Mazelton blearily wolfed down a bowl of something. He wasn’t sure what. The texture was sort of like lentils cooked to mush, but the flavor wasn’t right. He couldn’t put his finger on what it was, exactly. Perhaps it’s because they are cold. Once he finished his bowls, his eyes received enough energy to look beyond the immediate bounds of his body. He was in his wagon (well, the wagon belonging to Nimu that he rented a portion of) wedged between sacks of flour and the roll of his tent cloth. His shoes had been shoved under his head as a pillow. Mazelton tried to remember if he had done that, but found that he couldn’t recall.

It had been a long few days. Shoes aren’t very comfortable as pillows, but they had a magnetic, almost irresistible attraction, pulling him down and back to sleep.

“Oh no you don’t! Up and at ‘em, Mazelton. I have questions and curiosity! Your sleep can wait.” Madam Lettie sounded entirely too chipper for someone in stabbing range.

Mazelton rolled one eye in her direction, surreptitiously reaching for a sharp tent stake in a sack under the tent. It had been jabbing into him while he slept, and he hadn’t noticed at all.

“I saved some of the blood and diagrammed as much of the tattoos as I could. The forensic analysis of the gross physical modifications are as complete as they can be in the field, but I can’t crack the portion that is operating on the EM spectrum, not when it’s all messy loose heat, and particularly the ionizing radiation portion-” Her voice trailed off. “You know I can see you trying to sneak that tent peg out, right?”

“Just one stab. Somewhere non-lethal and that won’t stop you from going away.” Mazelton tried to sound persuasive.

“I’ve had better offers. Look, can you just tell me what this is?” She held up a vial full of sparkly blood.

“A terrible accident waiting to happen.” Mazelton firmed up his grip on the peg.

Lettie sighed. “I have a bottle of Koresh Family wine I was saving. The real stuff, not the second wine they put on the general market. Don’t be a pain in my ass about this and we can split it.”

“How big a bottle?”

“One liter.”

“Done.” Mazelton collapsed backwards onto the shoes. He hung on to the peg, fiddling with it while he thought.

“Never tried the genuine article Koresh. Expense account never stretched that far, and I could never quite con someone into buying it. On the two occasions I actually saw it for sale.”

“It is even better than advertised. I got four bottles almost a decade ago, and this is the last of them. Speaking of rare bottles,” She waved the vial of blood around.

“Heavy metals in the blood-”

“Obviously!”

“You asked, I’m answering. Plainly fatal levels of heavy metals in her blood. Those same heavy metals are absolutely lousy with heat. They are losing heat really fast, but something in their chemical makeup is letting them absorb heat really fast too. It’s the radiation bouncing off stuff in the plasma that makes the little glowing sparks.”

“Sure, but why?”

“Well, sometimes when radiation hits other materials-”

“Oh I know all that, I mean, why is it in her blood? Even the Ma couldn’t survive something like this.”

“What makes you think that?”

“Because I can literally see your genetic code and everything going on in your body right now?”

“I couldn’t survive it. No one in my particular branch of the Clan could either, at least as far as I know. And before you ask, she wasn’t Ma in any way, shape or form. I would know. BUT.” Mazelton held up one finger, like he was admonishing the roof of the wagon. He still wasn’t prepared to give up on falling back asleep. “That doesn't mean we haven’t seen or used similar technology!”

“Wait, what? Why haven’t I heard about this?”

“Because everyone who was alive to see it is dead, and we haven’t done it this epoch. That I know of.”

“Well obviously they are dead-”

“Sorry, let me clarify. I mean, nobody saw how we used it and survived.”

“Ah. And somehow it didn’t leak out of the clan?”

“Nah. Every Clan has their own version of something like this. It’s not exactly a high priority.”

“I am certain that the Pi clan does not.”

“Bet you half a bottle of Koresh wine?”

“No bet.”

“What this is, is an evolution of a enhancile warrior system. Basically disposable fodder that do a disproportionate amount of damage then die before the cost of their maintenance exceeds the value they bring to the clan. This is a pretty refined example, actually. She has to be, what, at least in her twenties? That’s downright geriatric for a heat enhancile. The blood absorbs heat easily, and it radiates heat easily. Her organs must be an absolute heap of precancerous lesions.”

“More or less. Less than you might imagine, actually, but yeah.”

“So the rest is simple. The body ingests heat either directly through the stomach and lungs or some other way. The body modifications work with the tattoos to project effects into the environment- that sonic attack, the light show, all that. All powered by the heat flowing through her blood. I bet you that her bite is poisonous too.”

“Her saliva has high levels of metal and heat.”

“Still don’t know why her arms and thighs are so long but-”

“Me either.”

They shared a quiet moment. Mazelton was starting to drift off again.

“Still don’t agree that the Pi clan has anything like this.”

“Denision Valley. Po Farm. The River Race. More recently, the “scuffle” at Ro’an Isle. Pi clan is the second worst for doing this crap. That’s just the last couple of millennia.”

“Those aren’t… exactly the same…”

Mazelton stayed quiet while she thought it through.

“I still want you to explain exactly how the heat and the tattoos interact.”

Mazelton groaned and felt sleep slipping away.

“So to sum up-”

“The tattoos don’t work well enough to justify their existence, and you would be better off using an external tool, even if you had to modify a tool so that a non-polisher could use a heat based weapon, yes.”

“And this is-”

“A multi-epoch scheme by the Ma and every other half bright polisher clan to fuck over the fully dumb polishers or those aspiring to our “dark powers” yes.”

“But they have developed a religious system-”

“That treats these enhanciles as “sacred warriors'' or “Holy Witches” or something, using the erratic and frankly terrifying effects of a semi-functional tattoo system on top of their gross physical modifications, thereby combining two semi-functional parts into a semi-, but slightly more-functional whole. Also yes.”

“And the actual shape of the tattoos-

“Are 90% useless or actively unhelpful, yes.”

“Are your eyes closed?”

“Yes.”

“Mazelton…”

“Yes.”

Madam Lettie sighed and left the wagon. Mazelton was back asleep before her boots hit the ground.

Mazelton woke in time for dinner, sleepily set his tent, and slept. He really could not be bothered with anything else. He woke the next morning feeling like he had been beaten with sticks, but all things considered he had probably slept enough.

The land continued to be mockingly flat. He had the oddest illusion that the land was baiting Policlitus. The more he worried about the mountains, the flatter the land became. Mazelton put the sun at his back and stared west. Not a hint of a hill, let alone a mountain. How far away was the horizon? It had to be a long way- there were hardly any trees to break up the sight lines. The Ramparts looked awfully close on the map.

“Now where are you hiding…” Mazelton muttered. Duane looked over with mild curiosity.

“I don’t see the Ramparts, or even their foothills. Just prairie. But the map says they should be close.” He shrugged. Duane shrugged back. Spread his hands wide. Went back to driving.

Mazelton nodded. It was indeed a big continent.

Mazelton had missed the funerals. Apparently he had been invited, but had just groaned in his sleep and didn’t get up. He was a little sorry about that. The funeral services had gotten very abbreviated, when they happened at all. But they were important to be a part of. To show you were part of the community. Apparently people understood. Word had gotten around about how he had killed four, or five, or twenty, of the raiders, then stitched up half the caravan right after. He could be allowed his sleep.

Madam Lettie came and pestered him throughout the day about the tattoos. “There is no reason why it couldn’t work, in theory.” She insisted.

“Yes. That’s what makes the scam effective.” Mazelton agreed.

“But what if someone made it work?”

“Then we would steal the idea and probably arrange a terrible accident for their entire clan, city, nation, or portion of the continent.”

That brought Madam Lettie up short a moment.

“What kind of accident could affect a big chunk of the Greenfire continent?

“It would be our expert opinion, based on the limited evidence available to us, that the unhinged, unethical experimentation done by the BlaBlah nation, including vivisecting infants and putting attractive animals through horrific torture in the name of “Progress,” triggered a chain reaction known in some epochs as “Runaway nuclear fissile progression.” The Ma Clan will stand at the forefront to return those contaminated lands to habitable condition, and offer our condolences to the currently surviving family of all those affected.”

Lettie frowned.

“”Runaway nuclear fissile progression” isn’t a thing. Arguably, the first and last words are redundant.”

“Yes, I know. But everyone who matters will see that and remember why it’s a bad idea to fuck with polishers.”

“Well aren’t you a little ray of sunshine.”

“Only if pushed.”

“So why doesn't the Ma have a monopoly on polishing then?”

“Same reason the Pi don’t have a monopoly on green smithing or calculating machines. Sometimes the technology is just too widespread, and touches on too many interests to be one Clan’s exclusive possession. I would put our market share at around fifty percent on the Eastern Edge. Well, less now, after the fall of Old Radler. Still, the point is that hundreds of other groups of people can take a slice of that particular pie. Everybody that wants to can, at least in theory, get a taste.”

Mazelton gave Madam Lettie an odd look.

“How do you not know all of this?”

“I spent most of my life traveling around the areas between the Eastern Edge and the Mud Dragon river. Which, ok, not as big as what we are passing through now, but on foot or cheve it’s a damn big patch. Tinkering, bookkeeping, prospecting, that kind of thing. I wasn’t involved in-” she waved her hand “any of this high level stuff. I want to know how you know all this stuff.”

Mazelton wondered if, or even how, you could explain the strange role of a Hurricane Lily. “I worked in public relations? And intelligence gathering?”

“Seriously? It sounds like you just went clubbing every night.”

Mazelton gave her a pained smile.

“That was Old Radler.”

The days rolled past in absolute tedium. Mazelton cherished them for that, to begin with, but by day four, he was as bored as the rest, and by day five he was ready to start clawing at the walls. In fact, he was ready to build some walls for him to claw, just to break up the endless expanse of yellowing grass. Bored? There needed to be a stronger word than bored. This was excruciating. He saw people sitting around a campfire, trying to see if they could light their farts on fire. One jackass he could completely understand. Forty people seemed like creeping madness.

On the fifth day, they started running into farms. Lots and lots of farms. Lots of tribal folk on cheve too- Mazelton thought they were the Two Souled, but it turned out they were the Laginalopo tribe. One of the contributors to the New Territories renaissance, now that he thought about it. Mazelton tried to remember- was the Thousand Bird Sangha that sold him the deed to Plot Eleven next to Danae’s house a front for the tribe? He dug out the deed. No indication whatsoever of who was backing the Sangha. Well that’s great.

He saw some tribesmen zipping around on low slung wagons, plumes of steam rising out of the back, easily going thirty miles an hour. Mazelton gave them a long stare, trying to figure out how they worked. Some kind of steam engine, but that could mean almost anything. Lettie would probably know. Not many of them about, though.

Strong cheves the Laginalopo used. Taller than the stubby little plaines ponies the Two Souled favored. Big muscles on them. It still took six horses working as a team to haul the artillery pieces around.

Which was a bit of an eye opener, for Mazelton. Firstly, that someone had rediscovered, or redeveloped field artillery, and second, that a nomadic tribe had access to it. Artillery ment iron or steel. Maybe, just maybe, brass, but tin was a lot harder to come by than iron. And that was a insane fortune in iron, being hauled across the plains. They had thrown tarps over them. Perhaps they assumed nobody would know what artillery was. Usually a safe bet. Mazelton suddenly regretted not being able to see Mendiluzes’ face right now.

He watched one of the six horse teams jump a low berm. Not more than a meter tall, maybe even less. Still. Six horses, harnessed together, jumping two by two, hauling the wagon over the berm in a big jolting bounce. Incredible. And they made it look easy. They had that same smooth roll to the hips and steady shoulders that he remembered from the Two Souled. You could serve tea on those shoulders, with a tray of nibbles balanced on their head.

Mazeton sighed, feeling somehow defeated. At least he could buy a saddle in town. The New Territories were shaping up to be an actual, formal war instead of a simmering pot of sectarian tension. So that was fun. A lot of rifles there too. A lot of them. Hundreds at least, which meant that their total stockpile had to run to four figures or more. He would have to find out where that was coming from too. You could hand tool a rife, he knew. Didn’t know how, but he had read it was possible. Just unreasonably hard. Another job for power tools and an assembly line. Looks like the Leoinida Collective put more pressure on them than he had imagined. Or the Sea Folk, but they weren’t going to come that far inland.

They rolled past farm after farm. Mostly cereal crops, but he noticed vegetable gardens clustering by the sides of thick walled homes. Mmm. Too late for beans, right? Or was that peas? What could you eat mid-summer? There must be something. Carrots? Potatoes? Maybe a well shaded bed of greens?

A sudden thought jolted through him. Fresh. Herbs. They must, MUST have fresh herbs. His mouth started salivating. Parsley. Thyme. Coriander. Laurel. Maybe he could buy a living plant and grow it on the side of the wagon in a little pot, at least for a while. Maybe he could buy a whole bunch of them.

Mazelton let his food fantasies carry him until dinner. Camp that night was just within sight of the walls of Cold Garden. The Joyful Throng, the religion that ran the city, kept prices pretty “reasonable”, but ”reasonable” couldn’t beat “free”. That and they were just too damn tired to push on any further. Mazelton was so tired, he didn’t even find a local merchant. Tomorrow, he promised himself. Tomorrow. He would see what grew in Cold Garden. And with a little luck, feast.