CHAPTER SIXTY-THREE - BEAR'S BLOOD
"...sir?"
"Hm?"
"Was... you said you had something to confess. Won't you... please elaborate, if possible?"
The old man looked at her. Blinked. Once, twice... then stood up very suddenly indeed, and trotted away... downstairs. Towards a cellar, where a warm orange glow was emanating. Tanner followed hurriedly, her snow-covered boots insufferably loud next to his whisper-quiet moccasins. The tower in general was a well-kept little place, if very monastic. A few scattered pieces of furniture, most of them scavenged or hewn from stray pieces of wood, everything simple if well-made. A barrel or two of food, indicating that he'd been preparing this little haunt for some time. A wooden cage, fresh-made, hanging from the ceiling to collect any misfortune. No sign of any skull-measuring tools, though, and no sign of any little statues or monumental objects. No cast-iron decorations, either. This wasn't meant to be some kind of lavish retreat, it was practically just a hunting cabin. Now, the cellar... oh. Ah. She suddenly remembered something. Bayai had gone over to this fellow's house, and found huge discoloured patches on the walls, many of them. Indicating where something - or rather, many somethings - had been hung at some point in the past. Now... now she got to see what those things were.
Goodness.
...that was rather a lot of pin-ups.
None of them scandalous, obviously. If they were, she'd probably have closed her eyes or started staring at her boots. They seemed to be... noblewomen, of some kind. Excellent dresses. Gorgeous hairstyles. Copperplate engravings, but all of them carved with the utmost degree of skill, and stamped onto impeccable, creamy sheets of sturdy paper, mounted on card. Depicting them lounging around on garden seats, in elegant armchairs, or simply strolling down quaint pavements, while their faces were inevitably marked by the most artful, delicate smirks she'd ever seen. Curls of hair tumbled around their faces, to frame the smirks better. The light cast upon their features to illuminate the smirks, and the slightest hint of teeth. Their hats seemed to work to augment the smirks, and the necklaces might as well be extensions of the smirks, so tightly were they intertwined in the composition of the drawing. Some clutched instruments, some held dogs or long, elegant cats, some gazed into interminable distances, some looked down upon the viewer with mild contempt, and some were simply draped upon blooming flower-pots or ornate bannisters or chaise longues or sun chairs, and each and every one of them seemed to be slightly amused by being confined to such portraits, if their omnipresent smirks were any indication.
The old man stared at them for a moment.
Then glanced at Tanner, who was politely examining the engravings.
"Ah. You like them?"
"They're... very well-engraved, sir."
"'Course they are. Been collecting these ladies for years, I have. The Ferlug Folio of the Fidelizhi Feminine. Finest divinities of the entire city, I tell you. Been collecting them ever since they started making them... half these ladies are dead by now, I should think, or at least not half as pretty as they are in these."
Well. Explained the discoloured patches on the walls of his house.
...and said something about his priorities, that he'd hide himself from sight, conceal his smoke, live in a ramshackle tower in a blasted wasteland, but by gum, no-one would make him give up his collection of... the Ferlug Folio of the Fidelizhi Feminine. For all she knew, there were bouncers waiting over the next hill, following the trail of the presumably enormous trunk he hauled here, filled to the brim with smirking noblewomen.
She looked...
Blinked.
A familiar froggish face stared at her, smirking faintly. A very familiar face indeed. Slightly bulging eyes. Teeth that Tanner knew were slightly broken and required ivory dentures to look complete. A face curling into a smirk worlds apart from the broad smiles Tanner had known. The features were smoothed out, some of the distortions Tanner remembered being erased in the process. From slightly frog-like to... characterful, charmingly unique. The way Tanner saw her brought into reality. A name at the bottom...
Lady Eygi of Yorone.
"...how old is that one?"
"Hm? Oh. Year, must've been. Get them sent up, I do. Mail order. Expensive, costs a prize pelt and a half... worth it, completely worth it, I tell you. All about the novelty - they're doing more unique faces these days, not just the conventional beauties. Listen here, you very large young lady, there's something to be said for uniqueness, I tell you what. When you're young, oh, sure, it's all fine cuts, but when you're old, you're experienced. Had my fill of the good chops, want me some of the stranger parts, can you grasp my meaning?"
Tanner nodded silently. Eygi continued to smirk silently at her. This was the first time Tanner had seen her face in... years. Years and years and years. They'd never met up since Eygi left. Tanner stayed in touch, but... well, no pictures, nothing. Missed her. But glad she wasn't here to share in this place's unique charms. The two of them remained looking at the pictures for a moment longer, and the old man seemed oddly tickled by the fact that his collection was being 'appreciated'. He stumped off suddenly, powerful limbs smooth and regular despite his age, and he started to do what he'd been doing before Tanner's arrival. Sewing up an old jacket with thick, black thread, no care for how it looked on the cloth, only for sturdiness. Life was too short to care about matching colours. Tanner, who wished she'd brought her many, many ribbons along, heartily agreed with that notion.
She slowly, silently, began to draw out some blank sheets of paper, spreading them over a small, crude table... several layers of paper, to make sure she had a smooth, flat work surface. Her quill slipped over her fingers, and the mechanical motions of using an automatic quill calmed her a little, steadied her breathing. Her lenses clicked into place, magnifying the paper.
And she began.
"Tell me about Rekida."
Tal-Sar glanced over, eyes hidden beneath bushy eyebrows, sunken deep into a sun-tanned face. He stared at her solidly for a few moments.
"Why would I talk about Rekida? Not here to talk about Rekida. Rekida's not on the table, not for a second. Confession, pure and simple. Don't stray beyond that, y'hear?"
"...alright. What would you like to confess?"
The old man bit one of his fingers, hard enough to almost split the skin, and seemed to struggle to remove it again.
"Brought the bloodletting, I did. Brought it down on us. Red tide's coming. Can smell it in the air."
"How did you... go about this?"
"Killed a bear. Killed a kingly animal. Wanted to. Needed to."
Tanner started writing, but her heart sank. Yan-Lam had said he was... odd.
She hadn't anticipated him being this odd, though. Wasted trip. Maybe. Didn't say anything, of course. She remembered how Beldol, nee Femadol 25, had been willing to talk more when Tanner said nothing, how Mr. Canima made the silence draw out sound from the interrogated individual, how her impassive silence had made Dyen sweat like a hog and almost, almost spill the beans on what was really going on. If he hadn't gotten away...
Hm. Tanner might be getting rather used to interrogations.
The silence loomed. And Tal-Sar had to fill it.
"Bears... they're kingly beasts. Y'understand? Kingly. King of animals. Huge, old, clever... the big ones, no point running from them. Run, they catch up. Climb a tree, they kick the tree down like it's nothing. Hunt men gladly, if they're so inclined. You know, in the old days, husband-bears were so damn mean, so damn violent, that lady-bears came out to stay near our huts? Clung to our fires with their cubs. Took over, really. 'Cause they knew we'd shoot the males that would kill her cubs and take her as a bride. Well. Maybe. All I knew is that sometimes you learned to stay real still. To shut your eyes. To wait until the great mother walked away, maybe with your dinner in her jaws. And whatever you do, don't touch the cubs. Want to know Rekidan word for cubs, girl? Slarida. Means 'dead-herald'. Cubs are small and harmless, but let them come close, and the great mother comes, and she'll never rest until you're meat for her to feed to the little ones."
He paused, getting his breath.
"...not meant to hunt them. Kingly animals. Only for the greats of the city. And then, it was no certainty. Know of a great man, a great man, who brought along one of his rifles... oh, they were rare in those days, rarest things in all the world, carved them all over with images to honour them... oh, and he found a bear. And he planted a little lead-seed right in its body. Right in the heart. But he knew, oh, he knew, never approach too fast. So he waited. For five minutes he waited, watching that great corpse. Watching it die. And then, he thought the time had come, so he walked forward... and the bear lunged up, wrapped its jaws around his face like it was a lady giving him a kiss, and tore the whole thing off. Damn things can't die. Kingly animals, for people with powerful weapons and nothing better to do. Best thing any other human can do is stay very, very far and very, very quiet. Saw it. Saw it walking. Saw it shambling along, half-rabid, limping in one leg... meant to be fatter, ready to hibernate. Suppose it was still out and about looking for food. Think would've died if it tried to hibernate, just starved before it could see spring. Dangerous thing, a starving bear - would've gone for the colony, would've gone for people."
He shook his head suddenly, a violent spasm of the neck that filled the air with the pop-pop-pop of cracking vertebrae. Sharp as gunshots in the silence.
"...liar. Stop lying, damn old fool, stop lying. Killed it because I wanted it dead. Wanted to mount the skull over my door, tell the world that not only the great and good could kill these things. I could. I did. Shot it through the heart, waited ten minutes before I came close to start my work, was careful. No need, thing was practically dead before I shot it. Dead walking. Looked at me with these huge, black eyes... just stared."
A shiver.
"I killed the thing. I killed it, and I shouldn't have. Damn old fool. Arrogant. Thought I could do what the greats did, in the old days. Hunt a bear, cut out the skull and clean the flesh from it, hang it over my door."
Tanner wrote.
No crimes she could see.
The silence drew out between the two of them for some time, and now the old man was unwilling to talk, his mouth drawn tightly shut, lips caving inwards where he was missing teeth. He shook his head sometimes, and gripped his knees hard enough to strain the cloth of his trousers. Tanner felt uncomfortable. No idea what she was meant to do, but... soldier on.
"...why would this start a bloodletting?"
Tal-Sar looked up for a second, staring at her... then his head dropped again, and he began to wring his hands against one another nervously. Guiltily. Hunched over, like he was praying to her, bowing to try appease her will. She saw... hm. Pale scars around his wrists, sharply highlighted against the sun-tanned flesh. Old scars. Very old indeed. Perfect bracelets of silvery tissue.
"...chains are frayed. All the chains are frayed. Broken, in places. No good. World's unbound. World's unmoored. World's ready to spiral off into the dark. There's things under the earth. You know them. We all know them. The great serpents of the deep. The underground rivers. Bodies of rock and blood of rot. And... the blood of a bear, a kingly beast, that's wine for them, wine and succulent meat. Spilled kingly blood. Not a king myself. Blood cries out from the soil. Calling the things up from the dark, and no chains to hold them in place."
He shook his head again, screwing his eyes shut.
"Serpents are coming back through the earth. Gods, should've stayed in Fidelizh. Let this land stay dead."
Tanner was scribbling quickly and quietly. Chains... the chained towers, the chained statues, the chained walls. Cages to contain misfortune. Obsessive attention paid to the brain's own cage, the skull - what was inside was reflected by its container. A Rekidan obsession, maybe? Gods, he must be old... old enough to remember the city when it lived, maybe. He let out another shuddering breath, his chest rising and falling like the skin of a drum.
"Gods, I didn't mean to do it, I promise, I didn't mean to. I didn't... I thought... no, no, stupid man, stupid man. Knew what I was doing. Wanted to do it. Should've never come back..."
"Why did you?"
He looked up suddenly, eyes sharpening, like he'd just remembered she was here. He stared... and his voice slowed down a little, lost some of the erratic speed.
"Sometimes a man wishes to die in the land where he was born. Whether or not that land wants him, or if the land has anything good to offer."
He looked down.
"When I left, I was a father. On the way south, my wife gave birth to my second child. When I reached Fidelizh, I was alone. Fidelizh is kinder. Warmer. Better. Ought to be proud to linger. Ought to be proud to live the lives they couldn't. Ought to be. But I'm old. Not much life left in me. Not much at all. And if I've lived my life for them... I'll spend the last part where I please. When I go, I want to smell the trees where Kan-Bas and I walked in the evenings."
His eyes flicked back up.
"How is the girl? Yan-Lam?"
Tanner swallowed.
"Ang-"
"You said that. What else? Is she eating well?"
"...she's helping me with my work. Has a very keen eye, an excellent work ethic. Still living in the governor's mansion. I believe he was arranging her adoption in Fidelizh, but... I'm not sure how much progress he made before his death."
Should she... a part of her wanted to go 'I'm looking into making her a judge'. But... no, no, still an embryonic idea. Consequence of a lack of imagination. Not all souls were suited for judging others. And the eagerness of the girl's belief that judges should be allowed to execute people again...
She shivered slightly.
"...my fault. All my fault. Lam... sweet boy, very sweet. And loyal to his woman. Judge a man by his wife. His wife was happy, and died holding his hand. My wife died in the snow, far from home, far from warmth, and we didn't even have time to bury her. He was a good lad, Lam. Damn fool I was, killing that bear, bringing the tide. Took him first. First among many. No way of soothing it now, not now the chains are frayed..."
He was subsiding back to his ramble. Tanner was putting together a narrative, slowly but surely... but one thing stood out to her. Not once had he mentioned the hammer or the eye, nor had he mentioned anything to do with cast-iron, or indeed with skull measurements. But she knew skull measurements were part of Rekidan culture, she'd seen busts decorated with measurements in the city. But he was sharper than he looked - she couldn't just launch into a non-sequitur question, she had to have preamble. He'd said he didn't want to talk about Rekida, but he talked about chains, about bears, about the serpents under the earth. As long as it connected to his story, he was willing to elaborate. She kept silent for a moment, working away with her notes, trying to record things down verbatim for later dissection into basic data. Only then did she speak, in a small voice.
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"Can't the chains be rebuilt?"
"No."
Tanner blinked. His eyes were sharp again. His attitude focused. Ah. Misstep.
"...you said you lived here. Where?"
He stared at her cautiously, tapping his left foot as rapidly and regularly as a sewing machine.
"What does it matter?"
"I'm... curious. I've seen the city a few times, but there's... it's almost entirely mansions, villas, large estates. And there's towers out here, but the hills are covered in stones to stop anything growing. I can't imagine that makes it easy to settle on them, either. I suppose... I used to live in a small house in Mahar Jovan, right by the river. Very small."
"Must've been a tight fit."
Tanner kept her face very flat.
"It was, especially with all three of us. But... I can't see anywhere like that in the city."
He stared.
Tapped his foot.
Gripped his knees with hands capped by scarred wrists.
"...lived in the city. Back when I was a boy. Long time ago. They didn't like us outside the city, not one little bit."
Tanner nodded, saying nothing. Letting him elaborate.
"Tell you what, the world was different... the chains gleamed, you should've seen them, back then. Polished them all the time, checked them for any problems, repaired them quick as you like when something went wrong. The root-chains had been around for hundreds of years, they said. Hundreds. Thousands, maybe. And the base... people kissed them for luck, till the metal shone like the sun..."
His face was dark as he talked, and no hint of wonderment or nostalgia entered into his voice.
These weren't happy memories.
"...and they were different with the snow, didn't like it touching the statues. Blackfingers were the folk who had to clean it out of their eyes. Never let them be blind, never let them stop glaring at you. Called them that on account of the frostbite. Lost a toe to that. Lost a few. Doesn't hurt, when the cold gets in them. Just... tingles, a little bit. Starts normal, but then... then it starts turning blue, shade you'll never forget. Then you warm it up. And then it hurts. Ice and fire all at once. The whole thing screaming at you, and it turns red, bright red... and all you can do is cut it off. Barely feel the knife. Tough part is the bone. The flesh freezes and cracks, but the bone... that's still just as it always was. Have to saw through that, same as you would any other time."
Silence again. The smirking faces of innumerable noblewomen glared down at them from beneath half-lidded eyes, the flickering light of a feeble candle twisting them slightly, making them seem almost feral, their teeth almost luminous. Even Eygi looked animalistic under these conditions. Tanner slowly stopped writing to rub her hands a little, banishing the last hint of numbness from the outside, and wriggled her toes in her boots until she was certain they were warm, and not drained of feeling and life by the ferocious cold.
"Times were different."
"Have they finished excavating the part of the city where you live?"
"Hm?"
His head jerked over, and once more he seemed to have to remind himself that he had company. His eyes, dark and shining, were impassive... and with a little effort, he kept going.
"Hm, I do believe they have. Maybe. Yes... yes, they have, I remember. Same as all the others."
He paused.
"Where were you when the governor died, big woman?"
"In the city."
"Heard that. Heard you ran out of that place when the call came. What were you doing in there?"
"Having a drink in a... bar of some kind, an inn. Someone told me about it, said it was quieter than the inns in the colony."
The old man stared.
And his mouth creaked into a hollow grin, revealing a black pit with startlingly few teeth to gleam in the light.
"Describe it to me, if you please. Not much to drink out here, punishment for someone who killed a bear. No drink, no women, no life, no nothing. Only the cold, and waiting for the red tide to come. Twice blasphemy. Killed a bear. And then lived in a tower, imagine that. And me, without the right."
He pointed down vaguely.
"Foundation's down there, sturdy as can be. They lay down tablets of foundation stone, like they did in Yanmaya with the glorious thirty-seven... do, maybe, if the mutants left that place be. Go on. Describe this bar."
Tanner swallowed, but kept her face still and her voice calm, flat, professional. Her memory room opened its doors, and-
"It was... not especially large. Filled with wooden benches, some of them piled with boxes of food and drink. The ceiling was engraved with a continuous pattern, a trail that looked almost like a fingerprint. The benches seemed to be very old, had slots for matting to be inserted. Tiled floor, looked like red candle wax. A counter, a spot where an old stove once was, and a swollen cage hanging from the ceiling. Evidently no-one had burned it yet - the rot hadn't made it collapse yet, on account of it being made entirely from wood. All of it swelled at once, changed at once. I thought it was cramped, for an inn. Suspected it might have been a storeroom, it wasn't a free-standing structure, just built into the side of a larger building. Assumed that it was just intact enough and irrelevant enough for people to use for other purposes - out of the way of major construction, could be ignored for some time by any teams that were sent in. Not much else to say about it."
Tal-Sar studied her.
"Good memory, girl."
"Thank you, sir."
"You know about the cages."
"To trap misfortune, sir. Made wholly from wood - iron is sterile, and can't adsorb things. Wood, though, can. Yan-Lam said that when you chop wood from a tree, you kill it, and in the absence you can place misfortune. Make the wood into a cage, and you trap the misfortune."
"You listened to her."
"I... asked. I was curious."
"Perceptive judge, aren't you?"
His voice was sharp. Alert. Intelligent.
"Thank you, sir. It's my job."
"Met judges. Some of your lot are just sods in love with your own damn voices. Either that, or priests. Damn fool nonsense, the lot of it. Might as well ask a foreign god to decide my life, going to one of your bunch. You..."
He leaned closer.
"Summat odd about you. Big. Said Mahar? Said Jovan?"
"Yes, sir. Born and raised."
"Not Fidelizhi."
"No."
"Why'd you become a judge?"
"...my mother's cousin died on an expedition into the west. The rest of the expedition died too. The leader survived, returned, and... gave me the collected back-pay of all the deceased members. None of them had family members to give their earnings to. My mother chose to send me to become a judge, at the advice of my lodge. It would bring respect to the lodge, and would be a good vocation for me to follow. Honourable way to make a living."
She rattled this off mechanically, and Tal-Sar nodded along carefully, mulling over each word.
"I see. Told to do it."
Tanner didn't answer.
"No shame in doing what you're told. Following orders. No shame at all."
He paused, scratching his chin.
"The bar. Good description. One mistake."
Tanner's quill twitched.
"It's not a bar."
She blinked.
"That's a dormitory."
Tanner blinked again, several times in quick succession.
"...it's tiny."
"Hm."
"It's... windowless."
"Hm."
"Are those benches..."
"Beds. Stacked them high. Bunks. Uncomfortable as sin."
Tanner leaned forward, trying to put this together.
"...were they assigned for a household's servants, or were they-"
"They were for all of us. If you married, you could breed, they let you do that in a quiet room somewhere else."
"All of..."
"Us. The slaves. Rope-people. Chains for the great. Ropes for the lesser. The lords of the chained towers could kill bears. Not for folk like me."
He stretched out his arms, and Tanner's eyes were fixed on the pale rings around them, the scars of... old bindings.
Gods.
She didn't...
"How... I never knew, no-one ever mentioned."
"You think we like talking about it? About the days when you were born as a piece of property? No, no... they told us, every morning. Not property. Blood. The body is made of many organs, and all are sustained by the flow of blood. The walls are the skin. The chain-towers are the mind. The soldiers are our iron-tipped nails. And the people-of-rope are the blood. The blood supplies. The blood fuels. But blood is subservient to the greater organs. Without organs, without skin, the blood spills free and serves no purpose, it spills into the snow and is lost forever. And rebel blood, poisoned blood, is fit only to be drawn out by the fangs of leeches and cast away. By your deeds, we are sustained. And when the time comes, the heart will recycle you, and new, greater blood will flow in turn. By your deeds, we are sustained. By our deeds, you are protected, renewed, and given purpose."
His voice shook as he spoke, and he gripped his knees tightly, like he was trying to shatter the bone with his bare hands. His eyes closed... Tanner was scribbling down everything he wrote. She had no idea this was the case. No idea whatsoever. There weren't... she hadn't found books on Rekida in Fidelizh, and when she got out here, the general theme seemed to be severance. The cutting of the ties that bound past to present, and present to future. People had cast-iron carvings they seemed incapable of explaining beyond vague platitudes. Cultural practices seemed to be smoothed out, homogenised, and... and hold on. Hold on. Maybe the shantytown helped. The Erlize hated it when shantytowners were too... open. Festivals were forbidden. Temples would never be built. Priesthoods never emerged. If people practised their faiths, their rites too openly... well, that sparked division, it caused problems, it tied people to the city, when the city wanted them gone. Maybe that had helped with smoothing things out, or... no, no, there were problems. Major problems.
A question slipped through her lips.
"...how can no-one know? Why wasn't this... I mean, it's... I didn't know a thing about this. Not a thing. How could..."
She was genuinely baffled.
Rekida had been a society built on a foundation of... a slave caste? Did... hold on. Hold on. Something was occurring to her - and it wasn't entirely pleasant. Something to do with skull measurements. She held onto the thought as Tal-Sar kept going, talking feverishly.
"We left. Ran south. Let the old greats die in their towers. Die defending a city we'd built for them. Most of us died. Most of us. Some of us died on the way, others chose to stop too soon, in cities doomed to die. Only some made it to Fidelizh, some went elsewhere. Only some of us. Took years. Years. By the time we were done... some of us were already getting old, some of us barely remembered Rekida, and we weren't going to teach them. That girl. Yan-Lam. D'you think she'd like it if I went around, telling her that her father was meant to be a slave? D'you think it would make her life any better, knowing that... she's alive, her father was alive, because his mother, bless her soul, chose to abandon this whole rotting place, leave it for the mutants? Chose to leave the nobles to die in their palaces?"
He spat.
"No. Wouldn't. Let their history stay dead with them."
"...but language, surely there were books..."
"They didn't teach us to read. Didn't teach us a damn thing. How many nobles do you think escaped? How many do you think lived? They were the only ones who could read the symbols. And they... you think... this place was a backwater. A shining backwater. You invaded this place, we burned our fields, and your armies starved and froze. Why bother taking this place? Who'd want it? Limpet. Backwards and strange. Clinging to the world. No foreigners allowed... no foreigners wanted to come in the first place. When the city was taken, they had three whole cannons. Three. And a mansion might have... five, seven guns. No more. They shut out the world. And when the world came knocking stronger than ever, they had nothing. For all those years, they said they kept us safe. Kept us secure. Kept out the damn foreigners. Lied. Always knew it. Then the mutants came, and... and they were eaten alive in their beds, all of them. And we ran. We chose to live. And they chose to die. Been making that choice for a thousand years..."
He paused, swallowing.
"...shouldn't be telling you this. Shouldn't. Promised myself I'd let them rot. Promised."
Another pause.
"...bastards. Bastards, the lot of them. Thought... no. No, you can't... get away from it. I came back to die in my own country. And nuts to those old bastards. They're dead. I'm alive. Thought that was it. Then I killed that damn bear. Land woke up. Just like they said it would. Rebel blood, nothing for it but leeching. Rebel blood, poisoning the body. Turned it septic, I did. Should've stayed far, far away. They said... they always said the world wasn't a place you lived in. It was a place you beat into submission. You chained it. Whipped it. Scourged it. Locked it up. Bound it with walls. And then you could live in it. You had to ride on its back like a bucking horse, and wait until it stopped struggling. Maybe they were right. Maybe this land hates. Maybe I woke it up."
His eyes were shining with tears.
"Gods, please, judge, forgive me. I didn't mean to ruin everything. I promise I didn't. I just wanted... wanted to say that I was alive, and they were dead. Please. I didn't mean to start the tide. I didn't. Tell... tell them I didn't, tell them. Tell them."
His head bowed down.
And he sobbed soundlessly in the darkness of the cellar, surrounded on all sides by the smirking faces of Fidelizhi beauties, a whole galaxy of them leering from the walls. Mute witnesses to... gods. To someone who'd known Rekida. Really known it. The governor might not've known. Mr. Canima, too. None of them. Who'd ask? Who'd care? Tanner remembered her first case, shantytown business, and running into a single problem with the data she needed to access. When the shantytown began, it was a rotten carcass of a place, sudden and unexpected. For the whole Great War, it was just left there, left to fester, left to manage itself. Only years after it ended did they bother trying to manage the thing, note down whoever was in there, where they were from, what they did for a living. Too late. Rekida... how long would it take for memories to die? A generation fled the city. For years, they fled south, some staying in doomed cities, some keeping going, eventually reaching the middle kingdoms south of the Tulavanta... how many survived the journey? By the time they reached Fidelizh, there wouldn't be that many. How many would talk about their lives as slaves who ran away to leave their masters to die? How many would be sent away to die in the Great War, leaving children behind? And when control returned to the city, when the Erlize started asking questions...
How many of those children would have answers?
Lyur's stories of the horrors people went through on the way south... who would want to tell those stories to their children? A generation slaughtered over and over until barely any remained... not teaching their children about their old lives, in the far north.
And once they were dead and buried...
Tal-Sar was an old man. Not long for this world. When he died, this story died with him. Lam hadn't taught it to Yan-Lam. Yan-Lam wouldn't know it, and couldn't teach it to her children, if she had any. How many times had that pattern repeated itself?
"I... can I ask more questions?"
Silence.
"...how many know about this?"
"In Fidelizh... few. Very few. You learn to be quiet about it. Sure, tell your new hosts that you abandoned your masters and left them to die screaming. Tell them, see how they treat you. Don't like it when we make charms, you think they'd like that?"
He laughed coldly, wiping his tears away with the back of his hand. A long sigh escaped his throat.
"...shouldn't... shouldn't have told you this."
He looked up.
"Let the history die with you, please. Yan-Lam, her father... they never knew the touch of a whip. Never lived in one of those stinking barracks. Never feared when foreigners would try to invade, because then you'd be marched out to die by the hundred. Never feared your children becoming blackfingers, or attracting the eye of some noble... they never knew. They'll never know. I'm not long for this world. Not many of us left."
Tanner was frozen.
"...I..."
She swallowed, getting her thoughts under control.
"I may... need to use some of this information."
"Don't."
"I won't publicise it, I won't tell anyone unless necessary."
"Don't, woman. Don't. You hold onto this, I hold onto this. I'm dead in a few years. You're dead... not sure how long. But don't tell. And when we're both gone, it dies with us."
He reached out suddenly, grasping her hand - the automatic quill twitched erratically, spreading a long, inky scar over the front of her page. Tanner stared at him, eyes wide.
"You were here. I came... came to this place to hide, to... wait out my guilt. The chains brought you here, the whole bloody land did. I waited for someone to come and hear me. You're... I suppose that's you. You paid attention. Noticed what other people didn't. Please, don't... tell anyone. Tell them about the bear. Nothing else. I deserve the guilt for that."
Tanner blinked a few times, unsure of what to say.
No.
She knew.
"...I need to ask something."
"Hm."
"The hammer and the eye. What... does it mean? And... the names, you're Tal-Sar, she's Yan-Lam, I know someone called Tom-Tom... but then there's Lyur, Fyeln, Dyen... please, I just... need you to explain what that means."
The old man stared at her sightlessly, processing the question. He looked around at the beauties on the walls, at the smirking, too-smooth face of Eygi of Yorone, who seemed so different from the Eygi Tanner had known in her day. His gaze slowly shifted back to Tanner once again, and he studied her absent-mindedly. Something had gone out of him with the confession. The twitches were gone, the tapping foot, the clutching hands... all of it faded. Like there was a spirit of guilt in him that ached to be released, and now it had left... maybe it had taken something in the process. Some little spark. How much life was left in him? Was he thinking about the years he might spend in this tower, waiting to die? About heading back to the colony and pretending like nothing happened? Was he trying to think about what life might be like now he'd purged this great motivating thing from his chest? Tanner stared helplessly back at him. She needed answers. She needed something. But an idea was already brewing in her head. A very, very unpleasant idea. Too outlandish to consider without evidence. Far too outlandish.
The man looked very sad, all of a sudden.
"Take y'pages, and get ye gone. I've said my piece. No intention to say more. Unless y'want to spend the night, got nothing more for you."
"Please, sir, I just need-"
"Get ye gone."
"The cast iron decorations, at least, can't you explain what you know about them, why-"
"Get ye gone. There's roads to walk, and roads to leave be. Get ye gone, and tell them what I did. Tell them about the bear. Find the skull, burn it, return it to the snow, do what you like. No way of stopping the tide, not now. Land will buck, and shake, and throw all of us free..."
Something of the shantytown had descended over his face. The same... wall-faced resistance to interrogation, the perfect surface against which questions simply slid off. He barely even seemed to acknowledge her voice. Like Yan-Lam - resistant, keeping her trap shut on instinct, unwilling to let the authorities know. Maybe the shantytown had been the perfect environment for killing the history of Rekida, the lingering terror of life here. A training camp where people were taught to shut up, to not talk about their history, to not practise their culture. Come to think of it... the city wasn't that big. And those mansions, they'd just be for noble families, with little dorms bolted on for the slaves, so... even being generous, there'd never have been that many people. Never. A city far too grand for its inhabitants, built to chain the world and bind it to submission. Not to live in. But maybe to live for. Die for, certainly.
She'd never known Rekida.
And now she had this information... she felt like she understood enough.
Enough to drill deeper.
She stood.
"Thank you for... everything, sir. If there's anything I can do for you, any supplies I can send-"
He was already leaving. Shuffling wearily to another part of the room, where a small wooden board of meat was sitting. Ignoring her completely - the confession had taken something out of him. She saw... saw a hunched, tired old man, survivor of the destruction of Rekida, the exodus south, the Great War, the shantytown, the journey back here... outlived his family, outlived a man who might've been something of a replacement son, outlived his city. Not mad, he was startlingly lucid, but... tired. Beyond tired. Eventually he was bound to fray at the edges. And now he'd sung his last song... there didn't seem to be much left in him at all. Like a Fidelizhi god had unhooked itself from his back, slithered away to find someone else, and he blinked, and found that his back wouldn't straighten after so long, his behaviours had been so sculpted and shaped by this god that it was impossible to tell where the dictated behaviours ended and his own behaviours began.
"Take care of the girl."
"Yes, sir. I'll do my best."
"Don't do your best. Just do it. No gods will curse you for it. Gods of this place wouldn't give a rat's arse for a dead slave, nor an orphaned one. No gods will come for you. The land won't wake up."
His eyes flashed.
"But I'll know."
"Yes, sir."
No reply. She bowed her head slightly, and began to pack up her things. Heading for the door in a stupefied haze. She'd found what she was looking for, in a way. Just... hadn't expected it to be so large. The clues had all been there, in a way. The strange construction of the city. The fact that cages were important to Lam and Yan-Lam, but the only place in the city where they occurred was that 'cantina'. The fact that so many cultural practices had just... died, apparently. Complete severance, not a scrap of the original remaining - a conscious rejection, not just entropy. But it'd been well-hidden. Very well-hidden. Without Tal-Sar, she'd never have put it together, wouldn't have made the requisite leaps of logic. A language no-one could translate now the nobility was dead and the teachings were gone. Rites tied up with the caste system, understandably painful for the Rekidans to continue performing. Hidden. Rekida's history had been close to death, very close indeed. In her, it had a new host. It'd endure a little longer than it otherwise should've.
...she thought of that red-haired mutant from the journey here. Her tattered silk dress.
One of the nobles. Ageless once the contamination seeped into her. And left to animalistically prowl the lands she'd presumably been meant to inherit.
Without another word, she set off for the tower containing Beldol. Her excuses for her late arrival were already forming on her lips. It'd take time, she'd have to hurry to arrive before sundown... and her mind reeled with implications. With further information.
She knew what she had to do.
A shiver ran up and down her spine as the chill welcomed her once more, and she left Tal-Sar to his history that he wanted dead, and his endless pictures of beautiful noblewomen, smirking down at him perpetually.
She knew what she had to do.
Her suspicions were growing. They were outlandish, deeply outlandish, and she needed more evidence, more data, to confirm or reject them. But... there'd been a whole secret history to this place, lost over the span of a few generations. Who could say what else might be hidden?
She hurried along through the deep snow, fleeing the approaching dark.
Not sure how much time she had.