Chapter Twenty-Nine - Unicorn of the Secret Police

"Send her in, would you?"

The voice from the other side of the door was stately, dignified, weighted with authority. Tanner immediately twitched backwards, almost tripping over her own feet as she retreated from the door. Didn't want to be caught with her ear at the wood, like some sort of paranoid lunatic, did she? No, definitely not, and it wasn't something judges did. She plucked at the tiny pearl buttons lining her sleeves, nervous that one of them was fraying, about to fly off with a pop. Wished Marana was around to tell her she was being silly. Wished Eygi was around, in general. Only a few days had passed since they'd arrived at the outpost and proceeded on to Rekida, but sometimes she felt like she was still out in the snow, stumbling around and slowly going blind from the glare. Nothing felt quite real yet, nothing had the vividness of that night in the snow, a torch the only thing standing between her and death. Maybe she had died out there, and this was just a bizarre hallucination. Might explain those cage-trees, those chained towers... she had to say, the hallucination of getting rescued by the same redhead mutant from the beginning of the journey felt like an absurd dramatic contrivance, and she was insulted that her brain couldn't just come up with another mutant to do the job. She shivered from head to foot, trying to anchor herself again. Just... focus on her immediate surroundings. That'd work.

The governor's house was... well, she wanted to say 'palace', or 'mansion', but none of them quite added up for this place. The words fell short. It was a little too intimate, a little too cosy, a little too human. It felt like a place which belonged to one person, rather than a title. Probably accurate, the colony wasn't all that old, hadn't had a governor for very long. The stucco on the ceiling barely looked dried. She wasn't even waiting in a formal hall or something, she was waiting in a living room, there was a decanter of whisky, a tea set, books scattered listlessly around the numerous chairs, a little fire glowing warmly... she'd been drawn between the allure of the governor's door and the warmth of the fire for a while now, bouncing from one to the other, moving on tip-toes to avoid clumping around like a gorilla. Everything had a sheen of newness combined with pretensions of age. Tastefully shabby, in a way. Decorated ceiling, deep carpet, plenty of chairs, blue-painted walls barely visible behind bookshelves heaving with nameless ledgers, only a single tiny window looking out into the featureless whiteness of the sky. If something could be cushioned or insulated, it was - the chairs were overstuffed, the carpet was luxurious and red as fresh liver, the glasses surrounding the decanter were fat and thick, the paintings of landscapes were all done in such broad, loose strokes that the world they depicted seemed to be made entirely out of clouds. Even the ceiling, painted blue and white, was only decorated with stucco flowers and vines, coiling around one another until they formed a perfect natural ceiling.

It was... not unlike being inside a huge gas mask, the single tiny window being the only functional eye to the outside world. Everything controlled, regulated, forming a perfect little environment. Outside lay the cold, the hustle and bustle of existence, the unrelenting reality of things. Inside... well, inside was warmer. Safer. Might as well be back in Fidelizh, honestly.

A man pushed open the heavy wooden doors leading to the governor's office, and Tanner stiffened immediately, shivering under her cape. Erlize. Diamond-shaped golden cufflinks, tweed suit, cold eyes. She knew him. He'd been at the outpost, having lunch with the officer in charge. Didn't know his name, but he'd accompanied them back to Rekida, barely saying a word. Seemed to be the head of the Erlize outfit here, monitoring people, keeping them on their best behaviour. His thin hair was combed severely over his head, illuminating the sharp contours of his skull, and a single knob of bone around the middle of the scalp. A bizarre little carbuncle that gleamed slightly in the light of the window, and made him seem... almost like a narwhal, he was too thin to be a rhinoceros. Or a third eye, glaring at her while his actual eyes remained flat and cold. His lips were practically invisible, such was their tightness. His suit clung to him like a second skin, and she sometimes thought she could count his ribs through the jacket. Surprised that it didn't tear along the small of his back when he moved. He didn't smile. But his lips expanded horizontally, very, very slightly, in a perfect line. Seemed to be his equivalent.

"The governor will see you, Judge Tanner."

Tanner smiled nervously, brushing a lock of hair behind her ear.

"Oh. Ah. Right. Thank you."

The man inclined his head a little, and moved to one of the chairs with a strange gait that seemed... uncomfortable with being seen. He moved with spider-like strides, picking his way through the carpet like an explorer would venture through a deep jungle, hands folded behind his back and head jutting forwards like a gargoyle. She saw his back, with his tweed jacket pulled tight, a pleat running down the middle, highlighting the severe curve of his spine. Could almost count the vertebrae. He clicked his way to a chair, sat down while tugging his trousers up with a little jerk of perfectly poised fingers, and seemed to vanish from perception. He was there, of course. But he seemed to... adopt such a form of stillness, such a lightness of breath, such an angle of reclining that he might as well have blended into the background. Been of the same species as the furniture. Unliving and unthinking. All except the narrow, intelligent eyes, which never stopped scanning every corner. She couldn't fail to notice how he was right-handed, and had chosen to sit with a wall to his left, in a corner where he could see the entire room at once, particularly the exits, the window, everything. He was like a spider in a cobweb - invisible until you walked into him.

Tanner was glad to leave him in his chair, doing nothing at all but staring at the room, monitoring it for... something.

The governor was waiting for her. And while the waiting room had been a neatly contained capsule of Fidelizh, the office felt like... almost an embarrassed attachment. Small, slightly cramped, and smelling very strongly of sandalwood and old hats. A desk the colour of tobacco, covered in leather barely a shade lighter, with a heavy typewriter and a pile of anonymous papers. The window here was much, much broader, almost stretching from floor to ceiling, with as few obstructions on sight as possible, and the glass kept spotless. It stood behind the governor's desk, and the unyielding pale light made the room feel slightly sterile. She saw only one sign of luxury, one and one alone. An ashtray carved out of what looked like ivory, decorated with complex scrimshaw, sitting on three little nubs of silver carved into the shape of eagle claws. A three-legged ashtray, in which a half-burned cigarette eked out its last moments of heat.

The governor was here.

Tanner bowed her head slightly, didn't extend her hand to shake - wouldn't be proper, not unless he initiated. And he didn't.

He wasn't a tall man. But he had the sturdiness of a career soldier. A face which was scarred by shrapnel, giving half of his face a pitted, cratered look. Paralysed the muscle, too, leaving him with a perpetual blank expression, save for the tiniest crook of a smile at one deformed corner of his lip. His hair was sandy and short, his hands looked like pieces of dried bark, and his shoulders still held their muscle, even as his face showed signs of entropic ageing. He stood as she entered, revealing a slight limp and stoop - another sign of being a veteran of something or other. His left hand was mottled. She stared at it for just a moment too long, memories of mutants coming back. Then her eyes flickered away, embarrassed. Just a little cosmetic mutation. It happened, especially with veterans. Lucky it hadn't gone anywhere else. His suit was dark and old-fashioned, and his eyes were a shade of palest green, like faded jade.

"Honoured judge, please, sit down. Pleasure to finally meet you. Terribly sorry for the delay."

He smiled, the stiff side of his face remaining locked in place, giving him a slightly clownish look. Tanner sat, happy to be reduced to a smaller height - she felt like she ought to be shorter than him, she really should, he had a bearing which filled up the space around him, made him seem large. Wished reality would catch up with her perception, honestly. He sat down as well, his face stiffening for a moment, as if the action pained him slightly.

"Again. Terribly sorry. Business of the colony. How are you settling in, incidentally? House functional?"

Tanner nodded a few times, and one of her hands picked, stealthily, at one of the little pearl buttons going down her skirt. This was her confidence dress, it was well-fitting, fairly fashionable, and had more buttons than she could count. Just having stuff to fiddle with was enough to relieve her stress a little.

"Oh, yes, the house is lovely."

"Heard there was a small problem with the stove."

Tanner blinked.

"You... heard that?"

The governor's clownish half-smile appeared again.

"Oh, of course. I make a point of knowing things like that. Sorted out, I hope?"

"Oh, yes, just finished today, sir. Been staying over the kaff for now, that's been fine, and the house overall is lovely. Just moved my trunks in before I came here."

Done it when the sun still hadn't risen, terrified of sweating with exertion, terrified of becoming poorly composed for her meeting.

"Well, can't really be lived in until you get that stove running. Always feel like a house can just become an infernal cold-room when you leave it alone long enough. Sorry for the inconvenience, of course, just let one of my people know how much the stay in the kaff cost, we'll happily recompense you. And the rest of the colony, acceptable...?"

"Oh, very, very."

She paused.

"...someone did try to measure my head, though."

The governor coughed out a small laugh.

"Ah, I heard about that. That's Tom-Tom, she's one of the locals. Try not to pay too much attention to it - some places have palm reading, Rekidans measure skulls, seems to me. Doubt she means anything by it, but if she gets pushy in any way, you let one of my boys know, alright? Can't have someone harassing a judge. Oh, goodness, sorry, forgot - tea?"

"Oh, no thank you, I'm... quite alright."

Translation: I'm quite nervous today, and holding a delicate cup of hot liquid that can easily stain something, like all those lovely papers on your desk, or your suit, or your floor, or your face, will make me quite possibly have a heart attack. But thank you anyway.

"Well, anyway. My men are instructed to assist you in any of the work you need to do. Now, I've been told that you're here to assess matters for the future, lay some groundwork. Some of our citizens, though, will doubtlessly want you to pass a few judgements. You're a judge, they might come to you with disputes for you to settle. Obviously, that's beyond your official remit, but I give you liberty to pass judgements if you think it's necessary. Come to me if there's something more complex, or pertaining to the deeper management of the colony, we'll see if we can work something out, hm? You've got free reign to wander around the colony, examine what you wish, study what you wish, interview who you wish. If it's in my power to grant, I'll happily do what I can. Complete transparency, yes? Speaking of which, yes, you can access our records - not that many of them, but they're yours."

Tanner blinked.

"Oh."

She twisted the buttons on her skirt.

"That's... really very kind of you, sir."

"Not at all."

He half-smiled.

"We're trying to run a sustainable colony here, honoured judge. Not interested in creating some awful little prison camp where everyone hates us. Judges like yourself should help, I think - I want harmony in my colony, an independent authority telling us what's lawful, what's not, what's equitable, what's unfair or brutal... well, that's just peachy. Can't be said that you're in cahoots with me, and no-one out there can say you're favouring any other party. All I ask is you don't get involved in anything... partisan, I want complete neutrality from you."

Tanner nodded rapidly.

"Of course, of course, not doing anything radical, nothing at all. Just like back in Fidelizh. No political associations, no radical contacts, no reactionary sympathies, no desire for monarchy restoration, no engagement with the political process, no attempts to influence procedure, nothing."

She almost wanted to yell to the man in the waiting room, just to let him know that she was a good, loyal citizen who'd only had lunch with a neo-monarchist a few times, mostly because of his sister, and she'd almost gone completely ape on him back in Mahar Jovan. Maybe she should've, then presented her righteously bruised knuckles as evidence of her loyalty, and for why she shouldn't be deported, please and thank you. Then again, roughing up people probably... probably wouldn't look very good, would it? Might make her look like a dangerous lunatic. Which she wasn't. Not at all. Neither dangerous, nor loony. She was a harmless... uh... well, luna-tic was derived from the moon, so... solartic? She was a harmless solartic, the opposite of a lunatic.

Only a total solartic would come up with this, someone who represented the ideal state of solaracy.

Only a solartic would invent new vocabulary to describe how normal they were.

Definitely.

Urgh.

"Ah. Thank you for the... comprehensiveness. Now, something more unpleasant, wanted to put it off. Don't worry, it's nothing to do with you. Incidentally, thank you for grabbing those letters on your way here, very kind of you. One of them, though, did concern you."

A pulse of absolute terror ran through her. They knew about Algi. They knew about something. Her mother had just bombed the Golden Parliament. Her father had died. Oh, gods, her father had died, she knew it, she knew it, and the last thing she'd said to him had been about eels, she'd never forgive herself if-

"I... believe you were meant to come here to join with a number of other judges. Five others, to be exact. Two were prevented from coming here on time due to an attack by the Sleepless on their train line - bastards, even when they get a state of their own they're insufferable. They won't be here until spring at least, things are starting to freeze over, safer for them to come once everything's woken up. And the other three..."

He paused, his expression grim.

"I'm afraid they won't be coming either."

Tanner froze. Said nothing. Calculating the consequences of this.

"They were coming from Tuz-Drakkat, crossing over in Herxiel and then moving west. I'm afraid to say that... well, Herxiel's not the most stable of nations. Been a serious dispute for the last few months between two religious, political, trade union factions - in Herxiel there's not much difference between the three. When those three judges arrived, they were meant to make the crossing, but it was delayed on multiple occasions due to this ongoing issue, and... eventually, it spiked, all crossings of that sort were locked up, negotiations look unlikely to succeed for a few months at least. Put bluntly, they're not going to be able to make the crossing, let alone reach here, before the cold makes things completely impassable. And, embarrassing as it is, they've... run out of money. Stuck in Herxiel for so long that they couldn't even pay to stay in a hotel, had to beg for enough money to catch a train to the nearest judge-friendly city."

The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

Tanner nodded along dumbly, thinking as quickly as she could. She was alone. She was the one and only judge. She had no prototype to follow, no example to model herself after. All she had was herself, and what she brought with her. Until the spring thaw... gods, she was just thinking about the house. She'd been expecting to share a workload with numerous other people living in close proximity, the house wasn't meant for just one person. A nightmare occurred to her - the other judges coming in spring to find a squalid little den of rats, occupied by a single giantess, filthy from head to foot, thrusting piles of incomprehensible notes at them. She... she remembered a case, an unpleasant brief she'd looked over but hadn't taken, that she'd followed for some time as it progressed. Neglect, that was it. Parental neglect. A mother in Fidelizh had six children, and spent a great deal of her time indulging her hobbies and interests at the expense of her husband (who had a meagre trade in candlesticks) and her children, who wound up becoming filthy, neglected... she'd read about how the eldest child had stalked to the Golden Door with rags around her feet instead of shoes, demanding to see someone about things, having lost absolutely all her patience with the way things were going at home, aware her mother didn't care, and her father had been pecked into oblivion and mostly just drank the evenings away. The description she'd read when the judgement had come through... she couldn't help but imagine that the judges who came to help her in spring would think the same of her, and how she kept their house. 'Anything capable of being broken has been, anything capable of being spoiled has been as well. Dirt accumulates in all corners and over all objects, and indeed over all inhabitants of the house (save its mistress, who remains impeccable in form). Cupboards are stuffed with fragments of rotten food, bottles of milk metamorphosing into cheese, random rags that were once clothes, saucepans crusted with filth, bread that is now host to a hundred species of mould... one cupboard has a floor made of several inches of compacted coffee grounds. A single core of cleanliness exists in the house - the mistress' bedroom, which is lavishly decorated. The children are not permitted to enter, nor is the husband. This house fits every definition of absolute squalor, and is scarcely fit for the meanest vermin, let alone a human child. If it were within the remit of this judgement, it would be consigned to demolition by mutant-grade immolators. And let it be said that if Tanner Magg were in charge of a house like this, I should have her expelled from our order, kicked in the jaw, and subjected to a twelve-day death sentence immersed in a vat of theurgic solvent, and then we'll talk about how she always had terrible breath but never realised it, and we were all too polite to mention it, and she stank to high heaven to the point that she made us dread her coming like the rabbit dreads the eagle. Also she had a fat arse.'

She'd be like that. Except the last thing. She'd be like the mistress of that... that palace of rags, she'd be deemed a woeful judge, barely capable of doing anything. She couldn't be a housekeeper, a judge doing the work of five others at once, a coherent scout of a whole colony's woes, and an adjudicator on mild issues, while reporting to the governor and... and...

Oh, the governor was still talking.

Ought to listen to him.

"I understand the pressure this likely places on you, and let me be clear, I don't expect the same results I would from a full team. The mere fact that you reached the colony, under such challenging conditions, while still being willing to work speaks volumes to your quality of character, and I have absolute confidence that you'll succeed in accomplishing something. I don't expect you to shake the roots of the earth. All I want, honoured judge, is for you to talk to my people, understand what concerns bedevil them, even in the broadest possible sense. Even getting a vague notion of what resentments or instabilities might be festering in the colony would be a great help to us, and to your fellow judges."

His voice was smooth. Calming. There was a kind of... she'd seen this with Captain Kralana, and some of the other mutant-hunters. An air of 'I've seen worse'. A knowledge of how much a body could actually take before it broke, that gave a certain detachment from pain. A knowledge of how awful a situation could be, that cultivated a very cool eye indeed. She looked at him, nervousness making her skin prickle... the craters on his face looked painful, and he was sitting with some discomfort, like it pained him to remain sitting for a long period of time. He wasn't large, but he had this quality of... completeness, like he knew everything that was worth knowing, and had some kind of prophetic foresight as a result, some ability to see the patterns of history, even a kind of immunity from them. Some people wore history like armour, and he was one of them. Tanner thought about the nightmare in the snow, the terror of being chased, the sight of things getting ripped apart, and...

Yes. Yes, it could be worse. She'd seen it be worse. Already, she was thinking of solutions, calmed a little by... well, looking at a prototype of calm detachment. Get a housekeeper. Maybe get an assistant, someone literate. There were merchants in the colony, traders, some of them would have children, perhaps, who might appreciate a bit of extra pocket money in exchange for helping with her papers. Might need to ask for some help from the governor, might need to send letters back home to make sure the judges would supply her with proper funds to actually pay for the help.

Alright.

This was fine.

Everything was just peachy. Positively apricotal. Absolutely and indisputably nectareeny.

"I understand, sir. Completely understand."

"Well. Good. Now, my man Canima, he's the head of the local Erlize... meaning, he's the local Erlize, and has two assistants. They'll all be happy to help."

She shivered.

"Yes, sir."

"And again, if there's anything you need, come and ask. I'll be happy to help."

Tanner nodded. The governor cracked another half-smile, shifted in his seat... and reached for some papers. The meeting was over. She stood quickly, almost bowed before realising how odd that would look, and scuttled to the door as quickly as propriety could allow. The room beyond... it took her a moment to find Mr. Canima, even though she knew where he was, and he hadn't moved a jot. He was just that stealthy. The door behind her clunked shut, sealing the governor away with his piles of work. Couldn't imagine what that work entailed, no idea what those papers could have on them. Maybe they were just props to make it seem like he was working, and in reality, the moment she left he'd leapt back to his feet and slipped through a hidden door to... do something else. She really had no idea how governors worked. Did he kiss babies? She'd heard of Parliamentarians kissing the occasional baby to garner a vote or two, but, well, she'd never voted, not allowed to, so... maybe they kissed babies, maybe that was an urban legend, like those stories about the elusive Mothwoman who slithered down chimneys to eat all your coal. Anyway. Mr. Canima was here. His glittering eyes had slid open, and were fixed on her, unblinking and unnerring. She gulped slightly.

"Uh."

"Was there something else?"

Was an effort to get her voice not to squeak.

"I don't think so?"

"Hm."

His eyes slid closed.

And he started, very faintly, to snore.

Somehow this was more alarming. If he was able to go to sleep that quickly, it meant he had absolute control over his body. Probably about to spit venom at her before scuttling to the ceiling to lay his eggs. No, she might be confusing secret policemen with large insects. Or snakes. Either way, the opportunity to run presented itself, and she gladly took it, leaving the room with all the haste she could manage while still seeming dignified. It wasn't that she was scared of authority figures, she was just keenly aware that she could go temporarily insane at any moment. What if she broke the decanter? What if she spilled tea everywhere? What if she just started crying? The last one was unlikely, but she had tear ducts, she had moisture, she was a moist individual, she could moisten her eyes a little, and if she could do that, she could moisten them to a state of intense moisturisation, and humiliate herself forever. Maybe that was why the governor's window was behind him - stopped people committing suicide out of shame.

She trotted down the sharply tiled stairs.

Found a sharply tiled hall.

Passed by a handful of very polite soldiers with very lovely uniforms and very large guns, who blinked at the sight of a very large woman shuffling agitatedly at high speed.

And left through another heavy, dark door, into the flurry of snow beyond.

Rekida awaited her.

The grand old ruin.

Even now, after a few days, it was a sight that continued to engrave itself into her mind. And years later, if she lived that long, she was confident she'd never forget it.

The colony, such as it was, was a wart on the surface of a ruined city. It stuck itself to a huge breach in the walls, known colloquially as the Cleavage, or more properly, as the Breach. The mutants had made it during the Great War, and the colony had expanded it, reinforced it against collapse, and used it as the primary means of access to the ruins. The actual main gate had been turned into such a tangle of slag and rubble that clearing it would be the final stage of the restoration - it was something that resisted all attempts at incursion from the outside, and right now, the outside was all they controlled confidently. The colony was mostly made up of dark dwellings, wooden and warm, huddled tightly with their roofs bending to touch one another, forming perpetual canopies over the lamplit streets. It was such a continuous field of buildings that the snow could form a boundless field atop it, stretching from one end of the city to the other. Only a few higher stone buildings interrupted it, and they were rare indeed. Almost looked embarrassed to be so tall, with their bare grey stone and narrow little windows. And when the roofs of the surrounding houses flowed around these interlopers, they did so with a sense of supreme annoyance at this damned inconvenience. The colony was fine. There was little to say about it until you were inside it. Looking down from the governor's hill, though...

The greatest attraction was the city.

The walls were enormous. Sturdy beyond belief. Made of alabaster-white stone, hewn out of the hills nearby and built over the course of centuries. The faceless gate-gods of the Rekidans were omnipresent, forming great structuring pillars, marking regular intervals along the great wall. They seemed to hang from the wall, arms braced upon the top, so that they leered ominously at anyone who dared approach. These gods were clearly inhuman, in some ways - their legs were studdied with smooth, hooked spikes, like the sort found on the legs of certain insects. Their arms were unnaturally long, ending in vast hands with six clawed fingers, a second thumb extending out of the palm. The heads were completely abstract. No pretensions at humanity - each head spiralled into a delicate helix of strands, almost simulating hair, while the male figures often had jagged beards which looped under their arms and around their waists. Faceless as they were, they weren't expressionless. When the sun cast upon them, subtle imperfections in their features caught the light, casting shadows which almost resembled something more natural. Right now, the titanic woman facing her, just to the left of the Breach, seemed to have a deep, unwelcoming frown... but Tanner had seem her smiling coyly, or broadly, or with deep shadowy eyes and no mouth at all. Enormous metal braziers were mounted in front of each statue, where in the old days fires were lit to create even more shadows upon them.

The Breach felt like a violation. The walls concealed everything from the outside world, only a few peaks from the highest roofs visible above it. And the breach violated that privacy. Even now, the statue the mutants had destroyed in making the breach lay shattered all around it, the colony operating around them. An enormous arm, grabbing at nothing. A half-broken head, the few shadows upon it meaningless, creating no expression, the conditions for the intricate shadow-play of the others... simply gone. Through the Breach... ruins. Buildings shattered by fighting, scorched by fire, stained by the gore of mutants and humans alike. At least they'd cleared the bodies out. Slight flashes of grandeur, but nothing compared to the walls, nothing whatsoever. Hard to even tell what things were meant to look like. Tanner found that... Rekida was a city that liked its boundaries. The old towers outside the city, which had once been the centre of little settlements and fortresses, all had three gates you had to pass through. The city placed a massive emphasis on its walls, on the gods of boundaries and limitations. In the old days, they said that the borders of the nation were marked out with huge standing stones, placed at regular intervals over enormous distances.

All gone, now.

The city was silent. The work crews were still streaming in, a little train of ants heading through the monumentally enormous Breach. A cold wind blew, scattering a few flakes here and there. The city swallowed sound, it devoured noise, it turned words into meaningless whispers. It wasn't quite like standing before a grave, more like... standing in a library written in a language she didn't recognise. There was meaning here, there was something within and behind all the symbolism she saw. The walls were hung heavy with nameless gods, there was an emphasis upon light and how it played upon surfaces, a love of alabaster stone and sharp angles, and there were symbols wound around some of the monuments, symbols she knew nothing about. This was a holy city, but the gods were voiceless, nameless, faceless. The priesthood was dead and gone. The braziers had been unlit since the Great War. Even now, whole stretches of the city were either reduced to anonymous rubble, or were still utterly unexplored. There was meaning here, but she couldn't find it. A library of sensible gibberish. And based on the people she saw around the colony, that wasn't a unique impression. These people were Rekidan refugees, fleeing the city before it fell, coming back after most of them had raised children in Fidelizh, taught them Fidelizhi as a first language. And the younger generation were the first priority for returnees, better able to work, to uproot themselves from Fidelizh, and... ultimately, they were disconnected from this place, just as much as the governor and the Erlize, as the soldiers who patrolled the streets from time to time. Just as much as Tanner.

Regardless.

She marched down from the hill, the snow stomped into a paper-thin layer by the progress of officials, soldiers, workers and the like. Strewn with gravel to stop people from slipping. She still attracted a few stares from the soldiers on duty at the bottom of the hill, but... hardly mattered. Not her job to complain about a few stares. Now, if someone else complained about a few stares, or ideally, many people complained about staring in general, then she'd be able to record it, slip in a personal anecdote for added effect. But her alone? No, that'd be an unnecessarily obfuscating and self-centred approach. That was what her memory-room told her, at least. The feeling of one of her older skirts running between her fingers brought to mind the principles of equity law, of broad-scale mediation and enumeration. Don't be self-centred. Be detached, but not unsympathetic. Be precise with calculations, yet never ignore the human element at their core. Favour no side, leave that to the people writing out the judgements. She kept thinking of these precepts, and more, as she entered the colony proper. Entered the shadow of the many, many roofs. If the walls of Rekida were imposing and godly, the colony seemed to delight in its own smallness, its humanity, its shadows and gloom, illuminated by the warm flickering light of innumerable lamps.

The roofs clustered overhead, forming a solid canopy, edges marked with dripping icicles. The ground underfoot was sodden, sludgy, snow pounded back into liquid by countless feet. Well. Not countless. The colony wasn't large enough for countless. But at least a few hundred. Tanner pulled her cape tightly around herself, regretting not bringing her coat. No, no, judges wore capes, that was the rule. She could wear a coat when she was... well, not meeting the governor. The governor was cape-worthy. Tanner walked as quickly as she could, the streets growing quieter and quieter with each passing minute. It was funny, being in a place like this, so solidly devoted to labour in a single industry - that industry being the colony's prosperity. People left home in the morning, returned home at night. Men and women both. Dedicated housekeepers worked solidly throughout the day to keep the small dwellings clean and vermin-free, leaving people to filter off to their various duties. It was effectively a huge barracks which had been subdivided into houses, but the model was still very military. There were no homeless people around, no housewives, no children in the streets, none of the little accoutrements of civilised society, the impedimenta that were carried along as age and inefficiency built up around the joints of civilisation. Here, everyone was focused, everything was dedicated, nothing was left up to chance or failure. It was an early colony - and that meant it was more of a glorified factory than an actual settlement, reliant on importing labour from elsewhere.

No workers to be seen.

None but...

Well.

Shadowy figures stumping through the snow, backs heavily laden with furs and pelts. The last hunt before midwinter had ended. They were coming in to take up other jobs now, to drop off the last of their yields. They said buffalo used to live around here, big, shaggy buffalo, horns black as carbonised wood, eyes black as opals, fur thick enough to get lost in. The hunters marched through the streets some ways away... she only caught tiny glimpses of their march as she walked home, like glimpsing wild animals that shied and fled the moment a human came too close. They were big men, damn big men. Strong, corded with muscle. Swathed in layers of hard brown clothing, backs straining under the weight of their pelts. Gas masks still on their faces to protect from anything that might've gotten into the pelts, into the animals, into their colleagues. Seemed like a ragged assembly from a primitive priesthood, weighed by the fur of great beasts, faces concealed by ritual masks, their guns hanging lazily from their hands like religious sceptres. A few had their masks slightly undone, and their hair could protrude freely from the back. Once, she saw a bright red plume of hair, like something that ought to be on a knight's helmet, sticking out from between loosened straps. The man beneath the rangy and tough as all the others, but there was something strangely hilarious about that plume of shockingly red hair, reminding her far too much of the mutant girl who'd nibbled at her hand. Some of them stared at her as she walked. But most just soldiered on, guns gleaming, fur devouring light into its dark completeness, knives sleeping in battered leather sheaths, scarred by all manner of misdeeds. One seemed to be carrying a bundle of flowers, pale, pinkish, stringy... but she looked closer, and saw that it was the compacted mass of tails from huge rodent-like creatures, their grey, ugly bodies swinging beneath.

They'd be heading home. Heading for a rest. For a drink, perhaps. And then... new jobs. Anything for a bit of pay over the winter, when the animals slept and hid, when the snow killed more surely than any buffalo could.

Only saw a dozen. All of them silent. All of them strange. And then... gone. The only folk with business to be out and about at this sort of hour. She did catch a glimpse of something, though - a huge shape on a cart, too heavy, and remarkably intact, compared to the other large animals which had long-since been dismantled to their basic components. This one was huge, and she thought it... might be a bear? Might explain why it was in a cart being pulled by a handful of hunters. Killing a bear was impressive. Tough sort of hunters, then. But even with their trophy, none of them spoke, none of them cheered, all of them were far too weary and weighed to do anything but struggle on home.

And as a result, by the time she reached her own home, the narrow, warmly lit streets were completely deserted.

And she was utterly alone.

Her house faced her.

A house too big for one person. Much, much too big. Meant for six judges at once.

And when the door creaked open, she winced at how hollow it felt. She'd spent the last eight years living in a labyrinth with many others, only in the last few years had she even received the right to her own room. Now... now her feet echoed on barren floors, she looked around at lifelessly new furniture, carved and not even close to being worn in. The wood was turned almost silver by the faint winter light, and it made the place seem leached of colour. The house hadn't been filled in with colour, not yet, it wasn't ready for occupation. Every edge was sharp, every hinge gleamed, every wooden surface still bore the occasional splinter of newness. She slung her cape onto a peg - part of a rack that mocked her with its emptiness. She removed her shoes, and they seemed similarly out-of-place. Padded to a pair of thick slippers.

Still unused to this place.

The stove was, indeed, functional. Fixed this morning. She had no reason not to be here. And only a crazy person would go and hit the stove with a massive hammer so she could go and life in a cramped room above a kaff, scented perpetually with cooking food and boiling tea. No, that would be completely insane. Lunatic, not solartic.

She slipped into her slippers, the cold wool making her shiver a little.

Paused.

Sat down at her table.

Drummed her fingers.

Stared dead ahead.

Hummed.

Thought.

Thought a little too much. Kept thinking about wolves in the night. Silent human-things that sat in a perfect circle, unblinking, unsleeping. Standing stones amidst the blizzard. Her heart beat a little faster, and her hands curled up slightly. No, stop thinking about that. Focus. Focus.

Had a job to do. Had things to manage. No idea where to start. This wasn't... she wasn't meant to lead an expedition, she was meant to be an assistant, more or less. Forcibly promoted beyond her abilities. She could see... if this expedition lasted a hundred days, she could see what she might be doing on day fifty, or sixty, or seventy. She could see how those days might go - she'd interview people, work her way through the major workplaces, fully settled into a routine of learning about grievances, complaints, and so on. She'd return home and write them up formally using her automatic quill, file things appropriately in a locked chest, and cook herself a small dinner, if she didn't get one from a local kaff or... whatever the Rekidans had instead of kaffs. That was day fifty. But day one? Where did she start? Set up a stall with a giant sign reading 'COMPLAIN TO ME'? Go to a kaff, slug a few cold ones back with the girls and yell 'so how about that governor, am I right, ladies?' to the tune of a hundred little responses she could note down later? Go to one of the work crews? When? When would possibly be a good time to interview people? They were working all day, then they were tired, and... gah! She didn't want to ask the governor of his terrifying Erlize assistant what she was meant to do, that would be deliriously unprofessional, and she'd probably shrink several feet out of sheer shame.

She would literally cure her gigantism through cringing out of embarrassment. If she thought she wouldn't immediately drown herself in a puddle, she might actually consider doing that.

Day one...

What to do?

Had to do something.

Couldn't just walk around all day looking at people, though.

...a thought.

She hummed again, the sound devoured by her empty, hungry house. A house insulted by how only one judge had come to fill it.

If a mutant entered this house, she'd be defenceless. Looked around, charting every dark corner where scuttling things might dwell. They said cockroaches could flatten themselves down to the thickness of a piece of paper. For all Tanner knew, the walls were full of the things, little traces of contamination blooming among them. Wasn't that how it worked? Contamination seeped up. Infected tiny organisms. Then bigger organisms devoured them, or came into accidental contact. And before anyone knew what was happening, the walls were heaving with insects the size of small dogs, devouring one another silently, spilling infected matter to create more mutants, attract them, nurture them... and then all you could do was burn the place to the ground.

She shuddered. Needed help. Needed company. Not ready to be alone in here.

Her cape remained hung. Her coat, though, swung around her shoulders and was fastened tight. Her boots were replaced, still warm from when she'd last had them on a few minutes ago. She paused... and wrapped a scarf tightly around her face, feeling the warmth of her own breath reflecting back. Ah, good, didn't have bad breath. Wonderful.

And with that...

She went out to find Marana.

Because sometimes, Tanner Magg, twenty three years old, accredited and chartered judge, esteemed by her peers, larger than anyone she'd properly met...

Sometimes she needed an adult.

And Marana, somewhat, qualified.