CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE - LAND OF POOR OMENS

The night was fitful and restless. Every time Tanner closed her eyes, she found herself fearing the consequences, imagined nimble fingers opening the doors, imagined waking to find a pair of soulless silver eyes staring into her own, incapable of blinking, incapable of sleeping. Here to investigate her and Marana, to see if they'd kept anything around during their time on the boat. Even if they didn't find anything, it was still dangerous to be in close quarters with a mutant. If it felt threatened, if it felt like it couldn't escape swiftly, it'd fight. Even if it was simply running away, it might still inflict damage on the way out, and... and how long would it take for the others, the other mutants that were surely outside, to think to themselves 'well, we've clearly annoyed this bunch, they're clearly inclined to violence, best to nip this problem in the bud. Tear them to pieces, and stop them from reporting our presence'. She knew that was ludicrous, she wasn't sure how much intelligent lingered in those swollen skulls, but it almost hardly mattered. She didn't know how they'd react. Their logic was beyond her, and... anyway. She remained awake. Staring into the dark, waiting for dawn to come, treasuring the safety of the coach. The horses, at least, were good detectors of trouble, though she found her heart rate increasing every time one of them snorted in its sleep. Terrified that it had smelled contamination, and was growing agitated.

The moment she got into Rekida, she intended on soaking her clothes in enough smoke to make them basically intolerable to be around... but also definitively purged of any lingering taint, anything that a mutant might find curious. It was like... yes, like dealing with a bear, you kept your food suspended away from your camp, she remembered hearing that in the Annals of Tenk, during their adventures with the bearlords of Strulgamathria. Keep the food away, let the bear take it and move on, don't risk contact. Same with mutants. Either way. She stayed awake, and huddled into her greatcoat, sometimes stretching out languidly just to keep her muscles properly limbered up, ready to run, or fight. She'd never hurt something deliberately before. Never. Never struck someone in the face, never really gone out of her way to make someone else suffer. Wondered if she could break a mutant, if it wore a human's face. If she could feel bone split under her fists. Could crush something, the way she always knew she was capable of, if she pushed herself, if she lost all restraint. Remembered being a child. Accidentally snapping an arm while playing too hard. That crack had inspired a terror in her, a fear of what she could do if she went too far. Even if the memory of the crack had slowly faded away into vague, easily confused impulses, the terror had lingered, like an arrowhead embedded into a healthy limb, scraping when the wrong motion was made. Most of the time, she avoided such motions.

Sometimes, she didn't. Forgot. Slipped up. And the scrape would bring it all crashing back.

Morning came in a haze of unyielding light, and the slow, steady patter of snowfall, quieter and softer than rain, whispering across the roof of the house. The coachman could be heard rising, groaning, stretching, shuffling outdoors to relieve himself... when he came back to slam on the coach door, he already had a cigarette dangling from his lips. Tanner had seen how cigarette smoke could dry out hair, leach it of colour, turn it a sickly yellow and permeate it down to the roots. Wondered if his mutton chops would up the same way, or if the smoke would miss it, head straight for the top, and he'd wind up looking like an egg in a hairy egg-cup. Anyway. Marana woke grumpily, and sat stiffly, almost regally in her seat, waiting for the day to begin. And begin it did, and unceremoniously. The coachman had work to be getting on with, and though he was clearly trying not to show it, the approach of those mutants last night, ahead of schedule, had clearly tickled something in the grey matter. Something ever-so-slightly nervous. And it transmitted to the horses, who whinnied disconsolately, the great cold beyond swallowing up their voices and turning them to silence.

The world beyond was silver. Glittering. Shockingly cold.

Without any further ado, the coachman set off, and they clattered into the wilderness, the wheels of the carriage almost whisper-quiet amidst the snow. But when a little sound emerged, it seemed to only reach a few inches away from the source before the snow swallowed it whole. Were it not for her paranoia, Tanner would've drawn a curtain over the small window, shut out all the brightness, so glaringly intense that it was impossible to really see into the distance. But she wanted to see the enemy. Needed to.

"Gods, Tanner, calm your mammaries."

Tanner twitched. Her nose wrinkled.

"Please, could you-"

"Oh, come now, that was barely vulgarity. All I'm saying is that the instruments you use for feeding your squalling brood should be kept under control."

Tanner looked at her. Sized her up.

"It feels like my mother is being vulgar. And that just feels... viscerally wrong."

Marana froze.

"Take that back."

"No."

"Take that back, you gibbon."

"My mother is around your age."

"I will hit you."

Tanner didn't dignify that with a response. Marana knew it wouldn't work. She was smaller than Tanner. And older. And drunker. Tanner hadn't gotten properly drunk once in her entire life, the desire to get really drunk would need to overpower her natural frugality, and her frugality was mighty indeed. This presumably meant she was physically superior to Tanner. Behold, her liver was immaculate. Behold, her digestion was smooth and flawless. And her nose was not remotely... ah, hell, it was cold outside, her nose was about as red as Marana's during her binges. And she did drink coca wine. Not sure what mild quantities of cocaine did to the system, but...

No, wait, Marana said she'd once offered Carza vo Anka cocaine, presumably that meant she used the pure stuff. Tanner was still ahead.

"...old enough to be your mother, not my fault your mother is unusually young, what, did she enjoy dallying in the company of gentlemen early on?"

"No. She's normal-aged."

"Oh, your mother is normal-aged, but I'm middle-aged. I see how it is. Blatant favouritism, that's what. I won't stand for it - that's elitism, that's elitism which unreasonably benefits your parents simply because they gestated you, while I'm doing my best to initiate you into the ways of righteousness. I reject elitism in all its forms, each and every one, I reject all arbitrary boundaries as ridiculous, and I-"

"You're a governor's daughter."

"Ex-governor's daughter, darling, ex, I know it's a terribly unusual letter, twenty-fourth, but it's quite pivotal in this circumstance. He was deposed, remember. Kicked out, tail between his legs, running home on the last train he could catch."

Marana's words ran ahead of herself, and her mouth closed with a dainty click as she seemed to... remember something, or relive it. Her face wasn't flushed with embarrassment, but her jaw tightened up a little, and she stared fixedly out of the window for a long, uncomfortable moment. Again, Tanner wondered what she'd seen. Who she'd known. What had happened in the last days of Mahar Jovan's largest and sweetest colony, dragged away into the steaming forest by the Sleepless, leaving nothing but a black mark in the train stations, a downward cast to the eyes of their kings, a class of people in the city who spoke with strange accents and always seemed strangely haunted by something unnameable. A layer of spectral scar tissue running throughout both cities, even the cloistered corners of Jovan remembered Krodaw, and not very fondly. Even if she'd heard the lodge complaining about how 'Jovan was Mahar's first colony', there was a dim sense of horror at what had happened to its second. A thought.

"Did you say 'ways of righteousness'?"

Marana blinked.

Her smile was automatic at first, fixed in place by decorum. An empty bowl that meaning took a few moments to flow into, before the thing could become genuine.

"Oh, yes. Well, that's just a turn of phrase. Means very little. Certainly, I hope that by the time the two of us part ways, you'll have a good taste for the finer things, for art, and you might be able to hold a conversation properly. That's all."

"Hm."

"Oh, don't judge me like that, with those big eyes of yours."

"I am a judge."

"And I'm a surrealist, but you don't see me hitting you with lobsters at random intervals."

"We're inland."

"See, Tanner, this is what we're going to solve, you and I. This sort of patter you have, where you either resort to panicked apologies, lengthy rambles about eels, mechanics nods and shakes, or this, just endless sass. I intend to correct it."

"You've taught me nothing."

"Teaching is authoritarian hoo-ha invented by factory owners who wanted workers who could operate more complex machines, all schools resemble factories, and all factories resemble prisons. I teach by osmosis. I emanate teachings. I positively ooze wisdom from each of my immaculate pores. Absorb them where your ignorance supplies a void. Reject them where your knowledge is complete. And that shall be all. I teach nothing? I dictate nothing."

Tanner's eyes were narrowed, but her mouth was curling into something of a smile, even if weariness still clawed around the fringes of her brain, tugging at the bottom of her eyelids.

"You're absurd."

"And you're exhausted. Go to sleep."

"You can tell?"

"You look like you've smeared your eyelids with tar, darling, they're positively blackened by weariness."

Tanner hesitated. Shouldn't sleep. They'd gotten through one day of travel, just the one, they had to get through two more before she could feel safe. She could handle not sleeping for seventy two hours, right? Presumably? Out of paranoia? See, if she was one of her colleagues, she could say 'ah, yes, pish-tush and flim-flam, I spent one hundred and eight hours awake, fuelled by nothing but a handful of cheroots and a pint of citrinitas, all to complete my latest judgement! This should be a piece of proverbial pastry, ho ho ho!' But, alas, she had a healthy sleep schedule. Always had. If people couldn't get their work done in time, it usually meant they had bad work habits, went out for too many lunches, or worst of all, canoodled with other people in the hours when they should be studying tax law. Not Tanner. Tanner was too competent to canoodle, she was.

Gods, she really did need to sleep, didn't she?

And she stared out towards the plains, the rolling expanse of snow and ice, punctuated by the silhouettes of raggedy leafless trees, standing like lone soldiers on the horizon. How many of those trees were contaminated in some way? She'd heard stories about those, about carnivorous trees with needle-thin branches, or the hollow remnants of mutated trees were great slithering mutants lurked, burrowed into the devoured trunk, gnawing away at the roots for a hint of power. The lodge had a mystery play about those, she remembered. The mystery plays were... right, thinking of the lodge either terrified her or sent her to sleep. Might as well. The mystery plays were enacted over and over to incarnate the events and virtues they described. Like Fidelizh with its gods that rode on the backs of mortals, the lodges invited the past into the present in order to sustain the future. The dead riding on the backs of the living. She was usually the monster in these plays - she was large enough, clumsy enough, and the monster was always the least prestigious part. She remembered the story about the Bristle-Back Man who marched off into the forest to kill the slithering thing in the hollow elm tree, a tree which had stood for years and grown fat on the rot in the earth, until a great beast came to devour it. Other heroes had come to fight the thing with spear and sword, but the mutant simply sprayed them with its poisonous blood, which marked them for death at the hands of other mutants. Or mutated them into the tree's newest protectors, enslaved to the gifts of its master. The Bristle-Back Man chose another option. He ignored the bleating of others, and set a great fire throughout the forest. Villagers wailed at the loss of their homes, soldiers marched against the Bristle-Back Man to punish him for his crimes, and mutants rose up to face him...

But the fires never stopped. The Bristle-Back Man lost his arm to the fighting, yet he never stopped setting fires, burning the whole forest down to ash and dust. And amidst the ruins, the Bristle-Back Man gestured grandly, showing them how the poisonous elm had been burned, even unto the roots. How all the mutants had been cleared. And how the land, barren for years, was now infused with nutritious ash, and would be blessed with good harvests. Tanner slumped back in her seat, already bored out of her mind. The point of the story was that sometimes, everyone's wrong, you're right, and you just need to burn everything down to make it better. The lodge used it to say that, no matter how strange it might seem, yes, they should burn Mahar down to the ground, and from the ruins would rise prosperity. Or burn all their enemies.

The lodge was... she had few good memories of it. Very few.

But the idea that she was doing something to make them proud of her, after years of being practically beneath their notice... there was a part of her which felt viscerally gratified. Liked to imagine other lodge members being mocked for 'not heading off to be a famous judge, like that Magg girl', or some of her stuffier aunts being told to keep her candle lit, or the lodge in general hoping for her success, protecting her from witchcraft.

Almost felt like she'd won. And the best thing was, she could win without interacting with them.

She slumped down into dreamless sleep, the last thing she heard being Marana's low hum, as she traced out the tune of some old song.

* * *

The thing about napping, for Tanner, was that she never truly fell asleep. Not truly. She just drifted through an endless grey haze, sometimes opening her eyes a little to see the snow, sometimes slumping back to do nothing at all, sometimes dimly aware of the world, and sometimes deaf to it. It was both restful and restless - above all, it was useless. She thought of almost nothing, even at her most aware, she was still a being of flesh and little else, content to simply pore over her own basic nerve impulses like they were holy texts, absorbing her absolutely. In short, she became an idiot for the entire day, and rather liked being an idiot, at least for now. Many things were fun in limited quantities - idiocy was just one member of a broad church's congregation. Coal scooping, crate lifting... anyway. She drifted through her grey fog, limping from hour to hour with little starts and stops, sometimes falling finding a half hour had vanished, then finding that time was passing normally all of a sudden, before finding that the afternoon had come and gone with her being nary the wiser. There was nothing else to do. Speech was fun, but three days of constant talk with anyone, including Eygi, would drive Tanner a bit dotty. The coachman was silent. No stories of noble turnip enthusiasts (turnip enthusiasts who are noble, not enthusiasts of remarkably refined rutabagas).

And as the hours dragged on, she realised why, even in her idiotic state. He was nervous. There'd been no cries of alarm, no blasts from a hidden gun - no mutants, in short, not a single one. Tanner kept thinking about that red-haired creature in blue silks. Kept... not quite dreaming, but somewhere between dazed thought and half-baked fantasy. Had she been noble, once? Fleeing south, finding that she was already poisoned... she imagined her being saved from mutants, but being contaminated in the process, feeling the rot fester within her, too deep to be extracted. There was no curing contamination, just purging it by any means necessary, like chasing infection amputation by amputation. Maybe she'd been abandoned to the snow, left to change. Maybe her entire group had been altered. Maybe she'd not been saved at all, had hidden away in some little cupboard while mutants took over, their presence slowly corroding any hidden survivors. And eventually... ape-like, shambling, dead-eyed and loping from place to place, human enough to be painful to look at, mutated enough to be unreasonably dangerous.

A crack.

And she woke.

They were here. Another rest-house, painted in cheery white and green, silhouetted starkly by the rubious sun. The cold seemed to have grown, and the landscape was more varied, less flat - she'd barely noticed during the journey. They were coming closer to a place where humans might live, rather than simply travel hurriedly. The hills were more dramatic, there were divots where streams might flow during warmer weather, and it seemed... right, it seemed as though Rekida was nestled in a valley, she remembered that from the coach station, and they were heading into an array of towering, monumental hills, dark and ominous. Could easily imagine a town being nestled amidst some of these, hidden from the wind and snow. Not from the mutants though, apparently. She'd missed most of the day, spent the whole damn thing dozing like a lazy little oaf, and somehow she was still ready to sleep. But the moment she stood up and stepped out of the coach, the snow crackling as she disturbed its immaculate surface... a very unpleasant mixture of weariness and alertness spilled over her, from the top of her spine to the soles of her feet. She felt like a gambler begging a die to hit a favourable number mid-roll - come on, stay tired, stay tired, stay tired, just until she got settled down to sleep, don't wake up, this wasn't time for waking up, it was night-time, she was meant to sleep now, ignore all the dozing, ignore how she'd stayed awake last night, night means sleep!

Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

No idea how those oddballs with odd sleep patterns coped, she'd go insane if this happened more than once in a row.

There was no singing now, no cheerful whistles from the coachman. And no shovelling of coal on her lonesome. Not taking the risk. The coachman hesitated as he clambered down from the box, no cigarette to be seen. And a second later, he had a brace of pistols extracted from his little perch, and he was removing his gloves with his teeth, giving him enough flexibility to pull the triggers, to load smoothly. Three pistols arranged on a leather belt, revolvers each and every one. He plucked one for himself, stuffing it into his belt, where Tanner could see another one already loaded, and a sturdy shotgun was strapped within arms reach of his perch on the coach. The others were handed over casually to the two guests.

"Right, you two know how to shoot?"

Marana nodded confidently. Tanner shook her head. The coachman hesitated... then plucked her pistol back, handed it to Marana, and extended a large stick in her direction. Tanner frowned.

"...is this-"

"If you use a knife, you spray blood over yourself, you get contaminated. With mutants, you either burn them or you bludgeon them."

"...must I have... a stick, though?"

The coachman paused. Tilted his head to one side, chewing his lip thoughtfully. Then extended his hand.

"Fair. I do have a better idea."

Tanner handed it back gratefully. She wasn't... opposed to hitting things, not at all, but she didn't quite like the idea of walking around with a stick like some sort of ogre. Plus, it didn't look sturdy enough, not whatsoever, now, if she was given something metal and-

The coachman poked her in the nose.

With the stick.

Quite hard.

Tanner yelped, and had a sinking feeling - the adrenaline. She wasn't going to get to sleep, was she. Oh, crumbs... she rubbed her nose indignantly.

"Now, that's really-"

"Would you like the stick, big woman?"

"...yes, please."

"Good lass."

And with that, they all collected around the coal bunker, watching Tanner shovel it into the scuttle. Not because it was terrifically entertaining - not sure how fun coal-shovelling could be - but because being alone felt like a poor idea, with the mood as it was. The world beyond darkened, and Tanner could imagine hidden mutants waking up. No, not waking up. They weren't nocturnal, didn't even need to sleep. They'd just wait, hidden under snowdrifts, hidden in dark burrows where they were safe, before clambering out. She'd dozed her way through the entire day - but she knew no mutant had slept a wink. That red-haired creature hadn't slept a wink, certainly. Just stared solidly ahead while waiting for the safety of darkness, safety from other mutants, safety to prepare and execute ambushes. Miles away, of course. Must be. Even if she sprinted through the entire day, which felt unlikely, she'd never have reached this place ahead of the coach. Presumably.

She could have wings...

No, no, don't be daft. No wings. A flying redhead wasn't going to crash through her window to eat her clothes like a deranged moth. No.

...definitely going to have to include that image in her next letter to Eygi, though. Gods, Eygi, it'd been ages since she'd written a proper letter, everything had just become so chaotic, it'd been impossible to find a free moment where she wasn't going to pass out instantly. No better a time than now, then, given how that single poke in the nose was enough to solidly put in her the world of the wakeful. The coal clattered. The plain around them was silent, save for the winds, which were slowly picking up. Felt like a storm was coming, or at least a gale. Pitied the coachman, he'd... no, no, he'd be fine, they'd get to Rekida, and he'd have an excuse to stay there for a few days to let the storm blow over, while he got to sample... dens of sin. Goodness. Did she... hm, laws, laws... now, she couldn't go after him necessarily, or at least, she wouldn't go after him now for the crime of sampling a brothel. No, no, the Golden Door had taught her that... she meandered through her hall of memory, going through her principles, associating them with the arrangement of items beneath her bed back in Fidelizh, even the texture of her various boxes and trunks telling her what was what. Right, once she arrived in Rekida, she'd need to record this, make sure the judges coming into the colony were aware of the phenomenon and, ideally, most of the major players. If she could outsource that duty to some of the other judges, she definitely would.

Well, coal shovelling, flying redheads, catching up with an old friend, and prostitution law. And all after a day of being basically comatose.

Who said Tanner Magg didn't know how to have fun, huh?

...when did Marana get that close?

"...hm."

Tanner shovelled another load of coal.

"What?"

"Just... I'm completely aware you have odd thoughts, you express them from time to time, mostly with regards to eels and... head tilting. I was just trying to see if you have any tells. You know, like while playing cards. Your patron, Carza, oh, she had tells for days back in Krodaw, she was melting into a puddle every other second."

Tanner blinked.

"You're thinking of something odd, aren't you?"

"Not... now."

"You were thinking of something odd."

"Were. As in, during the past. Well, between the moment when I became aware and now, yes, I have had thoughts that might be considered weird by the standards of an average individual. I'm sure for you they were relatively ordinary."

"The judges really punch the fun out of people like you, don't they?"

"I'm sorry I'm not a... theatrophone playing nothing but the greatest entertainment of the last century, Marana. Some of us have jobs."

The coachman snorted. Said nothing else. But the reminder that someone else was around to witness their... tomfoolery, their dickjapery, their harrycapricery was enough to shut them up. Hm. She turned to Marana.

"Tomfoolery."

"Hm?"

"Dickjapery. Harrycapricery. Does that make... sense? Tom, Dick, and Harry, I mean. I know... those are names."

She finished weakly. Marana blinked owlishly.

"You were having a weird thought, I knew it! Goodness, you do have a stoic face, you look positively stone-hewn, Tanner. I mean, dickjapery?"

The coachman snorted again.

"I like me a bit of dickjapery, if you'll pardon the expression."

The flying redhead coming in to eat her coat suddenly didn't sound quite so bad. Tanner tugged the collar of her greatcoat up, covering the infernal blush that began to march over her features like a rapacious horde. Goodness. Not her fault that the shortened version of 'Ricarlesū' was 'Dick', now was it? Feh. Her own damn fault for using a clever foreign saying, her own damn fault. She'd just stick to legal humour, that was always fun. Not very good for anyone who didn't practice the law, admittedly. Still liked that one about the judge who became a general and lost every battle he fought, because he refused to believe most of his messengers - abiding by good legal instincts, he refused to countenance hearsay, and would only believe an enemy's movements if the enemy testified to them in person. See, that one went down a screamer in the news room, absolute howler, but out here, she got the feeling she'd get the cold shoulder. No idea why a cold shoulder should be so bad, shoulders were fine, now, a cold finger slipped up the back of her blouse in direct contact with her back, that was awful. But saying 'get the cold finger' probably came across... hm, well, good thing she thought about that, she was about to ask Marana or Eygi. Never would've lived that one down.

For all she knew, 'getting the cold finger' was some lewd bit of slang regarding... icicles or uncooked sausages or some loathsome little story about a fellow who comes in out of the cold and...

No more thoughts.

She wasn't qualified for thoughts.

Just coal. She was good with coal. You knew where you stood with coal. Burny black rocks, innit. Just frozen oil, innit. Oil ice cubes.

Urgh.

* * *

As expected, the night was long and sleepless. Tanner was genuinely worried that she was going to become nocturnal, like some of the weirder colleagues she'd had when she was still studying. Goodness, imagine that - developing the sleep schedule of the serial canoodlers, without canoodling anyone or anything. There was something infinitely sad about that notion, wasn't there? Knowing her luck, she'd develop bags under her eyes large enough to carry her shopping in, her hair would grow tangled and greasy, forming long filthy dreadlocks, her skin would turn translucent, her fingers would elongate, her eyes would gradually fall out and be replaced with smooth skin, and... well, she had a long night, plenty of time to think about what a completely nocturnal human might look like. The night outside had the ominous character of a world where the weather was growing worse - the snow had ceased to whisper, now it rattled, clicked little crystals against the small glass windows of the rest-house, like a thousand tiny hands knocking insistently, eager to enter. And with each hour... it was hard to say when the increase happened, but happen it did, and the snow blew fiercer, the windows rattled more alarmingly, the horses snorted and gruffed to one another, shaking their shaggy heads from side to side like they were warming up for the long, cruel day ahead. Marana slept soundly, mostly through the ministry of a tiny nip from her hip-flask while she thought Tanner wasn't looking. Tanner would've objected more, but... if the woman was right, and she'd escalated to shakes-level alcoholism, then it was probably for the best to let her take her medicine. A slight vulnerability to cold was probably better than uncontrollable shakes and hallucinations, followed by death.

Well, both could end in death, but either way.

Morning didn't really come. There was just a slight dimming of the dark. Wise animals remained quiet, the sun hid its face behind growing clouds, and when Tanner extracted herself from her coat and blankets, she found that the cold had been sleeping in this coach with them all night, coiled up like a domesticated cat. And the moment she stirred, it moved, rumbled, purred, and slid up her leg to place a frigid paw on her cheek. Wanted to curl back up and go to sleep, but... no, no. All she could do was soldier on. She stumped out of the coach, into the rest-house, seeking out... there. Basin of water for her to splash over her face, just to get the grit out of her eyes and her skin. A second later, she pushed her soaked fingers through her hair, enjoying the little bursts of awareness that came with each droplet that made its way to her scalp. Funny, how that worked - she was loathing the cold a moment ago, now she was relishing it. Maybe it was the... honesty of it? Environmental cold was unyielding, it was something to be endured, nothing more. The entire body was aware of the danger around it, and... maybe it poked some deep-seated instinct. But this, soaking one's head in water, even on a cold day, it was... more controlled, based in choice, could be appreciated as a temporary phenomenon. Well, that, or the body simply felt intense cold, immediately panicked, released the right chemicals for relieving the shock, and made everything feel better. Like slapping a mosquito bite to prompt some proper painkillers, something to really staunch the itching.

Anyway. The coachman was already awake, staring out of one of the windows while smoking his habitual cigarette.

"...will we need to stay indoors today, sir?"

The coachman glanced over sharply, grunting.

"Huh. You move quietly."

Tanner ducked her head, hiding a small blush.

"Sorry."

"Nah, fine with me. Don't do it on someone with a gun, though. Should be alright to soldier on, honestly."

"The weather looks... harsh."

"Where are you coming up from?"

"Fidelizh."

"Well, that explains it. Weather's harsh for Fidelizh, I suppose. This? This could get nastier, could not, right now it's fine. If we stay still, maybe we just ride this out, but... not a good move when winter's coming in. See, want to know something you're not going to see out there? Melt. Snow-melt's done, so every blizzard, every snowfall, every few cheeky flakes that tumbles out of the clouds, all of that's piling up. Not going away until spring."

Tanner shivered.

"So... the longer we wait, the worse it becomes."

"Hm. Maybe we ride out the snow in here, only takes a day for it to blow over... maybe we're stuck here for days, or a week, just waiting for it to calm down, we step out, can't even open the door because of the snow. I've seen buildings swallowed by a proper drift, buried completely, need a map to find them again. Right now, the roads are fairly clear, the snow's not too bad, we push on, we get to Rekida, we're fine. Stay here, we just get worse roads, we're all hungry, we're all cold, and we start stabbing each other to relieve the boredom. Hm. Came up from Fidelizh, eh? Saw the weather balloons?"

Tanner dimly remembered them, yes. Big, floating masses above the mudlands, signalling to one another and to ships coming through, letting them know which passages were clear, which were silted up, which were frozen, which were too shallow for large vessels... the chaos of the Tulavanta wasn't something that could be tamed, or even really predicted, but it could be observed. That was the best that any human could ask for. And their role in looking out for any movements of mutants was appreciated, too.

"Yes, yes, I did."

"Each one of those things has... generally one or two people manning it. One slithers up the ladder to watch from the balloon, the other stays below, monitors, repairs, cooks, cleans. Little cabin down in the swamps, set on stilts."

His face cracked into a small smile. It wasn't an enormously pleasant one, and Tanner found herself feeling glad for her size - odd, she rarely felt that way, very rarely. Must be all the physical labour, presumably.

"Good pay. Very good pay. But not for me, too quiet, too... confined. See, me, I heard that sometimes the weather cabins, they just go quiet. Oh, the lights keep coming, the signals keep flowing, but when the time comes for relief... only one person comes out. Says their partner went mad. Gas comes out of the mud, sometimes - miasma and whatnot. Poisons the brain, poisons the blood, sends you scrambling into the mud so you can drown in it, laughing all the while. 'course, more than a few have used that as an excuse. Kill someone, throw 'em into the mud, the mud covers them, the little creatures in it eat them to the bone, and the bones get tugged apart by all the little underground currents. Never find them again. Might as well have gone mad - you won't find a body either way."

Tanner hadn't blinked for a long few moments.

"Bad business, going mad from the silence. Always starts quiet, the madness, then creeps in around the corners of the head, presses in like needles, gets into your dreams. And before you know it... fancies, pure fancies, no sense in them. Thinkin' the snow has something in it, something kindly. Thinkin' the mutants have the right idea. Then you're running out into the white, raving and rambling, naked as the day you were born, rolling in the cold till it feels warm - 'course, that's because your skin's dead as dead can be, can't feel the cold, can't feel anything. Salvation in the nothingness. Too rotten for the mutants. Bad business. Bad business. 'course, that's if you don't start hunting the others. Don't leave the door open when you run out, let everyone else freeze in their sleep. Bad business, going snow-mad."

Tanner stared.

"So, I say we get moving. Don't want to think about you going snow-mad, hm?"

He plucked the cigarette from his mouth, extending it in Tanner's direction.

"Have you a wheeze on that fag. Nice to have some warm smoke in you, better than alcohol in these conditions, eh?"

Tanner shook her head silently, and drew her coat around herself tighter. The coachman shrugged, spat a little ash-grey glob to the hay-strewn ground, and plucked out a dried sausage from his pocket, marred with lint. A knife, a spot of carving, and he was munching at a slice, Tanner hesitantly taking an identical one from his outstretched hand. Marana was stirring sluggishly in the coach - not a morning person, not at all. Well, until someone else saw her, then she straightened her back, brightened her eyes, glued an enigmatic smile on her face, and seemed incapable of standing - had to lounge, lean, recline, perch, do everything in the least straightforward fashion possible. Such a metamorphosis happened now, and it felt like no time at all had passed before they were starting to get on the road. Even if the sun felt weak, leached of colour and warmth, even if the world was growing smoother and more alien, evne if the snow was piling up higher by the moment, changing the contours of the great dunes and drifts into unfamiliar shapes, until it felt like they were on the surface of some barren celestial body, a bad, frigid wandering star which signalled poor omens to the world beneath. The carriage groaned, frost cracking from the wheels like the casing of a chrysalis, like the coach had to hatch before it could roam. The horses snorted, and stamped their hooves restlessly.

And they were off. To prowl the surface of this ill-omened star, and seek out a city of the dead.

* * *

There was nothing to be said of most of the final day. The snow slanted angrily into the side of the coach like the barrage of a warship, and it seemed like every nook and every cranny in the structure was filled up with glittering white scars, crystals compacting over and over and over. Like veins of diamond in the deepness of the earth. Marana didn't make any further comments as the hours dragged on, the coach struggling through the ever-growing snow, pushing onwards desperately to the finish line. Tanner wondered if the coachman was incompetent, if maybe he'd made a series of mistakes, if maybe the old man at the initial settlement had blundered by sending them on their way so soon, dismissing the idea of them staying in the settlement any longer. Maybe they should've waited. Maybe the boat had been delayed at some point, just by a few crucial days. The weather was an infuriating combination of inexorably vast and intimidatingly personal. The passage of winter was unstoppable, yes, and it would bring worse storms, more intense cold, the piling of snow in higher and higher drifts. And that was something that had been true since the beginnings of the world. But it was personal, too. This storm had started properly today. Had it been here last week? If they'd set out a day earlier, would they have missed it completely? Even as they rumbled on, Tanner wondered if they could've started riding a few hours earlier today, and avoided this particular gale, this specific gust. It was like being trapped in a great wave... while someone inside the wave poked her repeatedly with a needle. And cackling. Cackling, and slinging insults.

She thought of relaying this to Marana.

But the coach was rattling too loudly. Both were rigid as boards, unwilling to relax until they were safe. The end was in sight, no point jinxing it by complaining now. They could eat a huge, warm meal, share a little wine, and complain, complain, complain until the cows went home. She contented herself with monitoring each judder and shudder of the woodwork and wheels, and drafting her next letter to Eygi. Dear Egyi, etcetera etcetera, the usual questions about the weather, her health, all that business - asking after her health without naming anything specific, that way it felt less like an interrogation, see, and it wouldn't remind her of anything unpleasant. Plus, Eygi was rarely specific enough to be specific in return. Tanner had never even asked how her teeth were - they'd been slightly broken during their time studying together, and she'd had ivory caps over them on the day she left, never been sure if those were painful, if there was a story, if there were any unique inconveniences... then what? I'm sure I'm being a cowardly little oaf, but this is the coldest I've ever felt - it's not just the cold, it's how unending it is, how it seems to cling in my pores. I wonder if when I go somewhere truly warm, not just the meagre stuff the stove gives out, I'll start weeping water from every patch of flesh, as ice crystals melt. I see the snow forming scars on the coach - I wonder if those have formed on me, too. Hm. Too visceral. Adjust. The regular motions of inspiration, composition, adjustment, refinement... it calmed her down a little. Letter-writing was a calm activity, so by doing it, she was calm, she was safe, she was all the things she might not be at this moment.

The coachman was growling obscenities under his breath as the snow picked up, his voice growing thick as flakes invaded his lips, before a rasping hock of spit cleared it away. Tanner imagining it freezing before it hit the ground. Unlikely, but... the image stuck with her. Marana's fingers were laced tightly together, her knuckles white from the effort, her lips thin and nervous. Tanner rubbed her hands together, for warmth, and to cultivate a little luck. The lodge were protecting her from witchcraft, even up here. They'd be sheltering her from the dark, from the things that brought misfortune, from the unique poor luck that made a man be struck by lighting rather than simply soaked by rain, struck by a falling rock rather than barely missed. The witchcraft that turned an accident into a fatality. And as a judge, she was far too... well, she had a job. Couldn't freeze to death, there were jobs to do. Dearest Eygi, I do hope you're doing well. I'm currently relying on a chunk of dried sausage, a spot of nasty coffee, and tension. I wonder if the reason half-frozen people can suddenly die when warmed back up is because they're held together through nothing but tension, and when they warm, they relax, and they simply fall apart like an ice sculpture. I wonder if that's something sustainable, if a person can just keep going and going and going, even if whatever's inside them rots away into nothingness, turns into a little void, but the body keeps moving because it's too tense, too locked up. A suit of armour with no-one to propel it, moving out of habit. Makes me think of those ghost stories, the ones about the dead who don't realise they're dead, and just keep trying to live as they used to. This is the sort of landscape for ghost stories, the snow could hide anything, could preserve anything. If something died during this blizzard, it might not start to rot for months. Do you think that maybe-

Something went wrong.

She heard a strange sound. A hiss, like something was being shot...

And then a crash.

The horses squealed, and Tanner felt an evolutionary pit open in her stomach, some dim ancestral memory that animals should not sound like this.

The coachman was silent.

The horses could barely be heard twisting, bones cracking like the surface of an iced-over lake.

The noise was barely audible. The snow swallowed it whole.

But she could hear the groaning.

The groaning of a coach straining.

The crack of wood breaking.

She didn't think. Lunged for Marana, wrapped her up with her broad arms, sheltering her with her broad back. Marana was frozen in place, only a tiny whisper of fear escaping her lips.

A tilt...

A shudder...

A crash, the drifts devouring all noise.

And chaos consumed Tanner's mind.