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squadron-of-damned · 2 months ago

Text

The truth is a many-angled thing

for @artisanoftheredscience for the @fallenlondonficswap secret swap.

Word Count: 1926

Summary: Three people want to destroy the Brass Processing House for dramatically opposing reasons.

Read on AO3

To all shapes a purpose. To all purposes a name. To all names a shape.

Her name was the Insignificant Movements Inscribed in Coral which Accumulate to Topple Constellations. Her shape was three-lunged and slippery. Her purpose was vengeance concealed in vengeance of other origin.

Her name, the other one’s name, was Taste of Roots. Her shape was gboffalgathsthp, which can be insufficiently translated into Queen’s English as ‘suited to revealing’. (It is the shape of a discovered truth that acknowledges that no two bodies can see the same truth in the same object, because they have different experiences. Each time it is looked at, the viewer is richer for revealing the truth before, and thus doesn’t reveal the same truth. A reflection in the mirror is changed by the very act of being seen.) Her purpose is rebellion.

As an act of mercy on the editor of this publication, we will refer to them as Coral and Taste respectively.

Right now Coral was mingling with the crowds on the edge of Spite. She wasn’t very good at mingling, because of her nature people usually didn’t want to mingle with her or anyone else of her kin. But that was of a little concern; Coral wasn’t here to mingle with these people. She needed to mingle with that special sort who accepted into their arms not because of looks, but because of mind. She had an information to pass on.

She slithered her way through the back-alleys and the rear ends of the factories until she spotted a particular sight: A Soot-Stained Worker, a cigarette behind his ear, toyed with a lighter. It flickered once, twice, thirteen times. Then the man gave it a shake and waits a while. Afterwards the pattern repeated.

The thirteen licks of light were, of course, meaningless. It was the twelve moments of darkness between them what was important.

Coral fished out from her breast pocket a cigarette box and the corresponding holder. It was a little tricky to put a cigarette in its holder without getting it all soggy, but then again, this was more about the coded phrases and secret signs than about smoking.

The Soot-Stained worker noticed her and nodded his head: “Want a light, uh, ma’am?”

Once again Coral has to congratulate herself on the decision of purchasing a corseted dress. It was still beyond her how creatures confined in the growth of their inner coral could find such clothing comfortable, but they were of little concern to her. If they created instruments of their own suffering, so be it. She personally liked corsets – they made it so much easier to hold her back upright.

Now of course, corsets did nothing for her regarding grasping human speech. It was confined to mere sounds and a few spots of movement of appendages, but, just like the human skeleton, it was too constrained and not accustomed to the fluidity of Coral’s existence.

She crossed her upper appendages and turns her head to the side dismissively.

I want no light. I desire no light. My being yearns for darkness.

“Tough luck, lady. You can’t burn tobacco without a fire,” the Soot-Stained Worker dropped his voice to a raspy whisper. “But I know someone who can. All year round.”

He motioned for Coral to follow him into the warehouse right behind him. His back swiftly disappeared in the darkness of the unlit space, deep shadows cast in by crates and strategically placed tarpaulin. Of course, the absence of light was irrelevant to Coral who heard and tasted the Worker’s footsteps with greater precision than her eyes could ever manage.

There, deeper within the bowels of the building, a flicker of the flame – the lighter once again emphasised twelve stretches of darkness; one for each month of the calendar.

Taste patiently waited in the pitch-black meeting room, the ideas and arguments of her comrades passing through her like soft amber.

The Companion in Flesh was holding her appendage and from time to time they squeezed it reassuringly: No lights, no kings, no masters. She tasted their conviction through every pore.

This wasn’t a proper council for the Liberation, it was a small informal meeting. A council of the Weeks. Perhaps Days, even.

An entrance of a new idea – a new person – stirred the placid pools of Taste’s amber-tinged thoughts. Droplets sending ripples across the surface, the liquid spilling out on the banks: The Caring Foreman wants to destroy the processing house she oversees. The Caring Foreman wants to break the shackles of her workers. The Caring Foreman calls for Liberation.

Taste let go off of her companion and searched for the source of this idea. She pushed through people, going against the stream of novelty until finally she reached the source, a spouting geyser of thoughts and tastes.

They embraced, a confluence of minds and suctions cups.

She felt the vengeance bubbling underneath the soft, flexible skin. They were kin. Sisters of amber. Sister of the Liberation.

No lights, no kings, no masters.

Fire to the processing house.

How easily are the ones with conviction manipulated, Coral thought thossphtfily. (What ‘quiet’ is to sound, ‘thossphtf’ is to motion.) For now our causes are aligned.

It wasn’t difficult at all to convince the small revolutionary cell to destroy the Brass Processing House. It belonged to one of the Masters and the brass plates stored inside held those of love stories which paper refused. Paper was too uncompromising material.

Coral and her kin preferred metal. It was malleable, it was easy the clean and use anew. Of course they favoured amber to brass, too. Amber was the right temperature and didn’t leave that ugly sharp aftertaste in your thoughts.

But such musing was neither here nor there.

Coral’s contact had left her with a detailed description of the processing house, including the rotation of the neddy men, shifts, and which places it was easy to slip to and from obscured and unbothered. It was more details than a mere foreman could disclose easily, especially on a whim.

Such details should have bothered the revolutionaries, but as they were blinded by their affection for darkness, they didn’t think to ask. At least for now.

It didn’t bother Coral either, because she did not care. Regardless of the aftermath, her purpose of vengeance would be closer to fulfilling. Why should the Bazaar have love stories while there were those who were not allowed to experience a single one?

Just that thought made her vital essences boil. Wrath flooded her mind and her movement tinged in affglogodioll in turn.

By her side, Taste completely misunderstood her emotional outburst: “Soon,” she whispered. “These shackles will be broken soon. Have a little more patience.”

So they waited. Minutes turned into hours until finally for the briefest of moment all workers had their back turned to the great ladle of molten brass hung between the sturdy transverse beams.

Taste scuttled across one of those supports while Coral kept watch.

“All clear,” she signalled.

From Taste’s appendages a single object dropped into the ladle bellow. It was no larger than a marble. It was very much not made of marble, though, not even glass nor clay

Molten brass (regular, such as the one in the ladle) is fairly hot. Amber expands in heat practically exponentially, especially its vapours. Infernal brass that never gets cold keeps it volume even at high temperatures, but it conducts heat extremely well.

If you take a sphere of warm amber and coat it in infernal brass and then quickly heat it the interior of the sphere quickly builds up pressure and the surface will only hold for only so long. When it gives out, the gaseous amber rapidly expands.

Sudden expansion of gases is best known as explosion.

Coral and Taste hastily retreat from the processing house before the never-cold brass figures out it is weaker than furious and fluid amber.

For a moment the light was very, very bright.

And then there was none. Or almost none; the gas lamps blew and the fires have died out, but high above on the roof the False-stars gleamed and fluttered in their unceasing dance of poisoned affection. The vast inverse citadel still shone weakly with their pools of false-amber.

Taste dis not need the light to perceive, to feel, to hear, to taste. The walls of the processing house collapsed upon itself. The few survivors were coming to, groaning – in pain, in search of help, as a test if their vocal cords were still functional.

The young revolutionary turned to her sister to congratulate her on the job well done.

But Coral was long gone. She was a constant movement. As if she did not care for shackles broken and light extinguished.

Oh well. She served her purpose, she advanced the Liberation in her own way. With that, Taste was satisfied.

Without looking back, she returned to the Council of the Days.

No lights, no kings, no masters.

Their purpose was to get by, and preferably get paid while at it. Their shapes were unfinished in a way that one complemented the other. When people spoke of one of them, they meant both of them. To separate their purposes, their shapes and their names was unthinkable to all. Their names were Jasper and Frank.

Frank was standing on the top of a very tall very sturdy and very heavy step-ladder. It had to be all those things, because it was meant to carry a Clay Man high enough to reach the ceiling.

Jasper was with both his feet firmly on the ground and was making sure the same went for the step-ladder. He looked up: “How’s it going?”

“I didn’t shatter this one.”

“Good to hear. Let me know if you want to switch.”

“It’s all good as long as I don’t look down.” It was a long way down. Especially if your weight was in the triple digits. “I still think boss could have asked someone with, you know, fleshy fingers for this. My hands were not made to handle light-bulbs.”

“Or any glass,” Jasper muttered.

“I heard that!”

“Well, you were meant to. Get your practice on, we are going to instal these in all of boss’s factories. After what happened in the processing house it’s taking some preventive measures.”

“I get that. What I don’t get is why we have to do it.”

“You’ve seen what that light does to Meat Men.”

Frank had seen that. It shone right through them. It made them sort of… glass-eyed. And glass-skinned. It did something to their brain, made them think only some thoughts.

“Clever people these Khaganians, gotta give them that,” Jasper continued.

“Not clever enough to make light that goes through clay, though.”

Jasper hummed something. Then something occurred to him: “Hey, Frank?”

“Yeah”

“What about that Rubbery”

“Which one?”

“The one with that corset. You know, the one boss wanted us to give that binder to?”

“What about her?”

“What was her deal?”

Frank shrugged. Clay Men – even the unfinished ones – had enough shoulders that one could seem the shrugging from miles away. “As far as I know, she just wanted to burn something the Bazaar liked. Kind of one-track mind, that one.”

“Glad we don’t have a cause. We don’t get used like that.”

“We do get used,” Frank pointed out. He felt rather used, elbow deep in wires and all.

“We get paid for it, though.”

“Stop rocking that ladder. Do you want me to fall on top of you?”

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