CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE - RECOLLECTIONS OF THE FOUNDER'S EYE
Tanner was fourteen when it happened. When the woman with the letter came to their house in Mahar Jovan. The woman with an eye tattooed on her forehead, and an accent which spoke to a very, very distant city indeed.
The day was grey, the sky overcast with heavy clouds that didn't promise rain, and didn't promise sun either. No cold intense enough to be feared, no heat powerful enough to be enjoyed. A non-committal sky, in short, which seemed to drink colour from the world below. Tanner was picking little bones out from her beneath her nails. Been working at the fishery again, gutting huge piles of fish sent in for processing. This was how she spent her day, at this point in her life. The morning was for schooling, in a cramped little building maintained by the great and good of the cities. The afternoon was for labour, where she and the other children in her little caste trooped off to find work where it could be found. For Tanner, that meant the fishery, meant hours of hunching over a soaking-wet table, her hair tied into a severe bun, her front covered by an oiled apron, her hands aching as she sliced again at another shimmering body, parting scale and ice-cold flesh to find the little red organs that lurked within, inedible and bitter. A flick, and the body was open. A flick, and the organs were torn out. A snap, and the head was gone, spiralling away into a nearby bucket. And then she moved on. This fishery dealt with sauce production, which meant that the fish was destined to be macerated in brine. The bodies would be for the poor-quality stuff, and the organ bucket was destined for the high-quality batches. Not her business, she didn't deal with it, but the stink of the tanks lingered in her clothes and hair afterwards, made cats give her longing looks as she walked home.
This was her life. And she was doing all she could with it. Morning, school. Afternoon, fishery. And evening.. heading back home, usually a little before her mother returned from her own work. There was an old woman who'd stopped working years ago, who was nice enough to keep an eye on father during the day, in the periods when everyone else was out of the house. But once the evening rolled around, the old woman returned home, and Tanner had to make sure father was alright, that he hadn't been in the same place for too long, that he'd eaten everything he needed, that he was comfortable. She could tell when he was uncomfortable - there was a tightness around the features, and she'd developed a good sense for what worked, what didn't. She got dinner started, and then picked out the bones from beneath her nails with a small knife, waiting for mother to get back home so they could eat. She had a slate-eyed solitude painted over her face, a dull resignation that... this was it. Her life would continue in this vein. She didn't think of herself as marriageable, and so... well. There were worse fates. She had her business, looked forward to the hours of peace she got, enjoyed school as much as she could, and all the while the lodge protected her from witchcraft.
Just thinking about the lodge made her shiver.
They weren't evil or cruel. Not objectively. But they...
She still remembered, and would remember for the rest of her life, that first initiation. Dressed in a white shift. Stood before her aunts and uncles, all the distant relations who were joined together beneath the lodge's leaking roof. Gathered to practice their rites, to gather luck, and prevent others from stealing it away. A perpetual occult war raged in Jovan, and no-one acknowledged it was happening, not outside of a lodge and its ceremonies. Luck was a zero-sum game, and if you were to win, someone else had to lose. All that mattered was clinging together and fighting against all the others. And in the initiation, she was tested. Probed. Examined. Interrogated. Naturally shy. Naturally afraid of being stared at. And exposed before a crowd of people she barely knew, who seemed to take relish in watching her squirm her way through question after question after question. No idea what was happening. No idea why. Only aware that when she looked in her mother's direction, the woman's eyes flickered down, refusing to meet her own.
Never forgiven her mother for dragging her to that. Never. Even if it was for the greater good. Even then.
Her skin crawled at the memory, and she worked harder at her nails, biting her lip. Didn't want to think about it. Didn't want to think about it.
When a little knock came from the front door. Tanner twitched. No-one knocked. Mother had a key. The old woman, too. No-one else came by, not really. Mother didn't entertain guests. Her mind immediately went to the lodge - they were sending someone to check on them, the little outposts of lodge-approved virtue in a city of sin and ruin. She stood carefully, setting her knife down, twisting her fingers nervously... flattening her face. Expressionlessness coming to her as easily as nervous twitches did to others. She adjusted her ribbons - slightly grimy and in need of replacement, but money was strained enough as it was, even with the lodge helping out with the occasional spot of bother. She approached the door, nervous.
"Who is it?"
"Is this the residence of Tonrana Magg?"
The voice which came through the door was female, and sounded... not old, but not quite totally youthful. And strained, very slightly, like something was obstructing it. Unusual accent. Tanner hesitated for a second, and kneaded her skirt furiously, looking around for some sort of large object to whack people with. Just in case.
"Who's asking?"
"My name's Carza vo Anka, I worked with Tonrana Magg's cousin, Lirana."
...mother didn't talk about her family. Not much. She didn't have much of a family, they were largely dead and gone, either by age or the Great War. Did she have a cousin? Had she mentioned her before? Tanner hesitated, glancing at her father, staring blindly ahead. As he'd done for the last few years, without fail. A childish part of her wanted to say that no-one was here, there was no-one in this house, the voice was just a hallucination, and then she'd run to her room and hide under her bed for a while. Another, equally childish part wanted to open the door to see what was happening. And eventually... the latter child won out. The woman sounded civilised, sounded polite, and knew mother by name. And if in doubt, Tanner could use her knife. She opened the door slightly, keeping it on the chain...
A woman with an eye tattooed on her forehead stared back, looking up at Tanner slightly.
"Oh. Mrs. Magg?"
"I'm Tanner. I'm her daughter."
She kneaded her skirt uncomfortably with one hand, keeping the motion hidden by the door. The woman wasn't alone, there were a pair of individuals waiting a little way down the street, talking idly. Both of them were massive, thuggish-looking, and their faces were hidden by scarves and masks, even on a fairly muggy day. No sign of their flesh, but they were large. Larger even than Tanner - and that was a feat. Carza smiled slightly, her face always seeming to twitch from one expression to the other, never smoothly transitioning.
"May I come in?"
"Mother's not here. She'll... be back soon, though. Would you... like to wait inside/"
Her eyes kept flickering to the large pair, noticing only now that one was a man and the other a woman. Carza followed her gaze for a moment... she was an odd-looking woman, really. Slightly dusky skin, messy brown hair, large dark eyes, and... well, she was rake-thin. Seemed rattish, honestly. A giant rat wearing some sort of gown, reminding her faintly of a judge's cape, over a heavy, ever-so-slightly mannish tweed suit. Her shirt had a bizarrely high collar, almost stretching up to her chin, and it made her look even thinner, and this in turn made her look more ravenous, more... well, she looked like the sort of person who wouldn't do anything slowly. The sort of person who gnawed her way through time, rather than savouring every drop. She was foreign, but... no idea from where. Carza drew a bundle of papers out of her bag, sealed in an envelope, humming slightly to herself as she did so, scratching her neck with the other hand... no part of her remained still for long, especially not her face, which was always screwing up, relaxing, twitching... her eyes were perpetually on the move, and it was making Tanner nervous.
"Oh, yes, I would - sorry, those two don't need to come in, I know they can... fill things up. I have some papers to do with... everything."
She smiled helplessly, and Tanner found herself almost smiling back, just to resolve a little of the tension in the air. A moment, and Carza was inside, sitting herself down in the kitchen while Tanner hunted for the cleanest tea-things they had. Would let her into the sitting room, but father was there. This was why people didn't visit unexpectedly - because father needed to be moved around in order to stay healthy, but they didn't like having him in the same room as visitors, made everyone feel self-conscious, and she couldn't move him to the bedroom immediately, so...
Anyway.
Carza's smile was fixed in place, and she kept adjusting her hair.
"So... Tanner?"
Tanner twitched.
"Yes, miss?"
"How old are you?"
"Fourteen, miss."
"Go to school?"
"Yes, miss. Every morning."
"Enjoy it?"
"Yes, miss."
Carza was practically squirming in her seat, in obvious discomfort with small talk. Tanner returned with tea, laying down a cup for both of them, nestling a cosy around the teapot to keep it warm for her mother.
"...I like your ribbons?"
Tanner flinched as she sipped her tea, almost spilling it.
"Oh. Ah. Thank you. I... like your... tattoo?"
Carza's hands twitched towards it on instinct, and for a second Tanner thought she'd insulted her. Just for a second.
"Oh, yes, this thing. Had it done when I was twenty-one, just after I graduated. Have you heard of ALD IOM before?"
Tanner blinked.
"I don't... think so. No, no, they mentioned it in school, sorry, just remembered. That's... a city, right? Off to the west?"
"That's the one. Well, that's where I'm from. And where... your... hm, sorry, trying to figure out the right time for a mother's cousin."
"First cousin, once removed."
"...that was quick."
"Lodge. They're... very interested in family ties. Sorry."
"Ah."
Silence fell for a few painful moments. Carza''s hands were white with tension around her cup, and she seemed to be itching for something that tea couldn't quite satisfy - Tanner wanted to offer her a cigarette, or a cigar, or something, but they could barely afford basic amenities, luxuries like tobacco were completely off the table. She felt ashamed at her poorness, wished mother would come back, felt how grimy her ribbons were, how she still stank of fish sauce - there was a stench to the maceration tanks which was quite unique, a mixture of spices, rancid flesh, salt, heat... it was rot, blasting outwards at all times from vats heated with furnaces, and the resulting sauce didn't taste much better. She envied the children that got to work in the normal fisheries, the ones which salted fish for preservation, or just butchered them for the market, but... well, those places were taken. Leaving her with the vats. She kept staring at her own fingers, at the still-unclean nails where bones and flesh had wormed their way into spots hard to scrub. Bit the inside of her cheek.
"...I'll be talking about this with your mother, but... well, your first cousin once removed died a few years ago, I'm sorry to... bring bad news, but there's some salary she was owed, which I'm here to give to your mother."
Tanner blinked.
"Oh."
Well, she'd found out she had a first cousin once removed, and a few minutes later, that the aforementioned cousin was dead.
"I see."
Carza sipped her tea. Nodded. Hummed. And suddenly spoke, her voice infused with artificial brightness.
"...so! Uh. The... you know, I've never really been round here before, to Mahar Jovan, I mean. Interesting city. I'm surprised it still has a diarchy. So... you're in Mahar, but you said there was a lodge, that's... more to do with Jovan, isn't it?"
"Yes, miss."
"I've read about those."
She paused, swallowing weakly.
"I mean, I've... had a little poking around. I wonder... I mean, Tanner, have you ever thought about why the lodges are the way they are?"
Tanner blinked.
"No, miss. Not really."
"I mean, they're cloistered, they're secretive... they're obsessed with us-against-them. Why do you think that is?"
Tanner blinked a few more times. This was new. People didn't ask her these things. She was getting the feeling that Carza was a bit... odd. And... hold on, ALD IOM? As in, that city which just appeared? She'd heard about that, some ships talked about some of their goods ultimately ending up in that place, lots of luxuries which ALD IOM treasured above everything else. Bizarre place, apparently, but it sounded exotic. The woman in front of her, with her mannish suit, her gown, her tattoo... Tanner felt a little, long-neglected spark of curiosity well up, moving past layer upon stifling layer of stinking fish sauce, the routines which had slowly ground Tanner down into a hard-faced automaton.
Just a little bit.
"...well, the lodge says it's because being secretive protects us from witchcraft. If we let our secrets into the world, the other lodges will be able to attack us more effectively, steal our luck for themselves, leave nothing good behind."
"Luck. Hm."
Carza's head tilted to one side.
"And there's the luck in Mahar, which is more about... filtering the world for the good things, isn't that right?"
"Yes, miss. More or less."
"Why do you think there's a difference?"
"Mahar was founded by foreigners, miss. Fidelizhi. Jovan wasn't. So... well..."
She could trail off. But she felt the urge to continue, her thoughts clicking, her mind's gyre widening.
"Maybe... Jovan was encouraged to think of the world as something which was theirs, and has since been invaded and needs to be protected, but Mahar was more about finding the unfamiliar and filtering out what's bad about it. I mean, just look at the buildings, Mahar's full of domes and wide streets, loads of gargoyles... it's richer, but Jovan has some very wealthy lodges, but they all live in these narrow little buildings."
"They don't show off their wealth, then."
"No, miss. No point. If you show off your wealth in Jovan, you're just showing how much luck you have, you attract attention from the other lodges."
"Or from Mahar, which invaded this place. I mean, Mahar is wealthier, maybe there's an element of just hiding your assets from the other side. Wonder if there's been any civil wars in Mahar Jovan, and if there were, if the lodges formed some core part of it. It makes sense to me, at least, but I don't imagine Mahar would tolerate the lodges if that happened. What do you think?"
"Oh, no civil wars, miss. None. The royal families like each other too much."
She nodded, satisfied with this answer. If the royal families liked each other, the state was fine, everyone was fine, no civil wars. And thinking of all those bridges, how could one side invade the other side properly? It'd take ages to march across from one to the other, they were narrow, some of them were easy to sever, so... maybe that was why the bridges were built that way, to discourage fighting. Hard to have a riot cross from one side of the river to the other when the rioters had to march up and down and up and down and left and right and do it all in single file. Carza leaned forwards, her hands suddenly becoming much stiller - just noticed that she was missing a few fingers, and usually angled her other fingers to cover them up, self-conscious. Her nose twitched.
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"Really?"
"Oh, very much so."
"Do they intermarry?"
Tanner blinked.
"Miss?"
"Intermarry. Does one royal family marry people from the other royal family?"
"...sometimes? I think? They're private, they don't really tell people what they're doing, they don't make a big deal out of it all. Mother says that's good, one of the princes had a scandal a few years ago, and she said that it was best if the families kept all their issues inside the families, didn't bring the whole thing down with little... well, things like that."
"I assume they don't always intermarry. I mean, if they did, they'd be very inbred by now. Just, logically speaking, I imagine they don't intermarry all the time - makes me wonder how they stay on good terms. Though, then again, maybe avoiding intermarrying helps, reduces the number of marital spats."
Tanner blushed slightly.
"Ah."
Carza smiled guiltily.
"Sorry. So... luck, it's interesting how that works. You know, there's a place out to the west - this is where I went with your first cousin (once removed), it was on an expedition into the steppes over the mountains. And they're obsessed with luck, too. But their conception is more... well, about invitation. For them, luck is just a day where nothing happens, bad luck is something you avoid attracting to yourself, like... when a thunderstorm happens, and you don't stand under a tree .That's how they conceive of luck. Because out on the steppe, you're constantly moving, there's a perpetual risk of getting raided by someone else, suffering an injury or illness, being stuck in bad weather, having your herd attacked, meeting the Scab- well, mutants... lots of bad things. So their version of luck is just the absence of bad luck coming down on them. Bit more pessimistic."
Tanner's eyes were wide, and her words were rapid.
"Really?"
Carza nodded quite a few times in quick succession, her enthusiasm written obviously all over her foreign features.
"Really. Names are a big deal for them, just because naming something can call on it - so they don't name the dead, people who are going through mourning lose their names briefly, and there's a massive number of mythological things they just don't name except in a very roundabout way, just to stay safe by avoiding attracting attention from anything. It makes sense on the steppe, but it's... interesting to see a similarly pessimistic angle emerge in the lodges."
Tanner's face was starting to creak into a smile, just by accident.
"Maybe the lodges used to be different, but becoming part of Mahar Jovan changed them into what they are now. The lodge doesn't really talk about it, but... well... I mean, being part of a lodge helps, mother joined after father had... had an accident, and they've helped with money, with bureaucrats, with all that stuff. Just from time to time. Maybe... lodges originally only did that, but then Mahar came along, and suddenly it was all more paranoid. Just thinking."
Carza nodded along.
"Yes, yes, that does make sense, though you'd probably need to prove it a little more. Maybe... well, colonies, maybe lodges helped with the first colonies, provided a way for colonies to stay bound up with the city, rather than going their own way with their own beliefs. You could travel to a colony, just make the right signs, and you'd have a lodge-mate ready to help you, house you, feed you, everything. Binding people together."
"Oh, yes, yes, that's something they do! Some of the bigger lodges, I mean. The oldest rites are always the rites we have for people leaving home, going on long journeys, we keep shrines for them, and... sorry, sorry, shouldn't be telling you."
"Don't worry, not a witch. But I understand. Out of interest, do lodges provide actual defence?"
"Miss?"
"Defence. Do they fight other lodges, or-"
"Oh, no, no, never. Not polite. Not good. Against the law. I mean, we steal their luck, but we don't fight them physically, that would be rude."
"Hm. I see, I see. What about feasts?"
Tanner blinked.
"There's dinners."
She shivered. She didn't like the dinners. Not one little bit.
"I wonder if that's how the practice started. I mean, feasts are good, everyone likes a feast - anthropologically, we love talking about them, they're very popular for cross-cultural comparisons. Anyway, think of it this way, the bigger a feast, the more prestige you get, right? In ALD IOM, there's a... well, a court, the Court of the Axe, they love feasting, they're obsessed with it, draw in all their members. The bigger a feast, the more prestige the organiser gets. Thing is, feasts are also expensive. But by cooperating, you can extract a lot more out of it - your feast winds up bigger, it's less of a burden to put it on, and it binds you together with the other people organising it with you. If lodges aren't really for mutual defence... you can imagine how they'd grow up. You start by having feasts, then people cooperate in order to put on bigger feasts, this binds people together more and more, they start using this cooperation to help their members in other ways, over time the feasting element declines, but the association sticks around, reinforcing its fraternal bonds through other means. Because I doubt the cooperation element came first, there needs to be a goal, otherwise it'll fall apart fairly quickly - the Court of the Axe loves feasting because, originally, it helped bind them together around their warleaders, it was a way for leaders to give directly to their retinue, keep them happy, while also publicly asserting rulership over their latest conquest, and..."
She trailed off, coughing slightly and flushing with a hint of embarrassment.
"Sorry. Theorising."
Tanner was leaning forwards, her eyes locked on Carza.
"What about religion? I mean, there's gods, and... I shouldn't say this, but the lodges, we have tutelary gods, maybe we started as a cult for them, but gradually we expanded outwards to do other things?"
"Possible, possible. But why did you choose to revere gods that way, rather than more openly? Why did you become more secretive?"
"...because if the enemy knows about-"
"There you go, enemy, why is it about enemies? I suppose a question to ask is how did Jovan get founded? Did the lodges emerge out of nowhere, or was there a past invasion which made them get set up, or some sort of religious schism? If Jovan was invaded in the past, or if some other religion was set up that disliked tutelary deities, maybe hiding them was a way of preserving their worship, and then this developed into a more... paranoid outlook on the world, paranoid outlook on witchcraft?"
"Or contamination. That could be it. Contamination comes out of the ground, it'll always come out of the ground, you can't stop it, so... bad luck is the same way, you're just avoiding it by letting someone else soak it up. Zero-sum."
Carza clicked her fingers.
"That's the basic idea, yes, but everyone deals with contamination, why would Jovan be different? Might... hm, I wonder what histories exist of the early years, I assume Mahar writes most of them, but I'm... hm, if there could be an ethnography of a lodge, then..."
She shook her head suddenly.
"Anyway, anyway. That's... very perceptive of you."
She smiled strangely.
"Have you considered going into academia?"
Tanner stared. Blinked.
"Miss, I gut fish for the maceration vats."
"I used to be a street urchin."
Tanner's eyes widened.
"Really?"
"When I was a child, yes. Then I blackmailed my illegitimate father, got into the Court of Ivory... point is, just because you started small, it doesn't mean you can't do something."
"Hm."
"You don't look sure."
"...father's a dockworker. Mother's a maid. I'm a dockworker too. Not a bad life."
"Could be better."
"Hm."
Carza drummed her fingers on the table softly, tilting her head to one side, slowly studying Tanner. Tanner felt a sudden flush of... not sure what. There was embarrassment at being poor, uneducated, idiotic, in many ways unsophisticated. Shame and fear at revealing things about the lodge - maybe this was a test, maybe they were watching, they said they could always be watching, they had many members and they had wide eyes and keen ears. Could be watching. Might be here. Might be Carza. Another part of the initiation. And... something else. Something twitching its way through the grey matter in her head. Something she'd... when was the last time she talked like this? Not since father's accident. Not once. Mother didn't... she hadn't been one with time for Tanner's silliness, and after the accident, the two just didn't talk much at all. Especially not since the lodge. Things had been said. Mistakes had been made. No going back from most of them. And so, for the first time in... longer than Tanner really wanted to acknowledge, she was thinking. Human thoughts were writing through her. Stupid thoughts, bizarre thoughts, an endless string of extrapolations and non-sequiturs, thoughts pinging from one another in arcane trajectories.... eels. When was the last time she'd thought about eels? She wanted to get out that battered book she had under her bed, the one she'd been too tired to read for so very long, she wanted to ramble about the little interesting things she'd found, she...
She coughed.
"Sorry, miss."
Carza blinked.
"You... haven't done anything."
"Sorry for... wasting your time."
"No, no. Listen, I... need to talk with your mother about this, but... alright. So, I have your first cousin (once removed)'s salary to give. Few years of back-pay, I promised to give it to your mother when I returned, it took me... longer than I expected. Expedition went on for a while, it took a long time just to get back to ALD IOM, and... anyway. Anyway. I'm sorry for how long it's taken. But I have... other salaries, from people who died on the expedition, and... some of them, no, all of them don't have next of kin. The Court wants me to just keep the money, filter it back to the treasury, but that just seems... it seems rotten. It seems wrong. And..."
She smiled slightly.
"Well, anyway. I need to talk with your mother. But, if I can... help, in some way, I'd be happy to."
Tanner froze.
Money?
How much?
No, rude to ask. Rude to ask. A question erupted from her lips before she could think.
"Could I visit ALD IOM?"
She immediately flushed, and her hands dropped below the table to knead anxiously at her skirt. Carza's smile was faint, and there was a hint of something in it, something Tanner couldn't quite identify.
"Maybe one day. Hard to get there. Harder to leave. Can I ask... what it is you want to do, Tanner? Beyond gutting fish?"
Tanner shrugged nervously.
"I don't know. What do you do?"
"Anthropology and linguistics."
"Can I do that, too?"
"...well, maybe. Give it some thought. I... well..."
She paused.
"If there's any advice I can give you, it's just... well, people will say 'do what makes you happy', but what makes me happy is doing very little and sleeping in every day. Can't really do that, right? So... try and find something where you feel like you can justify doing it twenty years from now. Or fifty. Seventy. A hundred."
She smiled weakly.
"Your... first cousin (once removed), she... wasn't like that, she just wanted to make a lot of money and then retire to a house in the country filled with attractive menservants, pardon my vulgarity. Didn't really succeed. Died in the west. So... find something, burrow into it like a tick, and don't let go. No matter what. The world's a chaotic place, so just... find a rock, and latch onto it. Best people like us can do."
Tanner stared. She didn't get advice like this. Father had just done whatever work he could possibly get. Mother had only done little odds and ends before the accident, then she was just scrambling for whatever paid. This was... the first time someone had suggested that she do something which doesn't involve fish, manual labour, the destiny of people in her situation. Unskilled business that went on and on and on and on until she died or was injured too badly to work any further, then she'd go and mend nets for the rest of her life. She had no real... ambition for anything else, but... find something to do for the next hundred years, then burrow and cling. Don't aspire to being lazy, don't aspire to decadence, just find work and do it. It... spoke to something in her. Restraint. Limitation. Accepting boundaries and marking them, for the rest of time. She imagined... imagined if her father had done that sort of thing. Had a job that he did reliably, instead of whatever came his way. Something known, something bounded. The same schedule, every day from now until the end of the world.
Would he have been injured?
She stared at Carza, and thought about... what she must do, every day.
Did she have a kindred spirit? The same longing for predictable limitation? The same knowledge of how... delicate everything was, how everyone else operated so smoothly while she was so clumsy, how she had to work twice as hard just to do what everyone else did...
A click at the door. Mother was home. Tanner looked down at her tea, and focused on it as the conversation above began, and didn't stop for several hours - the letter was opened, papers were dispersed, the grisly matter of money was discussed. She kept looking at her tea as it grew cool, then ice-cold. Her mind had been set off, clicking outwards like an expanding army, taking more and more mental territory with each moment. What was she going to be doing years from now? Would she still be gutting?
Would she live the same way for the rest of her life?
Would she end up like father?
Would she end up like mother?
And when the topic of becoming a judge came up...
She accepted. And eagerly. Judges made money. Judges were stable. Judges were always needed. Judges didn't get struck by damaged harpoons, didn't get shoved into a salt-stained hovel by the riverbank. Judges didn't gut fish all day in a stinking fishery, hoping that somehow this would go somewhere positive.
Judges could do the same thing for the rest of their lives.
* * *
"...that's about the long and short of it. Ms. Carza vo Anka came to my house, gave me the money, talked about jobs..."
Marana was leaning back in her bed, eyes bright.
"Goodness. All this time... I knew her in Krodaw. She was younger, I suppose, practically still a girl, lacked the... worldliness which makes you seem old. Still innocent, and dying in the heat. We had dinner, I offered her cocaine, the usual. I always wondered what happened to her afterwards... she slapped me, you see. People didn't generally do that, not when I was the governor's daughter, not just a governor's useless old hag of an offspring. I... so, she made it to the steppes. Good for her. Always meant to... look her up again, but when Krodaw fell, ALD IOM was cut off for a long while, took some time for the routes to be opened up again, and once they did, I was... rather busy. Having a few ghastly breakdowns, you understand."
She smiled sadly.
"I used to be young... I swanned around with the silliest damn haircut, went to dinner parties while artillery fire was perpetually audible... she had a companion, a young man, I didn't dislike him... I wonder what happened to him? Hm. I'll... well, once this is all over, I'll look her up. Reminisce about the old days. Gods, after all this time... she shows back up to just give money to some random giantess who meets me on the way to a conference."
Tanner grunted, still refusing to undress, even her boots remaining tied and ready to march.
"Small world."
"No, big world, but only tiny pockets of life within it. Goodness..."
She suddenly seemed terrifically sad, for some reason. Hadn't known Ms. vo Anka for more than a few days years upon years ago, yet... oh. She was probably remembering Krodaw. The fall of the colony. The old days where she was young and bright, wasn't quite weathered by the passage of years. Tanner watched the older woman as she stretched back languidly on the bed, staring up at the ceiling. Her fingers were itching for a drink, Tanner could see that much. Not healthy to do so, not when they were about to set off into the snowy wilderness. She'd read up on hypothermia, she knew that alcohol only made it worse, warmed the skin while chilling the organs. Deadly, in the right conditions. It was... years since she really relived that day.
Had she followed Carza's advice properly? Carza hadn't been in touch, and Tanner hadn't reached out. Not due to any inherent reason, it was just... their relationship wasn't one of correspondence. Never intended to be. Carza was presumably travelling now, doing more work, maybe she was in ALD IOM, locked off from the outside world by years of isolation and the destruction of many routes by the fall of Krodaw. The nearest settlement to ALD IOM, and it was a shattered ruin occupied by raving lunatics who'd destroyed all the train tracks years ago in a fit of fury. She hadn't corresponded, but... anyway. Had she done as Carza recommended? Found a career, lost herself in it, bound herself in a thousand routines, restrained herself with predictability and safety... burrowed into the world like a tick, secure in her own little world. She remembered the mussel mosaic on the banks of the mudlands, the shimmering mass of shells, cloistered and closed, unwilling to engage with the world beyond the one they cultivated for themselves. Only opening when they were absolutely confident. Resilient creatures, very resilient... but immobile. Just took the right predator to crack them open, and in their tiny little worlds, there was no defence against things so large and specialised. Safety in smallness and isolation... until the right thing came along, and then it was just smallness, nothing else.
She'd been sent north by the confinements that kept her safe, restrained, happy.
The winds howled beyond them. Tanner thought about the journey. The distance. The low dread in her stomach at moving forwards without a plan to go back.
Had Carza ever dealt with this?
Anyway. The coffee was keeping her awake, the eggs were a lead weight, and she had no intention of doing anything but waiting for the dawn, for the coachman who was sleeping off a hangover. The wind wailed disconsolately. She remembered the titan standing amidst the uninhabited country of the Tulavanta. This place... this place had birthed that creature, and a million others. How many were still out there? How many were...
She saw a shadow, near-invisible amidst the dark.
Seven gleaming silver eyes, looking in through the window, right at Tanner.
Tanner froze. Fear surged up her spine at the sight of those eyes, flat, dead, resolutely and dismissively inhuman. Something about them made her feel... small. Weak.
Something was out there. Something was...
No longer there. The seven eyes vanished, and she imagined heavy lids snapping shut, concealing them completely. The shadow slinking away into the dark.
How many were out there? How many were watching?
She scanned the darkness, but nothing presented itself.
The Great War... they said it hadn't really ended. Not really. The mutants just lost the will to remain cohesive. People still didn't know why, it was one of those interminable mysteries that only fools looked into, because there was nothing to be found. Nothing but gloom and uncertainty. The mutants stopped aligning into million-body legions, the sculpted mutants stopped coming out of the distant north, and that was it. They stopped prosecuting the war, but that didn't mean they lost. The armies were still out there. Surrounding everything in the north, lingering in the dark, eager for contamination to consume. Living in conditions most creatures couldn't, so nothing could bother them in their long, silent lives. The armies were still here.
The armies were outside her window. Watching. Waiting.
She examined her skin carefully, checking for a hint of mottling, the first traces of contamination. Did it see her as an irrelevance, or a meal?
...if her routines had brought her here, what value did those routines have?
No, no, she was being nonsensical. She'd be fine. Just had to get to Rekida, set herself up, get on with her job. Simple enough. Marana suddenly spoke, her eyes sliding over to examine the intensely tense Tanner. Her voice was painfully loud to Tanner's ears, straining to hear a hint of movement in the great wasteland beyond.
"...you've never been west, have you?"
"No. Fidelizh and Mahar Jovan. And here."
"Well, calm down a bit. Trust me. No matter how bad it looks out there, it's quiet. Nice and dead."
"Except for the mutants."
"Not so many. See, out west... well, the foundation stone, the stuff which stops contamination welling up... in the middle-kingdoms, it's nicely balanced, some big permanent deposits under the major cities, and some smaller, temporary deposits where we dump the colonies, the coloniae if you want to be fancy. Out west, the deposits are much smaller, not many permanent ones at all... and north, up here, there's too much. It fills the soil up. Kills most plants, stops you farming, really. No wonder not many people lived up here, even before the Great War. When contamination breaks through, it's a giant pool of the stuff - the only stuff that can get through. The smaller trickles, those don't have a hope in hell, they need pressure to break upwards. Difference between a swamp and a geyser."
Tanner was dimly aware of some of this, but just listening to Marana was helping her clam down a little. She nodded along, always watching out of the window.
"So, the point is, calm down. Out west, every other breath is contaminated, especially if you go outside the cities. Pool after pool after pool, it just doesn't stop. You get old-growth mutants like you wouldn't believe... and plenty of mutant humans. Ugly. Hot. Not good. The north... if you take your pills, clip regularly, you'll be fine. Out west, you can't survive forever, you just try to die slower than everyone else. Up north, you're fine. Alright? So settle down."
Tanner hesitated.
"If the west's so dangerous, why do people live there? How do people live there?"
"With difficulty. And... you know what happened to Krodaw. Sometimes, people don't live there. They fail. And loudly. Point is, I've been to worse places. The two of us, we'll be just fine, we just need to stay warm, calm, and steer clear of those big pools."
"What if one of those pools appears here?"
"Then we run away when the rumbling starts. Remember... hm, you had that story about the blacktide, those eels that warned of change. Well, just think like that. We hear rumbling, we move. Not that it'll be a problem."
Tanner shot Marana a look, a little annoyed at how flippant she was.
"If the north is so harmless, why did the Great War start here? What made this place so special?"
"It's quiet. They could kill us city by city and no-one knew until it was too late. The cold was fine for them, but it killed us. Hard for us to invade lands that were already basically dead - you don't invade the north, it's never been a good idea, the land's too barren, there's no food, you just starve to death before you can do anything, and that's without moving forces through the Tulavanta."
Marana's voice had a low consistency to it, a calm rationality that was... quite at odds with how she usually was.
She was trying to make Tanner feel better.
Appreciated. But the idea of being babied, pitied, it... made her slightly annoyed.
Still.
She appreciated the gesture. Slumped back from the window, lowering her head and resting her eyes for a moment. Just a moment. Struck her, thinking about Carza, seeing those eyes... made her think. About her life, where she'd come from, where she was going, why she was doing it all in the first place. Her lips thinned slightly, but she said nothing, even as Marana continued to ramble about foundation stone, going over random factoids to calm everyone down. Humanity had endured for a very long time, even in environments like this - and if humanity had endured out here, so could they. The mutants wouldn't touch them. Not unless there was a damn good reason. There was a brutal calculation to the smarter ones, they'd forgotten mortal hungers and desires, lost their attachment to concepts of territory or sport, they simply did things as they became necessary. They wouldn't go for humans, not unless there was something worth eating or killing. They'd fought a genocidal war against humanity, yet they seemed to barely have any strong feelings towards them... or any feelings at all. No enmity. No hatred. No cruelty. Nothing at all.
She slumped back...
And when she next opened her eyes, the sky was tinted a light blue, and ragged streamers of cloud marked where the interminable grey had been banished. The sun was rising, small and golden and bright, turning the landscape into a boundless plain of blinding diamonds.
It was morning.
Time to go to her new home.
Time to go to Rekida.
This was where her routines and her vocation had led her. Nothing more to say. Nothing more to think about. She'd chosen this, in her own way. She'd committed.
Now, she finished whatever was on her plate.