CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE - THE CAGE AND THE IRON

"Twice. Daily."

Tanner blinked.

"...you inspect your underground facilities twice a day?"

The old man smiled innocently, his eyes continuing their unnerving twitch. The others were ignoring them at this point. The old man seemed to be... not the leader, but he was clearly more infirm than they were, and thus couldn't be used for the tougher manual jobs. Leaving him to take care of the front room, the tea, the coffee, the food, the coats... and the visitors. Tanner was glad for the enormously thick coat, and her equally thick gloves. Stopped her kneading things nervously. Or angrily. Was she angry? Or was she somewhat resigned? Hard to tell. Oh, she was sure all of this would be funny once everything was said and done, but for now... well, it felt like seeing someone take away the last pie in the pie shop right in front of her eyes. No, wait. Not like that. More like... not going to a particular shop for a while, suddenly developing a hankering, going there, and finding that the pie she had a hankering for was no longer being sold, and in fact, hadn't been sold for several months. Resignation. Sorrow. Annoyance. Not much anger, though. Gods, she was hungry.

"That's right, missy. Twice a day."

Wait. A flash of hope.

"Who inspects it?"

"Roster's over there, if you care to look at it."

A ragged sheet of paper in the front room, plastered with... names. More than one name. Assuming Tyer had gone to ground immediately after Tom-Tom had sneaked out of her house, and had run up here to hide, he'd have been caught three times over by now, each time by someone different. Unless the entire workforce was deciding to shelter someone they professed to barely know, and in some cases barely like, then he wouldn't be... hm.

"And... can I possibly inspect it?"

The old man's expression twitched, and his eyes continued to shine with something between enjoyment and smugness. Gods, she... she could snap this hunched creature in half with as much effort as a horse snapping a twig under-hoof. No, stop it, expel all her bile in a letter to Eygi, like she always did. She forced her mouth into a smile, forced it with all the power at her disposal, as the Coral-Spinal-Judge demanded. Couldn't knead her skirt like she'd like, so she laced her gloved hands together in front of her stomach, just as the Judge insisted. There. Polite. Controlled. And the old man spoke.

"Wouldn't advise it."

Tanner didn't reply. Gritting her teeth too much to sustain her small smile, and the rest of her face was rigid as ever. The old man actually seemed unnerved by that, and spluttered through an explanation without prompting. How nice of him.

"It's... really not meant to be wandered around. We pack things tightly, see. It's low, narrow, dark, dusty, cold... if you want to move around in there..."

Tanner hated her body.

She hated it with a burning passion.

Oh, maybe some slip of a creature could just flicker down there and explore, but not her. Not this giant ogress with her giant nose and her giant ears and her potato-face. Feh. Probably for the best, she'd go down there, see all that food, and go berserk devouring it all in moments to satisfy her potato-lust, and the hunger gnawing at her gut. Two fried eggs and a slice of dark bread, she needed nutrients. No, stop it, stop being a self-pitying little wretch, a mewling little thing dragged off the side of a road after a sewer burst its contents over it. She was a judge. She could complain about this to Eygi. Not to Marana. Complaining about one's job was to be done around non-colleagues. Complaining about one's life was to be done only around certain friends, or ideally to no-one at all. And complaining about one's body was to never be done unless absolutely confident. It was intimate, embarrassing, undermined authority, and made her seem like a self-obsessed adolescent.

None of this reached her face, of course. A fact for which she was insatiably glad. She simply nodded along with the old man's words, humming as if deep in thought. No reason to believe the old man was lying about this, just to be unnecessarily mean, or, worse, to hide someone. The roster was clear, and they were talking loud enough for the other workers to hear... yet none of them interjected, none of them looked up from their work, which seemed to mostly involve checking valves and dials over and over again, before occasionally consulting a chart which told them which stores were to be plundered next, what orders were required by the colony below. Could see the names of familiar inns, familiar stores, familiar addresses. They were definitely listening in, this work wasn't cognitively demanding enough for everyone to be completely riveted. Yet, no reactions. Hm.

"I understand."

A pause. And a small thought came to her. Most people had asked what had happened to Tyer, and why she was looking for him. And initially, she'd been fairly subtle in her inquiries - just asking if he had friends, associates, anything of the sort. At no stage had she said that he was at large, running amok, knife-wielding and insane. And indeed, no-one had fallen into this fairly elementary evidential trap - no-one had said anything about Tom-Tom, or his potential arrest, or anything of the sort. And if Tanner had left immediately after the interviews, marching back down the hill to whatever fate awaited her in the colony, that would be all. But she'd asked to examine the underground segments of the cold-house. And why would someone want to investigate that place? Why would she be concerned about who was doing the investigating? Was Tyer hiding down there? If he was, why? What was he doing? What had he done? She surveyed the room carefully, clamping down on her nervousness, studying every masked face as much as she could. Difficult, but... body language, study the body language, then. She knew for a fact that when you paid intense attention to your entire body, things immediately became stiffer, clumsier, more exaggerated. So much was automatic, and despite that, you never really learned how to reproduce it artificially. At least in her experience. And she had plenty of experience obsessing over her own body language. Was doing it right now, in fact.

"When would the next inspection be?"

"This evening, before most of us head back home."

"Does someone monitor the place during the night?"

"Night crew. You're meeting them now, in point of fact. Overlapping shifts."

"Which ones?"

None of this was relevant. None of it. But it gave her a chance. The old man waddled about the room, his stiff leg dragging behind him, pointing out the workers who would be staying here tonight. Interesting model, probably carefully designed by the governor to promote cohesion or some such rot. Morning crew handled, well, the morning, then the night crew started helping out as the afternoon wore on, then the morning crew headed home for the night, leaving the night crew to hold the fort. Didn't sound especially efficient, there was only a brief window where every worker was here at once, but... well, she wasn't starving yet, presumably it worked tolerably. She studied them, as she walked. Studied them with her face impassive. Any twitches. Any awareness of worry. Any suppressed instincts. And... she saw hints. Hunches. The things that judges weren't meant to rely on, not for a second. Instincts were for the roulette wheel, not dignified jurisprudence. A slight stiffness. A slight nervousness. Maybe it was just the large woman looming over them. Maybe it was nothing at all. But... maybe. Maybe. Tiny hints from each person, and there were enough people that those tiny hints could collectively become something larger.

But large... enough?

Large enough to be evidence?

Large enough to press?

Why no questions? Why no concerns? Some sort of group loyalty? Unwillingness to express weakness to an outsider? Worried about consequences? Why?

Nothing happened. Her questions were unanswered. And she was out of excuses. Couldn't stick around here poking around hunches all day, all night, while a knife-wielding lunatic was out there. Ought to meet Marana, swap notes. Maybe come back tomorrow. She could already see the bleakness of inactivity that might stretch out if Tyer remained hidden. If leads dried up, if paths ended in dead ends, then she could return here, like an old woman heading to a restaurant where old admirers dwelled, whose eyes lit up at the sight of her faded beauty. A renewal of confidence. Restoration of identity. She'd come here, where there were hints of greater truth, when no other route presented a viable alternative.

She said her goodbyes. Before she departed, though, she had the foresight of checking the shift schedule, quickly committing it to memory, filed into one of the slightly distorted buttons on her left sleeve, the texture reminding her of the sequence of names, rattling out like the rhythm of a drum.

And when she left, the old man stared at her from the open door until she vanished from sight. Staring, even as the snow mounted on his thick eyebrows, and melted in long streams down his fire-warmed skin. Must've been freezing. Yet he continued to stare.

Interminably.

* * *

Tom-Tom waited for her. Tanner didn't have the heart to play at enthusiasm - she simply stated the facts, as kindly as she could, and the woman immediately sat down and poured herself a drink. Tanner didn't take one. She had work. Compiling. Her room beckoned, where she could light up a tiny stove for warmth, could huddle around it like a marooned sailor on a tiny island, letting it blossom with heat and slowly make the rest of the room habitable. From pinnacle, to isle, to island, to a little country of her own, with her meagre bed and her meagre desk, and her luminous bottle of citrinitas to energise her. Her automatic quill clicked and clicked and clicked for several hours, all transcripts entering the proper forms, with adequate summaries. All matters drawn up in the most precise manner she could. Usually the police would handle matters of evidence... now, she had to write up each and every one of the knives she'd confiscated from that house. Judges were beyond reproach or suspicion, that was the ideal - let them take evidence, let them play around with it. Oh, the police could do it first, but out here... she was the one and only law enforcement group that wasn't either secret, or military. The knives were lavish, beautiful, well-made and clearly beloved. Must've been quite the price to pay for a labourer, acquiring all of these, and a special case for them. She marked them up, nonetheless, doing her best to think of something more proper than 'knife', 'knife', 'knife' over and over again.

Facts flowed past her, refusing to come together. Like leech-thinned blood that resisted coagulation, just flowed and flowed and flowed until the supply stopped entirely. When would the facts stop? When Tyer was dead? When he was caught? Or when spring came and they walked into the snowy wilderness to find a sad, drunken oddball with some disturbed impulses, frozen stiff and now beginning to ooze in the spring heat?

Maybe.

A redhead neighbour who said he left. A box of knives in an austere house. Workers who lived in a red brick sarcophagus and tended to their jars of vacuum, fruit of a metal tree. Silence, from all of them. Lips moved, but nothing came out. When she tried to think of something, she found her thoughts would be distracted by another tangent, far too quickly for comfort. Not her field. She wasn't an investigator. Necessity demanded she become one, and she was finding her new costume pinching in all the wrong ways, still filled with a tailor's needles. She wanted files. She wanted the proper records, some validation, something on paper. Paper was truth, paper was where all things dwelled, paper was anonymous and offered its secrets unashamedly. If it was read once, it could be read twice, thrice, four times, a hundred times, and it would be the same truth, a chain of a thousand links, all identical and interchangeable. Interviews had no such luxury. Nor did hunches. All they offered were more disparate facts she honestly wondered if she was remembering correctly. When she'd asked about the underground facilities, had the old man looked smug, or had there been a trace of wary hostility in his eyes? When she'd studied the workers, had they actually been stiffening due to her questions, or due to her presence? Or had it been nothing at all? She found herself wondering about the cold-houses, owned by the governor. Would they be owned by others, one day? Was that something Marana had a familiarity with - merchants squeezing the life out of a colony by charging for every crust of frozen bread, rather than doling them out as approved rations for a tough winter? She had this sudden image of the colony being like a... squirming black eel, suspended by a net over a hollow, waterless, airless abyss. Wriggling and shivering, as chaotic and twisting as any eel would be, directed to a distant pilgrimage site that only it understood or could feel... even as it ignored how the net was straining, straining, fit to break...

It was just how a single man had done this. To her. To... life. One spot of harassment and stalking. One man with a knife. And the Erlize seemed helpless. The governor paralysed. Every house a reservoir of danger. The cold-houses vulnerabilities ready to be torn apart by a single saboteur. She had an image of him breaking in during the night shift, entering, putting on his uniform like usual, heading into the centre and smashing it up. Popping the glass fruit, smashing the metal mouths, choking the underground passages with filth, burning the whole sarcophagus to the ground. What had the old man said? Cured meat was just meat twice-dead. One man with the right intent, the right means, and maybe a little luck, could turn it once-dead. Like a maggot sneaking into the sarcophagus, finding the cured corpse, and restoring life's course. One glass-house gone, and people would die, people would starve. Maybe. They were still flirting with midwinter. Far from pecking it on the cheek, far from kissing it, far from taking it to bed. Dark days were still ahead.

The eel wriggled unceasingly. And the net strained further.

Why did...

Something clicked in her mind.

Something interesting.

Decorations. She looked around her own room, seeing nothing but bare walls. Bare as could be, no time to put anything up, not that she tended to put anything up in the first place. Too frugal. But... the inns were full of cast-iron decorations. The cold-house had a cast-iron wall-hanging. And Tyer's home had one too. And the only alternative she'd seen was in Mr. Lam's house. A cage hanging from the ceiling. And he'd been willing to explain it in a moment. All of them were Rekidans,

Cage and iron. Why the difference?

She mulled this over until Marana's voice echoed in the house. Warbling, stumbling, and thoroughly, thoroughly sloshed. Tanner rose with her face rigid, this time with anger. She marched downstairs in a stately, military fashion, hands crossed in front of her stomach, back stiff as a board. Marana was leaning uncertainly against the door-frame, the door itself a little open, sending a small amount of snow into the house. The woman looked up. Red face. Cloudy eyes. Could smell her breath from here. Tanner stared.

And quietly, carefully, reached to close the door.

"Findings."

"He-llo, Tanner, my darling. Yes, I do have findings, I have findings galore. Come, come, we must sit, we must discuss."

"My room."

"Very well, madam, very well."

Tanner practically dragged her upstairs. Not letting Tom-Tom see one of the investigators handling her case acting like a common tramp. Marana grunted vaguely as Tanner directed her, forcibly, to sit on her bed while Tanner took the one and only chair. The dim glow of her reading lamp was all that illuminated the place, and the snow was picking up more and more, leaving them in a tiny island of light and warmth in a great ocean of boundless cold. Marana looked around blearily, and for a second her eyes locked on the bottle of citrinitas, with ferocity enough for Tanner to carefully move her chair to obscure sight of it. Citrinitas wasn't alcoholic, no reason for her to want it. No, wait... yes, she'd said something about an opium den in the past, and offering Tanner's patron cocaine. Maybe she just wanted the tiny spark that coca wine could provide. Anyway.

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"You're drunk."

"A few drinks, nothing more. Infiltration purposes. Wink-wink."

Tanner narrowed her eyes very, very slightly.

"What did you find?"

Evidence from a drunk. Sister Halima would be outraged. And Marana launched into a lavish story of the day's labours. An innkeeper with a florid complexion and a moustache long enough to swallow both of his lips when seen at the right angle. A bar-top marked with the residue of innumerable drinks, rendered sticky and cloying as molasses. Air that grew warmer and warmer as more bodies piled inside, workers eager for a hint of relief from the boredom and the cold. Once enough bodies were packed inside, the stoves became unnecessary, everyone swapped heat, nothing was lost that wasn't immediately taken up by someone else, then lost again in turn. The only way for heat to leave this closed system was if someone left, and entered the snow. Each departed patron was a dimming of the collective flame, she said, each departed patron sapped the party of heat and life. Only by clinging tightly against the cold could the system endure. And she had gladly participated, adding her meagre warmth to the mix, and stirring her blood to give more heat to the world by fuelling it with alcohol. Preamble finished, she talked about how she talked with the others, asked about Tyer. And each and every time, she found...

Scraps.

Hints.

Impressions.

A burly man knew him, thought he was a decent cove, if not an especially loud one. More stories of a quiet loner proceeded. The same as in the cold-house. Odd. Quiet. Unwilling to talk to most people, but a decent laugh from time to time, when he was drunk enough, and he was often drunk enough. It was inadmissible evidence, obviously. The statements of drunk patrons issued from a drunk artist. Never going to touch her final judgement. But then Marana interjected, noticing Tanner's fading interest.

"And there's the rub, my darling delectable. There's the rub, my dear old sport. None of these people were drunk. Not really. They'd barely started. When they got properly going... then the tune changed. And that's when I got to have a little fun."

Tanner stared as Marana described an evening of sublime sensuality and sophistication. Oh, she swanned from table to table, she chattered and laughed and sang, once or twice. Was a great favourite. And when one of the girls from the city work-crews dragged her onto a table, she stamped out a dance with all the fury she could possibly muster, and wound up with splinters in her ankles for the trouble, not that she minded. Went down a treat, her, with her lively, quick movements, her flying hair, her unrestrained eagerness, and the fine sheen of sweat covering every last one of her shapely-if-decaying limbs. She was middle-aged, a dedicated souse, and yet when she got to living it up, she could shed her years faster than a startled lizard shed its tail. And slowly... slowly, she unravelled them. Singled out people who were more hesitant with their answers, or who rattled through them like they'd rehearsed them in the past, and were just trying to get it all over with as quickly as possible. Most did nothing, they just drank, and refused to engage with her questioning. Then, Marana went further. Found a man. Fyeln. One of the locals. And Fyeln... he'd liked her. And Marana had liked him. And so, once enough drinks were downed, they withdrew their deposits from the collective flame, abandoned their investments, and headed into the dark and the cold, where the only warmth was one another. Tanner flushed at hearing this, and kneaded her skirt a little in embarrassment. Didn't want to listen to her being sordid.

Thankfully, she wasn't graphic.

"Well, after all of that was over, I came to..."

She smiled for reasons Tanner couldn't fathom.

"I came to, and I turned over, and he was drunk as can be. It's hard to do anything on the tiny cots people have here. Hard, but... manageable, in some respects. I won't elaborate, don't worry, I can see the discomfort in your eyes. I think. All four of them. Apologies, soused. Now, he was lying there, his chest rising and falling, eyes half-closed, stupid little smile on his face... now, for my money, I think it's a matter of motherhood, we all love warm, dark, cloistered places on account of the womb, naturally, so presumably for a man, the only two occasions he can get truly close to the experience is either a nice warm bath, or... this sort of business, and it really just turns them into absolute infants in the aftermath. Contented with the universe and their place in it. Suddenly convinced that the great cosmic order has some real benevolence behind it, that we're all going to be just fine in the end. Not so bad for me, either. Oh, I'm sorry, I'll stop. You can peruse my erotic art at a later date, that should give you my basic thoughts."

Tanner, upon finding out that Marana had erotic art, was never, ever, ever going to look through her collection of paintings. Ever.

She didn't want to see a middle-aged souse's nude self-portrait. By all the gods, she did not.

Had she come here straight from-

"Anyway, any-way. I was watching him, leaning into his side due to the limited space, stroking his chest hair, the usual things one does."

Tanner wanted to have an adult present. Marana did not count.

"And then I asked him. I probed a little. Oh, I was dreadfully careful about it all, but... drunk, at peace with the universe, a man has no secrets under those conditions. It only took a prick for the proverbial balloon to pop, and out came all its delicious contents. I'm talking about him telling secrets, incidentally. Nothing else. Purely a metaphor for social interaction - I'm sure you didn't think of anything else, of course."

Tanner yearned for oblivion.

"And he talked. He said he didn't known Tyer especially well, which made me feel rather annoyed, but... he said he had talked with the man on occasion. The man was, in point of fact, a startlingly pleasant fellow. Startlingly pleasant. Polite, though a little quiet from time to time. Otherwise, a stand-up individual that he tended to enjoy seeing. He was confused, though. Everyone in the inn was saying that he was a drunk, a sinful drunk, the sort of person who drank until his liver began to liquefy. But to my good friend Fyeln's knowledge... he drank to moderation."

Tanner blinked. All embarrassment forgotten. She leaned closer, ignoring the very slight scent of sweat cloying around Marana's skin. Barely.

"Go on."

"Drank to moderation. Or, to quote him directly, 'really, the man wasn't that bad, but, well, you never know, guys change, maybe he did his drinking when I wasn't there. Felt odd, though'. End quote."

"Did he say anything about knives?"

"No, no he did not."

Tanner leant back.

It was drunken testimony from someone who'd... canoodled in the name of information. Testimony from one drunk to another, blind leading the blind. Tanner was operating on twice-drunk-hearsay. But... but here was the thing. That contradicted every other story. Drinking to moderation? Everyone in the cold-house who talked about him said that he was a habitual drunk. Mr. Lam had said he'd seen the man stumbling home, like he couldn't handle his liquor. Tom-Tom had found him in a state of profound intoxication. This was blasted poor testimony, she couldn't use it, her judgements couldn't cite it, this was useless, but... but it was making her think. This entire case had been odd. The only straightforward moment had been when Tom-Tom had knocked on her door in the middle of a snowstorm. Then it'd been wrapped in politics, then a hunt for a fugitive, then the discovery of the knives pointing to a much more dangerous figure than previously expected, then the oddities about the cold-house, and then... this. Undermining the basic tenets of the case, the evidence she'd just written down in her books, ready to be locked up with the rest. The knives glimmered in their case, mocking her with their implications of violence. She was discovering Tyer by aspect after aspect - drunk, quiet, loner, knife enthusiast, fugitive, stalker, harasser, 'startlingly decent', moderate drinker, rumours of a violent past... of all these qualities, all of them could work together, all but 'startlingly decent'. Even moderate drinkers could have an exceptionally odd night, but... a genuine praise of his character, not historical like the youngest man in the cold-house, but present-day...

It was a fly in the ointment.

And it made her wonder if Fyeln was just drunk and rambling, an idiot saying anything that came to his mind, blinded by optimism... or if he was onto something.

But the questions that raised were unpleasant in their largeness. What was the parable? Four blind men touching an elephant, each of them coming to different conclusions of what it is, due to where they're touching. No-one seeing the bigger picture. Well, this was like a blind woman touching a bear and trying to figure it out before the bear got annoyed and tore her face off with its claws. Claws shaped like that single missing knife.

Marana rambled a bit more. But her evidence... none of it was usable. None of it. Tanner actually rather wanted her to stop sitting on her bed, for fear of... residues. Urgh. They talked, but in low voices, about the erratic details of the night. Most of it was half-remembered anyhow, disintegrating under scrutiny. Tanner didn't even write a scrap of it down when she heard it, preferred to keep it all in the confines of her head. She explained this, kindly as she could. Explained how if Marana hadn't been drunk, there might've been something here, might've. But her being drunk was the final nail in a well-nailed coffin. More nail than coffin, at this point.

"...well, phooey. The law ought to accept drunken confessions."

"It shouldn't."

"Divine revelations, then. Ancestral memory. Contact with the mind-of-the-world. Something along those..."

Marana trailed off. Staring out of the darkened window. Kept staring. Tanner followed her gaze, and saw nothing.

"What was it?"

"...nothing, just thought... no, nothing. Bird."

"...it's a snowstorm out there."

"So it is. How peculiar. I... yes, I suppose I ought to get to bed. Been quite a day."

Whatever she'd seen, it shocked her out of her stupor, and she stood up, getting ready to leave. Tanner showed her to the door, being significantly more gentle than she'd been on the way up, actually feeling a pulse of shame about that whole... dragging thing. Felt dreadfully uncouth. Not to mention ungrateful. Marana mumbled vaguely as she was led to her own room, to her own bed, and set down as gently as possible. Tanner looked down at the form of the woman there, and thought... oh. Oh, gods. Marana had gotten hammered drunk for this case, which wasn't much of a burden for her, but then she'd... gone with someone. Had she... Tanner deeply, deeply hoped that had been a perk for her, and that Tanner hadn't laden her with a duty that demanded she debase herself. She hadn't intended to. Wanted to apologise, deeply wanted to apologise, but... but looking down at her, already easing her way to sleep... she didn't look overly troubled. If anything, she looked profoundly peaceful. And a spark of guilt lit up as she realised that she'd abandoned her lover to come back and report evidence that Tanner couldn't even use.

Tanner left her alone.

Tom-Tom was downstairs, drinking. Tanner moved to the kitchen, hunting for a little cured meat. Not that she had a great love for it, that cold-house had made her rather unfond of the stuff all of a sudden, but... it was the only food she had. Out of eggs - the jar they were water glassed inside was empty of all but the pickling fluid. Out of bread, only the sad end of a crust. Some dried meat, and that was it. Had to gnaw on something to keep back the baying animal in her stomach that demanded a proper meal. Tom-Tom looked up blearily as Tanner came back, a sad little sausage balanced on a too-large plate. The woman's dark eyes were fixed on her, and there was something completely genuine in them. Whatever had happened to her, it wasn't false. Whatever had happened, and whatever the context might be, she was hurt, she was afraid, and that alone demanded the presence and advice of a judge. Tanner hesitated, looking around. The woman might not have eaten since this morning, and three eggs on a bit of bread was no way to comfort someone in a state like that. Hm. Her notes were done, her stomach whispered. All she'd be doing was sitting up, awake, fuelled by citrinitas and whatever cured meat she could bring herself to choke down, pondering. And ponderments weren't of much use. No... no, she'd be writing to Eygi. Getting her thoughts in order that way. She really ought to do that. Her fingers were itching for it, itching for something to braid the chaotic strands of her thoughts into a simple, organised braid. Linear and unidirectional, flowing from the moment of the crime to the present, incorporating all relevant information. Some judges had spouses they used as sounding boards for their arguments - Tanner had Eygi. And she needed to rest her mind.

Tanner wanted to go upstairs and get back to work.

The Coral-Spinal-Judge had other ideas. The lodge had other ideas, particularly on the topic of loyalty to one's guests. Her role as a judge, especially, had other ideas, and they were firm.

"I don't suppose you've had anything to eat since breakfast?"

"...no, can't say I have. Didn't want to raid your pantry."

Wasn't much to raid.

"Would you like to get a little dinner somewhere? Or I can ask someone to go and fetch us something, the inns ought to still have something..."

Tom-Tom hummed. Seemed tempted. Sipped her wine.

"...I'm fine."

Didn't sound fine.

"Really, I'm fine. Not very hungry at all. Prefer to stay awake for a while. I saw that guard you sent my way, incidentally - stands out like a sore thumb, even in his civilian clothes. Appreciated, given what's happened."

Tanner hesitated. Then moved forward, dried sausage wobbling on its plate in a way that highlighted its loneliness.

"May I ask you something? Off the record, this isn't part of my investigation."

"Well, not exactly going to refuse, not with everything the way it is."

A pause, and a small smile entered the woman's face.

"And I've read your skull, there's the right nodes to rely on. Unless the moon's made some of them shrink."

Tanner forced a smile in return.

"I think I'm alright. But I want to ask - your name."

Tom-Tom blinked.

"My name?"

"Yes. I spoke with Mr. Lam. He explained that... Rekidans have a system of patronymics. He lacks one, due to not knowing his father. His daughter, Yan, takes his name, so Yan-Lan. I take it your father was Tom, making you…"

"Tom-Tom. More or less."

"But I've met a few other locals. Lyur. Fyeln. And... Tyer. I'm wondering if you could explain the discrepancy. If you're not too tired."

Tom-Tom was silent for a moment, before slugging back her cup of wine, leaning back with her arms over the back of her chair, tilting the thing back until it was at risk of falling backwards. She spread her legs like a man at full sprawl, and her smile creaked outwards a little more.

"Rekidans aren't all the same, Tanner. I mean, what, you're called Tanner, but I know ladies from Mahar Jovan - they've got names like... well, Marana, or Otrana, or..."

Tanner finished.

"Tonrana. Kralana. Lirana. I'm aware. Ana is a feminine suffix."

"So where does Tanner come in?"

"Old name from Jovan, and my father's from there. Back in the old days, apparently, people had two names - their public name, and their lodge name. Lodge names were secret to all but the lodge. And public names were usually short and descriptive. If someone was called Tanner..."

"They tanned leather, I get it."

Tanner nodded quietly. Though, come to think of it, 'Tanner' probably only sounded like 'Tanner' because they were from cities with very similar languages, basically two dialects of the same mother tongue. To someone else, it might sound like something else completely. Maybe in Rekidan, 'Tanner' was a loathsome curse against one's mother and one's cat. Hoped not. The two sat in silence for a moment, Tom-Tom sizing her up.

"Alright, you showed yours, I'll show mine. Rekidans aren't the same. Some of us have different types of names. Think it was a colony thing. City built colonies. People went to them. Developed different practices. Then came back and spread them. City ended up with a mixture of them. Like how Fidelizh has people with the suffix 'Dol', who just filled up one of the old colonies, bred like rabbits, came back... once upon a time, Dol was just for, like, one district that did one thing. Now they're everywhere. Same with us."

Hm. Neat explanation. Perfectly adequate. Entirely satisfying. Tanner had a small idea, though. Just a tiny one. She wanted to see Tom-Tom's house again. Wanted to check something. Before then, though, another spark of curiosity was going. Dammit. Not again. Another tangent, another thing to occupy her brain. She felt like a dog in a perfume factory, whirling and dancing after every single new scent, crashing through beautiful crystal bottles, upsetting hordes of distressed perfumers, slowly going insane as she became convinced there was a world of strange, exotic animals all around her, but she couldn't decide which one to pursue first. That was her, Tanner the Perfume-Mad Bitch. Bitch in the scientific sense, of course. Anyway. Interest.

"Do you know where...?"

"Not a clue. Shantytown, first memory was that place. Not like we were teaching history lessons about old colonies down there. Well, wouldn't really expect judges to know about it. We're a world to ourselves, down in that stinking pit."

A tiny hint of bitterness. Tiny, but potent, like the pip of a sour orange.

"No, I understand. I've done a few cases there before, it's... terrifically hot during the summer, I have to say."

"...really?"

"Oh, yes. Quite hot indeed."

"No, the cases, moron."

Tanner smiled faintly.

"Hm. Well, yes. I've done a few cases. Mostly to do with property disputes... that was my first ever brief, actually. Property dispute in the shantytown."

"Charged?"

Tanner felt slightly affronted.

"Of course not. I'm a judge. We charge what the client is capable of paying."

"...you dress pretty well for someone doing charity work."

The feeling rose, overwhelming Tanner's usual reluctance to talk about money.

"I make commissions on certain cases. Most of the money goes to the temple. I get a small cut."

Tom-Tom gestured vaguely.

"So you're encouraged to take cases which pay well."

"...in a sense, yes, but-"

"And the temple is encouraged to get cases which pay well, because they get the money too."

"True. But-"

"So if someone can pay more, they get a better judge."

"Hardly. And may I remind you, Ms. Tom-Tom, hiring a judge is not hiring some... advocate. It's hiring an arbitrator, whose opinion on a matter is final, barring exceptional cases. A judge has no reason to fight for a particular side, sometimes we turn on our own 'clients' and tell them they were fully in the wrong. If the case took long enough, sometimes we even take the fee anyway. As per normal agreements. And I assure you, we do not look down on those who do cases for free, we do look down on the excessively mercenary."

She paused, catching her breath. She disliked it when people criticised the judges. Felt like they were attacking her life choices. Tanner knew they weren't, but still. Felt that way sometimes. Tom-Tom shrugged.

"If you say so."

"I do say so, in point of fact. I do. And when Tyer is locked up and judged, I hope you'll see-"

Tom-Tom seemed to flush slightly, and waved her hands in surrender.

"Yes, you'll have told me what for, and I'll promptly surrender to your infinite wisdoms, this I swear. Please, just... sorry I was like that. Late, tired, drunk, hung-"

Tanner immediately pushed the dried sausage across the table, the plate rattling over the uneven wood with unpleasant loudness. Her smile was completely genuine.

"Please. You ought to have something to eat. I'll see if I can pick something up tomorrow morning, as soon as something opens. I still have enough ration stamps, I think."

Tom-Tom looked rather embarrassed indeed. That was an interesting change of pace.

"Use mine, it's food for me, so-"

"No, but thank you for the offer. Eat up. And try not to stay up too late."

Tom-Tom snorted, leaning forwards and planting both elbows on the table, grinning as she rested her head on her hands.

"Yes, mother."

"Honoured mother, surely?"

"Oh, the big lady does jokes now, does she?

"As a matter of fact, she does. Sometimes."

Barely a few minutes ago she'd been drinking and drinking while staring ahead. Now she was grinning and talking like always. Tanner... well, she liked to think this was what happened when you treated a client with dignity and respect. What was it Sister Halima said to her, while they were having lunch on a gloomy autumn morning? 'At its worst, engaging with the law drains a client of agency. They become instigators of a path they can't control, which is completely out of their hands. They sacrifice their life, their confidence, their self-assurance, their agency, their money, their freedom, into systems they don't understand, managed by individuals who might as well be magicians or high priests. They surrender freedom to us, in exchange for justice. At its worst, this justice doesn't come about, and they wind up miserable and devoid of any kind of self-esteem, robbed of it by laws they can't get their head around. At its best, though... the law rewards the faith placed in it. At our best, we're the weapon of the innocent against the guilty, nothing but straightforward tools applied to rectify injustice. So, be nice to your client. And that, Tanner, is why you should smile more, especially when you're passing me the gravy. Speaking of which, I'd like some pepper, too.'

Sister Halima had been a wonderful teacher.

And now, Tanner had to write to a wonderful friend.

Could already imagine the first lines...

But weariness was clawing at her mind. Clawing at her face, encouraging it to senselessness.

And when she went to her room, standard pen in hand, paper arrayed...

She was asleep with her head pressing into the desk before she could get out more than a paragraph.