CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE - THE GREAT SEAL AND A WALK IN THE SNOW

Days rolled by, with little to differentiate them. Tanner became less a judge, and more of a professional inn reviewer. Well, she facilitated the reviews, Marana actually put them into words. The inn over by the eastern quarter was good, but lacked variety with its liquor. The southern quarter had a surly innkeeper, but the chairs were the comfiest in town. And so on. After a week, Tanner found herself feeling unpleasantly fleshy as a consequence of too much pie, and little twitches of shame ran up and down her spine when she saw the broad-chested, well-heeled soldiers marching about. All confident and cocky and devoid of winter fat. Feh. Tanner started taking long morning constitutionals, and evening constitutionals, and within a few days she was just... walking around the colony, over and over, admiring the walls, admiring the hills, admiring the ground, admiring the sky, before she just set her eyes ahead and trudged stubbornly onwards, hour upon hour upon hour. After a while, she went a little further, started insisting on carrying her papers and tools around wherever she went, like some sort of travelling doctor. Marana thought she was mad. But Marana was clearly going mad herself. Slumping from drink to drink, her nose growing redder and redder and redder, like a balloon swelling up until... pop.

Well, in this case, pop meant collapsing in a drunken haze, snoring away, her nose gradually resuming a state of paleness. Everyone knew alcohol was stored in the nose, and when you got too drunk, the alcohol had to explode outwards - like fluid from the appendix - and entered the brain, thus forcing the mind to go to sleep as one's thoughts became permeated with bubbles and boozesome delusions.

"Well, that sounds completely correct - my mind is surfeited with amazing, astounding, and otherwise incomprehensible ideas, and must go into a coma to process it all. Alcohol is the holy medium which allows for interface between myself and a hyper-real version of myself which is blessed with infinite knowledge and terrible insights into the nature of reality."

Tanner remembered just staring at her when Marana had spun that story. Undermined by the fact that she was drooling into a table and was on her way to passing out.

"...beg pardon, Tanner, beg pardon, beg pardon, I'm going off to hyper-reality to snog my hyper-real self. Flurgh..."

That wasn't the sound of her, ah, snogging her hyper-real self.

That was the sound of her spilling a little trail of vomit from her slack, unconscious lips.

Tanner wished she was awake. She had comments about 'goodness, I suppose hyper-real Marana's tongue tastes awful, doesn't it?' but no-one would get the reference, no-one was coming near to them anyway, and Marana had passed out. Truly, reality was unfair.

And that was... really it. Tom-Tom wasn't a friend, if anything, she was an informant. An informant who delivered startlingly little information. Since Tanner had arrived in this colony, she'd learned the basic gist of things, judged precisely three disputes over mild nuisances (one: excessive noise due to vigorous lovemaking between two civilians in a neighbouring home with thin walls. Judgement: quiet down, informal warning, general request to be more polite. Two: anonymous pile of vomit found in an inconvenient place outside a person's house. Judgement: mystery unsolved, perpetrator still at large. Three: escaped cat. Judgement: polite interrogation of Tom-Tom yielding no results, sentry duty with large bucket of fish, eventual success when cat was found to have moved to someone else's house once they started providing more food) and had failed to piss anyone off severely. She read. She drank. She ate. She walked. She walked a lot. Marana needed a purpose in her life, and sometimes she found it, by doodling away. She actually had a damn good grasp of the technical side of art, she wasn't just flinging paint at a page and calling it a day - her canvases became quickly cluttered with the cramped roofs of the colony, the soaring statues of the city, the little black mark of the governor's mansion on its imperious hillock... she even started painting the workers.

That was her current project, between drinking binges to 'renew her artistic muse'. Every morning, she'd haul her easel out, thick dark glasses over her eyes to shield her virginal hangover from the thrusting intrusions of the sun's girthy beams (Tanner hated herself for thinking this, but she thought it nonetheless, and she judged herself for it), and she'd set herself up by the main path leading to the Breach. Even as the work on clearing the city continued, this was still the primary means of getting in. There was even talk, apparently, of never really repairing it - just turning the colony into a weird warty bulge in the wall. Anyway. Marana would sit by this path, well-worn by feet tromping past day after day after day, wearing a permanent scar into the snow... and she'd draw. The same easel, every day. The same canvas, every day. Each day, she added the same figures in different positions, drawing as many as she could, starting with great refinement and delicacy, descending to charcoal-esque scrawls as her hand grew tired and the crowd grew thicker. Body upon body upon body, marching over and over and over again. When Tanner asked her when the painting would be done, Marana just looked at her over her dark glasses, shrugged, and said:

"When I need to start painting another one."

No idea what the final product would look like. But it made Tanner think... well, when she walked around the colony, she left footprints that vanished a minute later in the perishingly thick snow. If she could see all her prints, see how far she'd walked, how long she'd been doing it, a dark ring worn into the world... would she keep walking, proud of what she'd done? Would she feel some concrete sense of the passage of time, and how she was wasting time on routines? Would she stop walking, content that she'd done enough?

...eh, probably not. She quite liked routines. If she could, she'd gladly slip into the slow dreaming of routine, just like she had in the labyrinth in Fidelizh. But the low, keening hint of unease at the edge of her mind, like a finger playing around the edge of a wine glass and yielding a tooth-aching note, kept her pinned to conventional time. Not sure what was going on here, but she knew there were things she didn't know. And yet... how could she start? What thread could she pluck without unravelling everything around her? So much was made up of small, tiny notes which built up to a general sense of uncanniness, but individually? Nothing at all. Like snowflakes. A single one was nothing, crumpled on contact, even mild body heat enough to melt it and disintegrate the whole structure. But together?

She knew well how those tiny flakes could add up.

Anyway. Returning to the art, to the point of it, to the terror of routine - sod it. Walking was good for her. She had no reason not to do it.

And one day, she developed another reason.

She'd been striding along, wading through the snow and enjoying the slow burn in her muscles, the gathering rumble in her stomach that demanded food, the feeling of existence. Her coat was drawn tight, her scarf was snug around her mouth and neck, her boots were sturdy... nothing about her was unprepared. She knew what it felt like when the cold was dangerous, knew when snowfall was a flurry and when it was a blizzard, or about to become one. She knew to never stray too far from the walls. Stray too far, and you came into the spiderwebbing rivers and streams, often shallow, and sometimes not completely frozen. Step on them, and a foot could plunge down into the dark, into water so cold it could turn a limb black and dead in a matter of hours. She knew not to light fires beneath trees, for fear of snow falling on her head. Knew to fear numbness when it came. To know when it could kill. Hypothermia was a terror to her, even now, even after a few weeks of the intense cold, yet... well, she was trying to overcome it. Without routine to anaesthetise her, every last criteria of weakness stood out to her. Her fears, her ignorance, her deficiencies of character, each one blaring and livid as gangrene in a milk-white limb. And the shudder of fear that went through her when she felt that numbness, for a second lost track of the walls, felt the ground shift or her fingers slip, or simply heard rumblings amongst the frost-licked workers of 'poor skies' and 'bastard cold'...

Well. She was aware.

And if the world was going to keep reminding her, and if routine wasn't going to numb her, she might as well try and take care of it. Keep walking in the snow until her fear of going mad with cold faded. Keep walking until she stopped seeing things lurking behind every drift. Keep walking until she stopped thinking about the crunch of an overturning carriage, the still, dead form of the coachman, the squealing of the horses, the thump of a pistol in her hands, the dreadful, dreadful silence, the feeling of something rasping a dry tongue and sharp teeth over her hand like a cat hungry for the meanest scrap of food, until the vision of a little fire burning in a hollow ribcage left her, until...

Stop it.

Just... walk. Day after day.

And one of those days, as she engaged in her exertions... she found herself with a spot of company.

* * *

A dark shape in the snow. Moving towards her, struggling through the ever-mounting piles of the stuff. Tanner paused, looking over her shoulder. A tiny flush of fear. Mutant? Murderer? Tom-Tom coming to ask her to gut more fish, or to measure her head to read her future? The Erlize, ready to arrest her? Running wasn't an option, and all she could do was watch the dark shape struggle closer, slowly resolving through the glare of the noonday sun, one of the few times over the last few days the damn thing had shown its face. The mutant hypothesis was discarded quickly. She saw the flapping trail of a coat. She saw telltale puffs of steam coming from mouth and nostrils both. All of them, irrevocably human - mutants could cool their own bodies, slow their braething to near-nothingness, adapting to make themselves stealthier to any sense. The murderer hypothesis was discarded as the figure marched closer, and she saw no threat in its stance. And just in case, she had a stick. A big stick. Hidden under her coat. Didn't leave home without it, not since the low keen of unease had started to play around the contours of her heart. Tom-Tom... no, no, there was no waving arm, no cry of 'hey-ho', no characteristic bandoliers filled to the brim with hooks, line, tackle, ice picks... so, Erlize?

For a second, she thought that might be the case. No sign of tweed, too far away to glimpse cufflinks, but... for a second, something about the head, silhouetted against the boundless sky, the walls of Rekida rising up in a second horizon, a man-made one, hubristically piled upon the first... it was nothing. Just a feeling.

A pause.

And a voice carried over the plain.

"Hoy there!"

Tanner blinked.

A small flush appeared in her cheeks, and she adjusted her scarf. She called back, trying to reach some ideal state where she was loud without being uncouth or hoarse. Unsure if she managed.

"Oh, hello officer!"

Sersa Bayai marched over the snow, his legs powering onwards like steam-engines, unyielding and mist-wreathed. The head resolved - no more odd contours, now she could just see close-cut black curls, sun-tanned skin, a mouth curling into a smile that was welcoming without being exuberant. She adjusted her stick, trying to make it less apparent that she was carrying a cudgel. Goodness, he was well-kept, wasn't he? High collar, clean-shaven save for his moustache, everything neatly trimmed and neatly arranged, his thick boots gleaming with melted snow, his coat impeccable... little ice crystals gleamed in his bold eyebrows, and she couldn't help but notice the very fine gleam of perspiration across his forehead from the morning's exertions. He rubbed his hands together for warmth, smiling faintly as he did so.

"Well, nice weather for a walk! First bit of sun we've had in an age, I should think."

Tanner nodded.

"Oh, quite, officer. Very bright."

"It is a bit, isn't it? I'm being a little incautious, ought to have brought some dark glasses - last thing I want is to go snow-blind. Anyway, how are you, honoured judge? Keeping in rude health?"

"Oh, you know..."

She shrugged.

"Surviving."

Bayai smile broadened incrementally, his moustache's little burden of snow crackling as he did so.

"Well, all one can do. Where are you heading?"

Tanner considered.

"...usually, I go to that hill over there. But the sun's so bright, the weather's so fine, I almost... well, might go on a further than usual."

"Not a half-bad suggestion. Would it be impertinent to ask if I could accompany you, at least part of the way?"

Oh goodness.

No, wait for a moment, don't seem odd.

"Well, I can't promise that I'd be very good company, but... yes, officer, if you like."

"Capital. March on, then?"

The two of them moved off together, and Tanner was... alright, alright, regulate her pace, not too fast, not too slow, don't do her normal practice of stuffing her hands in her pockets and propelling onwards like some sort of loosed projectile, keep her head high, amble, woman, amble, don't stride... goodness, was her breath tolerable? No, no, irrelevant, she was taller than him, he wouldn't smell a thing. Was it rude to stare ahead all the time, should she turn her head more often to look at him? Oh, goodness...

She rubbed her hands together, cultivating luck through the gloves. Wished she'd brought her pince-nez. Hm... oh, yes, idea! Adjust the scarf just so, just as she was taught as a girl, loop it around her throat like a noose, pull it slightly over her lips... bless every inhalation and exhalation with luck, bless every word spoken with little droplets of fortune. And remember, she wasn't going to go insane and break this nice fellow's neck between her fingers, that would be insane, and insanity was witchcraft, and she had a candle protecting her from that. Damn, she should have her cape, if she looked like a judge she could just pretend to be a judge, and judges were smooth operators, they were, and-

Hold on, she was a judge.

Like, an actual judge. She had qualificiations. She'd studied for seven years, practiced for one.

Come on, Tanner. Pull yourself together. What would Eygi say if she saw you like this?

No, Eygi would be perfectly lovely and conversational and Tanner would find everything easier if she was around. Marana, though, would call her a blushing maiden who probably had fits of hysteria and horror when she heard words like 'cockamamie' or 'mastication' or 'moist' or 'cockle' or-

Qualified for law. Not qualified for damn sentience, though.

Cockamamie. There, she could think that word with absolute seriousness. Cockamamie, there, she thought it again! What a merry japester she was!

"Coping with the cold?"

Tanner blinked.

"Oh, yes, quite. Thick coats, warm stoves, lots of layers. I mean, it takes some getting used to, doesn't it?"

Sersa Bayai snorted slightly.

"No shadow of a lie there. Tell you what, round this time of year, I've got to keep my lunch under my coat at all times, unless I want it frozen into a block by the time I go for it."

"Goodness."

He patted his breast for a second, revealing a fair-sized packet hidden beneath the coat.

"...not too cold, though?"

"Hm?"

The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

"I mean, you're not too cold, overall? I see those sentries standing around all day, all night, and you're talking about your lunch freezing, and..."

She trailed off weakly.

"No, no, not so bad, not so bad. North of here, though, you go too far, the snow is too deep to wade through, you have to tunnel to get anywhere. Sun never sets, neither. Just stays there for the whole cursed winter."

"...oh my. How... far north have you gone?"

"Far enough, almost scraped the mountains - almost. Part of a little airship patrol, no permanent outposts that far. Small vehicle, just good for watching the land, but... only darkness you could find to sleep in was in cupboards, or in the engine room. Theurgists got mighty angry with us soldiers huddling in their little chambers just to get a hint of shut-eye, tell you what."

A sudden memory.

"Are all theurgists... well, on the way up here, I was with some mutant-hunters, and their ship had a theurgic core. The theurgist maintaining it for part of the journey, he was... well, he was eager to talk about it. Very eager. Uncomfortably so. Are they all...?"

"Was he alone?"

"Yes, yes he was."

"Lonely theurgists will ramble to anyone. When they've got colleagues, they talk to each other and leave us out."

"...well, that makes sense."

A silence extended between the two, silence broken only by the crunching of snow. She found, to her relief, that she wasn't going to suffer from the normal problems of walking with others. He was strong, powerful, he moved quickly through the snow and resisted its attempts to slow him. She still had to amend her pace a little, but nowhere near as much as she feared. Ought to walk with military fellows more often. The silence continued, Bayai dropping into the regular march of a soldier, one which could live easily with long pauses in conversation, while Tanner was simply trying to think of something else to say.

"Mind if I ask if you could settle an argument for me? It's a barracks-room matter, small, but I'd like to know if I have the law on my side."

Tanner almost jumped with joy. Law!

"Oh, yes, of course, happy to help. What's... going on, then? I'll see if I know anything about that area of the law, but... anyway, anyway, what is it? The matter, I mean?"

She was babbling. Shush.

"Well, it's a concern from back home. I want you to imagine... look at that hill, over there. Now, there's two dwellings. One of them is lower than the other, but they're vertically aligned. But, there's heavy rain. Very heavy rain. And one dwelling slides downhill, very gently, not remotely destroyed. It's totally intact. It slides downhill, and buries the lower dwelling. Completely subsumes it. The lower dwelling is crushed under the mud, the upper dwelling sits on top of it like foam on a pint of beer, if you'll pardon the expression."

"...alright..."

"Now, what I was wondering, what the boys were wondering, is... well, who owns what, in that scenario?"

Tanner tilted her head to one side, then the other - worked for many other people, might as well give it a go herself. It certainly filled up the empty moments, made it look like she was working. Sometimes she wished the human brain was entirely made out of water, and that increased mental activity meant boiling that water into steam. That way, you could really see if someone was puzzling out something rather than just staring ahead like a dumb elk trying to comprehend an onrushing train, because steam would keep rushing out of their ears, their nose, their mouth... plus, it would give the terminally neurotic a little extra cash as suit cleaners. Pop Tanner in a room, give her someone to talk to, and a moment later she'd be steaming those suits cleaner than the day they were issued from a tailor's workshop.

Anyway.

"Context would be necessary. The uphill dwelling slid down, but the downhill dwelling didn't. Was the uphill dwelling properly anchored? Was... let's call him Mr. Uphill, was he negligible, and thus responsible for the collapse? And if this couldn't be investigated at the scene, then there could be evidence from anyone involved in constructing it, or-"

"Assuming it was all done properly, there's perfect proof of this, no way of disputing it."

Alright. Unrealistic, but alright. Identical houses of identical worth on smooth, perfect land, with no other damage performed, and absolute information on all circumstances available at all times, nothing complicated by renting, landlords, or kingdom-specific law. In short, something which could never, ever happen.

"...well, it's ultimately a question of whether you own the house, or the land it's built on. In Golden Door jurisprudence, the stance is that when you occupy a piece of land, you purchase a kind of... pillar, I suppose. A pillar going right down to the centre of the earth. Anything permanently within this pillar is yours, theoretically speaking. Dig under your house, it's still your land. Build a bridge over your house, it's still your land. Technically, when you buy a piece of land, you're buying a tiny scrap on the surface of the world's core, which then extends upwards until you run out of air."

"So..."

"So, the uphill house is still, technically, in possession of Mr. Uphill, but he'll need to come and retrieve it. Otherwise, he agrees to surrender it to Mr. Downhill, who by no fault of his own has another's possession within his property, and if this possession is known to have shifted by Mr. Uphill, then the obligation rests with him to reclaim it. Otherwise, after a period of time, it's considered abandoned. Theft is the dishonest appropriation of property belonging to another with the intention to permanently deprive - Mr. Downhill did not acquire it dishonestly, and had no intention to permanently deprive. So long as he waits for the approved period of twelve months, he would be allowed to claim the house for his own."

"...and in the meantime?"

"He ought not go inside."

"Squatting?"

"No, the house is a possession that has vacated the property - but he'd better not damage it while he was inside, or he's damaging someone else's possession, which is a crime.

Bayai paused. Blinked. Snorted.

"That's... alright. Alright."

"Did I settle the argument?"

A pause, and Bayai seemed to be considering something else."

"Couldn't someone compel Mr. Downhill to repatriate the house, though? Given that Mr. Uphill didn't forcibly place it there."

"Mr. Uphill's house damaged Mr. Downhill's house severely, legally speaking, Mr. Downhill could claim that his livelihood and capacity to repatriate were damaged by the house, meaning, the onus would shift to Mr. Uphill. That's... actually the part of the law which means being shot with a bullet accidentally and walking away afterwards doesn't mean you're stealing lost property."

Another snort.

"That's ridiculous."

Tanner bristled.

"Well, that's where context comes in."

Bayai hummed.

"Hm. Military speaking, same as the idea that 'no plan survives contact with the enemy'. Every plan is wonderful when you have it mapped out on a flat piece of paper, but the moment people are actually locking bayonets while knee-deep in mud..."

He paused.

"...actually. Honoured judge, could I tell a joke?"

Tanner was still bristling a little at the slight against her profession. The law was not ridiculous, it was lovely and straightforward. It was only silly when you dumped it into an unearthly environment devoid of all the complexities which anchored the law in place. See, this was why the judges hadn't figured out the golden law quite yet - because it had to account for reality. If you just invented ideal precepts and said they were perfect and self-evident, well, then they had to descend to reality. Like sunlight! Stand in a flat expanse with no clouds above, and no atmosphere to protect, and the sun was a bastard monster that melted you into slurry. But stand in a shady forest on a slightly cloudy day at a normal altitude, and the sun was a delightfully warming presence. But you weren't really experiencing the sun, were you? You were just experiencing the descensions of the sun, the condescensions, even. The golden law was like... like taking the warming, comforting sun, and making that the sun, the one and only, requiring no adulteration or interference to become bearable, it just was bearable. Gah. And she really wanted to ramble about this, but she was keenly aware that reciting Sister Halima's many precepts on the Golden-Law-as-the-Sun would bore him, make her seem like a lunatic, and probably strain her voice.

Wait he'd asked a question.

What had the question been?

Something about...

No, no idea.

Just nod and smile.

Nod and smile, you quixotic moose!

"Well, there's a bunch of soldiers during the Great War. And they're all standing on a ridge, planning out the best way of assailing the enemy. But, wonder of wonderments, there's a bushel of refugees nearby! And among them are a number of famous academics, shivering and using their gowns as blankets. The soldiers, impressed by their qualifications, drag them out of the camp, march them to the ridge, and ask them to apply their immense learning to the battle. What should be done? And the scholars think, for nearly a full hour. A theurgist hints at an immaculate solution and refuses to elaborate further. An engineer insists on inspecting every single gun. A judge checks to see if there's any precedent for apocalyptic wars. And a scholar of physics outlines a perfect plan for how to attack the horde. Unfortunately, it only applies against spherical mutants in a vacuum."

Tanner blinked.

Croaked out an awkward laugh. Bayai shrugged.

"It's a terrible joke. Funny, isn't it, though? Not the joke, I mean. Jokes in general. Heard some legal humour once, something to do with... well, it was very complicated, and I didn't quite understand it. Sandwiches featured, I know that much. And then there's soldier humour, which is unprintable."

Tanner hummed.

"I suppose. Incompatible humour."

"Isn't the term 'irreconcilable differences'?"

Tanner let out an involuntary bark of laughter, barely muffled by her scarf, and she clapped her hand over her mouth immediately. Crumbs. People either had good laughter or bad laughter. Good laughter tinkled and chimed and sounded like a mountain wind going through a chandelier. Good laughter was infectious. Bad laughter was terminal. Bad laughter whooped and snorted. And no matter what, Tanner was convinced she had a bad laugh. Blamed it on her larger-than-average lungs. Crumbs, crumbs...

"Well, splendid, I can do legal humour."

"Yes, officer, I suppose... well, I suppose you can."

"Can you do soldier humour?"

Tanner remembered the mutant-hunter with the fused fingers who'd implied Tanner was taking a woman below the decks for her monstrous harem, or something along those lines. Done rather a good Tenk impression, too.

"I... don't believe I can. I do have one about some cigars and insurance, though. So, a man buys a box of cigars, takes out insurance for destruction by fire, smokes the cigars, then applies for the insurance policy. It's brought before a judge. The contract, however, didn't include any specification that the policy was void if the client liked having something of his own burned. The company paid out the appropriate quantity of money... and then called the police to arrest the client for arson."

Tanner shrugged.

"I'm... not good at telling jokes."

"Well, nor am I. Tell you something, and you can't tell any of the other men this, but being an officer means you have to keep a stiff upper lip - and that's just wonderful. If you don't make any jokes, it's because you're aloof and dignified. If you don't quip or snark, you're just... detached from worldly matters. They all think I'm a pillar of the community, a steadfast commander. They've no idea."

Tanner felt more kinship in that moment than she thought possible. She wanted to say 'oh by all the gods yes, I completely understand your position, I, for instance, am constantly on the verge of melting into sludge, and I'm holding myself together with ribbons and capes, truly we're best friends, truly we should walk more, also would you like to go and gnaw on cured sausages together? It's winter so that's all we can eat, but I'd love to chomp on a sausage with you. Oh no-'

She stopped thinking.

Her thoughts were silly.

The two walked in silence for a while longer, Tanner struggling to think of what to say. Goodness, talking and walking made the walking feel much longer indeed, didn't it? Hooh. As they continued to struggle up the snowy hill, legs thoroughly numbed (though not dangerously so) and the sky blaring with infinite blue shades, like the issuance of some odd chemical reaction... Bayai spoke, his voice consciously light.

"You're from Mahar Jovan, aren't you?"

"Yes, officer."

"Come on, Bayai will do, I'm not even in uniform."

"...yes, Bayai. Alright."

"Just out of interest, what do you... think of the Rekidans? The people round here?"

Tanner hummed thoughtfully, forgetting the cold for a moment as she indulged in a little cognition. If her proposed innovations of the human form when it came to brains, water, steam, etc. etc. had been carried out, she'd be doing a passable impression of a kettle right now. As it was, she... well, she naturally wanted to be reticent. Didn't want to make any judgements. But she'd been chatting. If she were to grade this conversation on a scale from one to ten, she'd say this was at least an eight, maybe eight-and-a-half! This wasn't an interview, they were just having a walk-and-talk. They told bad jokes, she was feeling more relaxed, the ice crystals in his hair were glittering in a rather appealing fashion...

"...I think... well, I think they might be... now, this is a hunch, pure and simple, nothing beyond a hunch, but it reminds me slightly of home. Of Jovan, at least. In Jovan, we have our lodges, little secret societies we belong to, mostly family-based, which have their own rites, their own beliefs... not cults, I want to clarify. Not cults. Everyone belongs to a lodge."

The soldier said nothing, so she soldiered on herself.

"And... well, you talk to people, but you're keenly aware that they're not really talking with you, not really. Their only real conversations are with other lodge members. Anyway. They don't complain about anything, and... well, this is between us, yes?"

"If the governor interrogates me, I have to tell him about my activities and conversations. Won't lie on that point. But, well, like you said - hunches. I don't have to tell him if he doesn't ask - and I doubt he will."

Well. Excellent.

"It feels like they have their own habits, their own lives. And... I honestly don't think an outsider would join them. You know, you should talk to Marana about this, she has good insights into how colonies work. She was in Krodaw."

Her voice became almost conspiratorial, and the way Bayai leaned in to listen made her feel a very small thrill of... well, having someone to gossip with. She only gossiped with Eygi when she was younger. Then, she gossiped via letter. Then, with Marana. But never two at once, not really. Eygi was good, Eygi was wonderful, but... anyway.

Anyway.

"Is that right?"

"Oh, yes. She's quite open about it. But, well, don't interrogate her about Krodaw, it was ugly up there. Not good business. But she'll talk about peoples till the cows go home, how groups interact, everything. I think the locals just like sticking to their own, and they don't like complaining. I mean, they're in a new home, and winter's coming in. I doubt they want to be too vocal about things."

"Is it annoying?"

"A little. Makes me feel a bit useless. Probably would be easier if there were more judges around, spread things out... I can only be in one place at a time."

"So the law, the interviews, the complaints, it all gets wrapped up in one person."

"Exactly."

Bayai hummed.

"I'm familiar. I joined the officer corps when I was sixteen, they start us young these days, and when I was... twenty, I had a little spot of convalescence. Wound in the leg during a skirmish out in one of the more unruly inner colonies, had a bit of time off to recover, get all my motion back. No, no, all healed, the walks keep it limber. I went off to a little place, off near Tuz-Drakkat - uncle had a little place there, inherited from someone or someone. And I was the only soldier. Foreigner, soldier, 'veteran'... law and authority wrapped up together in this little place. Felt like everything was just settling on me. Wanted me to settle arguments, when a fight broke out I was meant to break it up..."

I'm the same! I'm the same! I get it! I get it! Too much responsibility on someone who's not ready for it! Doubtless you managed it, of course. I mean, you're tough, presumably. Trained. I'm not remotely ready, and the stakes are much too high, but it'd be a ghastly thing to talk about. I'm a judge, after all. Judges are dry-humoured engines of impeccable confidence. Judges don't complain - they just hear complaints.

"Please, go on."

"Not much else to say on the topic. It wasn't very restful, but... either way. Matter was handled, matter was settled. Back to work a few months later, and I made sure to guard my legs better. But I understand what you mean, when it comes to that business with becoming too... anyhow. Certainly, I know how people here don't complain about anything. Do you want to know what unnerves me, though?"

"Oh?"

"I never see them praying."

Tanner blinked owlishly.

"...oh?"

"Well, be fair, look at the city - it's not the largest city, been isolated for most of its history... but look at those statues, the air of it all. This is a city with idols, blast it."

He gestured grandly, a light smile on his face indicating that he still wasn't taking this with deathly seriousness, this was still just a chat, a little venting of frustrations. Tanner nodded along.

"Back home in Fidelizh, there's the gods riding on our backs. Mahar has... something to do with clothes, I remember that. Jovan, you said there were lodges. Herxiel out east has those smoky steelwork-shamans and girder-totems. Apo... they've got that church of the wavelength, missionaries come up from the south, Sundragare has hundreds of prophets on every street corner, and yet here... here people wake up, they work, they go to the inn, they go to bed."

"...hm."

"Thoughts?"

"Could be... I suppose they might be very private on the topic. And..."

She glanced around automatically, looking for tweed-suited figures with glittering cufflinks and dead-yet-clever eyes.

"...well, back in Fidelizh, it's not like the Erlize is... fond of... well, that is to say..."

"They don't like it when the shantytowners go around bellowing about their myriad sects, I'm quite aware, one of my mates was involved in that... crackdown, two years ago. "

"Oh my."

"Hm. So, think their gods were just beaten out?"

"...I wouldn't use those terms."

A pulse of nervousness. An awareness of what she'd revealed. Hm.

"Well, maybe... maybe. They leave Rekida, that's damage, they get to Fidelizh, that's more damage, for years and years, the old generation grows up and almost dies out, the young generation grows to their majority and gets wheeled out here... well, should be thankful. Back during the old convalescence, I was being asked to handle bar fights, sheep disputes, hedges, yelling at the local delinquents until they did all their work quietly... but never religion. They never wanted me touching that side of things."

He shrugged lightly.

"I don't know. It all feels peaceful, out here. Good spot to live, if you can bear up with the cold. But I'll say this for nowt, and I'll say it twice if need be, for every nine things that slip by like river water, there's one thing that slithers by like river weed. Then you shiver, and wonder how much else you're missing."

Another shrug. A smile. She smiled back, shyly.

"...I suppose so, yes."

She paused.

"...you know, the person who... well, someone who helped me when I was young, she talked about this sort of thing. Religion. What it meant, what it reflected. Ought to write to her... not just about this, about... well, just to catch up. Nightmare sending things her way, she's always moving, or she's in ALD IOM, and that's always been hard to reach... anyway. Sorry to ramble. Now you come to mention it, though... interesting, I don't think I've really seen them do much. Still, well, could be more private. I mean, when I first arrived in Fidelizh, if I didn't know about the gods, I'd just have seen... people with odd fashion senses. And when I first visited Jovan, I knew a bit about the lodges. If I didn't, I'd just think it was unfriendly. Anyway, anyway..."

They stopped suddenly, right at the top of the hill. Managed to scale quite a few, actually, going from one to the next to the next. Until eventually they were... quite high up indeed. The world was terribly bright, almost blinding. The city spread before them like a tapestry, and Tanner could see the numerous towers standing here and there around the countryside, chained down. The gods of the walls were almost toy-like in their smallness, but the city was still... hm. She was going to say large, but it wasn't, really. It was the right sort of size if the statues were the inhabitants, but for humans, it seemed oddly misshapen. She'd never seen it from this angle, never walked this far, never in such clear weather... the streets were broad, rubble-filled. The houses were towering, and ornamented richly. Statues everywhere. Statues and columns. Like monumentality was a hobby for them, something they just did. Maybe that was the religion here - building. Building and building and building until the city filled up and there was no further room. Contained by walls, and too sacred to build outside. Maybe the locals were... well, how could you have a cult of monumentalism when you were a mass of starving refugees on a long pilgrimage south? How could you sustain that cult once you'd spent most of a generation living in a cramped shantytown where a small well would demand a fleet of permits, an organised assault on the labyrinthine bureaucracy of the Golden Parliament? Maybe their religion was in front of them. Maybe their religion was digging up the rubble and restoring the city to its former grandeur.

...would that be a problem, once Fidelizh tried to own this city?

Thoughts. Many thoughts. Problems in her mind, complications.

Hm. The streets were... don't get her wrong, the city was beautiful, in a ragged-yet-austere kind of way, but... the walls seemed almost comically outsized compared to the city within. Not that the city within was small, not by any means, but it was definitely smaller than the walls would suggest. Not a massive discrepancy, but... a discrepancy. Wondered how long it took them to build the walls, how much labour. Imagined them working, day after day in the freezing cold, snapping ice away to stop it from infiltrating their work... must've taken years. Less a set of walls, more of a national obsession. Practically an industry in and of itself. And so ornamented... every single siege, they'd have to rebuild the statues. Bizarre. Operating to priorities she didn't even pretend to understand.

And something in the middle of the city caught her attention. She peered. And Bayai hummed.

"Ah. You've seen it."

"What... is it, exactly?"

"A plug."

It was a giant mass of fused, scorched rubble, that was what it was. Must've been done by airship, really. Explosives to rip apart the central buildings, then carpet-bombing with the hottest damn fuel imaginable, the sort of thing that water couldn't extinguish, that needed to be peeled drop by drop from the flesh before the burning would stop. A black, strange mark, black as carbonised wood, black as oil, sitting right in the middle of the city.

"A plug covering what?"

"They made a hole in the foundation stone."

Tanner's eyes widened.

"...I beg your... I mean, what?"

"Mutants. When they took the city, they didn't just want the people. Foundation stone. Bored through it, made that little hole... absolute fount of contamination. Only way to stop it was to blow up the surrounding buildings, then drench it with fire, fuse things, kill off anything living in the stuff. Airship doused it in gravel, too - that took a good while."

Tanner stared.

And now she thought about it...

Why not?

Foundation stone lay under every major city in the world - every permanent city. A massive deposit, a pillar on which humanity could rest. Lesser deposits leached into the soil in other areas, creating short-lived patches of stability to settle on, where contamination couldn't seep. Mutants hated the stuff. Nothing to gain. Sometimes they might choose to live on foundation stone, if there was a good reason, but... if foundation stone allowed for permanent human settlement, it made all mutant settlement utterly temporary. It made cities safe. Made cities last. Colonies came and went, villages could live and die in the span of a few generations, but cities... they were unending. Truly, truly unending.

...now she thought about it, why shouldn't mutants try to rip it out of the soil?

Why shouldn't they bore a hole through the great pillar, looking for sources of contamination that no mutant had touched? Sources sealed away, reservoirs locked up since the world was young, since before the mountains were full-grown...

A black seal stood in front of her, a pupil in the perfectly circular eye of Rekida. Staring. Unblinking. Sleepless, even.

And she shivered.