CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE - A CHAT AT THE CONSULTANCY

"Well, that..."

Tanner trailed off, staring dumbly into a small cup of dark red wine that Marana had graciously poured for her. Not touching it.

"Hm? Go on."

"...it could've gone worse. I think."

She sagged into herself, feeling all her weight collapse a little. The feeling of embarrassment was... it was something else. Crackled over her skin like lightning. Sat in her stomach like lead. Banished weariness, but only so it could fill that space in her mind with more memories of... gods, she could feel her spine trying to cringe into a circle. She'd looked like an idiot. A complete, total idiot. She felt tics she thought she'd grown out of rippling through her - usually, she was stoic, still, and had honed this to an art as she realised how easily she could hurt people by twitching, how a harmless tic for others was a threatening jitter for her. She wanted to itch her neck, to push her fingers through her hair, to knead her skirt until it tore, to tap her feet over and over again, to walk in circles around and around and around the room while nattering to herself like a madwoman, until her throat was sore, her feet were aching, and maybe she'd worked off some of the excess energy. What was the bloody point in the body becoming so energised when it was humiliated, huh? What was the point? It wasn't like someone was pointing a gun at her face, it wasn't like a mutant was chasing her, she didn't need this excess energy, she didn't require it in any way, shape, or form, and if the court read her comments back, they'd find that she made no request to her brain for this much damn adrenaline. What, did the body get all this energy to run away? Was it some primitive part of her brain that went 'guvnor-man has humiliated us, he shame us in front of mate and tribe, we smash him, smash him good, show tribe what happen to he who irks the ogre-queen! YAWP!'

Her brain was not in her good books today. No wonder people got lobotomies, brains were bastards.

Finally, she spoke.

"No, I feel like an idiot. Like a complete, blundering, blithering idiot. I just... walked in there, bold as brass, acting like I knew what I was doing, like I was able to tell them what to do, like some judge with a year of proper experience could just soldier in and act all high and mighty, and I... well, I got what I deserved. Humiliated. Gods..."

She wanted to thump her head into the table and groan for many, many minutes. But she'd seen Marana doing the same thing, and... a little stubborn part of her wanted to retain a little dignity. Marana glanced lopsidedly from her side of the table. The night was wearing on, though honestly, it felt like night had expanded so much that the term was basically meaningless. What did 'night' matter as a concept when daytime was only a vanishingly small fraction of time? The snow howled. Tom-Tom was upstairs in one of the many spare rooms, sleeping quietly. Best for her to stay here while things were being resolved, safer that way. The governor had given her permission to order the soldiers to arrest the accused, but he'd 'politely noted' that she ought to be cautious, ought to just get him thrown into the drunk tank, nothing formal, nothing that could be construed as excessive. And browbeaten by the gaze of two people who were more experienced than her, more collected than her, and just... above her in so many ways, she'd mumbled an acceptance. Marana hummed.

"Well. It could be worse. Could always be dead. And honestly, I don't really see how it went overly poorly to begin with."

Tanner shot her a withering look.

"Really."

"Oh, really! And don't be snarky, it doesn't suit you. Look, you just blundered messily into a little scrum of colonial politics, bounced away with no harm done. Did they tell you to stop investigating?"

"...no."

"Did they tell you that they'd handle everything for you, and you could sit at home staring at the fire with mulled wine in your hand and a thumb up your arse?"

"Marana."

"Sorry. It's late, it's cold, I feel cranky."

Tanner felt a tiny spiteful spark.

"Don't be cranky, it doesn't suit you."

"Shush, you absurd wildebeest. You just walked into a little bit of a kerfuffle."

Marana's tone was light, but her face had a cast of seriousness to it which made Tanner pay attention, made her feel shameful for the petty spite she'd felt a moment ago. Ought to clamp down on that. Sit up, shoulders back, bum firmly planted on her chair, hands in front of her where she couldn't knead her skirt like a shrinking violet, act like she was in front of Sister Halima. No, impossible, Sister Halima practically never drank, she was too busy for that. Marana took a sip from her wine, and kept going, pleased by the audience.

"This is how things work. It's how they worked in Krodaw. I suppose they decided to learn from our mistakes, try to keep an eye on intergroup violence. It's a good move, really. Well. Might be. Could cultivate a poor impression if it got out, though - imagine it, the governor only caring about violence and ruin when it involves some of his countrymen, goodness. The scandal. The outrage. Not that I'd recommend you go around fomenting dissent, not unless you're very bo-"

Tanner lunged, and Marana let out a small, undignified squeak as Tanner's enormous hands slammed over her mouth. Tanner's face was absolutely stoic, as it always was when she was panicked out of her mind, and she was sure this made her look like an absolute lunatic right now. Well, good. That should cultivate the proper impression.

"I am not fomenting dissent, I'm not fomenting anything, I am here to administrate justice and provide recommendations to the governor for how to proceed where his remit supersedes my own. At no point will I engage in, nor support, nor contemplate any act of dissent against the rightful colonial authorities, and I reject any comments made to the contrary as malicious, founded on no solid evidence, and I deeply regret any possible misinterpretations of the poor phrasing chosen by certain parties."

Her hands came away.

"...does the governor's arse taste that amazing, then?"

Tanner growled. Oh, goodness. That wasn't good.

"I am not... I'm not doing that, whatever it is, I'm not sure what you're implying, but it sounds unsanitary. I'm simply being clear."

Marana smiled mildly, rubbing her jaw.

"Your hands smell like fear and soap, incidentally. Not criticising - if I'm going to be gagged with someone's palm, I like it when they're sanitary. If you're likely to do it agian, though, could you possibly start putting a hint of perfume on those mucky paws? Give me something adventurous."

Tanner's hands slipped under the table, where she began to knead at her skirt. Dammit. Given in. And her face... yes, redness was creeping up from her neck. A second away from turning the shade of a dying sunset. Marana tilted her head to the other side, eyes twinkling.

"Erlize, right? Paranoid about them?"

Memories of a man with a knob of bone in the middle of his head, and a tweed suit that seemed to contour itself to his ribs. Memories of an interrogation room with unyielding lights, where dead-eyed men with glittering smiles asked her question after question after question, dissecting her entire life up until this point, unravelling everything she thought she knew about the people around her, leaving her convinced, for days, that she was going to vanish one night and never reappear. That she was living on generously leased time. Having the Erlize pay attention to her in any respect was bad. The only good way to engage with them was to be a complete unknown, a model citizen with a non-existent file, and that way...

Tanner sipped her drink, and said nothing.

"...I understand, I suppose. Rather like... feeling as though you've been thrown inside a sausage machine, isn't it? Watching the mechanisms come closer and closer, whirring faster and faster, aware that you're on a path that was chosen for you, that you have no influence over... you realise the infinity of choices you used to have, and how that's all gone away. Your entire universe collapses down to a narrow set of possibilities, and all of them are out of your hands. Being in a sausage machine, where you don't even have the liberty of turning the handle yourself."

Tanner shivered.

"Hm."

"I understand. Mostly. If it helps... you're most likely fine. How many Erlize are there here? In this colony, I mean, not in general, though I'm sure their numbers in the wider world stretch into the hundreds upon hundreds of thousands, with coshes and revolvers fit to block out the sun, ready to file the whole world away as 'sensitive information'."

Mr. Canima. His subordinates. Their subordinates. Ten. A hundred. A thousand. The whole colony, employed in some way by a phantom bureaucracy which had no papers, no files, no badges and no ranks. Everyone a node on a network they couldn't imagine. Flies trapped in a web, convinced they were free. Still able to buzz, but incapable of moving, and mistaking the form for the function.

"I... am not entirely sure how many."

"Well, I'll illuminate you - not oodles. Noodles, if you will. Fidelizh is oodles, Rekida is noodles. Here's a question - they knew about the relevant identities, didn't they?"

Tanner shot a nervous glance upwards, where Tom-Tom was sleeping. Not... wise to let her know that the governor was tracking all of this, knew who she was, knew what was going on, would probably have her name scribbled down in a large, secret ledger book. That would induce paranoia in anybody, adn worse, it would make her less likely to report anything in future. Worse, if word got out, no-one would report anything in future. She could've killed her judicial career in Rekida with a single case, and then she'd spend months getting drunk on turpentine until she went stark raving mad and ran into the wilderness to eat snow like a wild dog until she plunged through a frozen river and drowned ignominiously, only her rear end protruding above the snow like a humiliating memorial to a humiliating life. Marana snapped her fingers.

"Come on, pay attention, don't doze off. They knew all the people involved - Tom-Tom, the claimant, Tyer, the accused, and Mr. Lam, the neighbour who witnessed this. They knew all of this information within the twitch of a hummingbird's wing. So, why haven't they done something about it yet?"

Tanner groaned.

"Because the appearance of justice matters to them, because it's good for morale when people see a judge doing her job properly, because it makes everyone feel needed and wanted."

"Cynical."

"I learned it from watching you."

Marana twitched.

"Avoid that. Come on, why haven't they just nipped this in the bud? I mean, days? Days of being stalked, being harassed, and the Erlize just sat back and went 'this works, this should be fine, we can easily factor this into our enormous, well-executed and brilliantly-conceived plans, simple. Or, on the contrary, they missed it, or missed it for too long, at minimum."

"Hm."

"They're not omniscient. I doubt they're even listening in now. In Krodaw, we did this all the time - cultivate an impression of omniscience at all times, make it seem like we knew everything, understood everything. An aura of completeness. It was why we wasted money on lavish dinners, even when everything was collapsing, and invited people from all over the colony. It was why we had a palace for the governor, when my father would've preferred to move out, into a more defensible, modest location, which required a smaller domestic staff. My father had a small team practically devoted to simply informing him of everything before he needed to know about it - they murmured in his ear before a meeting, he'd walk in with all the intelligence in the world, and would seem deliriously well-put-together. And in terms of observing the population, we just had enough public displays of infiltration and inner knowledge. Enough. And once people were convinced, truly convinced that we could be anywhere, they started assuming we could be everywhere. Broke down at the end, the Sleepless called our bluff far too often, but for a while we seemed rather... complete, I suppose. Absolutely in control, even if, at the best of times, we were still woefully limited."

Tanner blinked.

"...that's... very open of you. Isn't that sort of thing... well, secretive?"

She leaned inwards, and Marana looked at her from beneath half-lidded eyes. Despite the vague concealment, Tanner could see life still burning in those eyes, the alcohol hadn't killed her yet.

"What? I don't exactly live there, do I? Oh, I'm threatening the state secrets of a colony which is now a deserted ruin occupied by madmen and starving beggars, oh, I'm undermining the continental order. Look out, I'll be starting wars before the week's out, I will."

Marana snorted, and sipped deeply from her wine... pausing, a frown on her face. Seemed surprised by how quickly the thing had emptied, and she reached for the dusty bottle with a small theatrical flourish. Tanner's eyes followed her movements carefully, continuing to knead her skirt nervously even as she tried to resist the habit. Failed continuously.

"Still."

She paused, thinking.

"...oddly non-cynical, though. For you."

"Hardly. An omniscient Erlize would have taken care of the problem before it emerged, would be observing us at all times, and would be defending us from every single threat. Seeing their control as smoke and mirrors is much more pessimistic."

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"Oh."

...come to think of it, it was. Tanner thought... yes, yes, she was doing it even now, binding herself with roles. There was no god upon her back, but there was a cape, and all the obligations the costume demanded. The law itself was digging long, iron fingers into her shoulders, sharp as a condor's talons and infiltrative as botfly larvae. She was cultivating luck with her regular motions and tics, and... strange as it was, remembering the lodge was helping keep her very calm indeed. She'd been through worse, and come out better. Could endure this with just as much success. But those faiths were zero-risk. She was... the sort of person who was superstitious, but not faithful. She was self-aware enough to recognise that, and when you spent enough time on your own, you started to auto-vivisect your own mind just to have some sort of conversation. Superstition was the faithless faith, it was faith that began and ended with the human, it almost surrendered to the lawless nature of the universe by feebly spreading out webs of significance to try and stabilise it all. It was the urge for faith, without the spark that allowed for the rationalisation of a whole cosmos. At least, for her. Fear of the secret police, though... they were like...

Her thoughts trailed off as Marana kept talking.

"Why do they frighten you?"

"I beg your pard- what?"

"Good, you're learning. 'Beg your pardon' is such a dreadfully middle-class way of speaking, it's trying to sound grand and refined without having a hint of real understanding. Congratulations, you might fit in at one of my mother's ghastly salons. Now you just need to learn how to paint. Or play an instrument."

"What do you mean, though? About me... being afraid?"

"The Erlize. Why are you so afraid? You're a trained and experienced judge. Your organisation could just send you to one of their other outposts and the Erlize wouldn't touch you. You know what us in the higher echelons of Mahar Jovan think of those little wretches? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. We think less than nothing, if it's at all possible. They're bureaucrats, petty little bureaucrats with some advanced powers within their city, and nothing more."

Tanner grunted.

"You didn't live in Fidelizh."

"I toured there, once."

"Not the same. When I arrived, I was a student for seven years. If they found me, accused me of something, deported me, my education would be over. I've been a proper judge for one year. 12.5% of my time in Fidelizh has had some sort of insurance against the Erlize destroying things."

Still had the habit of reducing things to percentages. Helped put things in perspective - and once you got into the habit, it was rather hard to get out of it. How much was each day worth, compared to the rest of her life? How much was each year? Each hour? How much of her life had she, on average, lived?

Anyway.

"Yes, yes, but you're..."

She poured another glass of wine for herself, and Tanner pursed her lips. A sip, and Marana's voice became more slurred, her eyes dimmed a little. Even half-lidded, her eyes usually crackled with a kind of intelligence, but the more she drank, the duller they became, until they were flat and dead as pebbles, and the mind they reflected was a stuttering, oozing thing of lost conjectures and aborted tangents. Marana was slowly slipping away in front of her, and Tanner felt a spark of annoyance that she tamped down on as soon as possible.

"...now, I do apologise for the psychoanalysis, I know how you loathe it, but in my defence, your poker face puts me in mind of a proverbial oyster which the thrusting spike of inquiry much snap open, so I might gorge on your succulent innards."

"Marana."

"Sorry. In my defence, I paint. The harmonies of prose are beyond me, leave me to the harmonies of pigment instead. Wine?"

"No, thank you."

"Wonderful, more for me. But you... you're not just afraid of them, you're living in dread of them. You're still flinching. You don't like me talking about them. Not at all. And whenever you speak of that... tweed-clad fellow, Mr. Canima, your entire back locks up and you knead your skirt like an enormous cat."

Tanner bit the inside of her lip, the motion invisible from the outside.

"I was interrogated by them. Once."

"About?"

"A friend. You know him. Algi of Yorone. He's... still a neo-monarchist, and the Erlize were interviewing everyone he'd known while training to be a judge. Wanted to make sure he hadn't radicalised any of us."

Marana blinked lazily.

"Well, did he?"

Tanner gritted her teeth.

"Of course not."

She twitched, and looked around cautiously while Marana snorted.

"I was in no way radicalised by Algi of Yorone. He didn't talk to me about his ideas during the time in which we knew one another. I have no opinions on the restoration of the monarchy in Fidelizh, and I hold by the apolitical stance of other judges. My loyalty is to the judges of the Golden Door, and I have no intention of breaking this trust, nor offending my hosts in the city of Fidelizh, who have been so-"

Marana groaned.

"Gods, stop it. You're making me paranoid, now."

"Good."

"No, not good. And anyone who isn't presently hallucinating could see that you're as harmless as a bill-deficient duckling, at least when it comes to being a dangerous radical. You couldn't stand my surrealist friends, you're a judge, and the only thing I've seen that makes you genuinely act poetical is a bucket of living eels. Unless Mahar Jovan appoints a king who's just an enormous eel, I think you're a rare example of a painfully apolitical individual."

Tanner inwardly glowed. She was an apolitical individual! Good, other people could see it, she didn't sound insane when she kept protesting that she was about as ordinary as it was possible to be while you were this tall and this neurotic. She didn't disagree with the surrealists in that hotel - she just didn't comprehend them, and wasn't sure if she wanted to.

"So?"

Tanner snapped back to reality.

"...so...?"

"So? What else? Did they handcuff you to a radiator and burn a grid pattern into your back? Did they snap your nose and force you to wheeze through a mask of blood? How many of your toes were taken? Which of your teeth are false?"

Tanner blinked a few times.

"...none of that."

"What?"

"None of that. I was interrogated. Released."

Marana studied her for a second.

"...you're not just saying that because you're afraid of them listening in?"

Tanner's eyes sharpened.

"No. That was it. I was interrogated, and released."

"That was it?"

"That was it."

"No torture?"

"Not a mark."

"And you're still afraid of them? They brought you in for questioning, nothing else, and you're terrified of them?"

Tanner had to struggle to keep her voice as low as possible, and kneaded her skirt with clenched fists. Remembered how Algi had felt when she hauled him off the ground. The delicate, bird-like bones that could snap so very easily. She'd de-boned fish, she knew how bones could slither out of flesh, how the entire organic engine could be taken apart like any other machine. No, stop it, that was excessively violent. Stop thinking about that, it was vulgar. And psychotic. Think of the dead man in the snow, think of the mutants with their dead eyes, and... there, there, the aggression drained slowly from her, like pus from a lanced boil, and she felt rationality descend over her again. No, pus was an awful comparison, deeply unpleasant - like throwing ice-cold water over a fire. There, that was pleasingly homely and decent. The sort of comparison a normal person might have. Which she was.

Had to work to keep her voice civilised, though.

"I'm afraid because the Erlize can make you disappear at a moment's notice, if they like. They can take you away, take you behind a series of dark doors, and you cease. No more documents. No more presence. I think that's fairly rational, to be afraid of people who can do that to you. Now, if you wouldn't mind, I'd rather not discuss them further."

Marana examined her coolly, pouring herself yet another cup of wine, and Tanner could barely restrain her annoyance. Every drink made her mind sloppier, her words clumsier, her eyes duller. Each drink made her less interesting to converse with, and made her more willing to say... things that lingered in her thoughts, embedded like splinters.

"...the Erlize make shantytowners and neo-monarchists disappear, from what I heard last time I toured Fidelizh. If they made a citizen of Mahar Jovan disappear, they'd provoke an outrage. And they don't like provoking outrages. That would make people realise that opposing them might actually be possible."

"Could ruin my career. Easily."

Marana smiled sympathetically, but to Tanner it seemed insufferable. Didn't want sympathy. Not this kind of... of condescension.

"Not any more. Now, they can just prevent you from continuing your career in a particular city, if they're sufficiently provoked. If the Erlize were the tyrannical godlings you seem to portray them as, and think of them as, why would the Judges of the Golden Door be permitted to exist? They're an extra-governmental organisation that openly contests the Golden Parliament's right to legislate on certain matters, and keeps long lists of grudges. Yes, I know about the urns, the image was poetically stirring. Wouldn't be too hard wiping them out, too. Why aren't they gone? Listen, Tanner, I'm not trying to be a little turd, all I'm saying is that... this is how colonial politics works. Small people end up mingling with the great and good, a lowly judge speaks often with a governor and the head of the Erlize, you're going to interact with them a great deal in the coming months, and that means interacting with their plans, their priorities. It's like taking a cobweb, and retaining all the structure but compressing it down to the size of a thimble. All the entrapping strands, focused into a very tiny area. Once upon a time, you might be unlucky if you came into contact with a single strand, as you did when you were interrogated. Now, you could probably count on bumping into all the strands over the course of an especially productive morning. I'm just trying to help you, before you end up over your head with matters you lack familiarity with."

Tanner was silent.

Studied Marana, who sipped from her wine once more, looking mournfully at the almost-empty bottle. Was she speaking from experience? Was this some... arrogant ego-trip? Some way of living vicariously through Tanner? No, no, she lived vividly enough, Tanner was fairly pale by comparison. Was she... damn it, the idiocy that wine blessed her with was clouding her reactions, leaving her in that state of unfettered deceptive earnestness which was common to many drunks - an unfiltered state of emotion, but not an unfiltered state of truth. Like smearing mud over a palm before trying to read it - like Tom-Tom trying to measure someone's skull while they were still wearing an enormous hat. Regardless. She... hm. Fear of the secret police was like fearing a very human sort of god. Oh, it had the arbitrary ruin of a god, the flickering gaze, all of that. In fact... yes, yes, she remembered her patron, Carza vo Anka, talking about the steppes far to the west, over the mountains, where they believed in luck not as something that was to be cultivated, but as a negative force which had to be avoided at all costs. Like a thundercloud perpetually looming, lightning flashing forth like impossibly thin fingers... crashing down on anyone who named the cloud, who looked up at the cloud, who did anything to attract the cloud's attention. The Erlize were like that. Gods. Arbitrary. All-powerful. All-consuming. Operating by their own rules, their own means. They were gods for someone who found it hard to believe in actual gods. And those dead-eyed men in tweed suits, they... they were just its emissaries, its priests, its prophets.

She tried to stop thinking. Not necessary. This was just... being a self-obsessed little toad, poring over her own responses and trying to analyse them, because she didn't have anyone else to analyse most of the time. Except... yes, now she had Marana, sitting in front of her, drinking another cup of wine that left a gritty residue over her teeth, made her nose turn even more red... what did she want?

Tanner thought.

"...how did you know about the details of the case?"

"Hm?"

"You were asleep. I remember you being asleep when the details were brought up. How did you know the specifics?"

Marana blinked lazily.

"I wasn't asleep."

"Looked asleep."

"I don't really sleep, Tanner, you should know that by now. I just doze. Dozing is safer. Trust me, spend a month or two in an opium den where most of the people are willing to poke a ragged little hole in your stomach at the slightest provocation, and you learn to stop sleeping fully. Spend a few months with the sound of artillery strikes all around you, and the knowledge that a bunch of half-mutated freaks in the forest know where you are, where you sleep, where you go each day, and likely are sharpening their knives to rip your throat out, and-"

"I get it."

"Phooey, I had so many examples. Can't you let a middle-aged decaying souse burble meaninglessly at you? What happened to the youth respecting their elders?"

Tanner didn't reply, and Marana didn't demand one. They fell into a vague silence, for several long seconds. The air felt... fuzzy. Undetermined. Ambiguous. Something was going to happen, something had to happen, but once Tanner committed she could hardly roll things back. It was one thing to ooze passively onto a path, quite another thing to commit, to see all the opportunities on the other side fading away, to see the range of possible futures condense down to a very narrow range indeed.

Might as well.

"I need a partner. I don't... understand this place, I don't understand how the politics here work. I don't feel comfortable interacting with the governor, or his men, or... any of this. Ideally, I'd just sit down and work through the technicalities of the law. That's what I like. So... there are provisions in the law for situations like this, I wouldn't be making everything up, there are specific requirements for your behaviour, and specific powers you can exert. What I'd... be infinitely grateful for, is if you were to..."

She trailed off, swallowing uncertainly, for a tiny second wishing to have a little of that wine, until the sight of Marana's half-idiot eyes and bloated nose reminded her forcefully of the charms of sobriety. Parched though those charms might be.

"...if you were to... help with those details."

"Tanner, I'm most of a bottle deep, just ask me in plain terms."

Tanner almost scowled. Almost.

"I would like you, if it's convenient, to act as a go-between. To help me with these... colonial elements, the things I don't understand, so I can focus on my work."

Marana paused. Hummed.

Then reached forward to slap Tanner firmly on the shoulder, nodding wisely as she did so.

"I thought you'd never ask."

Tanner blinked.

"I do have conditions, naturally. I insist on not being paid, I already have enough money and my artist friends would never forgive me if they found out I was taking bribes from the authorities. Second, I insist on expenses. But you pay them. Not me. At no stage should your money cross my hands, only the things it purchases. Third, I want to keep living here, it's warm and the bed is in stumbling distance. Fourth, I reserve the right to brood over the colony like something out of a cut-price pulp novel. My half-made ramblings are non-negotiable."

Tanner was silent. Marana smiled.

"I mean, why do you think I came up here in the first place?"

"...holiday?"

"Partially, yes. Also, to educate you in the ways of righteousness, which... admittedly, I'm still working on, but give it time, I'll squeeze some life out of you yet."

"Please, don't."

"Non-negotiable. It'd be pleasin' to do some squeezin', if you'd pardon the parlance of our times. And... well... I'm not an idiot. I hear about some young judge heading up to an isolated colony in the north, I hear about other judges already being delayed from arriving until spring..."

She smiled faintly.

"Believe it or not, I was young, once upon a time, and I remember going from being an artsy-fartsy nobody in the middle of Mahar Jovan, to being a governor's daughter in a dying colony with no idea of what was going on, all my friends sealed away by miles of open country, and within the first few months my personal maidservant had her throat slit from ear to ear by a man who no longer needed to blink."

Tanner shivered slightly.

"...so, you're... on board?"

"On board? Darling, I'm three sheets to the wind, hanging naked from the crow's nest with sunburn turning me the colour of a boiled lobster, on a rudderless, anchor-less boat destined for far-bound shores, it's impossible for me not to be on board, I have no choice but to be on board. Briefly, yes."

Tanner stopped kneading her skirt. Took a deep breath. And twitched involuntarily as Marana poured out another cup. Irritation, for a moment, flooded through her. This was a serious assignment, with undertones of severe personal danger, and she was... getting sozzled on cut-price hotel wine she'd pinched from a surrealist conference. She tamped down on it, quickly. Marana knew more about colonial politics than she did, knew the stresses which influenced decision-making. Tanner didn't. And even if she did, she lacked... well, the more she understood, the less she felt able to act. Even now, the idea of simply going out to do her job was riddled with problems. How many toes was she stepping on? How much was she doing wrong? How many people would glare at her from their windows, or would let out exasperated sighs when they heard the brutish clump-clump of her boots in the snow? Leaving a bad impression was like... like leaving evil changelings of herself all over the place, changelings that looked like her, sounded like her, but weren't her. And they'd be there, lurking behind the eyes of everyone she offended or inconvenienced. And the Erlize... the governor... the soldiers... was there some kind of status quo she was disrupting?

It felt as though there were only two solutions. One, to be a galumphing idiot with no subtlety whatsoever, cutting through the layers of cobweb that tried to ensnare her. That was never her way. Once she'd lost her proverbial innocence by learning enough, she couldn't exactly regain it. What had... yes, yes, she remembered, it was filed away neatly in her house of memory, a quote from one of the legal philosophers she'd engaged with during her studies. 'The loss of disciplinary innocence is the price of expanding consciousness. The price is high, the loss is irreversible, and the reward is nonetheless worth all the travails of the two'. The caul was already peeled from her eyes - she could hardly put it back. The second option was... well, to be led. The loss of disciplinary innocence didn't mean she had to become some sort of blazing philosopher-judge, a thinker, an ascetic, a wanderer in the further realms of intellect. It just meant she had to read more widely, comprehend what others had already thought, and by and large, get on with her damn work. The loss of innocence was an awareness of the faults of the leash around one's neck - the response was to go to the leash store and find a better one. The idea of Marana being there at that embarrassment earlier in the evening... yes, she was drunk, but she knew things. She could set an example. Present that first prototype which she could imitate - Tanner would let Marana ride around on her back, and by doing so, would know if she was doing something right, or if she was blundering and thundering and digging a deeper and deeper grave for herself.

And...

And she didn't want to be alone while she did her work. Even if she wasn't... very sociable, she liked having people around. If she was on her own, then she felt out-of-place, uncertain. Uniqueness was prized by some, but to Tanner, all it made her think of was the last lonely member of a soon-to-be extinct species. An endling, that was the word. She'd seen a taxidermy endling in Fidelizh, once, during a massive exhibition where she'd seen a titanic stuffed eel from a distant sea. It'd been a lumbering, ugly creature. Grey skin, tinged with dust. Squat, short, powerful, made her think of the ogre-like creatures which lived in the mudlands around the Tulavanta. Tusks, a beak, and large, orange eyes that seemed infinitely sad. Bewildered, too. A pig-like, profoundly unattractive burrowing thing that gnawed on weeds, when it'd been alive. Gone, now.

Geniuses were unique. So were endlings. And when she was alone, Tanner felt more like the latter.

"By the way, it's not just the physical threat which makes me afraid of them."

Marana blinked.

"Hm?"

"The Erlize."

"Oh, yes, yes, of course. We're still talking about them?"

"I'm just having the last word. It's not the physical threat. It's the fact that once I'm involved with them, then I know exactly how I can make the interrogation stop. Doesn't matter if I'm guilty or not. Just admit to something, and it stops. I get deported. I leave. And I never deal with them again. I'm afraid of the Erlize because..."

She trailed off.

Same reason she was nervous of physical contact. Same reason she was hesitant in every conversation. Same reason she disliked crowds. Same reason she kept thinking of being a judge, being a role, being a lodge member. Same reason finding Algi in Mahar Jovan had unnerved her. Same reason she'd chosen a lifestyle which was so quiet, so reserved, so non-physical.

Restraint.

Because some things were prettiest when they were immobilised. Just ask a painter.

"Anyway. Thank you. For... helping. We'll start the interviews tomorrow. I spoke to the guards on the way out of the governor's mansion, incidentally - they're intending on arresting the man as soon as possible, just taking him into quiet custody while I get my business together. Nothing formal, just putting him in the same place they use for drunks. I've got Tom-Tom's formal interview handled, I need to write that up properly, and the two of us will take care of the neighbour tomorrow. If we can, we'll do that before we head for the accused, I want to have a solid grounding in the broader context. Getting up early."

Marana smiled blearily.

"Happy to help. Drink, to celebrate?"

"No, thank you. And you should... moderate."

"I am moderating. I'm awake. I'm aware. My consciousness endures. Marana persists to exist as a recognisable entity."

Barely.

"Anyway. I have work to do. See you tomorrow."

"Certain you don't want something to relax you?"

"I have work. I'll just have a glass of citrinitas, that should keep me going."

Marana said nothing, oddly enough, as Tanner moved for the stairs. Had to check on Tom-Tom, too. Make sure the woman was doing well in an unfamiliar house. Fairly confident she hadn't heard anything, not that it mattered if she had, so long as she remained schtum about it. The storm raged outside, and Tanner's mind was consumed with thoughts of proper legal notation, the proper format for recording a formal interview into a formal document, rather than her short-hand notes. No thought spared for how Marana had, for once, not chosen to claim the last word of the conversation. No thought for... hm. Hm. Something about her room, something... no, nothing. She poured herself a near-luminous glass, barely a thimbleful of the stuff, just enough to keep her going. Her lesnses were mounted over her face, and she clicked down the magnifications. Her quill shivered eagerly as she slipped it on, mechanical components gliding smoothly on well-oiled joints. Her paper was large, and lined imperceptibly. The snow was raging. Her face was still.

She had work to do.