. Goodness. Not now. Not now. She was nervous right now, she wasn't ready for anything more sophisticated, stop commanding her to spin more plates, she had so many already.

"I'll be on my way. Would you like to-"

"No, I need to stay out here. Safety."

"Would you like a gun? Guards? Sandwich?"

Tanner blinked.

"I would like a sandwich very much, please and thank you."

"And your friend?"

Tanner froze.

Ah, crumbs.

"She's... I don't think she wants a sandwich. But I would like one very much. Please. Thank you."

She bowed slightly, and flinched as the cold interior of her unsettlingly meaty coat brushed against her bare arm.

"Right away."

He paused.

"Damn good to see you alive, if you'll pardon the coarseness. Place didn't feel the same without you walking around in it."

And with that, he was gone. Leaving Tanner to blink over and over again in very quick succession, shuffling her feet to keep the blood moving through them. Pulling her buffalo-pelt cape around herself until she felt slightly warmer.

She'd been missed. The place wasn't the same without her.

Goodness.

Unexpected.

And the first impression she'd planted on her return, the first revision to the ink-and-paper Tanner was... convincing a random woman that she was a barbaric lunatic who killed buffalo, bathed in their blood to stay warm, did it all with nothing but a knife, and liked the Annals of Tenk. Out of those four points, only one was correct, for crying out loud.

One.

Needed to do better. The next time she almost died and vanished for hours and hours following an attack, she might not be remembered as fondly. Come on. Get her head in the game.

Even so. When she returned to Lantha... there was an undeniable spring in her step.

One that she very guiltily suppressed.