CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR - BLUE SILKS AND SWEDES
The coachman was smoking outside in the snow, stamping his boot-clad feet to stay warm. He was young, but had the sort of bearing which made him seem much older. A kind of weathering, a quality of stillness, the sort of thing that was usually honed through age and experience. Not to mention, Tanner thought, his mutton chops. Big black things, looked like odd fungal growths on the side of his cheeks. His clothes were frost-flecked and threadbare, worn in multiple layers until he looked like a well-off rag-and-bone man. He looked over as the two women approached, his back automatically stiffening, his lips thinning beneath his moustache - funny, how people did that. Tanner found that people with moustaches tended to automatically thin their lips a little, maybe born of a desire to make their facial hair seem a little more impressive, and less like a pink-red slug had decided to grow a mohawk. She'd seen a man who'd shaved off his moustache at some point, and his lips always seemed overly thin and bloodless, drained of life by years of trying to augment his whiskers. Wondered if the same applied to cheeks, if this coachman would find himself looking pale and scraggly for the rest of his life, head perpetually seeming incomplete. Either way, she hoped the best for him - having hollow cheeks and bloodless lips sounded like a recipe for being alone at any pub for the rest of time. He blinked a few times, took a long wheeze from his drooping cigarette, before opening his mouth to pick a little stray ash from his tongue, startlingly red against the snow.
Marana smiled winningly. Tanner followed suit a second later. The coachman grunted.
"Right. You're off to Rekida, then?"
"Quite right. Three days travel, yes?"
"Right. Let's get started then, want to make good time before nightfall."
Marana's eyes twinkled.
"Right."
Tanner nodded firmly.
"Right."
He turned away sharply, staring into the distance, eyes squinting against the glare. The snow was blindingly bright in the morning light, and it seemed to spread outwards interminably, devouring the horizon and any sense of distance. The air wasn't full of flakes, not quite yet, but there was a sharp quality to it - like ice was struggling to form, needle by needle, imperceptible to the eye, but not to the skin. The settlement seemed fragile before it, and Tanner shivered, little tongues of cold slipping through the layers of clothing she had on. Keenly aware of how... hot she was, biologically speaking. When you reached a certain size, it felt like the body just emanated heat with lazy abandon, and she was keenly aware of how her skin lost heat, how her organs wept heat, how her breath stole heat. What had Marana said? Seeing the world not as something which could be won, just as something which could be lost as slowly as possible. Tanner didn't necessarily agree, but in situations of intense cold, she found the idea tempting. The weather was a constant killer, and it was going to steal away whatever it could until there was nothing left. Heat stole moisture, cold stole heat. No wonder everyone lived in the middle-kingdoms, there was something quite nice about weather which didn't have a constantly tightening jaw latched around your throat, pushing deeper and deeper with each moment, only temporarily banished by fire or shelter.
Anyway.
The coachman talked as he started to stride away, his voice tobacco-scarred and older than it should've been.
"So. Three days on the road. Got gas masks?"
Nods from both.
"Good. Shouldn't be too necessary. Shame you came when you did, could've hitched a ride with the postal coach, they usually take up isolated visitors."
Tanner flushed.
"Oh. Ah. Sorry about that, don't want to be inconvenient."
The coachman snorted.
"Not a problem. Work's work. Now. Few rules. First, no drinking. I'm not cleaning vomit out of my coach, and if you drink too much, you die in the cold. Understood? I don't want you drinking more than you can handle, taking off your coat, and dying of the frost. Second, no questioning me if I have to make any changes. Weather looks to be fine, but if a blizzard hits, we buckle down at a rest stop, ration out the food, and stay put until it's done. No arguments. You don't want to waste the energy, trust me. Third, do not approach the damn hobbles, understood? They're still mutants, even if they look somewhat human. Those are your three rules - no drinking, listen to my orders, and don't talk to the mutants."
Tanner nodded rapidly, and Marana gave a single, curt inclination of the head. Her face was slightly stiff at the idea of not drinking for three days - Tanner resolved to keep an eye on her. Make sure she didn't do anything stupid. The village was eerily quiet as they walked out to the coach - a heavy wooden thing, bolstered with metal, drawn by four shaggy horses which stank to high heaven and snorted out great clouds of steam into the cold air. Little blinkers covered their eyes, presumably to help with the snow blindness, and the coachman swung himself up into a covered seat, starting to wrap himself up with more layers of scarves, gloves and whatnot. He had the drawn look of someone who was, ultimately, still getting over a hangover, and with each moment that went by, he seemed to tighten. Drawing his flesh inwards to preserve warmth - she could imagine him sprawled on a rickety bed, practically oozing over the sides, before being compelled to go out into the snow, to tighten, to sharpen, and to make ready for a proper journey.
...maybe she shouldn't think about the coachman oozing in any way, shape or form. Well, shouldn't bring it up to anyone, at least. Especially not Marana. Especially not the coachman.
The carriage smelled of all its previous passengers, a kind of small stove sat in the middle of the carriage, already starting to warm up. The two passengers loaded their luggage to the roof, meagre as it was, wrapped themselves up over and over with their layers of clothes, then hunched into the coach. Seemed like two bundles left in the back of a pawn shop, really, the sort of messy, undifferentiated heaps which stood like cairns memorialising a long, dusty, concluded life. Well, they would seem that way, if it weren't for the two pairs of gleaming eyes that shone out from them.
And they waited.
* * *
The ice-fields were boundless. They'd travelled north, Tanner knew that much, but she hadn't been quite aware of how... quickly it'd become so cold. Regardless. There was a bleak beauty to it all, the great plains of snow, which rose in dunes and drifts like the landscape of a sweeping desert. It was vast, truly vast, yet even before the Great War it'd been sparsely inhabited. And now... well, they said that it would be generations before it reached anything close to former numbers in some of the southerly reaches. The northern reaches, closer to the mountains... those were going to be the domain of exiles, nomads, madmen and eccentrics for many, many more generations still. The mutants had ripped apart half of the forests, apparently - torn them apart for more biomass, to armour themselves with bark, to grow enormous monumental wombs to birth more of their kind. Meaning, the winds had nothing to stop them as they howled from the distant mountains, and they could pick up speed across the plains - a tidal wave of sleet and ice, fierce beyond reckoning. And in the summer, there was nothing to stop the dust, the arid heat of an unblinking sun, the fierce humidity that rose from the sodden ground. The north was a country for nature, for the strange life which thrived in such conditions. Not for humans. Not for those delicate, pink, hairless apes that flabbily tried to set up homes and mines and factories wherever they could, even as they sweated to death in the heat, turned to frigid corpses in the cold, or melted in the wake of exotic diseases and shrivelled as hunger clawed at their stomachs.
She was in a mood today. Not sure why.
Either way. They rumbled onwards, the coach bouncing over the uneven road, horses snorting as they went, tossing their heads about and shedding little particles of frost from their shaggy manes. Seemed to know that this place was poisonous to them, would slowly curl its frigid fingers around their bones and drag them into the earth for good. Just had to run between nodes of warmth, like pilgrims hopping from holy site to holy site. The coachman kept up a perpetual chatter, though, his voice carrying clearly in the still air. No birdsong. All of them had migrated south, or were continuing to do so - even now, they could see white cranes flying southwards, beaks extending out like compass points, unerring and absolutely certain.
"They've got some good business up in Rekida, tell you what. Freaky place, freaky tombs, all grim and whatnot, but I tell you what, there's some good ladies. You been before?"
Tanner called through.
"No! First time!"
"Well, hey, welcome to the north! Hey, want to know something? Now, have to tell me if I'm being vulgar, I don't want to insult anyone, but I tell you what, the ladies in Rekida? Good ladies. Best. See, back before the war, all the noble-ladies from all over the north, had to run south, run south to escape the mutants. Running, running, had to stuff all their jewels into their corsets. Say every woman back then had, pardon my vulgarity, and do tell me if I'm being vulgar, I don't mean to be, but every woman back then had tits the side of my head, just filled up with jewels, gold, potatoes... I mean, potatoes were worth more than gold, you know? So, Rekida, north, loads of noblewomen come south, shack up with whoever they can. I know one guy, promise he's real, met him a while ago, lovely man, you should meet him, well, he farms swedes, and his wife used to be an anfissa, like... noblewoman from some northern place, can't remember the name. Either way, she travelled south, lost all her gold, spent it all on potatoes and turnips, then found this one farmer, with a barn full of swedes, and she thought 'this guy must be the richest damn man in the whole world, look at all his swedes!' So, jumped on him like a randy rabbit, hasn't let him go since. Gave him a whole brood, you know? Never seen that guy angry, never. Lucky man, no?"
Tanner's face had turned red around the point where he said 'good ladies', mostly because she knew where this was going. How... utterly vulgar. And inappropriate. Marana hummed, and called to him through the thick walls of the coach, voice straining to be heard over the clattering of hooves and the rattling of wheels.
"You're not the first coachman who's insisted on talking to me about something wildly inappropriate, you know."
The coachman's grin was audible, even as his voice became sweet and innocent.
"Am I being vulgar?"
"Oh, very."
"Ah, I'm very, very, very sorry. I don't mean to be vulgar. You see, it's the cold, it chills my brains, makes me do crazy things. You know horses? You put them in snow for too long, with too much sun, they go snow-mad, can't see, can't behave, they just go nuts. It's the light and the cold, see. Me, I'm from Mahar, and I think it's because the light gets filtered through the snow. 'cept, instead of cultivating luck, it just makes the light more powerful, makes it zap right into the brain, dance around like boules in a box during a storm, scrambles it all up. You know?"
Marana examined her nails demurely, and spoke lightly.
"Oh, well, in that case, please, keep on going. I mean, we can hardly ask you to stop driving the coach. Please, ramble away."
Tanner shot her a look. Marana's voice dropped.
"Go on, let him talk. Should be fun."
"It's... he's being terribly rude."
"Yes, and he's also driving us through the wind and snow for three days to reach a grim little settlement, and let me assure you, when the only thing you can appreciate are the women, then it means the settlement is likely quite grim. I mean, women should only be half of the people there, meaning only half of the settlement's population is worth appreciating. You know?"
"Hmph."
"Don't be a grouch, Ms. Magg, it doesn't become you."
Tanner tuned out the coachman's next rambling diatribe on the descendents of noblewomen you could find in the north - honestly, the way he rambled reminded her a little of those pulpy theatrophone plays, the ones involving women sprawled on divans in exotic climates. Tanner could say for sure that she'd met three nobles during her life - Eygi, Algi, and Marana - and two of them looked like frogs, one of them had broken teeth, and Marana was a middle-aged alcoholic with a too-red nose and cheeks stained with tiny spiderweb veins, pushed too close to the surface for comfort. Like her own body was trying to escape itself... hm, or like the Tulavanta. A river, apparently once underground, rupturing its ceiling and escaping into the outside world. And Marana's blood vessels trying to escape her poisoned flesh, to expel the liquor by any means necessary. It'd be terribly insulting to mention that, though. Anyway. Nobles. In her experience, if they weren't 'forbidden', there'd really not be much appealing about them.
But she wasn't going to engage in a long talk about... uh... aristocrophilia?
Anyway.
Anyway.
"I think you might just find vulgarity more entertaining than most, Marana. I mean, you're a governor's daughter."
Marana's eyes flicked over, half-lidded.
"Are you implying I was sheltered?"
"A little. I wasn't. Vulgarity isn't entertaining to me, it's just... vulgar."
She leaned closer, her face utterly flat.
"Sorry. I'm doing a little uninvited psychoanalysis."
"Tanner, you don't even know what psychoanalysis is, you just heard me using the word last night."
"I can guess by inference."
"No, you can't."
"I'm a judge, I have a certificate of my intelligence. If I say I can deduce by inference, I can deduce by inference, my certificate of smartness gives me the right. What do you have/"
"Money. And a house."
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Tanner huffed.
"Oh, be quiet."
"How terrifically rude of you. Vulgar, even."
"Shush."
"You might want to know, incidentally - I wasn't sheltered, not in the slightest. Honestly, of the two of us, I think the woman who spent eight years in a judicial monastery is probably a tad more sheltered than the well-seasoned and well-aged epicura that stands before you. Sits. Regardless. And, my father was a soldier before he was governor of Krodaw, and he generally thought that no daughter of his should be raised to be... lily-livered. Mother disagreed."
"Which one turned you into a surrealist?"
"Surrealism's a school of thought, Tanner, not a mental illness. Neither of them turned me into a surrealist, the world turned me into a surrealist, the world compelled me to be an artist. Though, yes, being a governor's daughter helped when it came to... early patronage. Believe it or not, even the radical revolutionaries tend to enjoy associating with the lady who can buy them all as many drinks as their anti-establishmentarian abdominals can arguably accept."
Tanner snorted slightly, and leant back in her seat, watching the snowy wasteland course by. The coachman was talking about Rekida again. Tanner thought... hm. She didn't know too much about Rekida. The north in general had always been content to remain obscure, its cities associating with one another rather than anyone else, the mudlands and the chaotic Tulavanta preventing most invasions, or even raiding parties. Not to mention, even when transport became a little easier, Rekida had been one of those places which stood at the annoying intersection of 'obscure enough to be easily ignored' and 'deeply suspicious of foreigners and unwilling to allow them unobstructed entry'. She'd tried to find some books on the topic, but... nothing. Nothing at all. The judges didn't have big tomes of ethnography on Rekida, and it barely appeared in the histories of the middle-kingdoms. The bigger libraries in Fidelizh had nothing on the topic either, but everyone knew the Erlize liked to pluck out books from the libraries every so often, or filled them with long, black bars to cover up any sensitive information. She felt a pulse of shame at not researching more, but... here she was.
A wind clattered through a flaw in the coach, sending shivers through its occupants. Tanner adjusted her greatcoat a little, appreciating the thick fabric more and more with each moment. She popped the collar up a little, fastening it in place with a little flap which buttoned solidly in place, forming a kind of neck-brace, a warm tunnel which kept her insulated from the cold quite admirably indeed. The scarf plugged the rest, though she found herself wishing for a blanket, nightmares of hypothermia still tormenting her more than she wanted to admit. They said there were some sailors, once, out in one of the lakes near the mountains, where the snow-melt turned the water frigid. The ship capsized, and they had to bob around in the water for over an hour, just weathering the cold as best they could. They managed it, somehow - even managed to get rescued. They were hauled out of the lake, each and every one of them, shivering but alive, and were guided into a gentle celebration - blankets, hot drinks, all of it. They sat down. They sipped. And dropped dead. The shock of recovery was more than the body could bear. She tightened her greatcoat around herself, using her gloved hands to clutch the sleeves shut, reducing any probing limb of frost, to say nothing of its bite.
Marana shot her a smile, barely visible behind the scarf. Tanner hesitantly returned it.
And thus it began. They talked idly, passing the time however they could, but there was an air of nervousness in the air, beyond even the dread of the insidious cold. Knew they were being watched. Animals didn't like mutants - how many of the snorts from the front of the coach were natural, and how many were out of fear? A scent of rot driving them to frenzy? The snow began to whirl more powerfully.
It was to be a short day. And a long night.
* * *
When they stopped, the coachman was in high spirits, rubbing his hands eagerly at the chance of a proper lie-down. The rest-house was eerily new, standing bold and unstained amidst the great desolation. Bright white, with a green roof, and a huge front door to allow the coach and its horses to warm themselves. A huge coal bunker stood ready, and the coachman hummed a drinking song as he got to work. Tanner hesitated... then stopped him. He'd done enough, and she'd always felt deeply, deeply awkward whenever she'd been driven around by others. Never felt right - she always became keenly aware of her size, her strength, how she inconvenienced others perpetually. A bemused Marana took her gloves from her, and Tanner headed for the scuttle, the shovel, the instruments of coal extraction, and got to work on the grey metal shell that contained such reserves of black gold. The coachman snorted, brushed his fingers vaguely against his thick woollen hat, as though he wanted to tip it honourably in her direction. He nodded a few more times, rubbed his hands, and headed indoors, followed by Marana. Leaving Tanner to shovel away. The horses even seemed to shoot her a grateful look from behind their blinkers, before shuffling through the great creaking door to a hay-strewn barn. The coach would be a bed enough for Tanner and Marana, the coachman had no qualms about sleeping amidst the hay, and the horses would just be happy to slow their labours, rubbed down to stop them overheating, allowed to rest for a while in snowless confinement. Be off again in the morning.
The sun overhead was very red indeed, turning the sky into a tattered mass of saffron strips and paprika spots, orbiting loosely around a glowing ruby coin. Tanner relished the movement of her muscles - she was getting the feeling that her time on the mutant-hunting vessel had planted this habit in her, this renewed liking for manual labour. She'd spent years focusing on... being a judge, and she liked being a judge, intended to keep doing it for the rest of her life, but she'd been raised as a dockworker's girl, gutting fish and picking out the bones from her nails. Odd, to relive it. To meet someone who knew the woman with the letter, Carza vo Anka. To be reduced back to a state of undifferentiated, unmoored chaos... no, not quite. When she was on that boat to Fidelizh, years ago, she'd been in a state of unmoored chaos, but there was a path to take. She could either take it, or abandon it and spill away into nonsensical non-existence. This was much the same. If she wished, she could wander away from this little house, and lose herself in the dark. She'd die. But she could. Many paths available, but only one was obviously correct and prosperous. Sounded reassuring... but when you saw how many paths there were, and how few were correct, it was like seeing a single strand of light extending over an interminable abyss. And the narrowness of the correct was highlighted by the vastness of the incorrect.
Either way. She liked shovelling coal. Not enough to make a career of it. But enough to make an evening. Just viscerally fun to take an empty thing and fill it up. Hopefully that just said something innocent and winsome, rather than infantile and moronic. What had that fused-finger woman said, on the boat? 'Ug, me Tan-nar, me like bucket fill, ug. Me only want fill bucket. Me fill bucket - me happy. But then me no fill bucket, because bucket full. So me sad. So me empty bucket. And fill again. Tan-nar smart, ug.'
She... shouldn't be allowed to think, should she?
Silly Tanner, she was qualified to think about the law, everything else was right off.
Hm. It occurred to her that she hadn't met any northerners yet. The coachman was from Mahar. The old man in the riverside settlement had a Fidelizhi accent. The mutant-hunters had been a people unto themselves, mottled and rootless, though probably originally southerners, based on their military records. The north, after all, had lost a lot of its fighting-age men before the Great War ended. The hotel had been full of surrealists, and they were all from the middle-kingdoms, taking a jaunt north to contemplate the emptiness. She'd been in the north for days, and she'd not met a single northerner. Didn't even know what they looked like. Idly, she wondered if Mr. Pocket from all those years ago had been a northerner, and she was about to meet a huge number of masked people who talked about their dead relatives. Hm, no, his home had sounded warm. Which this place most certainly wasn't. Maybe those gigantic people who'd accompanied Carza vo Anka, who'd hidden themselves under layers of clothes?
No idea. Be interesting to find out, though.
The scuttle clunked as it filled up.
She grunted happily, and hauled it up with ease, enjoying the feeling of her muscles really waking up, alertness thrumming through the fibres.
The sun was setting. Night was coming. She wasn't ready to sleep, but she was eager to be warm, to gnaw on whatever food had been brought along. The rest-house had a primitive homeliness to it, an innocent cheeriness lingering in the near-luminous paint. She moved, holding out the coal scuttle as far as she could from her body, to stop the dust from staining her dress. She hummed contentedly, going through the motions of remembering the proper forms for her arbitrations. How to record an injustice, how to siphon emotion from all reporting, how to reduce to numbers when possible, and how to estimate. How to make list upon list upon list, and condense her findings to conclusions. There was an art to this kind of thing, blended easily with equity law, and she'd have plenty of chances to practice. In a way, not having to pass judgements in Rekida was a relief - she'd just have to do groundwork, wait for seniors to arrive, to take over at some later point. Her responsibility was abrogated - she was simply here to observe. And observation meant passivity. And passivity meant peace.
And when she heard the snow crunching behind her, her back froze, and all thoughts of law and purpose ceased.
Suddenly, she felt completely aware of every inch of her vulnerable humanity.
And how entirely alone she was.
She turned slowly, knuckles whitening around the scuttle's handle, ready to swing it as a crude bludgeon. The sun had drawn low, and it glared directly into her eyes, making her wince. Red light spilled over the blasted plain, and even the smallest object cast shadows for metres, thin and sharp as new pencils, and the sparse trees and shrubs created tangled black labyrinths on the flawless white. She scanned, wincing continually when she accidentally met the sun's red gaze. Was it just an animal? A fox? Whatever things lived up here? Or... mutants were silent, mutants didn't strike until it was too late, they weren't idiots, they didn't sleep and had nothing to do but plan out new plans, their hunger was slow-burning and constant, a heat which never rose to a blaze unless they wished it to. The captain, Kralana, she'd talked about the silent war up here. They had nothing to give the mutants. No food to be found. She wasn't infected, right? The horses had been tested, the coachman seemed confident, and he had a brashness which made her convinced he knew what he was doing. She stared into the gloom. Stared.
And saw a pair of flat, silvery eyes staring back. Flat. Dead. Soulless. Hungry.
A whimper died in her throat.
Memories of fish with too many eyes and mouths, scales the consistency of metal, tails that contained more muscle than an eel's whole body. Memories of seeing their bodies struggle to learn how to breathe air, seeing bones clicking as they tried to form primitive legs, seeing their flat, dead eyes twitching to focus on her, on the nearest threat, teeth sharp as needles...
She backed away, scuttle in hand.
The eyes... two of them. Just two. Small. The body was nearly completely hidden, and...
And it slowly came forwards. The snow squeaked beneath its bare feet. It moved on all fours, but... but she saw fingers splaying.
Human fingers.
Oh. Oh.
One of the... the human things, the human mutants, the ones the old man had talked about. It was here. Tanner stepped further back, retreating towards the barn, her scuttle gripped tight, her arm shaking ever-so-slightly. Produced a low tap-tap-tap from the scuttle as the coal impacted the sides, like a low, warning bell, summoning aid. Her voice died in her throat, her teeth were clenched.
The creature was... it... it looked human. Almost. But not quite. It had two arms, two legs, a torso, a head... but there, the abnormalities began. The flesh was mottled with darker, tougher patches, like it was growing a new set of skin, better suited for this place. The eyes were wide and bulging, completely lidless - they wept moisture, had no need to cut off stimulus, no need for sleep. She could see the scars where the body had reabsorbed the eyelids into itself. The fingers were long and four-jointed, the toes better-resembled fingers than anything else, and the back shifted unpleasantly, an uncannily liquid spine flexing and contorting, none of the comforting stiffness of a normal spine. A pair of chapped, scarred lips parted, revealing sharp, sharp teeth, curling inwards. If something was bitten, any attempt to escape would just dig the teeth in deeper. If she was bitten. Muscles like steel cords twitched along the neck and jaw, and she suddenly felt convinced that this jaw could open wider than it should, like one of those gorgonopsids in the mudlands, ready to snap like a bear-trap, never to be removed. And... and the head. Nodules of bone sprouted like tumours from the forehead, pushing the skin out and reddening it painfully, and a bizarre collar of similar nodules fringed the neck. Like the brain had grown, and was pushing outwards incessantly, moving the body as it went.
Why was it here?
What did it want?
It came closer to the faint light from the house's windows...
Tanner looked upon the corpse of a woman. A little older than herself, maybe. A shock of dirty red hair that streamed down her back, untamed and ungroomed. Her clothes... she wore silk. Beautiful, sky-blue silk, soaked with mud and gore, the skirt torn away around the knees, and yet... yet it looked like the creature had tried to repair the dress slightly, even if very poorly indeed. It stared directly into her eyes. Tanner dimly remembered that mutants didn't fear eye contact, they weren't animals, they lacked the usual instincts. Eye contact didn't mean aggression, it didn't mean dominance, it didn't mean unfamiliarity. It just meant reading someone else for a sign of movement. No emotional notes whatsoever.
She looking into the ruptured pupils of the mutant woman, she... she could see why. There were no emotions.
The thing stared at her.
Tanner stared back.
The winter wind blew the gorgeous silk dress a little, and it flowed in tattered streamers as the woman reared to her haunches, sitting like a wolf. Always staring. Her nostrils flared. Sniffing for contamination. No sign of aggression in her stance, nothing. Tanner readied herself to swing the coal scuttle.
The woman sniffed. Sniffed again. Padded forwards another step, bare hands and feet unflinching from the cold, heavy with tough black tissue, and-
A bark from the house.
A shape charging past her.
The coachman marched through the snow, a burning torch in his hand. His teeth were bared, his eyes were blazing, his brash confidence was forgotten in favour of purpose. The mutant woman backed up, her eyes locked on the fire, her face remaining otherwise flat. She backed up, up, up... the coachman didn't stop advancing, swinging the torch angrily, his voice rising into a string of wordless shouts, everything about him radiating aggression. The mutant woman stared, scratched the ground... and sprinted away, her limbs moving uncannily to allow her to go on all fours... but the moment she breached one snow-dune, she reared up and ran on two legs, her gait uncannily human. A second later, she was gone. Vanished. But something lingered - a whistle. A sharp, piercing whistle from her lips, splitting the air. Fading a second letter. Like she was signalling to the others, summoning them to hunt, driving them to-
"Next time, hit 'em. Or throw fire."
The coachman slapped her on the shoulder, and spat into the snow.
Tanner was pale as a sheet.
"...gods, calm down, just a hobbler. Harmless, most of them, unless you're mutated."
"Harm... harmless?"
Her voice was incredulous.
"Yeah. Harmless. Mostly. Trust me, these things, there's still a bit of human in their brains, just a bit. They prefer to eat animals, not other humans. Still got that anti-cannibalism thing going on."
"What?"
"They don't like eating humans. They know we're tough, they know our capabilities, they don't like eating us. Animals are easier, animals are plentiful, humans are better at killing animals than they are at killing other humans. Come on, get indoors. Warm up, have some grub."
He paused.
"...gods, you're really shaken? Right, fine, you get one drink. No more, not letting you freeze to death. C'mon."
And with that, he was gone. And Tanner followed him hurriedly, almost breaking into a jog just to get out of the cold sooner, coal scuttle rattling lonesomely as she entered into the shelter of the rest-house. Marana was already gnawing on a piece of dried sausage, and shot Tanner an odd look as she entered. Did they... gods, none of them had noticed it until the coachman had looked out of the window. How many were still around? That whistle... the woman had been signalling to others, bringing them in, readying them for a hunt, for devouring. Maybe they'd grab the people here and haul them to a pool of contamination, dunk them and change them, slice off the parts they thought were stable, she'd heard of that happening in the Great War, they said all Great War mutants had ribs like huge cages, designed to hold captives, they were coming, they were...
She dropped the scuttle, and moved far away from the door, ears twitching, back of her neck prickling with beads of sweat.
A thought occurred, and she stopped the coachman - someone else whose name she should've learned some time ago, back at the dawn of the day, and now it was too awkward to ask.
"Wait! Wait, there was... the man in the coach station, he said these... things, they were only going to be around sometime into the second day, not the first. I mean, is that... is that normal?"
The nervousness in her voice sent a pulse of humiliation through her. The coachman looked at her, eyes inscrutable, and he scratched at his mutton chops.
"...hm. Is that right? Remember him saying something about that... see, the worry with these things, it's not them attacking us, it's them leading something else in, some bigger mutant that wants a snack. Less common these days - some mutants use them as food, others use them as bait to get a good meal. Wasn't worried about them. Still. They're moving slowly, we're moving quickly..."
He hummed. And Marana interjected.
"So, for them to come out here, they'd need to... what, be moving concertedly? Like something was drawing them in?"
"Or driving them away."
Tanner sat down heavily, forcing herself to calm down a little - like pretending to snore to convince the body to go to sleep. If she was sitting, she was obviously relaxed, otherwise she'd be pacing, and she wasn't pacing, so she wasn't nervous. Come on, people dealt with mutants all the time, they were natural threats, like... earthquakes, landslides, virulent plagues, famines, volcanic eruptions, apocalyptic floods, hateful comets pounding the earth into a soup of molten rock, the very world rupturing and exploding all around her, or-
The coachman sat down curtly nearby, drawing out another cigarette.
"Listen, I've been on these roads a few years now, driving worse coaches in worse conditions. Now, listen here, see - mutants go for you if you're a mutant, or you're threatening to kill them. Stay out of their way, stay uninfected, you're fine. Check yourselves for anything, clip if you need to, take pills if you feel paranoid. The horses were fine last I checked. So, these things don't want us. Maybe they are being driven away by something, but if they are, it'll be another mutant - same rules. Mutants fight each other, humans are just hazards they have to work around."
Tanner looked over, eyes narrowing.
"Then why did she come close to me?"
Marana coughed.
"...well, we did spend a few weeks on... a boat full of mutant-hunters."
"But-"
"Our clothes, Tanner. If something came close, it was probably just sniffing around your clothes, seeing if there was something worth nibbling at. Clearly decided not. Think that'll be a problem, sir coachman?"
The coachman snorted, smoke spilling from his nostrils like a fire was burning in his lungs.
"Doubt it. No mutant would kill you for a vague smell. Tell you what, smoke something, roll in mud, whatever. Should cover the smell. And on the road, damn nothing will care. Now, shush. You get one drink because of the excitement, otherwise, pack it in, go to sleep."
Tanner wanted to object. But the sound failed before it could pass her lips. The coachman had a confidence which overwhelmed her own - she was out of her depth, she lacked experience, she lacked knowledge. Meaning, she was working from a place of weakness. Every question she asked, objection she made, it was an opportunity for her to seem like more and more of an idiot, a panicked idiot. Humiliation and shame skittered over her flesh already, like a mound of spiders, and she knew they'd start to bite if she went any further. Her eyes flickered lower, and she nodded hesitantly. Unwilling to engage further. A grunt of approval from the coachman, and he smoothed his barbed moustache with a self-satisfied finality. Her tutor, Sister Halima, had ended all her points with a 'hm', Brother Olgi had a downwards cadence, and the coachman had a bit of facial-hair-onanism. Urgh, her thoughts were vile. Regardless.
Marana seemed happy at the news that she could have something to drink, and the coachman drew out a large stone bottle from a cabinet in the house, pouring three tiny glasses of something clear and acrid. Local brew, apparently.
Tanner downed it in a single gulp, and felt nothing. Not even the slightest spark of warmth.
Marana swirled hers, and poured it down her throat unhesitatingly. Her smile was immediately a little broader, her stance a little looser.
The coachman sipped his, and balanced his time between tending to the stove and horses, smoking his cigarette (the first in a sequence), and sipping the drink further.
That was all.
The matter was settled.
If only Tanner could convince herself of that fact, she might be able to sleep. But the red sun died away, the silver moon rose, and Tanner's eyes remained locked open, her ears peeled for the sound of any crunches in the snow outside, any further whistles of summoning and rallying and hunting.
Nothing.
And in nothing, lay everything.
Or at the very least, anything.