CHAPTER SIXTY-FOUR - UNBIDDEN GUESTS

Beldol had refused to talk. Didn't want to. Nothing more to say to Tanner. And Tanner had nothing more to ask.

Nothing to do but to deliver a basket of goods. Pies. Liquor. Cold cuts. Bread. Luxuries. With a note. Apologising for everything. But not asking a single question.

What did she know? What could she add? Too much had been revealed by the man with scarred rings around his wrists. A single person was nothing against the tide of a secret history - Beldol knew about a single man's character, but this was larger, much larger. Individuals became less than single points of data, they became... no, they became transmitters of data. Like the cables that carried theatrophone signals. In the tide of history, a person didn't make waves, they weren't even carried by them. They were individual droplets of water through which the pattern flowed, a pattern dependent on untold billions of drops of water, and yet not a single one of them. A person would think themselves free and conscious... until they tried to move against the wave, or in a different direction entirely, and then the current would drag them forwards. Rebellion against the pattern was pointless, because there was nothing outside of it. Detach yourself, and fall into helpless obscurity. Remain with the wave, and submit to wherever it wanted you to go. Beldol was just a person. So was Tanner. So was everyone. None of them had a choice in things, they were just... Tanner was a judge, caught up in a pattern stretching back thousands of years. Beldol was part of Fidelizh, an equally old city. Both were in Rekida, and they were bound by its legacy, whether they liked it or not.

Tanner looked out of her window, enduring the cold - no glass to fill the frame, just solid wooden boards to keep out the breeze. She could see the shadows, vaguely. A horizon of statues. Rekida loomed beyond, with statues that slaves had raised and kept free of snow, even as midwinter shrivelled them up like old insects, turned them the black of chitin and twice as brittle, then send them plummeting to the great white desert below. Maybe that was why Tal-Sar was so... strange. Not age - he was burdened with the weight of the full pattern, he was one of the few entry points for this pattern to cross from unknown to known. A burden usually carried by... countless thousands. More, maybe. No wonder he was so peculiar, why he'd needed to tell her, why he'd seemed so hollow when he was done. And Tanner knew that the pattern he'd held, that he'd understood, was determining things now. He'd never escaped it. Rekida was beyond his control, the Great War was beyond his control, the shantytown was a seething mass of humanity that no single human could command, and even if he tried to say that killing a bear had brought the bloodletting...

What did it matter?

She sighed.

Eels didn't think about going somewhere other than their destination. The pattern lived in every cell of their bodies, a pattern stretching back... well, to the point where eels emerged as a species. That pattern would echo through their mind, their bones, their skin, their muscles, their every particle, until their species ceased to be. Didn't feel any angst about that. About the life cycle which would, inevitably, leave them starving to death in a foreign ocean, or drove them to make horrifically dangerous pilgrimages to seemingly random places. They just... did it.

Envied that certainty. Tanner felt small. Small in the face of so much history, so much legacy. The pattern that Tal-Sar had kept in the contours of his soul was now engraved around hers. Shallower, perhaps. Less personal. But hers. If she looked at her wrists, maybe she'd see gleaming bands of manacle-made scars, marking her out as someone who knew. Someone who saw.

Even though Beldol refused to talk, Tanner stayed there for the night nonetheless, listening to the sound of movement upstairs, and the shuffling of the guards as they played an endless series of card games on a profoundly unlovable and rickety table that creaked and groaned like an old man with rheumatism. Sometimes she heard Beldol talking to herself, rambling about... well. Anything. Called herself a normal person, a perfectly happy person, a person who didn't want to be involved in this. She cursed the walls, cursed the gods, cursed everything... something there was a clunk, and Tanner realised she had a bottle or two of something with her, but the soldiers said they'd been rationing the booze for a while. Tanner had an image of the sour-faced woman slumping around her room, thumping an empty bottle against the floor like it'd bring more to her. Heard of folk who beat drums to make rain fall from the sky - maybe beating an empty bottle made whisky fall. Or something stronger.

Thump-thump-thump.

She'd move to the anchoritic stones of New Trobalis, and become one of those nuns who scrawled messages into the stones and left them for other generations, books that wouldn't rot, wouldn't burn. Lower the stones into the toxic mists that lay under the city, leave them for the future. She'd tie a band around her mouth like all those nuns did, and live out her days in silence.

Thump-thump-thump.

She'd run to Mahar and become a monarchist, join the exiled courts of Fidelizh's old king, become Countess Beldol, surround herself with silks, and wait for the promised day of restoration. Until then, though, she'd hunker down and entertain herself with courtly intrigues and elaborate salons. She'd learn the flute. Or the pianoforte.

Thump-thump-thump

She'd leave this place and never come back.

Of all the murmured plans Tanner heard, that was the only one which seemed plausible.

Tanner's sleep was fitful, always dancing between dreamless and dreaming, lured to the former by time, dragged to the latter by the thump-thump of an empty bottle and the creak of a rheumatic table. Dreamt of strange things. Of bald nobles with immaculately shaped skulls, holding cruel whips in their hands as they drove men and women with manacle-scarred wrists through a gleaming alabaster city. Dreamt of slaves being compelled to raise great statues. Dreamt of the blackfingers, with their shrivelled, useless, soon-to-die hands. Burned cold by the godly gaze of the wall-statues. Dreamt of a chained world. A world which had to be driven into the ground and ridden. Fidelizh had gods which rode upon the backs of men when they were called - a logical, rational transaction of behaviour for fortune. Mahar had a world made purer by filtering, like alcohol brought to strength after strength by successive distillations. Jovan had a world of cruel witchcraft, of lodges and groups striving against one another. No-one could win if someone else was winning, no-one could win without someone else losing. Bad luck was omnipresent - all you could do was shunt it to another poor soul. And Rekida... Rekida had a world which needed to be tamed, chained, broken down until it obeyed. The world had to be kicked until it understood who was boss.

She thought of how lands changed things.

Mahar was a country founded by exiles, trying to make the best of their new situation - of course they'd see the world as a place you had to make the best of yourself. No relying on anyone else. Put on a pair of golden pince-nez, some satin gloves, and anoint your nose with pleasing scents. Walk beneath the waters sprinkled from the hands of jewelled gargoyles, and take luck. Exiles making their own fortune from a strange, hostile world. Jovan was a country conquered and changed, a country where the enemy sat right across the river, smirking. Trust no-one. Your neighbours may be collaborators. Fear them. Trust only a narrow few. Have rites and secret words so you knew your own. The only victory was through another's defeat. A scavenger's creed. Fidelizh was a kingless city. No-one could have the kingly suffix of '-izh'. The coins were decorated with empty thrones. But... the statues of kings remained, faceless, yet somehow indestructible. The Golden Parliament was terrified of anyone hinting at restoring the monarchy. Like fatherless children obsessed with proving independence. The gods were parents, each and every one - bring them down by behaving nicely, doing what they said. Fortune was granted when you behaved well for mother and father. Behave well, and they'd ride upon your back and whisper encouragement.

And Rekida...

Rekida was in a blasted, cold country. Winter shut everything down. Farming was meagre. Inhabitants were scarce - there was more empty land in the north than could be imagined. Vast marches of nothingness. Mine gold, mine silver, mine all the gems of the earth - the wasteland had no mind for them. People were wealth. People were the greatest commodity. Unique, hard to raise well, useful in a hundred fields, useful for more decades than any other animal could last. A nation of paranoia, a nation that refused contact with the outside, that saw wealth and power and authority as the possession and domination of as many people as possible. Aware that their wealth was alive, and resentful. A nobility aware of their human vulnerability. Treasuries made of people, alive and aware and intelligent. Why not a city modelled after the human body, with the people as tissues, blood, brains, organs? Walls as skin? Why not a world modelled after a wild animal, a living creature that needed taming? Everything rooted around the same, basic neurosis.

...when you owned slaves, when wealth was bound in flesh, did you ever look down at your own body in the bath and think 'there's gold in here, I'm worth this much, I could be sold for a fair price, I could. Many men wonder how much they're worth in the grand scheme of things - well, I know down to three decimal places'. When you broke down enough people into property, did you ever see yourself the same way? Measure your worth against the bodies you owned?

Did that inspire confidence or terror?

She woke in silence. Her mind still buzzing with thoughts. A quick breakfast of dried sausage fried to a state of tastefulness in a heavy cast-iron skillet - the sight of the dark metal made her shiver, thoughts of hammers and eyes dancing behind her eyes. She ate in silence, watching the soldiers warily, wondering if they were in the pocket of someone, and would be interrogated by that someone once she got back - once she departed, even. She left in silence, taking a few provisions with her. The day was crisp. Beautiful. Full of gleaming snow, and only the faintest smear of pale haze on the horizon. The colony lay before her, less than a day's walk away. Less still, if she pushed herself - and she would. The moment her legs pumped a little less forcefully than they could, she felt a flare of guilt, a pulse of panic, a longing to break into a sprint and run, run, run. Had to stop herself. Remember, she'd learned nothing on this journey. Nothing at all. Basically just been wandering around in the snow for a day, was refused by Beldol, and then went home. Another miserable outing for a paranoid judge who had no idea what she was doing.

There was no talking to herself on this leg of the journey. No detours. Nothing. Just a straight march back to the walls.

Took her less time.

Much less.

And at her side swung a satchel filled with some very, very sensitive information indeed. She kept checking it, over and over, until her fingers had marked each and every one of her pages with rumpled edges and tiny stains. Check, check, check... she needed a code for her notes, definitely needed a code of some variety. Something to really stop people from examining them. Not for the first time, she felt a twitch of uncertainty - had Tal-Sar been lying? He was an old, odd man... for all she knew, maybe he'd murdered the governor, and was covering it up by acting crazy, or acting crazy had been the reason for the governor's death in the first place. Maybe he was lying. Those scars could be from a spell of time in prison. Maybe the governor had found out about this - scrubbed his past, like he'd scrubbed the past from the bouncers coming up from Fidelizh, and it'd come back to bite him. Or maybe the past-scrubbing was evidence of broader corruption, and Tal-Sar was one of the beneficiaries of that corruption. The governor found out, or Tal-Sar thought he had, so he was murdered. When he'd wept at the governor's death, had that been sorrow at what had happened, guilt at what he'd done, or crocodile tears to make people think he was innocent? Doubt was flowering in great poisonous blooms - had she been taken in? Hoodwinked? Bamboozled? Sent off in a blind charge to...

...to do what?

What did he expect her to do with this information? To... go around, yelling about the history of Rekida, before everyone laughed mockingly at her? To stop her investigating because she... why would she stop investigating? This didn't answer all her questions, it didn't make him seem less guilty, it didn't make him seem more innocent, he hadn't even been a suspect, and now he was glued to her mind. He'd become noticeable, whereas previously he'd been a potential lead with no great expectations attached to him. If she thought of him as a suspect, which she was now, then... he was trying to distract her? Dyen had been placed, she was sure of it, to plant the seeds of doubt, to send her down a silly little route of enquiry into the company owners, who seemed as clueless as anyone else in this damn colony. Maybe Tal-Sar was the same. Go on, investigate our culture, our slave caste, our nobles, our history, let it weigh you down, go on and stop paying attention to anything of value. But what was she seeking that was of value, then? Last time, she'd been investigating the bouncers, and the company owners were presented as the higher level - the organ grinders, as opposed to the monkeys. Her evidence now suggested, perhaps, an ongoing conspiracy to bring dangerous individuals to the colony, with an official in the Colonial Office laundering them and sending them up. The purpose of the conspiracy remained beyond her, the original perpetrators were beyond her, and the current state of the conspiracy was a matter whose importance equalled its obscurity - vast. What did Tal-Sar present that would stop her investigating these things? She paused, stopping for the first time since she'd left the guard tower. Stared at the distant walls, with the enormous statues spread across the surface, glaring out at anyone who dared come close.

...no. No, he... she didn't regard herself as some sort of astounding judge of human character - a judge of human action with specific relation to the law, yes, but nothing more than that. She was... keenly aware of her own limitations, but she truly thought that Tal-Sar was telling the truth. He'd been terrified. Exhausted. When he'd confessed his 'crime', he'd seemed truly and utterly drained of some inner vitality. He reeked of a guilty conscience, and the confession had felt legitimate. She remembered Dyen, how he'd sweated like a fiend, how guilt could become a kind of... emetic, a core of nausea lurking in the stomach, desperate to burst out. Tal-Sar had been much the same. But while Dyen had run off, and never seemed to confess the truth... Tal-Sar had seemed spent. Maybe he was just a very good liar, a doubting part of her mind whispered. Maybe he was just leading her along on a wild goose chase. She was heading back to the city, and he had a window of time to run into the wilderness and... die of cold. Midwinter was coming, there was no way he could survive a journey of any great length. He was trapped in that tower, as trapped as Beldol was in hers. Stored, like a chunk of cured meat, ready for her to sample months from now. If she thought she could really trust the garrison's troops, every last member, she'd ask them to go and keep an eye on him. But for all she knew, they'd kill him on the spot for betraying some secret trust, and... she'd have it confirmed to her that he was telling the truth, or that they wanted her to think he was telling the truth, or...

She was so damn tired.

Tired of doubting everything she heard. Seeing everyone as a potential criminal, a murderer... judges were meant to be removed from this. They handled the judging side, the enforcement was for othes. No, no, stop complaining. She had a job. She was committed to this job. Even if the job made her stomach shrink and her skin crawl, made her sleep curled around her notes to stop thieves from getting them, made her send Marana out to keep a series of sharp daggers out of her back. She could review these documents in the mansion. Doubt meant nothing out here, she needed more evidence to confirm or deny. And even if she lacked absolute proof, she could get proof by...

Oh ho.

An idea.

What if she found someone? Someone who knew the truth, whatever it was? Then, throw this evidence in their face, act like she knew everything... if they panicked, if they started sweating like Dyen, starting rambling like Tal-Sar, started exploding with emotion like Beldol, then she knew. She knew she was right, that Tal-Sar was right. And if they were confused... well, maybe she was wrong.

Had to pick her target correctly. Someone well-informed but vulnerable, connected to the conspiracy at a high enough level to know what...

Oh, she had an idea.

Her pace increased once again.

Her face was utterly flat.

Her resolve had crystallised perfectly. She didn't know what she'd find, didn't know what this all meant - but she knew how to go about resolving the doubt that yearned to chain her mind into self-destructive loops.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.

Well.

Hopefully.

* * *

The day was moving along when she got back, and she was numb from head to foot, her face was red, her eyes were sore from wearing the dark glasses for too long... and when she removed them, she saw soldiers staring at her. Standing above a closed gate, just staring. And to her surprise, they began to murmur among themselves while their brows furrowed in concern, and one ran away, disappearing below the lip of the colony's wall. Her large hands immediately drew around her satchel protectively, feeling the pages, trying to count them through the tough leather, make sure none had fallen away (somehow) during the last few minutes since she'd last checked. Tanner blinked confusedly, and called up cautiously, voice hoarse from lack of use over the course of the day.

"Is something wrong? Can I come back in?"

A soldier yelled back down.

"Of course, honoured judge! Happy to let you back! Just need to let the commander know you're here, he wanted to talk with you!"

A pause.

"Might as well stay where you are, he should be on his way!"

A chill.

Someone was dead. Someone was dead. Yan-Lam had been found in her bedroom, stabbed through the heart. Marana had slept poorly and choked on her own vomit, while bruises suggested where she'd been held in place to make sure she did. Sersa Bayai was still alive, at least... no, no, they said commander, weren't specific, she-

"To clarify, you're talking about Sersa Bayai, yes?"

A pause. Her terror grew.

"Yes, honoured judge!"

Oh, thank the gods. Someone was alive, then. Shouldn't have left. Maybe it was someone entirely unrelated to her little group, maybe she... maybe they'd sensed the net drawing closer, and were sterilising any remaining leaks. Any. And she'd come back in to find... nothing at all, no loose threads to pull on, just a solid brick wall keeping her out. Minutes passed with agonising slowness, and Tanner kept staring upwards at the wall, unwilling to ask what was wrong, terrified of the answer... thankfully, Sersa Bayai came along before the tension grew to be too much. His appearance made a little wave of calm ease through her body... and his appearance made her immediately snap back into a state of rigid paranoia.

He looked grim.

"Open the gate, let her inside. We need to talk."

She hurried through as quickly as possible, faster than Bayai could descend the wall. He didn't say anything... just took her arm and led her away firmly. Not dragging - she couldn't be dragged by him, much too large, but she followed nonetheless. No soldiers accompanied them. The dark houses with their glittering windows seemed to stare at them as they walked, and the inns contained men with clubs and intelligent, unyielding eyes. The eyes of people accustomed to violence. Accustomed to killing on the requests of others. She knew they were murders, she knew, she had proof... complicated proof. In cases of murder, you needed to be absolute, you needed to be completely certain that a murder had occurred. Dyen had confessed to his own side of things. Lyur had murmured about it. But she couldn't take them apart one person at a time, had to go for the whole organisation, and on that front she was deficient.

But she knew.

And their eyes were tinged with iron. They looked at her darkly over their cups, faces distorted by the whorls and bubbles in the uneven windowpanes. Leering creatures lurking in the shadows.

Bayai hurried her along.

And he spoke hurriedly.

"No-one's dead."

Her damn heart, her damn heart, people couldn't keep doing this to her, she was going to pop something...

"But I'd like to consult you. You're connected to this. We're keeping it quiet for now."

"What's happened?"

"Just hold on. It's in the city, we'll talk properly in there."

Prisoner? Someone ready to confess? Maybe they'd found Dyen again, and he was ready to tell the actual truth, maybe... maybe... maybe. They walked quickly out of the colony, Tanner overtaking Sersa Bayai on occasion. Now she knew where to go... well, the hand on her arm was irrelevant. Nice, though. Nice to feel someone's warmth. She flushed slightly, and slowed her pace - no, please, keep the hand where it was, even if she could barely feel it through her coat and dress. No need to remove it. The slowness was aggravating, admittedly. But the Breach came closer. The statues loomed ominously. Once more, she thought of Tal-Sar... these things, it must've take huge numbers of people to build them. And when the city spread before them, she realised... just how small it was. Nothing was especially high, and the streets, broad and splendid as they were, were clearly not designed for the swelling crowds a city of this size should produce. They lacked the usual structures - where were the horses meant to go, the carts, the instruments of trade? Where were the sprawling marketplaces?

The city never had them. It'd been... a glorified vanity project. Too large for the bodies of the people inside it, but just the right size for their egos.

How many people here knew?

No, no, focus. Bayai led her through the Breach, into the impeccably organised buildings and streets, made of flawless alabaster stone... but she couldn't stop seeing the glaring eyes of statues, the great chains that forced the walls to stay put, that bound the world into service. The small, windowless structures adjacent to every mansion... some were collapsed, but some had little openings through which she could see rotten benches. No, not benches. Bunks. Some with swollen cages overhead... idly, she wondered how long it would take for them all to fall down, the ropes hanging them up rotting through. And if they fell, would they shatter, or would they bounce? Didn't look like they'd break, they were too damp and soft for that. Might splat. Come to think of it... she saw sculptures of immaculate heads, she saw chains, but the cages were localised to the small dwellings. Well, the small dwellings were secluded and windowless, sheltered from the elements - wood would last much longer in those conditions. But...

Anyway.

They came to a part of the city which wasn't quite as well excavated. A plaza surrounded by buildings on all sides, and great quantities of rubble and snow that needed to be dug out. She glanced around, and... ah. In the ground. A kind of... foundation. A rectangular frame on which something could be built, with slots for wooden poles or struts.

Say, a wooden platform which would have quite a bit of weight.

Say, the sort of weight a slave auction might prompt.

...might be reading too far into it. But now she had this secret history lurking in her mind and her satchel, she couldn't stop seeing little correlations. Foundations that could be for slave auctions, rotten lengths of rope that could be whips deformed by damp and age, pieces of metal that could be chains from manacles, or could just be rusted pieces of... well, just about anything. Windowless rooms full of bunks, with rotten cages... dormitories? Or genuinely just storerooms? So much evidence had decayed over time, the script of the city was illegible, the mutants had trashed the entire place from top to bottom, she...

She just wasn't sure.

They passed into a ruined structure, where a guard was waiting, pale-faced and shivering slightly, despite his many, many layers of clothing. Tanner noticed... ah. Ah. This place hadn't been fully cleared out. There was a skeleton lying nearby, buried under loose snow and a great heap of dust, skull barely visible. Picked clean by carrion birds... no, no, mutants. Even if the body was dead, the meat was usually useful for them, apparently. Could pump life back into it, mutate it, use it as stock for more growth, for augmenting mutants into more advanced states... but there was a rusted spear lying besides it. A... spear. Oh, the haft was completely rotted through, basically just pulp, and the spearhead was a grimy brown mass of useless rust, but it was clearly a spear, held in a shattered hand. She remembered Tal-Sar saying that... what was it? When the city was taken, they had three whole cannons... and a mansion might have five, seven guns. Technologically backwards. Explained why they might still be using spears against the mutant horde. Was this a noble, standing in defence of their mansion to their dying breath? Or a slave-soldier, compelled to stand between the nobles and the mutants until the line broke, and their backwards weapons splintered like twigs?

She stared at the thing for a moment, ignoring Sersa Bayai completely.

What life did it lead? Enslaved, ennobled, free, chained... believing the world needed to be tamed, that bears could only be killed by the nobility, that cages caught misfortune, that skulls could be read to tell fortunes...

"Honoured judge. If you'd please."

She followed, tearing her eyes away, and gripping her satchel with ever-more paranoid ferocity.

They went deeper. The building loomed all around, groaning under the ever-mounting weight of snow. She paused, wondering if she was about to get ambushed, if Sersa Bayai was a traitor, ready to execute her for...

She heard something.

Something moving.

"Sorry. One moment."

He drew a small box out a pouch on his belt... contamination detector. A click of the shiny brass switch, and... he ran it up and down, the machine tasting the air, checking for... no, nothing. No variation in the hum, no shriek of warning. What was going on? Why was... Bayai nodded politely, and pushed open a heavy metal door, which screeched deafeningly loud against the floor. He struggled to get it more than a little open, and Tanner helped absent-mindedly, yanking it open with dismissive ease. Bayai nodded once again, a slight flush in his cheeks... and gestured.

A room lay beyond. Dark. No sources of illumination.

Something was moving.

She could detect a faint shuffle. A twitch, perhaps.

Bayai grabbed an oil lamp from a recessed alcove, and lit it up hesitantly, handing it to Tanner. She lifted it high...

And froze.

Five pairs of dead, cold eyes stared back at her. Unblinking.

As flat and dead as pieces of glass.

She knew these eyes.

And, somewhat, she knew the faces they were set into. Twisted by time. By new additions. But the eyes always remained the same. Always. And despite their human shape...

There was nothing human in their depths.

Five mutants stared back at her. They were sat like idols, squatting with their knees pulled close, their eyes darting between each and every one of their companions, watching for the slightest sign of movement. If someone did, if someone became vulnerable, if the stars aligned... the peace in this place would shatter, and they'd tear each other apart for the very slightest scrap of contamination to mutate themselves further. They were perfectly evenly spaced. They never slept. Never even blinked. Never moved an inch, lest they betray some violent intention to the others. When they moved, they'd move with explosive force and absolute certainty. Anything else, and they'd be asking to get killed by one of the others. This wasn't a cell - this was a war-zone, mid-truce. Massacre in embryo.

And right across from her, staring from one side of the room, back against the wall, eyes flickering from one side to the other in search of weaknesses or provocations... a red-haired woman. Well. Something wearing the skin of a woman. Girl. Hard to tell with the mutations. A pair of eyes with ruptured pupils locked onto her for a moment. Tanner knew this one. She knew this one. It'd licked her hand for contamination, ripped apart a wolf in front of her, followed her from the caravanserai settlement near the river. Followed her since before she even laid eyes on Rekida's statues. Still wore her blue silk dress, but intensely tattered. More inhuman than before - and she'd already been very inhuman. Still had the eerily sharp, curling teeth. Still had the hands with four-jointed fingers. Still had the feet that were closer to hands, reinforced with tough black pads of tissue. And had little traces from the wolf - insectile eyes, like tiny pieces of caviar, ringing her neck and collarbone, examining everything. Long black hooks bristling from her forearms, like the hairs along an insect's legs, sharp and ready to claw. But more had changed. When Tanner had last seen her, she had a collar and a crown of odd bony nodules, tumour-like, reddening the skin where they pushed up. Now... now they'd begun to flower. A crown of wickedly sharp antlers was slowly growing, branch after branch, tipped with a hook ready to tear. And a collar of curling, slightly twitching horns the colour of tooth enamel... reminding her faintly of a flower's petals. Could imagine them being used to trap other antlers, could imagine them snapping like a trap over her prey. External jaw.

She was mutating further.

Growing a little larger.

Her eyes locked on Tanner's for a moment, before dismissing her after a cursory sniff determined her to be useless.

Tanner swallowed.

"Why haven't... why haven't you burned them?"

"They weren't acting right. Mr. Canima thought it would be wise to... examine them. Not sure if... well..."

He coughed, getting his thoughts in order.

"They arrived not long after you left, surprised you didn't run into them. Mutants don't come here, not generally. No point. They know we'll kill them - if they come here, they're too idiotic to see the danger, or they're powerful enough to kill us. Given that we're alive, the latter clearly isn't prevalent, and the former are scarcer than they've ever been. Kill themselves off faster than we can. We were surprised, didn't have our flamethrowers at the ready... shameful, let them get close to the gate, and they just... sat there."

Tanner blinked.

"Sat there?"

"Sat in a ring, just... staring at each other, at the gate, at us... doing nothing. Nothing at all. Mutants don't do that. They just don't. It's not natural. They'd never come this close, not without a plan of attack, or... well... then one of them shuffled to the door, and pawed at it while staring up. Like a cat asking to be let out so it can... anyway."

He seemed genuinely shaken. His voice was nervous, his eyes were practically unblinking he was so focused on the mutants, and his hands kept twitching to wrap around a pistol that he clearly knew was inadequate. Did he fear bringing flame near them? Did he think they'd attack if they saw a threat, with no way of escaping but through him?

"...then someone opened another gate. Routine. No-one else knew about this - they were quiet, it was early. And they sprinted for it, fast as can be. We rushed, yelling warnings... but they were already through, just running for the Breach like there was no tomorrow."

"Do you think they were heading for... what was it, the plug that covers..."

"The seal over the gap in the foundation stone. I thought that too, but... understand, other mutants don't go for that. They don't seem to see a point in it. Too much effort, no guarantee of reward... these things wouldn't stand a chance, there's layers of rubble and fused matter blocking that thing up, no scent, nothing. They'd just break their hands trying to get through."

"So, how did you get them in here?"

"We didn't. They came here on their own. Just sniffed around quickly, dove into this place, fixed that door in place, dragged it shut, and sat there. We opened the door, so long as we didn't bring fire too close, they ignored us. But if we left the door open, they always closed it again. Wouldn't even attack the mutant doing it."

Tanner opened her mouth. Closed it. Opened it again, trying to put the right words together. She was already thinking about secret histories, this was... coming completely out of nowhere, and her mind wasn't quite ready for it. Thoughts were sluggish. Words more so.

"...they asked to come in. Do... mutants ever do that?"

"Not to my knowledge. Not when we have fire on our side. They know that we kill things like them, they know we're not good for eating, but we're damn good at killing. No point going for us."

"But theoretically they could."

"Theoretically. But it's never happened to me. Nor any of my men. Heard of mutants being... bribed, sometimes, or being appeased, but they're animals. They don't have loyalties, or a sense of honour, or any obligation to hold by an agreement. All they understand is hunger and survival. If you can satisfy the former, they'll eat you. If you're preventing the latter, they'll kill you. If going near you threatens the latter, they leave you alone. If you're not doing anything to prevent or supply the former, they'll have precisely zero interest in your goings-on. Give them 'bribes' of contaminated flesh, they'll just keep coming back until you stop giving them little treats, and if they think you still have some to give, they'll just kill you and take them."

His voice rushed out of him - like Tal-Sar, a knot of internal tension aching to be unwound, releasing a great torrent of sound as it went. He wasn't comfortable with this, no-one was, no-one could be. The guard at the entryway of the building was still shivering, and kept clutching... ah. A flamethrower. Clutched it like a drowning man clutched a raft. Tanner tried to imagine them just... coming here, and... what, hiding? Why would they hide while surrounded by their chief enemies - meaning, humans with flamethrowers, and other mutants. There was nothing to positively break the status quo here, all they had was... well, they'd kill each other off, or the humans would kill them off, but the point was, someone was getting killed off. The mutants didn't stand a good chance of survival here. Not at all. And... she thought. Thought about... right, the readings Bayai had taken.

"Not long ago, you mentioned there were higher-than-usual contamination readings in the air. Do you..."

"These ones didn't make it, they're too small. Readings have declined, incidentally. Seems to have calmed down. No, I don't think these things are..."

He shrugged.

"I don't know. I just don't."

The mutants offered no answers. Just kept staring.

Tanner thought. She thought... about how the mutants had already been erratic. The coachman had said that they'd moved suddenly, crossing quite a bit of land from where they ought to be. Then gone in the opposite damn direction, headed right back the way they'd come. Then here. Into the city. Erratic, truly erratic. She thought of the wolf-thing, and shivered. Thought of a shadow in the darkness, one she barely remembered in all the panic of that awful night. Thought of a dream... but the dream slipped her mind before she could grasp it, too ephemeral even for her memory-room. The contamination spike in the air. All of it, she just... there was something, and she couldn't put her finger on it, what it meant, how it worked, what it might all turn out to be. Mutants obeyed their own laws, and they were simple laws, in terms of behaviour at least. And that should equate to simple results. Attack. Retreat. Watch. The mechanical, unreflective actions of a wild animal. No doubt, no angst. Put a mutant in a given situation, and assuming the mind wasn't addled by uncontrolled mutation, it'd behave the same damn way every time. Mechanical as they came.

So why would these ones be so erratic?

Five of them. She remembered there being six when she left them at the ruined carriage, around the vague red stain of the wolf-thing's butchering.

She already had too much in her mind. She had no idea what... what she was meant to do.

But she thought, vaguely, of...

What had Tal-Sar said?

Mother bears. The male bears, sometimes they could be nasty. Tear apart a female's cubs like that. Savage creatures. So the matrons made a habit of sticking to human fires. Sheltering around the warmth, not because they liked humans, but because humans shot at the violent bears that might come close. And if they tried to shoot the matron, then the matron would tear them apart anyway. Bears being bears and all. Not an alliance, not even a relationship of mutual benefit, just... a resource being exploited. Like a bear standing at the top of a stream, eating the fish that leapt up towards it. The fish didn't benefit from that, and nor did the humans who found themselves with a huge she-bear prowling around with a whole sloth of cubs.

These mutants didn't care for them.

But...

"Is it possible they're hiding from something? Larger mutants, maybe? Saw a choice between coming in here and maybe dying, or staying out there and definitely dying. If they stay here, we maybe kill the big mutants, and they get to scavenge."

Bayai stared at the creatures. Thinking.

"Considered that. Never happened in my memory. Never. Mutants... listen, honoured judge, what you said makes sense, but only if you've only met a handful of mutants. There's big mutants out there anyway. And there used to be plenty smaller mutants around here. Not once have some of them come to us for shelter. If we burn a mutant, there's nothing to scavenge, and we've shown that we're willing to kill mutants. Smart enough to recognise that we'll just turn around, paint them with flame as well. There's a reason mutant-hunters don't string up live mutants to lure in more, they just use the dead - the live mutants wouldn't think 'oh, this is mutually beneficial, I get to eat all these things they're killing for me'. It just thinks 'I'm next, and I don't want to be'."

He took a small breath, getting his thoughts under some semblance of control.

"I just don't know."

The two of them stepped backwards, away from the room... and immediately, the red-haired girl crawled over the floor, eyes flicking to Tanner. She thought she was going to get licked again, or sniffed, or...

The metal door was tugged back with a single, smooth motion.

None of the others attacked the mutant with her back turned to them.

And in the darkness, there was barely any sound whatsoever.

Why would they seal themselves here, if they wanted to take advantage of humans killing bigger mutants?

Why would they stay so close to humans, if they clearly understood that humans could, and would kill them?

Why not hide in a tower? Why not just lurk in the rubble, if they felt like sheltering with vague proximity to protective firepower? Be safer, out there. Humans wouldn't attack them, but if something large came their way, the humans would definitely notice.

She didn't know.

She just didn't.

And they walked away, into the city.

Leaving the mutants to the silence of their room. To stare at one another in the soundless dark.

Waiting.