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A new light shines in the sunless skies
Lucy gets warped to a different place and time in the Fallen London universe
Permalink Mark Unread

Over long enough time, coincidences add up. A freak accident, a one-in-a-billion chance, can occur eventually - especially once the Laws are no longer being enforced quite so strictly, in the places far away from shining light.

Correspondence-engraved artefacts rest in ancient ruins, and the craggy cliffs are sometimes shot through with crystallized time. Cantankeri consume the Hours, breaking apart the stone to get at them. A freak accident aboard an engine results in a series of artefacts being lost overboard - the captain judges it better not to turn back. The things were unnerving anyway.

But when the artefacts land on a concentration of time, one that just so happens to be slightly fraying at the edges, the sigils interact and begin unspooling the power they're now exposed to. More and more, a chain reaction, a chaotic conflagration of noise and light and times past and future all brought into being at once - 

And when the light and noise fades, things from distant places and times are littered about the now-cratered cliffside, explosions and rumbling echoing through the towering dark crags above, below, and around. Things, and a person.

Permalink Mark Unread

The person is a study in whites; pale skin, paler hair, a white silk dress with white embroidery and layers of skirt that billow as she falls to the ground, landing in a crouch. A strange collar around her neck that looks as though someone had encased it in marble and then carved out the shape of a snake. A pair of glass slippers that adorn but do not conceal her feet. 

When she rises and dusts herself off, looking around, none of the dirt or stone dust or anything clings to her dress despite the fact that a dress that white should quickly become less so in an environment like this. 

Permalink Mark Unread

The objects surrounding her are... Varied. Blotches of other kinds of stone and patches of vegetation surround the bit of the prickfinger wastes that came with her. Over there is what looks like a piece of a Surface building, and there is a fragment of a church. Pools of water, salt and fresh and muddy, dot the ground. A patch of wheat stands out, amber-gold.

A floating isopod about the size of a small cottage on the periphery of the phenomenon loudly grumbles, "What a mess! This sort of thing never happened in the old days! Far too loud, disorderly, I don't like it!"

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"Hello! Can you tell me where I am?"

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"Not even a proper greeting, how rude! Nobody knows the courtesies these days. You're far away from anything that has an ugly English name. This is near place-of-lamentation's-feast-denied-by-tradition-nine-and-ninety-times. What a sorry language, that doesn't reflect the true subtleties of it at all. If you want an English name for the place you're in you'll have to go somewhere else."

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Regret at having made an assumption which diverges from reality. Greetings from a lost traveler to one who dwells in the place at which the traveler now finds themself, she says in Correspondence. 

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The isopod freezes halfway through a scornful mutter.

(Extremely) reluctant apology for having given incorrect criticism. Deep irritation at having a quiet and pleasant day interrupted by strange events. Self-ashamed annoyance at one's relative lack of skill in the Correspondence.

"This sort of thing never used to happen. I don't like it."

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Ambiguity as to which language is preferable. Empathy at events being disrupted by arbitrary bullshit. 

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Being unable to choose between two disagreeable options. Bittersweet memories for a time long ago. The desire to make an unwise attack against an irritation, against one's better judgement.

"Go southwest if you want to find Londoners. That way." It waves some bristles. "If you can. Everything's terrible these days anyway, you're not making it much worse."

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The strong determination to improve the inadequate world one was born into. Curiosity as to the nature of better times so as to be able to better calibrate one's improvements.

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"Before the scrive-spinsters and curators and humans and too many other people started making noise and flying around things were a tiny fraction better. The nerve of the trees and the mushrooms these days! Before the Judgement who lived here died, things were almost acceptable. And humans, building things with metal bones and glass eyes and wooden skin! A disgrace!"

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Gratitude for the delivery of information one was not obliged to give, she says. 

And then she tips her chin down and murmurs something. 

The stone snake around her neck shifts and uncoils and slithers down into her dress, where something changes below the skirt that causes it to rustle oddly. 

And then she is moving very fast to the southwest, until she sees something worth stopping to try to figure out more. 

Permalink Mark Unread

She quickly comes to a steep downward slope terminating in an abrupt cliff, which vanishes into... Nothingness. Between thick patches of mist and cloud, the open sky is visible beyond, below her. Off in the distance, past the miles-wide gulf, other enormous crags and mountains are visible. A few chunks of rock and stone of varying sizes are floating in the air in the middle of the gulf. They're all fairly barren, with lichen and corded fungus clinging to bare, soil-less stone.

Is that ...A steam trail through the open air? Running lights? Possibly. It's miles off and half-obscured by dust. Hard to tell.

Permalink Mark Unread

ZOOM SHE IS THERE NOW.

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It's cold enough that an ordinary human would be suffering quite a lot right now. Ice attempts to form on her.

There appears to be a rusty, clanking, wheezing, battered, flying locomotive with cracked windows and flickering headlights and a hole in the roof and some sort of cannon sticking out the front, flying a pirate flag. The steam trail originates in the south, and they're heading north.

Permalink Mark Unread

A pirate flag. 

Well. 

Never let it be said that she passed up an opportunity to stick her nose into things. 

She looks for a door that could potentially be forced. 

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There are two doors near the front, plus some sort of cargo door further back, plus the hole in the roof.

There's faint sounds of carousing from inside.

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She grabs onto the roof and scuttles towards the hole and draws her legs inward and humanoid and ducks through the hole. 

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She lands on a pile of coal, with a closed bulkhead to the rest of the engine. It's almost as cold in here as outside. There's definitely some sort of party going on.

-There's the sharp sound of breaking glass. An angry shout. Cheers.

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She opens the door. 

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A short hallway crowded with rusty pipes, leading to a crowded galley where rough men and a few rough women are drunk and showing off recently-stolen goods. One of them is bragging about killing a man without getting a drop of blood on his nice coat. There's a body on the floor in the corner.

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She closes the door behind her loudly and props her fists on her hips. 

When everyone is looking at her, she says: "Killing people is bad." 

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How did she get in here. Why is she so unafraid. What can she do to us. These questions stun the less-drunk and less-reckless pirates into tense silence. One of them folds away her butterfly knife. Several of them glance between the braggart and her.

The braggart glances around at the suddenly changed atmosphere and sneers. "Killing people is easy. I'll show you if you like." And he quickdraws a pistol and aims it towards her-

Permalink Mark Unread

She dances nimbly to the side as his shot impacts the door where she was just standing and steps forward to relieve him of his gun. 

"None of that. We'd stain my nice dress, wouldn't we, and I'm much too lost to be confident of replacing it conveniently." 

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He shouts in fright and is successfully disarmed. He steps back and shouts, "Get her!"

A couple of people shift nervously, but nobody else attacks. "No matter what sort of person she is, we can overwhelm her!"

More silence and shifting. "...Seems like a bad plan, Captain Beau Bloodletter."

He pales. He shoves someone to the floor to get them out of his way and runs for the front of the engine.

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She twirls the gun around her finger. "What is he doing?" 

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"No clue. Miss."

An older looking man seems alarmed. "The bridge is that way. My fucking idiot cousin, he'd crash us, just to take us down with him!"

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"Wow, mean. Don't worry, you'll be alright, even if the interim isn't pleasant. But I'd really rather spare that unpleasantness," she decides, and follows after the idiot. 

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"Gee, Dram, come with me to kill the engine!"

 

At the front of the locomotive, "Beau Bloodletter" is holding a frightened boy who can't be older than sixteen by the ragged collar, shoving him out the bridge door.

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Lucy stalks down the hall, briefly codeswitches to gentle politeness as she excuses herself past the boy, then barges into the bridge confrontationally. 

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"I don't know what you are, but I won't let you take what I've won from me! My crew, my engine! Shitty homesteads and a life of toil rejected for taking what we want. Better to die fighting than live in such a prison!"

He wrenches the main control stick sideways, and the locomotive begins a shuddering, violent turn.

Permalink Mark Unread

"Calm the hell down. Even if you manage to kill everyone aboard I can bring you all back so you're not accomplishing anything except to break your precious engine, so why don't you not do that and we can discuss the situation like civilized people." 

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He is ignoring her and aiming the engine for a floating rock, singing some kind of hymn under his breath. There is a look of madness in his eyes.

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She stalks over and yanks him away from the controls and moves the stick he yanked back to its original position. 

She holds him up in the air by his collar. 

"Bad pirate," she says, flicking him in the forehead with her other hand. 

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The sharp shuddering turn slows down, the engine finding a new balance and slowly evening out just as the shuddering of the pipes quiets and slows.

The pirate goes limp and mutters in confusion. "...Knives in the dark and bodies in the sky... Hours and days and years..."

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She goes back into the hall. "You should probably go back in there," she tells the teenager apologetically, then drags her captive back into the crowded room. 

"Does this guy go crazy a lot? Is there some established procedure, like give him some booze and put him to bed?"

Permalink Mark Unread

There seems to have been a scrambled effort to clean up. They're all afraid of her.

"...Sky-madness. It gets everyone eventually. He's been, uh, paranoid that we're going to mutiny. Even if he could kill any one of us himself, he couldn't kill all of us. Because of the, uh, sky-madness, we were. Going to kill him. Miss. Strongest rules, until someone replaces him."

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"Is that what happened to that guy?" she asks, pointing to the corpse. 

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"N-No, he got shot when we were boarding the Tackety engine we hit this morning. He only died a bit ago, though."

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"Mm. Well." 

And she shines. 

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"What the 'ell-"

"The stars! The stars sent her to get us!"

The guy in the corner stands up, looking around wildly. The 'captain' she's holding by the collar clutches his head and groans.

Permalink Mark Unread

"The stars most certainly did not send me. I don't know how I got here but I sincerely doubt a Judgment was involved." 

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"A what?"

"How're ya glowing then? You from Eagle's Empyrean?"

(The locomotive seems to be coming to a standstill, if the reduction in engine noises and background groaning and shuddering is any indication)

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"I am the daughter of the Mountain of Light." 

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Few of the pirates have an immediate reaction to this, but the older man, the captain's cousin, does. His eyes are wide. "The light of the Elder Continent? The far-south of the Zee?"

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"Mhm." 

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"Oi, you lot, show some respect! We're in the presence of something older and greater."

"As if Clint standing up didn't tell us that already..."

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"Ahaha, well, I myself am only in my early thirties, it's my father who's older really. Anyway. From my perspective I was headed back into London after a visit outside it when there was some kind of giant horrible explosion and I was standing at the bottom of a cliff surrounded by broken things with Correspondence sigils on them and other things I recognized less, and a giant cranky flying isopod pointed me in the general direction of human settlements, and if any of you have any kind of explanation whatsoever for anything then I would extremely appreciate it." 

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"London's far away from here, miss. I don't know what could have brought you here, but if the Correspondence was involved that, ah, seems like a likely culprit."

"That sounds like a Cantankeri. They attack things they disapprove of. Which is most things. Cor, it must've been scared of you."

"Nearest city's over a thousand miles from here. But there's homesteads about."

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"I know London's far away, I don't even recognize any of these stars from Earth. What I want to know is when did people from London end up in the High Wilderness?"

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"Ah." The captain's cousin clears his throat. "Some years ago, about two decades I believe, the Queen had a disagreement with the Echo Bazaar. Nobody really knows the details, but she equipped expeditions to open the Avid Horizon and colonize part of the High Wilderness instead. And everyone came through, leaving old London behind. London now sits in the place now called Albion, taken over from the King of Hours. And the Reach, here, which was more-or-less abandoned when we found it, folk are expanding into."

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"...I appear to have time-traveled, okay, that's new. Well. Everyone came through? Even the formerly dead? That seems unwise..."

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"Well, not everyone. A few formerly dead probably came through with some contrivance or another. I know the Snuffers are still with us." He makes a sign over his heart.

"What're you gonna do to us?" A young pirate asks.

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"Ideally get you set up somewhere doing something that isn't piracy. I don't like it when people are dead." 

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"...Nobody respectable will take former pirates on. Maybe some of us have family who'll take them or homesteads that haven't been overrun, but I doubt it's all of us."

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"I wasn't assuming you'd disclose." 

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"We could try to get jobs on other engines... They don't tend to be too picky."

"I wanna go home," the teen from the bridge says from the other side of the hall.

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"You can go home. Where's your home?" 

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"Zacharias village, off a spar of a little path between the Rat Memorial and Titania. Second northernmost one. Third spar, starting from Titania. Left at the zigzagging pass, few miles past the old pyramid."

"If you disapprove of people being dead," someone comments, "You'd better go get the Tackety engine we blew up this morning. And you'll be very busy for a very long time."

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"Where is the Tackety engine." 

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"Just about due south. How long's it been - six hours? So, about two hundred miles."

The teenager looks like he's going to cry at the thought of her leaving.

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"--Oh, shhh, don't worry," she says, laying a hand on his shoulder. "I am definitely going to make sure you get home no matter what. I'm going to help those people, but I am going to make you gentlemen help, since it's your fault they were dead in the first place. Now. I am going to strip, because in order to drag this thing two hundred miles south in less than six hours I'm going to have to assume my full true form, and that's really not compatible with wearing human-shaped clothes. I expect zero inappropriate comments, and I strongly disreccomend going through my pockets," she says, and smooths a hand over the white-on-white Correspondence sigils embroidered into the fabric. 

Permalink Mark Unread

"-Uh, human shaped-" Someone slaps the speaker.

"We'll need steel and bronzewood and stained glass if you expect us to repair their locomotive. Unless Mountain of Light powers can do that."

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"I expect you to take them on board. If you think there's enough left of their locomotive to be worth repairing instead of scrapping and starting over I can grab it too but trying to do that in the middle of the cold void seems unnecessary." 

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"That's a recipe for more murder."

"Do we even have enough fuel and food-"

"We do if we take them on a one-way trip to the Nature Reserve. This locomotive's not much better than scrap itself, anyway."

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"I can wait to bring them back, if you'd rather share space with corpses than angry victims. What's the Nature Reserve."

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"The Leadbeater and Stainrod Nature Reserve. It's like, a place for rich tourists to hunt and for scientists to poke the mushrooms or whatever. Closest significant port, by my reckoning. Er, I'm the navigator."

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"Anyway, fuel isn't that much of an issue, I can carry you, if there's a better port." 

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"I don't know where these Tacketies came from. You could put them in Lustrum? That's a Tackety place. Uh, at least a week's journey away though."

"Everyone we see will shoot at us. Even if we take down the pirate flag. This heap of junk is just obviously a Marauder engine. And there are more Marauders, you know? All operating out of the Battle of Culverston. God, this is - whatever you did, I feel the starlight's influence falling away from me. There's no future in this. It was just acting out, when I saw no other options."

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"What is the Battle of Culverston." 

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"It's where the first Winchester War turned. Tacketies and a defensive line versus the Stovepipes, hundreds of engines in a mad dance of combat. Now it's over a mile of wrecks and ruins. Easy to hide in. And a source of parts, to keep our engines going just a bit longer."

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"What are 'Tacketies' and 'Stovepipes.'"

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"Independence-seekers and London's lapdogs in the Windward Company."

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"Okay. Well. Is there somewhere uninhabited at the Reserve where we can rearrange things without anyone who isn't me having to go out in the cold." 

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"There's plenty of space near the Reserve to set down and work. We have a sky-suit for exterior work, and it's warmer over land. New engines are built only in major ports, though."

"You can slap together a Spatchcock from pieces of any two other wrecks, though. If we shorten the Rancid Bite, clean up the firebox, remove the prow blade, rename her..."

"...True. We can probably make it presentable enough with pieces from the Tackety wreck. Make a new nameplate, claim to have been lost for a while, show up in New Winchester later. That... Could work. Since we don't seem to have much choice but to stop being pirates, and all."

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"That's not what I was imagining in particular but it seems to put you in a better position than that so I'm all for it." 

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A few of the pirates stare at each other in confusion. Then the captain, a bit more lucid now, asks, "Why? We're pirates. Marauders. Scum of the sky."

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"Because I want absolutely everyone to get to be okay." 

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"Impossible."

"Can always try," the navigator mutters.

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"Damn straight. And even if I can't get everyone, anyone I can get is good."

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"So, the plan is to tow us to the Tackety engine, recover the bodies, recover enough to rebuild this engine enough to disguise her, then tow us to the Nature Reserve? I figure it's... Ah, six hundred miles to the Reserve."

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"I'm fast!" she chirps. "Yes, I believe that's the plan." 

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"Right. Since our previous captain has proven himself unfit for duty, I propose myself as the new one, and we'll... Disarm and entrust Beau to his cousin, for now. Anyone else want to put their name forward? No? Ayes for me as captain?" A rough chorus. "Nays? Beau Bloodletter votes Nay. The Ayes have it. Miss Mountain's Daughter, you'll want to, ah, perhaps, comfort the girl in his cabin." He looks ashamed. He fishes in Beau's coat pocket for the key and holds it out to her.

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"For crying out loud," she mutters, but she takes the key and heads for the door. She pauses in the doorway. 

"For the record, my name is Lucy Whitman. My mum's human and she gave it to me." 

Permalink Mark Unread

"I'm Samwell Goodman. I've been uncomfortably aware of the failure in my name for a while now."

 

In the former captain's cabin is a dark-skinned woman in overalls. Late teens. She glares at everyone except Lucy. (She's terrified.) "I was listenin' in. He didn't touch me, but he's insane." She holds out her left arm challengingly. Bruises and bandages.

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"Well, I'm glad he didn't touch you. I may or may not have cured his crazy, but either way he can't hurt you again." 

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She shakes as she peels off one of her bandages and continues holding her arm out. "Can you really do what they're saying? Unkill my dad?"

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"Yes! Is your dad one of the Tacketies or are we going to have to make a separate trip." 

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"He's Chief Engineer of the Lucky Strike, yeah. I'm 'prenticing. That engine was valued at five thousand eight hundred Sovereigns. It cost blood and sweat and years of toilin'. I hate them."

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"Hm. What's it like?" 

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"What's what like? Engine-work? Being a Tackety? Hate?"

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"Hate. I've been frustrated at people plenty, I could even say I've been angry, but feeling like it's just better if someone suffers--I've never felt it and I find it difficult to imagine and I--if I want to do right by people I have to understand them. So what's it like?" 

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"It's hot anger. Anger at the - wrongness that people who've gone murdering and plundering for probably years, killed who knows how many people, ruined lives, end up... Okay. It's the feeling that they need to be punished and tormented because of what they did to ma friends and family. They need to hurt like they hurt others. They need to suffer for hurting me, for inflicting fear on everyone who looks up at the sky and thinks - even if none of the other horrors get me, there's bastard pirates up there. It's not a justice thing, not a logic thing. It's just... Anger. I'm not very happy with you neither right now, not like I'm gonna turn down your miracles 'tho. If you actually have any." She gestures pointedly with her injured arm.

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She glows on the arm, which ceases to be injured.

"I mean, you make a really good point about the wrecked train belonging to you guys, I'm not going to hurt them but I'm not so thin-skinned that I won't go back in there and say 'change of plans, you guys don't get the train' because it's embarrassing." 

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She turns her arm over and over. "It's really fuckin' wrecked. Never gonna fly again. More trouble fixin' it than building a whole new one from scratch. My sister's first words were spoken on that engine. I spent most of my childhood on it. It's stupid to be attached to a thing when dad's dead, but I am." Sigh. "I'd say we need some Bronzewood, some choice bits from the wreckage, and one thousand Sovereigns to rebuild her. To build a replacement."

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"...Can you give me the value of the Sovereign in terms that would make sense to an old Londoner." 

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"...Ah, number three gasket is eight shillings- No that's engineer stuff. Mm. Big ol' barrel of top-quality coal goes for twenty Sovereigns? A used Leadbeater and Stainrod blunderbuss can be got as cheap as two Sovereigns?"

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"Hmm, so that's...okay, I think I get it. Okay. I think I can probably make that fairly easily, pull a few teeth if I have to." 

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She bows her head and takes a deep breath. "Yeah, prob'ly can. Just glow on some fat cat and charge for the privilege. You don't have to though. We've got savings to draw on, once nobody's dead anymore. Tacketies are used to getting things done themselves. If you're as lost you sounded you prob'ly wanna know some important stuff?"

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"Yeah. And--I think there's a sense in which--it's not wrong that you have the right to demand justice, so if I'm going to take justice away from you, then I owe it to you to do everything I can to fix the thing the justice would be for." 

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"I don't know what-all is new from Fallen London so I'm just going by my pa's stories. Uh... Hours are new. They're crystallized time, we mine them and sell them, and there's whole industries devoted to weaving time. They accelerate construction sites and factories and the like, or slow down wounds until doctors can come help. Stuff like that. And London uses them by the engineload, for lots of stuff. That's the biggest thing, I think. Crystallized Hours. Prisoner's Honey isn't a thing anymore, but Red Honey still is. They say the Queen killed a star with something called the 'unclear bomb' but pa says that's impossible. It's a lot easier to die for good out here. Electricity's gotten better at doing actually useful stuff. Rattus faber aren't officially menaces anymore, but devils still hate them. Ah... Books without Ministry stamps are illegal. Too much exposure to starlight away from islands makes you go crazy, but stained glass holds it back."

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"I guess the bit about honey makes sense; you probably can't access Parabola from here. Crystallized Hours is very new. Starlight makes you go crazy? I thought I knew things about stars but I didn't know that." 

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"Yeah. It fills your head with weird new thoughts. Sense of doom, wanting to break stuff and kill things, insignificance, being wrong-shaped, feeling like you don't know how the world works, guilt and doubt, weird fever-dreams, hallucinations. Depends on the person. I mostly get a sense of doom. Saw all the stars as eyes once after being out too long though. Creepiest thing, didn't come out of my room for a week." She shivers.

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"That's weird, stars aren't mostly eye...hm. I wonder if this is a weird interaction with souls. Do rattus faber have the same problem?"

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"No clue, we don't have any on the Lucky Strike. Our driver Gyla lost her soul in a bet and she still feels it, I think? And sky-suits help too. It matters how much reaches your skin, not how much you see."

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"Hmm. Well, it's good that mountainlight fixes it. You said wrong-shaped, is there a sense of what the right shape is?"

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"...Bein' made of fire. Or light. Not having a stupid slow icky body at all. Or so I hear."

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"Sounds about right. Did you know that souls are basically star-spores?"

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"...No?"

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"It is apparently true. It wasn't common knowledge in my London but word was spreading. Possibly that might have been mostly my fault? Stuff that's snobby about humans will usually talk to me." 

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"I don't know anything about souls except that devils like 'em. Should we maybe, uh, get going?"

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"Yeah." 

She gets up and goes out and explains the change of plans. 

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Well, not like they're going to argue with the glowing Power, are they.

The navigator-cum-captain has gathered up most of what was recently stolen into a big box. The captive Tackety girl asks for a gun. The navigator hands one over willingly. She says it's trash but it'll shoot at least once and nods at Lucy.

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And Lucy strips and climbs out of the train and transforms. 

It probably isn't possible, from the vantage point inside the train, to see her entire body. But the giant quasi-arthropodic legs that cling tightly to either side of the train are most distinctly visible. 

And then they start going VERY VERY FAST. 

It takes about half an hour to get to the site of the Tackety wreck. 

Permalink Mark Unread

(...They relight the firebox but don't try to go anywhere halfway through the journey. It was getting a bit chilly.)

The Tackety wreck is a smear of steel and splinters and bodies across the local patch of sky. The main body of the wreck is a chunk of engine section connected to about a quarter of a shattered wooden cylinder by a single twisted steel beam. It looks a bit like a popped balloon. The Tackety girl dons a sky-suit and brings Lucy's dress outside the marauder engine when she clambers out.

"CAN YOU HEAR ME?" She shouts, muffled by the suit and the winds.

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Lucy turns back and accepts the dress. 

"YES I CAN," she calls back, somewhat louder than the other woman, her voice taking on the slightest hint of tumbling crystals. 

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Well, they can get to the business of collecting up bodies and the most valuable bits of wreckage. The Tackety counts and confirms that everyone is accounted for, and stares at Lucy in something like awe as she maneuvers through the void much, much easier than she can manage. When they find a couple of intact sky-suits the pirates can help, too. It doesn't take long all things considered.

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"The Mountain wasn't born in the Neath," she says cheerfully in the face of awe. "I'm made to navigate the High Wilderness." 

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"Definitely amazing. I don't know much about the Neath though. Except I remembered a story - the Khan! The Khanate moved to Eleutheria and built the Zan- Built some kind of artificial moon and the city of Eagle's Empyrean, a city of electrical light!"

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"Oh, yeah, we had the Khan in the Neath, they're descended from survivors of the Fourth city." 

Permalink Mark Unread

"Why was London the fifth city? Huh - wonder if there's a Sixth now..."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Probably. London was the fifth because the Bazaar was taking cities from the Surface and London was the fifth one it took." 

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...She shakes her head. "The surface I know even less about. This is - all too big. I know boilers and engine-building. I don't know mountain-people and the long march o' history."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Well, all you need to know about mountain-people is going fast and healing stuff." 

Permalink Mark Unread

"Well. I wanna see my dad again and I'm sure these pirates wanna go... Somewhere. Do you think you could cut down a big kinda-sorta-metal tree? I think you probably could. And then we could handle the carving bronzewood into a new engine part."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Sounds doable! Bronzewood is also new to me, can you tell me more about it?"

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"The plants of the Reach grow real big, real fast, and real unpredictable. Bronzewood is one of the more useful ones - it's tougher than nails, it's available to get a lot of, and it gleams beautifully. A consignment of heart-bronzewood - a crate of the stuff in the center of the trees - goes for one hundred seventy five Sovereigns typically, but prices up to two-seventy or as low as a hundred aren't unheard of!" She blushes. "...I had to memorize a lot of prices as schoolwork."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Heh. Makes sense. Where's a good place to find a tree?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Bit barren around here but the Nature Reserve is lush and verdant. A side passage or somewhere deep in the vegetation and you'd find one pretty quick. There's also Traitor's Wood but that's a horrible place. And far away."

Hesitation.

"Can I fly with you or's that a terrible idea?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"That is not remotely a terrible idea!" 

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She smiles, slightly. "It'll be different to fly outside of something I helped build. Seeing something of the wonders of the sky from up close, without it trying to kill me - pretty unique experience. We could maybe find a vein of time for you to look at, too."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Are they pretty?" 

Permalink Mark Unread

"Ah, sort of, but I could show you what they do." She pats a recovered toolbox. "Hours are new, right? And learning by doing is the fastest."

Permalink Mark Unread

"That it is." 

She takes her dress off again and changes. 

From outside the train, it's easier to see the entirety of this form. At her base, she looks something like a giant crab about the size of a football field, with legs and pincers in proportion. It would have to be a decorator crab, though, with an entire palace on its back, towers and spires rising to their highest mountain-like peaks in the center. And the whole thing is made of diamond, and the "palace" is shot through with tunnels and chambers that give it an odd bubbly sparkle. 

Permalink Mark Unread

She floats over in her sky-suit again. When she grabs on to one of the back-palace spires she finds herself being pulled down gently and pushes off again before it can take hold.

She hooks her tether to a convenient pillar and settles in one of the tunnel mouths, where her feet settle firmly. "Apparently you count as an island or a vehicle. That's the rule for what has gravity - islands and vehicles. Wait, can you hear me? This is so strange..."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I can hear you! On the earth's Surface I can hear the Sun speak." 

Permalink Mark Unread

"Huh! Stars speaking wasn't just a story thing? You could carry their engine to a safe spot, then we go look for Bronzewood and Hours, I think? I can point the way, if that navigator guy doesn't."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Stars speaking isn't just a story thing! They speak Correspondence. People call it the language of stars but I think that's a little silly 'cause lots of kinds of people speak it, like Messengers and Curators, not just stars. But stars are at the top of the chain so I guess it's not surprising. The Reserve was that way, right?" she asks, pointing with one claw. 

Permalink Mark Unread

"Yeah. Keep going straight past the Memorial to the Unknown Rat, the sky widens a lot past there but keep going, and when the major path splits, go left - and we'll be close enough that it's time to find a good landing spot for the pirates to disguise their engine. I'd like my family and the Lucky Strike's crew back somewhere else."

Permalink Mark Unread

"That's really reasonable!" 

She keeps an eye out for the referenced landmarks. 

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The Memorial is a surprisingly huge statue of a rattus faber holding a wrench, lit up by a few lonely lanterns.

Several hundred miles on, the sparse vegetation on lonely rocks gives way to a fierce riot of mushrooms and greenery. Mostly greenery, the mushrooms are outcompeted. Another hundred miles, and the wide sky-path splits.

Permalink Mark Unread

She goes left. 

"Is the Memorial for all the miscellaneous rattus faber that died before they were properly recognized as people instead of pests?"

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Her passenger is in something like awe from this magical experience.

"Well, it's officially for all those that died colonizing the High Wilderness. But I think that's what got people to respect them, working to build desperately needed things together. Oh - watch for Chorister Bees. They're worst at Titania and deep in the wilderness past the Reserve, but there might be some out here."

Permalink Mark Unread

"What are Chorister Bees?" 

Permalink Mark Unread

"...Uh, they're giant bees. They sing. They swarm, their songs knock you out and then they eat you. Nasty sting, kills fast."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Well, they can't eat me, I'm made of diamond. Maybe you should scoot a little farther back so if we encounter any I can shut the door on you. Are they connected to devils?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"I have no idea. And sure." She scoots back.

 

"Hey, that plateau there, on the left above the little waterfall, would be a good place to put the marauders. We're close to the Reserve. They can start on the rebuild - if you'd warn them not to take the pieces I need - then we can go looking for time and a tree?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Okay!" 

She puts down the marauders and the unnecessary pieces. 

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Her passenger guides her into the side-passes and canyons in the great jungle, staring around at the sky flashing past at immense speed.

...Over there is a swarm of dog-sized bees, passing over the jungle below and humming a chorus that sends the other animals running.

Permalink Mark Unread

...She's curious but the responsible thing to do would be to find some later when she doesn't have a squishy passenger or time-sensitive responsibilities; she'll ignore them if they ignore her. 

Permalink Mark Unread

The bees hide below the canopy when she passes near.

A bit later, "There's a Bronzewood tree!" It's as wide around as a small house, and proportionally tall. You could build a small village in its crown.

Permalink Mark Unread

"Wow, big." 

She settles near the base and reaches forward to grip the trunk with her smooth, round claws while harder edges on her foremost four feet come up to saw at the trunk. 

Permalink Mark Unread

"Yeah, it's a big one, even for Bronzewood trees. There's probably... Twenty, thirty consignments of the good stuff in this. The rest gets used too, but it's less good."

The tree resists; Its whole body is as as tough as metal armor. But not forever.

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She softens the stuff directly under her feet with a few well-placed murmurs of Correspondence. 

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The tree shudders and surrenders its hold to the ground. Birds and other, more ground-bound creatures, flee the canopy as quickly as they can.

"Prince Albert's teeth, that would've taken a crew of six at least two weeks to fell and worn out a whole crate of tools. Bit less with explosives."

Permalink Mark Unread

She grips it carefully so it doesn't fall and crush anything, lifting off. 

"Oh good, looks like I won't have to resort to pulling teeth for quick cash." 

Permalink Mark Unread

"Do you still want to look for Hours to experiment with? We could probably - just buy some, at the Reserve. You, uh, might be kind of alarming if you go in all big, though."

Permalink Mark Unread

"More or less alarming than if I go in looking mostly normal but also physically dragging this." 

Permalink Mark Unread

"Well, we could core out a few timbers of the heartwood and be carrying that. A few spare Hours can be got for just ten Sovereigns, I reckon."

Permalink Mark Unread

"How do we do that? Do we need tools? For anything more complicated than just cutting in a straight line or along a specific fault in the grain or whatever I don't think I'm going to be able to be very precise." 

Permalink Mark Unread

"Our mining gear should be able to manage it. It's part the wreck we put on you instead of giving the Marauders. Mining rigs are valuable machinery."

"...It'd go faster with more people, though. I'd have to get the boiler up to enough steam to drive it. And a big part of me is worried that you won't - be able to get them back. 'M trying to be helpful, but. Yeah."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I can fix them now that the marauders aren't around if they won't freak out at me being like this." 

Permalink Mark Unread

"They probably will. I'm pretty freaked. Just - good at functioning through it? And I know you're nice."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Okay." 

She lays them out so they won't wake up all piled up with elbows digging into kidneys, and then--

It's like flipping a switch. One moment she's crystal-clear, the next a gentle glow renders her opaque. A light like that suddenly happening so close to one's eyes ought to hurt, but it doesn't. 

Flesh knits. The dead wake. 

Permalink Mark Unread

She rushes over and takes off the sky-suit helmet and starts babbling an explanation. The Tacketies are mostly stunned and confused - several seem to think that they're on the way to Heaven together at first. Her father hugs her in his bloody tattered shirt.

"June, I- That sounds really hard. And it seems like you kept your head. That's my girl. You okay?" June nods rapidly, crying into her father's collar. "And, uh... Miss Whitman, of course, I have to thank you as well."

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She shrinks down, pulls on her dress, and curtsies. 

"You're welcome. I really really don't like people being dead." 

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He winces a bit. "Seems a hard thing to dislike, but admirable. And our cause of independence is almost orthogonal to your cause, seeing as we're willing to fight for it. That's what makes a Tackety a Tackety, as opposed to just a homesteader or common worker."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I mean I don't like death because death is bad, not because I'm like a devil but for alive people instead of souls. I also don't like suffering and oppression."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Ideologists can be very particular. I didn't- Well, nevermind. Thanks again. I think we'll be able to cobble together something that flies as far as the main part of the Reserve from here, given time. But I understand you'd like most of this fine tree. We'll set to processing it. Shouldn't be but a few hours to get the whole thing gorged down."

"We'll need some odds and ends. And food and fuel," June interrupts. "Couple hundred Sovereigns should be more than enough to hire someone to bring it out if you don't want to alarm anybody, Lucy. And I promised to show you how Hours work."

"It'll take about an hour before we have a consignment of Bronzewood ready to go."

Permalink Mark Unread

"That's fair. My ideology is 'I want people to be okay, or if possible better.' I don't think alarming people is going to be possible to avoid in the long run but it's usually good where possible. If you're going to be a while I might go off for a bit and come back, if you don't mind." 

Permalink Mark Unread

"Not at all, not at all."

The rest of the Tacketies cheer and wave their thanks, before the captain starts waving them off to work on the salvage from their engine.

Permalink Mark Unread

She changes back again and goes off to investigate the bees. 

Permalink Mark Unread

The first swarm of chorister-bees she spots attempt to flee from the Messenger-like being that suddenly appeared. Their wariness of her is something deeply ingrained.

 

Each one bears a sigil scarred into its back - "A mistake, forged into a triumph."

Permalink Mark Unread

Ignorance at the source of another's fear. Concern for the well-being of one displaying wariness, she calls. 

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Fear caused by another's ancestry. An ancient injustice, still resented. Doubt regarding another's honesty.

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An uncertainty as to which facet of one's ancestry is being referred to. 

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Those bearing messages between Judgements.

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Puzzlement as to why a matter is frightening. The experience of having met only a single member of a species.

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An ancient injustice, still resented. A failure to understand the cause of one's desires/feelings.

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Frustration at the number of grudges in the world. Regret at having caused fear. 

She turns around and heads back to the Tacketies. 

Permalink Mark Unread

The bees continue fleeing. The impromptu Tackety camp is loud with the noise of buzzsaws and drills, working on disassembly of the giant tree.

Permalink Mark Unread

She lands and changes back. "Chorister bees are afraid of Messengers, apparently," she reports. 

Permalink Mark Unread

"Good for you," the Tackety captain snorts. "They're menaces. Attack Titania on the regular, attack anyone who has Chorister Nectar, even though they gather it instead of making it."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I'm not a Messenger--not mostly anyway--but I look enough like one. Were you aware they are people." 

Permalink Mark Unread

"...Like Rattus Faber? I mean, they sing. Sometimes in English, even. But they won't stop and chat with you even when they're not trying to sting you."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Okay, just checking. They didn't say anything in English to me, and back in London rattus faber were not kindly treated."

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"There's people who hunt them to steal the nectar. There's people who hunt cantankeri, for the gems under their hides, and scrive-spinsters for their bodies - bronzewood - and curators for their collections. London hunts us. Tackety engines, and we them. If anything, chorister bees are the least defensible, they don't attack you unless you have nectar aboard."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Fucking shit on a bed of hot coals, do people just pick up a gun one day and go, 'I know, I'm going to be a serial killer for fun and profit?' Ugh. What is a scrive-spinster, what are cantankeri, are either of those giant floating isopods 'cause I did meet one of those and not recognize it...do curators regularly attack people, I thought that was just the Vake." 

Permalink Mark Unread

"Scrive-spinsters were celestial librarians, but their library got smashed to bits and scattered long ago. Now they wander lost and angry and trying to piece it back together, and attack people sometimes. Cantankeri are the giant flying isopods. They mostly attack anything that's not other cantankeri on sight. I've heard a bunch of stories of curators showing up in the sky and screeching bridge-windows right out of their fittings to loot the engines, but there's a couple specific ones that aren't hostile - Mr. Pennies springs to mind, he buys tons and tons of hours and I'm not sure why - I think most people don't realize the terrifying giant killer bats are the same thing as the human-sized figure wearing a heavy concealing cloak? Anyway, it's easy to see something other than human and think - oh, that's a wild beast, undeserving of my sympathy. Or a monster, a threat that I'll be lauded in clubs and papers if I take a trophy from."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Ugh. So I guess people have figured out the Masters of the Bazaar were curators, if you can identify Mr. Pennies as one? The cantanker...what is the singular...anyway, it didn't attack me, hm. The scrive-spinsters sound maybe soluble, depends on what it is exactly they need..." 

Permalink Mark Unread

"I don't know much about Fallen London, to be honest - just the sky. Mr. Pennies is kind of a fixture at Lustrum. Selling off its whole collection for Hours, talking about postponing a reckoning - seems worrying if you ask me, aren't their collections supposed to be their whole purpose? Anyway, maybe the cantankeri was scared of you. I would be."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I was in human shape at the time! Anyway, yes, that is concerning, I'll have to investigate at some point."

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The captain shrugs. "God, this is all... I don't even know. Sometimes when strange things happen, you don't even know what to do next, you know? Well, June has some Bronzewood set aside for you. She's very keen on showing you how to use Hours."

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"I'm very keen on being shown!" 

She goes off to find June.

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She's working side-by-side with her father on the big pile of recovered machinery. It's all a lot more organized than before, and several things are attached to the mining rig that's attacking the tree.

"Hey! Find out what you wanted to know about the bees?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Not everything I'd like, because the first thing I found out was that they're scared of me." 

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"...Huh. Well, better that than the reverse."

She finishes tightening a bolt, says bye to her dad, and walks over to a small handcart with some solid timbers of wood on it. They're a bit rough, but they gleam like bronze.

"So, I figure you'll get about fifty Sovereigns for this and it's mostly believable for one of us to push it into the Reserve?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Cool," she says, and takes the handcart. She can pretend to struggle with it when they reach other human eyes. 

Permalink Mark Unread

"You'll need to fly us closer though. I think the main landing is about a hundred miles away. Can you be... Littler? Or sneaky somehow?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Hmm, yeah." 

Her skirts spread as she transforms partially beneath them, and she picks up June with one arm and the handcart with the other. 

ZOOM. 

Permalink Mark Unread

They pass another locomotive on the way in, steaming the opposite direction. It's mostly unmarked - June identifies it as optimized for trade due to the wide, curving outer hull. 

The main settled section of the Reserve is a small clearing on the edge of a high cliff, mostly free of vegetation. It's very warm and moist here. The plants are verdant and colorful and diverse, flowers and trees and shrubs and vines and more - and more beautiful than one would expect a jungle to be. The jungle chitters and mutters with the sounds of animals of all kinds. Clusters of raised huts made of something bamboo-like mark most the human presence here - only a handful of utility buildings, a crane by the docks, and a lonely rusting cannon turret are built more conventionally. Families and tourists and academics and a small number of laborers to support the others are walking around - many of them with rifles, just in case. There are smaller clearings scattered like islands and connected with little bridges, and paths down into the jungle here and there. It's easy to pick one out to walk up from.

"Pretty, isn't it?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"It is! Reminds me a little of Parabola, or the Garden." 

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"What are those things? I don't think it's someone's front stoop, the Garden. Sounds more important than that."

Permalink Mark Unread

"It's the stuff immediately surrounding the Mountain. Apples from the Garden are where Hesperidian Cider comes from." 

Permalink Mark Unread

"Never heard of that neither. I was born in the sky, not the Neath, you know? It's 1908 because the Queen says so, but a lot more than ten years have passed since London left the Undersea in most places." She shrugs.

They come up to the main clearing - A three-way sign points the way to 'Capability's Inquest Scenic Tours' and 'L&S Research Station' and 'Loading Bay'.

"We should just wander around the dock area and we'll find someone to buy it smart quick, and we can buy an Hour so I can show you how it works."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Sure. I don't have all that much context for not the Neath, yet, I'm learning what things there are but that's easier than learning what things there aren't, you know?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"I think I get it. I don't know a good way to bridge that quickly."

The loading bay is surprisingly full of captains and crew chatting to each other and drinking at an outdoor bar. Seems like a very relaxed place. When June shouts out, "Bronzewood going cheap! Also looking to by an Hour or two!" They take a bit to stretch before walking over and peering over the timbers.

June haggles a bit and gets her fifty Sovereigns from a captain who immediately has the wood hauled over to replace some engine plating, and also two small Hour-geodes for her trouble. They look like pink and purple crystals inside geodes, except they're a little fuzzy at the edges.

Permalink Mark Unread

Huh. 

Do they look any different to her, when she looks at them with eyes that can recognize individual stars in the sky from the surface of a planet well enough to know that the Judgments here are different from the ones visible from Earth? 

Permalink Mark Unread

They're made of tiny filaments, packed and coiled geometrically onto themselves until they become solid. They're made of a very particular kind of light, not exactly Judgement-light or her healing-light, but perhaps the same sort of thing approached from a very different angle...

June walks over to a clear spot and opens the toolbox she brought. "Let's find a plant and make it grow smart-quick? Or we could speed up ourselves some. It won't be very efficient at all on a hand-loom, though."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Hm, I like the plant idea, especially if I'm shining on it the whole time." 

Permalink Mark Unread

They head back out into the jungle-paths. June plucks a seed from a relatively tame-looking tree that has flutter-wings like a maple, but also prickly spikes, then finds a reasonably clear bit of underbrush to plant it in. She picks something comb-like from her toolbox and holds it up to one of the geodes.

"Ready?"

Permalink Mark Unread

She nods and her whole body lights up like a tiny sun. 

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June works the tiny comb along the crystals in a very particular way until some of the filaments catch and it starts shining semisolid purple light, and she quickly walks in wide circles around the seed, continuing to brush. The light tangles and snarls constantly, leaving spots of purple light in the air that expend themselves uselessly, and June's working with the comb-thing is only enough to smooth it out marginally. Enough for it to work on the seed, at least, which becomes a seedling, and a sapling, and sprouts four feet tall and starts producing lots of leaves before the little geode is bare stone and crumbles in her hand.

Permalink Mark Unread

"Huh. That was interesting," she says, and examines the tree. It's healthier, lusher, greener, than a tree at this stage of development would normally be; she plucks a leaf and bites into it and smiles. 

"Well. That's good to know. Can I see that comb?" 

Permalink Mark Unread

"Sure. I don't really know the theory of how or why they work, I just know how to do the two very basic tricks of speeding up and slowing down, and really inefficiently. An hour-loom could probably have done twice as much or more. -Hour-looms are specialized industry, like electric lights or medicine-making."

Permalink Mark Unread

She nods and examines the comb. 

Permalink Mark Unread

It seems like a fairly ordinary comb, except the ends of the bristles have tiny barbs and hooks, seemingly designed to catch and separate loose threads they pass over. It would surely get stuck in a bundle of wool and maybe even ordinary clothes, and tear apart the fibers trying to get it out, but perhaps time has less friction than wool.

Permalink Mark Unread

One imagines...hm. 

She picks up the remaining geode and examines it. 

She still remembers when she figured out she could switch her own light from the Mountain's healing glow to the Judgments' controlling glare. That was an emergency situation, but she remembers what it felt like to reach out through possibility-space to find it. She switches back and forth a couple of times just to make sure she has the freshest possible sense-memory, making sure not to actually glow during the switching. 

And then she reaches out again. 

Whatever the light in the Hour is, it isn't a mystery; it's right there. She can look at it to her heart's content, examine it in arbitrary detail; she can see where it would be insofar as "where" is even the right word for it. 

She shoves in a different direction than she has before. 

click. 

She holds out her hand, and a soft purple glow emanates from it. 

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The world slows down around them, just a bit.

June looks confused, then alarmed. "-Should you be doing that. Do you know what you're doing."

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She stops and switches back to her normal healing light. "Possibly I should not be doing that around a vulnerable human. I don't, like, get old or anything, worst case scenario for me probably isn't that bad, but also yes possibly I should learn more before messing with time-light. I just wanted to see if I could, there." 

Permalink Mark Unread

"I get it. But I'm squishy and made of meat and bones. So." Sigh. "Glad I could pay you back for the help a bit, though. Looks like you learned something."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Oh, I did, I very did. Finding a new kind of light is huge."

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June smiles a bit and- looks away. Hopefully a blush isn't as visible on her as it would be on someone paler? 

"Anyway. Time to go back to the crew, I guess."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Yeah!" 

She scoops June up and ZOOMS back. 

Permalink Mark Unread

June is... Clinging... To stay warm. Yep. That's the entire reason.

They're doing more work. A little rowhouse has taken shape, and the enormous tree is about half devoured by the rumbling mining equipment. There's some kind of bat-monkey being skinned near a fire, and a bunch of mango-ish fruits simmering in a pot above it. The man skinning the creature has a bandaged arm.

"What're you going to do now?" Asks June after being set down.

Permalink Mark Unread

"Fix that," she says, pointing at the bandaged arm, and heads over. 

"Did you get that killing that thing? What is it? I'm going to heal your arm, okay?" 

Permalink Mark Unread

"-Uh, yeah. It's a Hanging Monkey, they're one of the less weird things you can catch in the Reserve, just hanging from their trees most of the time, easy shot. I got hurt stumbling over some rocks and falling. It was a bit stupid of me really, we're not in huge danger of running out of food, but now that it's dead may as well make use of it, right? And, yeah, thanks."

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She pokes his arm with a glowing finger. "There we go. What weirder things are there?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Oh, I don't think half of it even has names that aren't in latin. Pit Squid. Farmer Spiders. Temple-Beetles. Chimaera Birds. Chameleon Leapords."

Permalink Mark Unread

"What are Farmer Spiders?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"They run little farms of flies and things. Like the ants with the fungus. I read about it in school, I think."

Permalink Mark Unread

"And they don't like steal people's eyeballs or anything." 

Permalink Mark Unread

"Uh, not as far as I know. That's... Alarming, is that a Neath thing?"

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"Yeah, Sorrow-Spiders do that. They lay eggs in them. They're a real problem but, also, they make amazing silk." Her hand idly strokes her silk dress. 

Permalink Mark Unread

"Huh. I know silk clothes are ruinously expensive and mostly an old establishment thing, no Tackety would be caught dead wearing silk, so maybe they're not around anymore."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Sounds reasonable. Surface silk is expensive in the Neath, because it's rare, and things like Parabola-Linen are expensive but don't signal affiliation with the establishment so much as personal power, possibly because there's so many damn factions." 

Permalink Mark Unread

"I'm not sure if it's less... Factional around here. The Stovepipes are very aligned with the Establishment, if not quite the same thing. The Liberation of Night still gets up to things once in a while. It's pretty bad in Eleutheria, from what I hear. The Eagle, London's embassy, the Brazen Brigade, the Cypress King, the Heart-Catchers, the Gentlemen, the Caudecus devils, the rubberies, whatever the hell Piranesi is about, Midnight Tea, Winter's Reside... Glad I don't live there."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Mm, yeah. Well, I'm sure there are expensive things that are and aren't aligned to any particular faction here." 

Permalink Mark Unread

"Sure. Bronzewood, tea, munitions, and stained glass are pretty ubiquitous, I guess."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Stained glass?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Oh, yes. Stained glass strips the light of the High Wilderness of most of its deranging properties. It's needed, especially when flying. Even bridge-glass has a subtle green cast to it, like thick old bottles. I'm a little worried how well we'll hold up out here, to be honest? It should be fine for a week or two if we watch each other and we're scrupulous about it afterwards."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I'm pretty sure my light fixes it, I shone at a guy who was well raving and he was super coherent after."

Permalink Mark Unread

"...I can see how that would make sense. It's two different kinds of light. I'd bet stained glass filters yours too."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Hrm. Well, I can probably shine strongly enough to overcome that." 

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He shrugs and stirs the pot of fruit, then goes back to skinning the Hanging Monkey.

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She nods and goes to see if anyone else needs healing and how progress is going on repairs. 

Permalink Mark Unread

It's less 'repairs' and more 'building a whole new engine from bits and pieces'. They have all the major machinery lined up in the right order, at least.

June is frowning. "I am beginning to have doubts about this plan... Might need more stuff. Bronzewood plating is well and good, using it for a skeleton is a bit iffier. I doubt you want to be a cargo-carrier for us, though."

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"Honestly? Keep telling me things about how this place is different from the Neath and I don't, really, have better use for my time right now, I can't really try to do anything until I know what there is to be done."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Would you be up for a trip to New Winchester then? Victory Hall is our place there, but the Stovepipes have Company House too. The Blue Kingdom Transit Relay is nearby as well, but... Anyone else and I'd say you really don't want to go there, but maybe you do, actually."

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"Blue Kingdom Transit Relay?"

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"The path to the Blue Kingdom. Domain of the Sapphir'd King. A Judgement. Shades of the dead all go there, and it's not a place to visit lightly. Not very welcoming to humans at all. I don't know much more about it."

Permalink Mark Unread

"A Judgment who collects the dead. Yeah, that doesn't sound like someone I'd get along with at all. I am, uh, by Judgment standards...somewhat illegal. Where by somewhat I mean very." 

Permalink Mark Unread

"Uh."

 

"Are we gonna be in trouble for having anything to do with you."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Oh, no, the thing that's illegal is committing amalgamy, not associating with the product of it. They might destroy me for existing but they might not even bother. My ancestors really don't want to meet the space constables but, uh, insofar as you don't want to it's mostly because the Judgments and their enforcers don't, like, care, about not incidentally killing people as far down the Chain as humans." 

Permalink Mark Unread

"Yeah, I know stars will totally murder you on a whim or less if you're stupid enough to be near one." Deep breath. "Uh, more Bronzewood to sell at New Winchester, and then shopping from my dad's wishlist, and you can look around the city and ask me stuff at the same time?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Sure, sounds good. Sorry for spooking you." 

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"It kind of happens a lot, doesn't seem super avoidable? Yeah. New Winchester might be hard to approach without alarming anyone but you can probably handle it and I know all the signs and codes to get into Victory Hall if we need local influence to calm things down."

She goes and collects her father's wish-list.

Permalink Mark Unread

"Cool." 

She transforms and picks up the Bronzewood and opens one of her "doors" for June. 

"You'll have to tell me which way to go." 

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She can do that. After borrowing a chart from the navigator. It's a different path through the twisting wilderness, down the other branch where they had to go left to get to the Reserve.

"We go right here, but Titania's to the left - that way, by the way," June notes about a third of the way there. "And Carillon's past it, next major offshoot to the left after Titania. Have I told you about Carillon yet?" 

Permalink Mark Unread

"You haven't! Or Titania."

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"Titania's right on top of a Chorister Bee nest, but the artists who live there would never give it up and leave. Even when they get attacked on a regular basis. Bunch of weirdos. Pretty, though. And Carillon's a sort of... Devil salon-slash-sanatorium, where they'll treat you for flaws in your soul with really weird penances. Seems... Benign, as devils go, I think."

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"Yeah. There are uses for having a soul that's better by devil standards but they're pretty obscure." 

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"The going rate for a generically 'good' soul is seventy Sovereigns. For a poor one, fifteen. Specialized buyers nonwithstanding." She snorts. "Prices. So important for sky-sailors to know, if they hope to make enough money to keep flying."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I really wouldn't recommend selling them." 

Permalink Mark Unread

"Why not? What do they even do besides be sort of Judgement-y... Spores? Rumor says 'nothing, maybe'."

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"Some people change when they lose theirs. And you can get someone back easier if you don't have their body, if they didn't sell it. And the Judgmenty spore thing isn't irrelevant, Judgments don't want new Judgments to remember being people with souls but it's not impossible. Souls contain the potential for apotheosis. I mean not that Judgments are like, worthy of worship or anything, but apotheosis sounds cool." 

Permalink Mark Unread

"Reminds me of a vague rumor I heard. I figure I should probably mention it whenever that happens, to give you background? The Heart-Catchers in Eleutheria can make... A jar with your death in it, to hide away. Not immortality, but protection against a particular fate. Or so the rumors go. So Judgements come from, ah, weaker souls?"

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"No, souls have to be pretty strong to even become a Judgment in the first place. Most souls don't, ever. But the longer you're alive the more stuff your soul has on it, and you have to consume some of the stuff to become a Judgment, but if you live long enough and do enough cool stuff you could, in theory, have enough stuff that you won't miss what you lose. I've been working on this for, like, ten years, I haven't been able to put theory into practice yet, but I'm pretty confident in it. The hard part is, uh, not having anything horrible happen to you for long enough. Which is pretty hard. Simple doesn't mean easy." 

Permalink Mark Unread

"...Mm."

 

There is an especially large, blue-painted locomotive visible up ahead, around the next bend. June swears quietly. "Windward Company dreadnaught."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Is that bad? Will they bother with me? I don't look like a train or anything."

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"Tacketies and the Windward Company are sort of at war? I thought I explained that. Maybe I forgot. They're probably freaking the hell out, not knowing what you are. Might try to shoot at you but you're way, way faster. Will definitely report you."

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"You did explain that but I don't think I look very Tackety and they shouldn't be able to see you very clearly in there." 

Permalink Mark Unread

"I guess not. It's just, seeing one of those is usually bad news, you know?"

The dreadnaught is turning back the way it came.

Permalink Mark Unread

"Oh sure. But even if they did get aggressive I could take 'em." 

Permalink Mark Unread

"Yeah, you could probably take most things that'll try to bother you. Probably. Oh, you wouldn't know about the Unwanted Guests. They're... Eels? I think? They're attracted to things of sentimental value on flying locomotives, and they mostly don't try to kill you but tend to crush people inadvertently. And when there's, like, a critical mass of them, then they take over the engine and keep flying it and launch their - acid spit or something - into other engines. A proper menace. When you have one Guest, others know how to find you, somehow."

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"Huh, okay. If we see any of those I'll try to talk to them. Maybe they'll talk to me, maybe we can make sense of them, maybe they're not people and I can just squish 'em." 

Permalink Mark Unread

June doesn't have anything else to say at the moment. They pass the dreadnaught at speed, and soon New Winchester is visible on the horizon.

"I don't know what the least panic-inducing approach is. There are gun turrets facing the common shipping lanes, so maybe not those."

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She starts curving around. "Is there some part that's relatively unobserved?"

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"Uh... I don't really know, sorry. Maybe sort of - below from the local perspective? Down there. Whole place is surprisingly flat for being in the sky..."

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"Okay." 

She tries to land somewhere without any buildings or people that could see the landing spot. 

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It's a busy city, it may be difficult to avoid all eyes. And yet, it's bad form to look at the stars too much, and large portions of it are abandoned and overgrown by the highly aggressive flora of the Reach.

She can't avoid notice entirely, it's all but certain people will have seen her flying near the city, but nobody saw them land and anyone searching should need to search a fairly wide area. And would be looking for a giant crystalline crab.

"Could go round up some barflies to move all this Bronzewood to the market. Plenty of people looking for work. We can... Imply it may or may not be entirely legitimately acquired, which tends to stop folk from asking questions."

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"Sounds good. Should just one of us go or is it safe to leave it here?"

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She looks at the large pile of gleaming wood doubtfully. "It's suspicious, this much good wood just sitting here. But also very tempting. Ah... Better if one of us stays here. You or me?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"You know better how not to spook the locals and I can defend the stuff better." 

Permalink Mark Unread

"Okay. Sorry to make you wait."

She reaches inside her coat and repositions a gun that wasn't obvious before to an outer pocket where it's an obviously weapon-shaped bulge if you're looking. And confidently walks out.

 

A few minutes later, a scruffy man in a dark coat and with an obvious facial scar walks around a corner of the nearest crumbling brick rowhouse, whistling and twirling a knife. He trails off when he sees half a tree's worth of Bronzewood and a strange woman. "Eh? What're you doing here, then? Only troublemakers," he smirks, "'Ave much reason to be in these sorry lanes."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Oh, I'm loads of trouble." 

Permalink Mark Unread

"Trobulemakers gots to watch out for each other, in both senses. Watch each other for treachery, and watch each others' backs against the pipe-hats. All nice and tidy, nobody wants blood in the streets, that sort of thing. You can think of me as a, ah, guy 'wif a moving company. Lots of burly help what carry shivs and irons just in case, you get the picture? I'd 'preciate some elucidation on what kind of trouble you are, 'zactly." He glances at the wood, greedy-eyed.

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"I'm the kind of trouble that's very friendly when people are nice! When people are less nice, I have...less room to be friendly. The last guy who tried to shoot me isn't star-crazy anymore, but I'd've done it sooner and gentler if he'd just asked nicely." 

Permalink Mark Unread

"Anyone can say they're friendly. Now, me, I cannot help but wonder whether you are perhaps here for reasons related to things I may or may not keep where few prying eyes would care to look. Havin' business of your own to attend to is reassuring on that front but," knife-twirl, "One wonders, ya know? A gesture of goodwill would be reassurin'."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Want me to fix your scars? Or any less obvious aches and pains you may have." 

Permalink Mark Unread

 

"I was thinkin' I could use a two-by-four to fix me favorite chair but, now, that is something that is assuredly not-to-be-messed-with-ish if it's not plain quackery."

Permalink Mark Unread

She spreads her hands benevolently and glows at him. 

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He puts away the knife. He feels his face. He stretches his left leg. He's grateful and annoyed and spooked.

"-Right. Well. I'll have to find a good place to bleed, to get that back. 'S kind of a badge of office. You here to make trouble for anyone in particular, starshine?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Nope! Just want to sell this stuff and get the lay of the land a little better. A few hours ago there was some kind of explosion involving stuff with Correspondence on it and what I think in retrospect may have been Hours and before that I was just outside London in the Neath. Getting myself situated is a task and a half, I tell you." 

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"Well, I somewhat hesitate to initiate dealings with someone who gets in trouble like that, but glow a bit more for some of my lads and Harley's Crew will more-or-less guarantee you and yours safety from the left of the law in the twelve blocks of New Winchester we call home, within reason and as much as we can given that people are people but I'm sure you know how these things work, and try to look out for you if ya need it."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Thanks! I'm not going to leave here until my friend gets back, but if your lads want to come here I'll be happy to." 

Permalink Mark Unread

"That's not really logistic-uh-ly possible, 'fraid. Here." He flicks a business card through the air - it sails quite far, but not all the way to Lucy. It's for a 'logistics and teamsters company'. "If you're going to hang around the north half of downtown, please stop by."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Will do!" 

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The criminal turns back the way he came, scowling once Lucy can no longer see his face. He'll have to be cautious for a while.

 

 

Some time later, June returns, trailed by the same guy. "Hello again, miss starshine! Your friend's a good negotiator. My teamsters are happy to take on a rush order, no problemo."

June comes up to her and quietly says, "You spooked that guy pretty bad. I was scared for a bit, but he knew a Tackety signcode. Anyway, I think you can trust him to play nice, at least once."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I think people might've been harder to spook, in the Neath. But then, if I'm the only source of mountain-light here, I suppose this place must be intrinsically more dangerous." 

Permalink Mark Unread

"Seems likely, yeah," June comments. She frowns. "By the way, 'starshine' is not actually a compliment. If someone offers you some, say no. It may or may not be addictive."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Iiiii am unusually likely to be okay, but noted."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I mean, it's not as bad as, like, opium hookahs, or too much booze, but it's a different mechanism. It's bottled light that makes you really really nostalgic and relaxed. Anyway..."

June tells Lucy what she knows about New Winchester while they wait for a team of big, burly guys to arrive with carts and start moving the wood into town. It's the industrial and commercial center of the Reach, with engine-yards selling locomotives and a big market for lots of stuff. The Tacketies and Stovepipes both share influence here, making local politics... Pretty tense. There's banks, and bars and music halls, and a bewildering array of factories, and two hospitals, and a famous locomotive-captains' club, and a moving picture theater, and probably a few dangerous plots brewing in the belly of the city. There's a lot of poor and a lot of criminals, New Winchester being the place to go when you can't stand one of the smaller ports or your parents' homestead anymore.

They're at busy Victoria Market, an only slightly tangled block of streets containing clearing-houses and merchant outfits of all kinds. They're soon accepting bids from a variety of people for the wood. It doesn't take long at all to convert it into more than two thousand Sovereigns - a small fortune. The Sovereigns are coins, impressively heavy and elaborate ones incorporating bits of stained glass for the largest denominations. The gang leader takes his moving fee and cheerfully waves goodbye without any fuss.

 

"Abraham's Engineering is the place you want to go for quality locomotive parts. I should buy some Murgatroyd's Fungal Crackers and maybe some sausage and butter to extend things at our camp. And coal. And maybe tea." June frowns. "I don't want to take away too much of your money, though."

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"Don't worry about it, I can always hack down another tree if I need more money." 

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"Alright then..."

She orders a big list of mechanical things, steel structural beams and plating, stained glass panes, plus several crates of food and coal, all to be sent to Harley's warehouse, and moved back out to the dilapidated parts of town tomorrow morning.

"These things take a bit of time, annoyingly. Still, glad that's over with. So... What do you want to do in the meantime?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Hm...I think I want to learn more about time-light." 

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"Yeah... Not sure how I can help with that. There's probably some academics downtown? Not an actual university, it's mostly just the Royal Society for that, but tutors and researchers and so on."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Do you know where someone would get a fancier version of your comb?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"An hour-loom. Big machines that weave Hours. Uh... Probably someone makes them in Port Prosper, or back in Albion. Port Prosper's the capital of the time business, right by the Albion transit relay. Might be some here? I wouldn't know where to look."

Permalink Mark Unread

Nod. "Might make more sense to go glow at the hospitals then, for now." 

Permalink Mark Unread

"I'm. Not entirely sure I want to hang around you for that? Seems awfully attention-getting."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I won't be offended if you want to split up and meet back up later."

Permalink Mark Unread

 

"Yeah but it's... I'm scared? My folks are alive because of you, and the only reason I wasn't breaking down on that Marauder engine was because I was - I actually don't know how I didn't fall apart? But going separate ways from my powerful new friend makes me anxious. I'm not nearly as calm as I seem? And not just scared, but other feelings too. It's both a good thing and a bad thing, being so calm. I probably should go somewhere and, uh, process, but..." Shrug. Sigh.

Permalink Mark Unread

"If you want to stick with me but not get attention you could wear a mask and people wouldn't know it was you?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"...No, I'll just get over myself. It's getting late. I'm going to get a room at the Reacher's Rest, that motel over there, and sleep. Do you need to sleep?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Enh...depends on how you define need, I self-heal and that really limits how much most kinds of deprivation can hurt me. But I do sleep." 

Permalink Mark Unread

"Maybe we should get- Two rooms at the same place so we know where to meet then."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Sounds good!" 

Permalink Mark Unread

They do that, then. And Lucy is free to walk to the Order of St. Peter's Blessed Mercy Hospital.

Permalink Mark Unread

"Hello! Who can I talk to about healing people," she says at the front desk. 

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A Bespectacled Nurse frowns slightly and asks, "Do you have any medical training?"

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"Er, not conventionally, but I'm the Mountain of Light's daughter and I can glow at people." 

Permalink Mark Unread

"The... What?"

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"You know how in the Neath people didn't stay dead?"

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"I have heard of the phenomenon, yes. It was in my schooling, as an argument that modern medicine is much better at patching up injuries than keeping people alive at all."

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She sighs and turns her hand into diamond. "Look, if I was just a crazy person I wouldn't be able to do this, right?" 

Permalink Mark Unread

"Miss, we treat people with conditions that leave them looking like that sometimes. Do you have any credentials. Or references."

Permalink Mark Unread

Sigh. "Do you have, like, a papercut or something I can fix." 

Permalink Mark Unread

(This nurse is pretty convinced Lucy is wasting his time.) "What would your treatment look like, exactly?"

Permalink Mark Unread

Well, Lucy is pretty sure he's wasting hers. "It would look like me glowing at the injury and then the injury being gone." 

Permalink Mark Unread

"As it happens, I don't have any injuries at the moment. If you find someone who's injured and willing to accept your treatment, or one of the patients who comes in here accepts it, and it is effective, please do come back to demonstrate."

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"Ugh, I don't have time for this."

She starts glowing. 

Her radiance ramps up, going from nothing to a faint glow to a beacon to a penetrating luminosity that pierces through the very walls and ceilings and floors, imperfectly opaque as they are. It would be blinding if it didn't heal corneal damage faster than it could cause it. 

She ramps down again after a couple of seconds have passed, then turns around and walks out, leaving behind her a hospital filled with zero injured and zero corpses. 

Permalink Mark Unread

"Miss- Miss what did you just do-!"

The nurse runs after her. 

"You need to stay here! You just unleashed something without any kind of safety checks or verification or anything, that's not right!"

Permalink Mark Unread

"I know what it does. I've been doing this for years. You can check up on it all you want, but I have more people to heal." 

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The hospital has a crowded evening street's attention already, being the source of some sort of Incident. The shouting isn't helping.

The nurse runs over to a police officer on the opposite side of the street and starts ranting and gesticulating towards Lucy.

Permalink Mark Unread

She continues calmly walking away. 

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The policeman jogs to catch up to her. "Miss. What's your name and are you responsible for that light just now?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Lucy Whitman, and yes." 

Permalink Mark Unread

"Is it true you said it was a medical treatment? And that you didn't receive any kind of permission or consent to administer it? Or demonstrate that it does what you claim?" The policeman glances at the nurse, who has followed, scowling.

Permalink Mark Unread

"I offered to demonstrate, he blew me off." 

Permalink Mark Unread

"I said you could find someone to demonstrate on-"

"Sir, please leave this to me."

"She barged into a hospital and 'treated' all our patients with some kind of light - you know how light can be - without allowing for any due diligence!"

"Sir. Miss Whitman, would you mind explaining your side of things?"

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"What do you know about the Neath." 

Permalink Mark Unread

"Oh, this is-"

"Nurse, be quiet. I am the officer here, not you. Just general background information. The Bazaar, the Tomb Colonies, the Fifth City, the Elder Continent, the Zee, the Avid Horizon. General details. How is that relevant?"

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"I am the daughter of the Mountain of Light, and the light that I give off is the same light that makes death less than permanent in the Neath." 

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"That's a very extraordinary claim. Miss. Given the, uh, treacherous nature of most light in the High Wilderness, do you think you can see why it might make people skeptical and alarmed?"

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...She stops.

"Not...exactly? I mean, I, uh, now that you mention it I can see it, but there was some kind of accident involving Hours and the Correspondence and from my perspective a few days ago I was in London when it was still back in the Neath and the best way to go crazy involved Seeking the Name. I, uh, have been trying to acclimate, but, okay, that was my bad and I apologize." 

Permalink Mark Unread

"Thank you. Would you come back to the hospital with us so we can sort things out and keep anyone from getting too worried?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Yeah, okay." 

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They go back to the hospital, the main lobby of which is filling with confused staff and patients. The officer asks Lucy to wait, calls in some backup, then goes to confer with several doctors, who glance at her warily and curiously and hopefully. That nurse sulks off to a side-room somewhere.

A Reckless Chronicler walks a bit closer than the other recovered patients, mutters, "Hmm, Correspondence?" and attempts to read the sigils on her dress.

Permalink Mark Unread

"Oh, uh, yes, I'm...naturally fluent. Which means I can handle it safely." 

Permalink Mark Unread

"I would sell my soul for that talent, you know. Fascinating stuff, the power that the words of fire can give. If we could codify it, it would be a whole new branch of science, bridging poetry and engineering!"

Permalink Mark Unread

"I met a man once who was born to completely human parents but his mother had Red Science done to him in utero. As fluent as I. Replicating the feat without risking the life of mother or child has been an ongoing interest of mine, but not something that's panned out yet. His mother was a nasty piece of work by all accounts." 

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"I've been unable to find anything on the Red Science. The Ministry of Public Decency has been quite thorough. Would you mind giving me your translation of a certain sigil I'm unsure of - I won't try to write it here of course but after all this fuss is sorted-"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Oh, sure!" 

Permalink Mark Unread

"I appreciate it very much! Trevor Custeau, chronicler, at your service. I'll be over by the entrance whenever the constables release you."

 

The doctors seem to be wrapping up their discussion with the officer, actually. They wave her over and explain that they're going to carefully monitor some of the patients for side-effects and wish she'd been less abrupt about it, but thank her. She gave the mortician quite a fright, they comment with a chuckle. The officer sternly asks her to not surprise people with strange light, but says she's not in trouble.

Permalink Mark Unread

"I'm sorry. I should have been more thoughtful about the circumstances. I was only weighing the risk of offending one person against the risk of making people wait longer to get better, and those weren't the only risks." 

Permalink Mark Unread

"No harm - hopefully - no foul. It's not possible to go through life without bothering anyone or making any mistakes," one doctor comments sagely, "That said, please do take this as a lesson, hm? And we might want you back in a day or two, if everything checks out and you'd be willing."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I will. I'll be more careful and talk to more people at the next hospital, and I'll come back, sure--but do you have any advice on how to handle cemeteries? There aren't doctors there." 

Permalink Mark Unread

"Cemeteries-"

"Have you heard of the Tomb Colonies?" A more senior doctor asks.

"Ah. Well, there's a whole section of sky that's one giant cemetery in Albion... I don't know what would be best, actually."

"I presume you want to help as many people as possible? I don't think you're going to convince people to dig up their relatives' graves until you're more, er, known."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I do want to help as many people as possible. I was assuming I would do the digging. It's, uh, I can do it pretty fast."

Permalink Mark Unread

"There's only one of you. There are a lot of shovels."

"...The Mountain of Light is sort of related to stars, right? It gave off light, anyway."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Yyyyyyyes, that is true. Uh, the Mountain of Light is...actually a Judgment/Messenger hybrid." 

Permalink Mark Unread

"You could- God, it sounds silly to even think of, I don't know if it's possible but I have to mention it- You could... Try to get the Clockwork Sun to do it?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"In theory anyone who gives off Judgment-derived light should be able to switch between kinds, it's not that hard, the main issue is that other Judgments are liable to go 'um, what the fuck' about it. Which is not insurmountable but is, you know, logistically relevant. Who's the Clockwork Sun?" 

Permalink Mark Unread

"I don't even know if it's properly a 'who'. Her Eternal Majesty had the Clockwork Sun built in Albion, and it shines across the whole region of the High Wilderness. Except things started going wrong and now it turns anything exposed directly for too long into glass, including people."

Permalink Mark Unread

 

"Uhhhhhhhhh what." 

Permalink Mark Unread

"The Clockwork Sun is supposed to be an artificial star under the Empress's control. They built a garrison, a whole city district, and exhibition halls around it. It was going to be the greatest glory of London since the Surface. And it was built and it does shine. But... Toxically. The whole 'city on a sun' thing was quickly abandoned. I don't know much more than that."

Permalink Mark Unread

"How do you build a--seriously what principles do you apply--whose idea was this--augh. That sounds like a problem I am going to have to solve one way or the other, thank you so much for bringing it to my attention." 

Permalink Mark Unread

"Er... You're welcome?"

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"People turning into glass is bad. Humans who don't know what they're doing messing with star stuff is dangerous. I would like to deal with this before it gets worse."

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"I'm in agreement with you," the doctor assures her.

Permalink Mark Unread

"I don't know if I hope the Clockwork Sun is a who or not, if they are then it should be easier to talk them around but if it isn't...I'm not sure I like the thought of what their life must have been like so far." 

Permalink Mark Unread

 

"Well, if you can get the Clockwork Sun to shine as the Mountain of Light, it would be a very great help for a great many people."

"Are you staying in town?" The cop asks her. "Some way government of New Winchester can contact you if we need to speak further would be appreciated."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Uhhhhh I'm not especially planning to stay here in the long term but if there was some way I could set up a post office box or something I could check when I come round I would be willing to do that?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"I was hoping for an address. I'm- My superiors are going to absolutely panic about you and that might make it slightly less bad. Of course, as an officer of New Winchester I have little practical authority over someone celestial. I'm under no illusions there."

Permalink Mark Unread

"If I were still in London-below I would give you the location of my mother's house but I do not remotely have any kind of address here yet." 

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"Can you front a few Sovereigns for a P.O. box for a year?"

One of the doctors digs a 10-Sovereign coin out of his pocket and flips it to Lucy. "We're saving at least that much on medicine alone."

"The post office is just down the street," the officer says.

Permalink Mark Unread

"Cool, thanks." 

She goes down the street to the post office to arrange a P.O box. 

Permalink Mark Unread

The Reckless Chronicler follows, whistling off-key. She can get a P.O. box. The officer shoos away a loud reporter.

(There are some people in the street who seem... Tackety-ish. Something about their posture and clothes. And there's also some people in Windward Company uniforms, trying to push towards the hospital and being argued with by more New Winchester police.)

Permalink Mark Unread

Ohhh dear. 

She emerges from the post office and surveys the scene. 

She strides up to the nearest person in WC uniform and taps them on the shoulder. 

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A tense-looking man nervously scanning the street for threats asks, "What?"

His boss in the center of the group, a scowling woman with a fancy hat, turns and immediately says, "You look unusual, do you know what the devil is going on here?"

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"If you're talking about the enormous glow, that was me." 

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Blink. "Yes. The Windward Company has an interest in intelligence on unusual events, and an interest in ensuring New Winchester remains... Unperturbed. We'd be quite appreciative if you would come by the Company House for a chat. We pay for information."

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Shrug. "If you're paying, I guess I have no reason not to."

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"I do appreciate it. Let's go back, lads."

 

The Tacketies in the crowd move to block the group. A sharp-eyed man steps out in front. "Valerie, you know we're sharing this town, right? There was a treaty and everything."

"I'm not sure what you're implying," Valerie replies icily.

"We both wanna know what's going on here, and we both know she's central to it, right? I think we both know the general story already, so why drag her off?"

"An interview in a private setting is hardly anything nefarious. Are you going to prevent us from travelling around the city, Tackety? Your gang of thugs here to intimidate us from investigating trouble in our very backyard?"

"Here to stop you from unilaterally dragging off a person of interest and interfering in the city, Stovepipe."

"Well, we're not doing that. We offered to pay her for information. Right, miss?"

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"...I will happily talk to you after? They did offer me money, so I think they get to go first. If they try holding me against my will it won't end well for them." 

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"Rewards for information are tied to an agreement of nondisclosure," the Windward Company officer bites out.

"We'll pay you for interesting things you don't tell the Stovepipes," the Tackety guy offers.

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"Okay, both of you, stop. I am not agreeing to not tell people things about myself! I am terrible at keeping secrets, and I can mostly do it when it's other people's secrets but I will not promise to keep secrets about myself." 

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The two sides break off staring tensely at each other.

"-The usual custom for port reports doesn't really apply here I suppose."

"You're really frightening, you know that?" The Tackety asks Lucy. "Heal a hospital full of people in an instant, that kind of thing turns wars. Which side are you gonna pick, freedom and independence or the Establishment's bootlickers? Neither? Both, for profiteering?"

"Bootlickers! Bold words from a glorified band of pirates-"

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"Okay, stop, again. I do not profiteer. I heal people. I find people who are hurting people and I make them cut that shit out. I will accept help from terrible people when their interests align with mine to the point of helping me do one of these things, and then I turn around and try really hard to incentivize them into not being terrible anymore, and I will use the carrot or the stick. I do not believe in people deserving to die, or suffer. If you guys start shooting each other I will raise you all from the dead and yell at you." 

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At the mention of shooting some of them twitch, but-

 

"Be a waste of ammo, then." The Tackety sneers.

"It is my considered opinion that we should both return to our respective establishments without any further... Fuss."

"Yeah, you do that."

The Windward Company officer gnashes her teeth, then sets her troops to a jog. The Tacketies nod, satisfied, and put away their guns and mill around. A reporter takes a picture with a big camera on a stand he set up very quickly, somehow, and asks Lucy for comments.

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"People should be kind to one another." 

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"And you're planning to stay neutral in the Winchester War?"

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"I'm planning to learn more before deciding whether or not to involve myself."

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"Roight. Look forward to tomorrow's edition of the Gazette!" He shouts to the crowd, bundling up his camera and running off with a smile.

 

 

The Reckless Chronicler is still here. He offers Lucy a porcelain cup of hot tea from a nearby cafe. "Exciting stuff, no?"

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She takes the cup and sips gratefully. "Exceedingly. Not my favorite kind of exciting at all. What's that symbol you wanted translated? I like advancing the collective knowledge of mankind so much better than having to yell at people with guns."

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He opens up a notebook to a page with nothing on it except the one sigil, which has blackened the surrounding paper slightly. "This one is on an obelisk close to the fungal wastes and there's very little body of material to help figure out the meaning. Quite the puzzle. I've seen it translated as both A commingling of radiances and Record of the acceptance of a bargain."

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...She taps her lip. "So, the thing about Correspondence symbols is, they can go down to almost arbitrary levels of detail and context. If I wasn't trying to be concise or poetic, I would translate this in English as, hm, 'marker to remind of a compromise which ends a problem or solves a conflict, in a manner which resembles the compromise of two Judgments shining equally on the same place.' But I wouldn't say that captures all of it either, necessarily; 'marker' isn't quite right exactly, it's more like 'contract' in a way, something that holds the parties involved to the agreement, something that you can't casually disregard."

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He is writing everything she says down in another notebook. "The power of Correspondence to actually affect the world has always struck me as beautiful. They say a truly great poem can change the world, which is mostly nonsense, but in Correspondence..."

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Giggle. "It doesn't really need to be poetic though. I mean I appreciate the sentiment, but." 

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"I am the kind of person who seeks poetry, whatever else I'm doing. I must ask, what is it like to actually speak a word of fire?"

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"Oh, that's so valid. Uh, well...that's actually sort of a tricky question, in some ways, because--there's a difference between just saying a word and saying a word with intent to do magic--fire happens because if you don't know exactly what you're doing it's very easy to do magic by accident and very hard to aim the magic at anything, so it just goes off like that. And the thing is that I have been speaking Correspondence since I was a baby, it's just in my head the way moving my hands and feet is. It's...it isn't like speaking a normal language. It's like--if a normal language is a bunch of stuff in a room and you can go in and find the thing you're looking for but you have to like go and get it, you can do it by reflex if you know where the thing is unconsciously enough and people mostly do but sometimes you have to look for a bit...if a normal language is like that, Correspondence is like wading into a pool full of fish and having the right one dart into your hand on its own, and if the one you're looking for doesn't exist yet then a new fish will spontaneously generate in your hand. And there's a, a difference in, in texture? It's not texture exactly but like, hm you know how your mouth feels different, when you're rolling your r's versus clicking your tongue versus whistling? It's sort of like that, like, when I speak Correspondence I'm making noises a fully human larynx just couldn't." 

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"A fundamental and innate experience, as natural as breath or love or a smile... Transcendent words spoken by a tongue no man or woman could hope to match. And perilous if one does not understand, which none of my compatriots do. Then again, many things in an engineer's workshop are surely perilous to the uninitiated, no?"

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"Yeah, exactly!" 

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"I have many more sigils I would be curious for a proper interpretation of, if you can spare the time. I notice that you have woven the Correspondence into your very dress - quite adventurous and daring, even if one knows that you have relevant advantages."

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"Haha, well, some of them are just for convenience, making sure the pockets don't mess up the lines no matter what I put in 'em, you know. This one, though," she indicates one repeated over and over again, the single most common sigil, "this one is just there because I like it." 

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With one raised eyebrow, "Then I find myself, of course, insatiably curious as to its meaning."

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"The heartfelt, bone-deep belief, permeating every cell of one's body and every wisp of one's soul, that everyone, no matter their place on the great chain or in society, ought to exist with happiness and self-determination."

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"...Hmmmm. Ambitious. Admirable. And a rare sentiment, lamentably. I should like to copy it down."

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"Let me write it out for you, much safer than trying to get you a good enough look at white-on-white embroidery." 

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He hands over his pen agreeably. "Though it would be quite a fashionable statement if you burned it into my notebook, or something similar."

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"Nah, burning is what happens when you don't know how to handle Correspondence exactly right, and my whole thing in working with it is that I do, you know?" She traces out the strokes of the sigil carefully and hands the implement back. "There's a difference between when someone like me and when someone who leaves incidental charring works with the Correspondence, and I don't want to suggest that humans shouldn't work with the Correspondence, shouldn't claim as much of the power of the stars as possible, but I don't want to blur the lines between the two categories. It isn't safe to be as casual about it as I am if you're leaving burn marks on things. Not that safe is the best way of describing human Correspondence studies anyway, but it isn't good to get cocky." She considers. "I could write something in blood, would that be aesthetic?" 

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He grins and nods rapidly. "Do you need mine?"

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"I think mine would be much better. Got anything black to write on?" 

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...He searches his pockets and produces a black handkerchief. "Do you bleed starlight, then?"

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"I don't bleed light itself, but I can make any part of my body glow, and that includes my blood, and also it's not starlight it's mountainlight. Like there's no reason stars couldn't switch to it but it is very much not the thing that enforces dumb laws and makes you go crazy." 

She turns her hand diamond and softly glowy, brings her thumb to her mouth, bites down on it with a crack, and brings the digit, now with a jagged spiderweb oozing glowing fluid down its center, and begins drawing it in strokes across the handkerchief. 

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"Not all starlight is the same, of course, some is more dangerous than others. Would that I could bottle the mountainlight for later, or perhaps create an electric bulb that shines it."

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"Well, you can't do either of those--yet, growth mindset--but..." and she finishes the character, then pries a jagged glowing chunk of diamond out of her thumb, and holds it out to him as the resulting gush of blood from her thumb trails off to a trickle and then nothing as her thumb heals. 

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"-Oh! Thank you! Will it continue to shine?"

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"Yep! I mean, I guess I can't say for sure it'll continue to shine forever, but the oldest chunk off of me came from a childhood accident twenty-five years ago and hasn't dimmed since." 

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He bows and makes a thoughtful 'hmm'.

"A more pragmatic and vicious and shortsighted person would at this juncture suggest that you ought to nigh-on shatter yourself, again and again, so that such beneficial light shines on more of the world. There is, of course, a difference between thinking something is right or good and being capable of it, and while 'alive and well' is better than 'ashes and dust' there are other things to address, I am sure."

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"The thought has occurred to me...but, uh, I don't actually think that would be a good idea. I'm not the only one whose quality of life would be likely to suffer. How much do you know about the Neath? All the examples I can think of come from there, naturally enough." 

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"A great many ghoulish secondhand stories, very few of which I have much ability to credit one way or the other. Urchin gangs and face-stealers and man-eating hats and predatory ideas and the Masters of the Bazaar willing to unmake anyone who goes against them."

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"So if I say 'Polythreme' or 'Seeking the Name'..."

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"Clay Men, and clothes and paving-stones that think? The latter does not ring a bell."

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"Yeah. Polythreme happened when someone decided to solve a dude dying by shoving a big ol' chunk of mountain in his chest. They didn't know that would result in him transforming into an island every individual part of which would become sapient." 

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"-'Ah, yes, fire cooks things and cooked food is delicious, surely it will be better if I put the fire in the food- Oh, bother, why is it black and crumbling now?' I make a good act of wishing to know the mysteries of the universe, but deep down I suspect I do not actually want to know. If you understand my meaning."

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"I think I do. Although there are a lot of things that, rendered in Correspondence, make humans start gibbering madly, but I can summarize harmlessly--being precisely half human is very useful sometimes--"

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"Most of us must be content with the power granted to us by our own minds, bodies, and the occasional bit of engineering."

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"But aside from the dangers there isn't any reason Correspondence couldn't be part of engineering! It's a part of the universe same as any other, there's no fundamental reason why it can't be understood and harnessed like lightning was." 

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"I know a lad who likes to put, ah, An inevitable return to the place one began on his locomotives."

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"Hah! Not a bad idea. Not a guarantee, but not a bad idea." 

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"Of course, one time the whole locomotive caught on white fire and burned to ash, even the metal. I think it was an accident during repainting."

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"Yeah, that'll happen. Is he okay, did he manage to replace it?" 

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"He survived, but his new locomotive is less impressive."

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"Well, better than losing a locomotive while away, so the risk may still have been worth it."

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"Perhaps so! Though most of us would rather put their faith in steel and gunpowder, I imagine."

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"Not a bad choice, given the comparative levels of knowledge on them."

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"Quite. When you're finished with that tea, sadly the cafe would like their cup back, but afterwards I would like to invite you to my apartment entirely without romantic or nefarious intent. Instead, with academic intent."

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"That sounds lovely." She finishes her tea and puts the cup down. 

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The Reckless Chronicler's apartment is fairly neat, all things considered. It doesn't contain many things other than books. He has a great many sigils he would appreciate translations for.

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She can translate all of them. Occasionally she pronounces one in her odd crystals-in-water voice. 

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He refrains from any attempts to use Correspondence, but questions her about the theory and grammar, such as it is.

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Theory she can provide. Grammar mostly isn't exactly, not in the way normal languages have it, too much of the meaning is packed into the characters themselves, but the order of sigils changes the context.

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Eventually it will be night. The Reckless Chronicler has industrial quantities of coffee in a cupboard and isn't slowing down.

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"I have a friend who'll be worrying about me, I should go." 

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"My good fortune cannot last forever. No matter - months of progress in a single evening is fine with me. Be safe." He grins sideways. "For others, I mean, not on account of yourself."

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"I will." 

She returns to the hotel. 

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June is in the place's utility room off to the side of the front desk, talking with the owner.

"-Look, it's just really old. You need good parts or a new one. Nothing I can do."

"Well, you said you could fix it."

"I said I'd look. I looked. I paid for my room, so..."

"You're not getting your money back."

"Of course not," rolling her eyes. "Lucy! My friend's here, so-"

"Yeah, go on, go on. You know there's not gonna be any hot water, since you're looking at-"

"Yeah sure," June says, pushing past the guy.

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"Management being obnoxious?" she murmurs. 

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"I don't actually care what he thinks about me, we're staying here one night. Almost want you to glow at him out of, like, anti-spite. Does that even make sense? Anyway, how did things go? I heard a bit of commotion a while ago."

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"Oh, uh, I miscalibrated someone's level of legitimate concern versus bureaucratic obstructiveness and freaked some people out by shining on a whole hospital without permission." 

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June whistles. "Yeah, I can imagine people would be concerned? That'll do it. Tho', there's plenty of bureaucratic obstructiveness going in places. What I heard is that things nearly came to blows in front of the hospital - and that the Windward Company bullies backed down - and that the Tackety hoodlums unlawfully threatened them, from another guy five minutes later."

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"Oh, both sides were there and they both backed down after I established that I was not signing any nondisclosure agreements with anyone and if they started shooting I would resurrect and subsequently yell at everyone." 

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"-Ha. Good job. I mean, I am technically mostly a Tackety so maybe I should be rooting for them but it'd be unfriendly - or unreasonable or something - of me to expect you to go break the Windward Company's stuff for me. So."

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"I might, eventually, break their stuff, if they're committing atrocities, but I'd definitely need to learn more before doing things like that. I'm certainly a lot more suspicious of the Windward Company than the Tacketies, but I'm not going to go around being mean to people based on suspicion."

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"What's the difference between an injustice and an atrocity?"

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"In terms of what they are or how I respond to them? An injustice is when you're treating people unfairly and you have to be made to stop but it's basically livable day-to-day for the people you're being unfair to; an atrocity is when the people affected just plain aren't okay. I'll warn an unjust ruler that they need to stop before taking serious action against them, but if they haven't cut out the atrocities by the time I find out about them they will be made to stop, immediately."

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"...Most Windward Company shenanigans going on now are injustices. The Workworlds, in Albion, are an atrocity. I've only heard rumors and it didn't really - hit me - until I started thinking about it because of everything that's happened today, but they involve way more people than the Winchester War and they've been bad longer and they're more inescapable and they're just plain worse. The workworlds are huge factory complexes running on fast time where you work until you're frail and grey, then work some more. Criminals, debtors, and the homeless get rounded up and sent there. Fuel for the factories. Even if you earn enough to pay your way out they make the forms for that so confusing that you'll definitely screw it up and owe money for misfiling fees again."

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"Where are they? Who runs them?"

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"In Albion. The only way to get there - well, for humans to get there - is through the Transit Relay near Port Prosper. I presume wealthy Establishment figures run them." June crosses her arms uncomfortably. "They argue that the abundance of cheap goods improves quality of life for everyone else, so it balances. As if."

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"An abundance of cheap goods does improve quality of life, but that only balances if you don't give a shit about the people trapped inside. So I wouldn't say their argument is a lie so much as being the product of them being shitty." 

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"They're really censorious, too. Feels like the Empire is falling apart at the seams sometimes. Maybe it should if it only ever does evil shit."

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"Yep. Looks like I'm going to have to go yell at the Traitor Empress sooner than I thought." 

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"It's heady, imagining actually doing something about it? I mean, maybe I would have done something about it if I were - celestial. But I was sort of just going through the motions until yesterday, it feels like. And then my whole world got blown up and I got kidnapped by pirates and I was so s-s-sure they were going to rape and torture me, and then suddenly everything is mostly fine again except I'm jumpy but-"

She bites her thumb, cutting off her rising voice, and screws her face in concentration, ignoring the tears from her eyes.

"Uh. So, so maybe I wouldn't have done anything about anything. I could've been doing more things than just follow Dad and maintain a locomotive, and I didn't. So, 'm not a good person. Not a bad one but- Not a good one."

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"--You know, when I went into London for the first time, I didn't have any plans besides figuring out more about what I was. I knew that people on the Surface were dying all the time, but I only started doing things when I heard something that made it sound like I had a sibling I didn't know about that needed rescue. Which, uh, it turned out I did, but that was totally unrelated and I didn't find out about it for another couple of years ANYWAY. So I investigated that and it turned out that there was other shady stuff going on, but--people need a push to start actually doing things. It's okay if you didn't get your push until I showed up." 

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"Yeah, a push. I'm not sure what I can do that nobody else can. Or that nobody else is, I guess. I'm mostly just a pretty okay mechanic who's maybe kind of good at staying calm. I can fix stuff for people who need the help, maybe. I'm also really, really scared of getting - pushed back. And dying, and you're not there that time."

Uncertain slightly guilty look-

"-Hug?"

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Hug. 

"Even if I'm not there at the time, that doesn't mean you won't be okay. I've brought back Second City mummies that had been dead for thousands of years, and they were fine."

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Very hug.

"I could get wrecked in a fungus-infested corner of nowhere and not be found ever. Or fall into a Well. Or be burned to ash and scattered. Or just go star-mad and not be me anymore. Maybe I should cut off a finger and put it in a safety deposit box and give you the key."

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"Honestly not a bad plan. What's the significance of wells, in the Neath they were bad news but, uh, the guy I mentioned it to today hadn't heard of Seeking the Name so I'm going to guess it isn't that." 

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"I don't know what they are but they're bad news. Basically, permanent hurricanes around extremely deep pits, that are supposedly inescapable. Not just because they're deep, they're... A little Correspondence-y? I don't think there's sigils there but there's definitely something celestial about them. Old Tom's Well in the Reach, the Well of the Wolf in Albion, the Well of Wonders in Eleutheria. Oh, and the White Well in the Blue Kingdom. They say that there's old unhappy things in the Wells and we're lucky they can't get out."

(Unhug. June sniffles slighty.)

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"That's concerning. There was something unhappy in the wells of the Neath but I could handle it. Well, eventually. I had to figure some stuff out first. Certainly there were no hurricanes. I hadn't figured out how to solve it but I had figured out how to neutralize it temporarily so I could climb down and collect the bones of its victims to resurrect." 

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"World's better with you in it. I wanna do the, uh, finger thing, just in case. Out back, maybe, so there's not blood everywhere."

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"Good idea. Uh, I can put you under for it, so you don't have to feel it."

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"...Yeah there's no point in trying to act tough for no reason."

They go outside.

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Lucy nips her finger for blood and traces a Correspondence sigil on June's forehead that puts her deeply to sleep, pinches off all the digits from one hand, wraps each in a different scrap of fabric and stows each in a different pocket, then glows at the hand until the fingers are back and finally wipes away the sigil so June can wake up. 

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She's a little unsettled. "-Done? Dad has a box at Hallidges. To put them in."

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"I figure it's probably safer if each one is hidden somewhere different, just in case." 

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"Hallidges, somewhere in Lustrum, graveyard - uh, if you wouldn't just get everyone out while you're there - unobtrusive bit of rock, box in my cabin, some place I don't know about?"

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"I probably would just get everyone out, if not immediately then certainly eventually. But the general distribution's sound." 

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...Smile. "I can go to Hallidges right now, and handle the rest later. Thanks. Feels good to know you'll get me back if I die. And after that, I'm tired."

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"What's Hallidges?"

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"A bank. The bank, really. Best one in this part of the High Wilderness. Discreet, secure, excellent reputation, many branches. The fees are higher than other banks but you get what you pay for."

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"Ahh, gotcha. Well, I have a PO box here, now, so I'll want to check in here occasionally, that's worth looking into. Maybe we should go to bed now and do that in the morning."

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"Yeah, makes sense. There's no hot water, though... Please don't offer to write Correspondence on the water heater, I would be alarmed."

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"I don't think I know enough about how water heaters work to be able to usefully do that. I could heat up an already-drawn bath by speaking, though, is that also alarming?"

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June weighs how nice a hot bath sounds against the unease brought on by the unearthly power of the Correspondence.

She decides quickly. "Nah, that would be great. I'll go start filling my tub."

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"Okay!"

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June fills the tub, has it heated, takes a lovely bath, and then tries to sleep. She sleeps... Fitfully. She startles awake and flails away from some imagined danger, knocking the (thankfully unlit) lamp to the floor and then falling out of bed herself some time after midnight. (The walls are thin here, and the rooms adjoining.)

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Lucy hears through the wall and is startled awake and bolts over. 

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June's room is locked by a chain latch. She opens the door a bit and blinks, then undoes the latch and opens it properly. "I'm fine! 'M fine. Bad dream, that's all. Sorry if I woke you."

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"It's okay, I'll be fine. Are you okay? What was it about?"

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"...Bein' shelled. Engine torn apart. Everyone falling away... Freezing in the wreck." Sniff. "We've fought before sometimes but that's the first time we were destroyed. Still don't know how they managed it with that piece-of-shit marauder engine, I wasn't at the windows."

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"...I'm sorry." 

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"I miss old Lucky Strike. I could hear the boiler running through my cabin wall. But everyone's alright, so, I shouldn't be this-"

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"Your home was destroyed. And you watched your family die not knowing yet that they would ever come back. That sucked."

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June hugs her and tries not to cry.

"Yeah. It really did. But I'm not dead, and you're saving my fingers for safekeeping now, and- I should be more okay than this. I should be dealing with it, I'm supposed to be steady."

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"Nobody can be steady all the time. Right this minute you don't need to be." 

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She starts crying quietly. Hug continues.

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Lucy pets her hair. 

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Sniff. She adjusts the hug.

"'M not... Being stupid, or needy."

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"No, of course not! This is stuff everyone needs! Even me, and I'm only half human!"

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"Yeah. But you don't have to- And I woke you up."

June is a little embarrassed by crying on Lucy's shoulder in the door of her motel room. But thinking about going into the room adds more embarrassment and other feelings that should happen not now. So she defaults to just... Continuing to hug and breathing deeply.

"All will be well. Takes time and work but all can be made well."

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"All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well. I'll be fine, a little missed sleep isn't going to slow me down."

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Sniff. She's managed to stop crying.

 

"Uh. Should prob'ly... Tell you something. It's... Relevant. I guess. It seems stupid but it also seems stupid to not say anything, so, I dunno."

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"It's probably not stupid! Do you want to sit down?"

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"Yeah." June unhugs and steps backward into the motel room and avoids eye contact, fidgeting.

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Lucy follows her in and sits down next to her and hugs her again. 

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She hugs and cries a bit more, then pulls away. "I actually maybe shouldn't be hugging you? At least not while I say this because..." Blush. Breathe. June closes her eyes. "I am attracted to women. And you are very pretty and kind and I want to kiss you but am, not, don't actually think that is a good idea. Yeah. That's about it."

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"I am going to have to think about the kissing bit? Why don't you think it's a good idea." 

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"-Because you might not want to, and you're leaving to go do something about the Workworlds soon probably and you should go do that, they're supposed to be awful, and you kind of just met me today."

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"That makes sense. I'll take a while to think about it and get back to you about it after the Workworlds?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Sure. It's just- I don't really know. It feels silly and shallow, like you're more important than me, you can do so much more, so you're supposed to be my friend at most, not - anything else. You definitely don't- Please don't feel like you have to for my sake or anything."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I don't think I have to. I've read enough love stories to know how badly that goes. And I'm not more important than you. Maybe strategically, I can do more, but--thinking I matter more because of that is the kind of thinking that leads to, well, Judgments, and their not caring about humans. And that's not me, I won't ever let that be me." 

Permalink Mark Unread

 

"Well, strategically, if you're happy and productive it helps people a lot more than if I am happy and productive."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Well, conveniently, I like helping people. Especially my friends." Hug. 

Permalink Mark Unread

Hug and leaning on Lucy. Both nice things. Feeling vaguely guilty about it is slightly less nice but eh.

"I think I'm going to be okay. Especially with my fingers put away for safekeeping, that's going to make me feel a lot safer long term? I'll try not to get reckless about it. I'm... Just kind of stressed out."

Permalink Mark Unread

"That's incredibly reasonable. You've had a really stressful time." 

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She nods into Lucy's shoulder. "Is it also stressful to be kicked into the future?"

Permalink Mark Unread

 

"Yeah." 

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June hugs tighter.

Permalink Mark Unread

"The most frustrating thing is when I expect people to have a common frame of reference and they just don't. And people just die! And don't get up! Like on the surface! I have any work to do in the Neath, I mean in terms of resurrections not just making people behave, but it's not--it's not everyone all the time like this. And people hunt Curators for sport? In the Neath there are only a handful of Curators and they're all really powerful, like, politically and economically. Only one of 'em's died and their killer fucked up so now they're an angry god sort of. And there aren't diamonds or spider-silk here. And..." Sigh. "And I miss my family." 

Permalink Mark Unread

 

"Uh, there are any diamonds if diamonds are important. And I think they hunt Curators for treasure and mostly die trying, and Curators hunt locomotives sometimes which is... Not actually much better. Can't help with your family except, like, part of the sunless Sea came through to the High Wilderness, just not all of it? I dunno how that works, it's really weird even by High Wilderness standards. But the Avid Horizon still exists and there's rumors you can go back to the Neath if you poke it the right way."

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"I might eventually but not right away, there's so much to do here. The diamonds aren't important, it's just that they're plentiful in the Neath because of my father and the difference is jarring. The difference-is-jarring thing is the relevant point about the Curators, too, I don't actually think them dying is worse than humans dying. I'm not even actually sure if this is my future and not some kind of alternate universe, I would--expect to have been remembered, at all, I was running around the Neath fixing things for ten years before the accident and, uh, I'm not inconspicuous." 

Permalink Mark Unread

"Find a historian in Eleutheria and you can look up stuff you remember and know for sure. A lot of it's Ministry-Stamped Bullshit but they can't rewrite everything and there are uncensored books somewhere - at least, I think so, you keep seeing paper stories about people arrested for smuggling illicit literature."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Oh, there was plenty of that in the Neath. Illicit literature, that is. More of it before I showed up, I managed to bully Mr. Pages into easing off on the censorship some." 

Permalink Mark Unread

June relaxes the hug into just leaning on Lucy with an arm around her.

"I wonder if I should know more stuff about... Stuff. Ugh, that's vague. The Masters of the Bazaar were special Curators?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"They were Curators who made a deal with the Bazaar. The Bazaar is a Messenger, you see, and couldn't just go around interacting with humanoids on their level. Physically speaking, I mean. On account of the size. I'm not quite as big as the Bazaar yet, but I'm not done growing." 

Permalink Mark Unread

"And you can squeeze down, like Curators."

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"Well, that's because I'm half human. Messengers can't do that, and as far as I know neither can Judgments. I didn't actually specifically know Curators could do that before I came here, actually, I've never known the Masters to be any size other than human while I've known them and it didn't really come up." 

Permalink Mark Unread

"Mr. Pennies is sort of a Tackety mascot, in a weird sideways way, that's how I know."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I wonder if the 'Mr.' appelation has any connection to the Masters. It's not really important but I'm curious." 

Permalink Mark Unread

"Uh, there's Mr. Pennies, Mr. Menagerie, probably some more and I think they all go by 'Mr.'... I dunno."

...June suddenly takes a deep breath and shivers. "-Don't worry, nothing wrong, just. Anxious."

Permalink Mark Unread

Hug hug hug. 

"Who's Mr. Menagerie?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"He wanders the Reach, selling - scouts? Trained bats, this weird Rattus Faber and Cavy who both seemed content enough to be there. And other small creatures that seemed less useful. In exchange for exotic stuff like particular stories, solemn promises, or unusual treasures."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Huh. Well, investigating that should probably wait until the Workworlds have been dealt with. Priorities." 

Permalink Mark Unread

"Not all weird stuff is bad stuff."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Oh, certainly. But satisfying my curiosity is a lower priority than solving things." 

Permalink Mark Unread

Shrug. Shrug in a hug.

 

"Think I could get back to sleep now."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Okay," she says, and gets up and leaves and goes back to bed. 

Permalink Mark Unread

"Thanks."

 

They can both wake up in the morning well-rested enough. June asks Lucy to meet her at this one warehouse in a couple of hours, probably all the stuff she bought will be ready by then and they can have it carried out to the dilapidated outskirts to be scooped up by a Messenger and carried away.

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Sounds good. 

She wanders around checking out shops in the meantime. 

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Shops exist and sell things! Ranging from food to jewelry to clothes to tea to stained glass to industrial tools to well-sealed barrels of Hours to guns to booze to phonographs and cameras and 'Empyrean Gadgets' that use electricity to books, and more!

She is approached by a lot of people who recognize her from the paper and want to thank her, or gawk at her, or ask for healing for themselves or friends and family.

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She accepts thanks and tolerates gawking and would be happy to heal whoever as long as it's not going to alarm anyone. 

Permalink Mark Unread

Lotta people want healing. Someone suggests she could take a joyride through the whole city in his car, glowing like a miniature Judgement.

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"That sounds great but also like it would alarm some people, do you think it would alarm some people?" 

She does not comment on any similarity between herself and her grandfather a Judgment.

Permalink Mark Unread

"Honestly I think everyone's heard about you from the news story now - a sudden bright light that heals and resurrects you- Maybe don't go past the graveyard unless we have people dig it up first, I could do that, I'd be happy to pay for that-"

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She cracks her knuckles. "That sounds amazing then." 

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He has a butler, apparently. He gives the butler several huge 250-Sovereign coins and asks him to round up everyone with a shovel and send them to the St. Margrave cemetery. Then he drives off in that direction with Lucy, with a woman who was old and in the morgue yesterday, to talk to the cartakers. They're both chattering eagerly, grinning.

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Lucy grins and bounces and talks about resurrecting people in the Neath. 

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He has to go fairly slow so as not to hit any pedestrians, honestly, but he's weaving through crowds and honking his horn with the best of them!

 

Soon they are at the cemetery and a very annoyed-looking woman in a nun's habit is power-walking towards them.

"One should be respectful in the garden of eternal rest, get that contraption out of here!"

"Hello, Sister Serena! Have you read the morning paper?"

"I don't partake in sensationalist news."

"-Could you perhaps get Mr. Erlikon? I swear to God, I have a very good reason to speak to him!"

"What could possibly be a reason to disturb the cemetery so with all this unseemly urgency?"

"It'll be more disturbed soon. Lucy, here, bears the light of the Mountain, from the Neath. The dead shall rise today, and rejoice!"

The nun looks shocked and suspicious. Her glare snaps to Lucy.

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She waves a glowing hand. 

Permalink Mark Unread

 

"Anyone can glow these days, I imagine."

"I was dead yesterday, and now look at me!" Calls out their example patient.

"Mrs. Carmichael?" Asks the nun. She nods. "-I'll go get him. Keep that silly motorcar off the grass!"

The cemetery caretaker shows up after a minute or two, and is equally shocked to see Mrs. Carmichael alive and well. They had her coffin ready and everything, since they received word from the hospital that she was gone. But people are known to come back from being recently dead, occasionally. Or to be mistaken for dead. His eyebrows rise and rise as he reads an issue of the Gazette handed over by the driver.

"I take it you would like us to exhume some of our, ah, residents?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"That's the idea!"

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"Well, this is very irregular - a good thing if true of course but I will be most disappointed in you if this is false hope - there's one man whose will volunteered his body for any nondestructive experiments or mediums or that sort of thing-"

They have quite a few sturdy crypts in addition to the dense plots of graves. The caretaker ambles over to one, identifies a certain niche, and draws out the coffin, cracking open the lid to reveal a black-haired corpse wearing a musty formal suit.

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Lucy glows at the man both literally and figuratively!

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He wakes up delighted that SCIENCE!! has brought him back, and is a bit disappointed when it turns out to be Mountainlight instead. The cemetery caretaker is stunned, and gapes like a fish when Lucy's driver tells him that a horde of people with shovels will be arriving any minute now.

"...Perhaps we'll need clothes," he says thoughtfully. "Fresh ones, that is. I'll go turn out some thrift stores, shall I?"

Permalink Mark Unread

Probably a good idea. 

She pats his hand reassuringly. "If it makes you feel better, I do science to my Mountainlight when the occasion arises."

Permalink Mark Unread

The rich guy returns to his car and drives off, honking his horn.

"Ooh, and what have you found out?"

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"It works more efficiently on people with souls than people without and on animals more efficiently than plants. It has different effects on plants than animals once you get really high concentrations. If I," she glowifies and diamonds a strand of hair, then plucks it, "lose a bit, it keeps glowing." 

Permalink Mark Unread

"What year is it, by the by?"

"1908," the caretaker answers. "You were put to rest in February 1903."

"The science of light must have advanced considerably in the last five years, perhaps Mountainlight can be reproduced? The Empyrean has all the best experts on lighting, of course. Or it did in 1903."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Perhaps. Thank you for telling me." 

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"Of course, they're weird savages in a lot of other ways. Might be hard to work with."

He straightens his musty suit. "I think I'll get out of the way before things get too exciting. Excellent, excellent thing, but I do like my quiet. Toodle-oo!"

 

 

A few minutes later, the cemetery caretaker and the nuns have dug out boxes of old records, and a horde of people with shovels, thrift-store clothes, and enough food for an impromptu street fair descend upon the quiet cemetery heralded by the honking of a car horn.

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And when all is made ready, LET THERE BE LIGHT!

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And driving all around the city, too! Past Victory Hall and Company House both! Some government officials and Tacketies and Windward Company people look on in disapproval, but nobody has the will to actually step up and stop the source of Mountainlight who has kicked off an impromptu holiday - Resurrection Day, they're calling it.

Several hours later, June does an almost jump-kicking motion to hop into the back seat of the open-topped car Lucy has been driven around in, while it's stopped for more kerosene. "Hey, Lucy! Stuff's all ready, no rush. I can't exactly mind the delay, given," she smiles wryly and gestures vaguely.

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"Hee, yes, no regrets. This is my friend June!" she adds to the others. "We're traveling together at the moment."

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"Good to meet you! Happy Resurrection Day!"

"Is that what today is?" June laughs. "I must have forgotten to mark my calendar."

"Fair, fair! I leaped into this blind but I'm very happy about how this is turning out, no matter how much I've spent. I've got another sixty years of retirement in me now, unless I un-retire!"

"Don't they say that the young have time and health, professionals have health and money, and the old have time and money? You've got all three now."

"Yes, I suppose I do. I'm feeling so active, I've a mind to find someone to kiss, not that I'd presume anything with anyone here-"

Mrs. Carmichael, now also considerably younger, kisses him. After letting up, she blushes and says, "I'm divorced, I'll have you know."

"Ah! Haha! Ahahaha! Shall we get back on the road? I don't remember if there's any part of the city we haven't covered yet."

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"I don't know the city well enough to say."

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June chatters with the others, does some quick math about light intensity and penetration after questioning Lucy, and helps figure out that there's a couple of streets they could still visit to be sure but they seem to have covered things pretty well.

Permalink Mark Unread

"Ooh, thanks, very useful."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I mean, it's a good first pass but we should probably, like, ask someone about any quirks of city construction? Is any of these places more brick and stone and less wood and glass, are there any pieces of city hidden in overhangs or alcoves or something- I'm not from New Winchester-"

"Do you mean the Mayor?"

"More like the utilities office?"

"I know where that is, I paid them to fix up the gas lamps on my street once."

Off they go!

They are blocked by a contingent of Devils, hissing away other bystanders. This status is visible from a distance in the eyes, in their manner of dress and pose. They block the car. A glaring leader steps forward and announces, "We would like to note that current events have deprived those who trade in souls of valuable possessions, which were fairly traded for and often bought at a considerable price. Curated with significant effort. Since collecting reparations from the persons in question is not necessarily possible or fair... We want to discuss compensation."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Discuss away. I'm willing to entertain reasonable requests." 

Permalink Mark Unread

"-Oh, good. For the current issue, we would accept money in proportion to the number and quality of souls which belonged to us and find themselves once again possessed of life. We can produce extensive proof of rightful ownership of said souls. Some of our collections, we believe, once belonged to still-living people and thus remained in place - so it is not a total loss and we - as far as we represent Devils as a whole, which is not actually true - are not necessarily opposed to continued... Restoration. Though the attrition of existing collections will cause a great amount of resentment. Perhaps there is some way to avoid escalation of conflict."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I do not at this time plan to specifically target harvested souls. If Devils or other people in possession of removed souls wish to construct containers which are less permeable to light this would be entirely reasonable. I do not, however, plan to do less healing on the grounds that I might resurrect the wrong dead person. Does it have to be fluid currency or will you leave me alone if I punch down a Bronzewood tree and sign it over."

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Some quick conferral- "...We will accept goods in kind. That is to say, two punched-down bronzewood trees of average or greater size. We'll arrange the harvest as long as the locations are reasonably hidden and told only to us. I swear to you that this will satisfy the devils currently residing in New Winchester in this matter. I can write up a contract to that effect as well."

"You can punch down a Bronzewood tree?" Her driver asks in some awe.

Permalink Mark Unread

"Literal punching is not the most efficient way but I can fell a bronzewood tree, yes."

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"Amazing."

Lead Devil asks, "Do you know how to use a one-time pad?"

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"Yeah. I do want the contract saying everyone'll be satisfied, by the by."

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Lead Devil walks up to the car and hands over a business card. "Please stop by our office before you leave town. I'll have it ready in an hour. It will also specify that we will not harass the reembodied or those who sold the reembodied people's souls."

And then the devils clear out of the street. June seems a bit pale, her expression grim and unhappy. Devils unnerve most people, really.

Permalink Mark Unread

Sigh. "Devils. I might have hoped they'd be less...that...in the skies, but I wouldn't have been holding my breath." 

Permalink Mark Unread

"I mean, they're kind of part of the fabric of things by now. Lots of devils are constructive-ish. Killing all the devils doesn't solve the problem either, just makes a different problem."

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"I'm not planning to kill them. I would just like to transition them onto some way of life that doesn't involve taking people's souls. It should be possible, as far as I've been able to determine they don't have any kind of biological need for them, I'm pretty sure they don't eat them or anything." 

Permalink Mark Unread

"...I don't think devils can be content without an avenue to getting souls. But that's tomorrow's problem."

They visit the utilities office. The workers there confirm that June's assumptions and math are pretty much correct. They cover another couple of streets with LIGHT, singing happy songs and accepting food from the people they pass.

The Devils' office is decorated in bright colors, and too warm to be comfortable. The contract is a three page document that is careful to rigorously define things but contains no deliberately confusing language or any particularly obvious traps or loopholes.

Permalink Mark Unread

She signs the contract in blood with the closest thing she has to a name in the Correspondence, the same sigil that so gratuitously adorns her dress. You think you can out-diva her, devils? You cannot.  

Permalink Mark Unread

The Lead Devil was considering also signing in Correspondence, but that's a face-losing proposition when dealing with someone of celestial descent. He signs in English and uses a wax seal. They hand over the one-time pad.

She and June can get back to the less-inhabited parts of the city and get out of there by early afternoon, though June seems kind of exhausted again by then.

Permalink Mark Unread

"Sorry about having to interact with Devils."

Permalink Mark Unread

"It's not the Devils. It's the - It's gotta be exhausting to be you."

Permalink Mark Unread

"...Heh. It's certainly frustrating, sometimes. But it wouldn't be better to be not-me, the frustrating stuff would still be there, I just wouldn't be doing anything about it." 

Permalink Mark Unread

"I do better with something I can throw my math and wrench at than... Staring down Devils that want money without flinching. Boldly charging into a hospital and glowing no matter what they say. Glaring at two groups of people with guns until they both back down."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I don't think I was being brave or anything. None of those people could do anything to me." 

Permalink Mark Unread

"...Guess so."

She walks quietly for a while.

"If you come looking for me later and can't find me, try the Royal Society. Or if you want to do me a favor some time, give me a lift there in a few weeks. I need to learn more about the way the world is, and the levers I can grab to move it. Proper Academe engineering sounds like a good start."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I'll see what I can do in a couple weeks. If I'm not done with the Workworlds by then..."

Permalink Mark Unread

"The workworlds are a really big deal. And - no matter what happens it's going to be a big change, and some people are gonna be scared and angry about it. There's gonna be knock-on effects. But it's really not okay to just leave them."

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"It's really not. I can deal with the knock-on effects as they come; something like that...it can't go on. There's something remarkably liberating, I think, about being the kind of person who looks at a complicated situation like that and says, 'alright, but that has to go, that part isn't complicated at all.'"

Permalink Mark Unread

"I'm sort of imagining - a thousand bureaucrats having a total meltdown about their carefully planned production lines all stopping at once. A hundred establishment fat cats screaming bloody murder about how much value is being lost. And against that - almost justicey feeling - whole lot of families that don't get cheap rugs and gas lamps and water heaters and gas stoves and aspirin anymore, which is - the bad's a lot more spread around but there is any?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"I do feel at all sorry for that last bunch."

Permalink Mark Unread

"It's not really that hard to make factory work better. Warm bodies are cheap, is all... Let's go."

The neatly stacked bundles of shiny wood have been exchanged for a smaller stack of Various Things, sturdily packed, mostly locomotive parts but also some food and other amenities.

Permalink Mark Unread

Lucy changes shape and picks it all up and nyooms off back to the rest of June's people. 

Permalink Mark Unread

They're all there and uninjured! Their rough camp looks a little less rough and the tree is now completely rendered into various bits of wood. They're relieved June came back fine and thank her for the Stuff and ask June about her time away and offer her a thoroughly mediocre dinner out of politeness.

Permalink Mark Unread

She will politely eat their mediocre dinner, she's probably had worse. 

And then, after hugging June goodbye, it's time to head to the nearest Workworld. 

Permalink Mark Unread

Port Prosper is that way. She passes the Memorial to the Unknown Rat and a few more locomotives minding their own business. The pirates are gone from the place she set their engine down, and hopefully not up to no good again.

Port Prosper is a smaller city than New Winchester, but still a city. The clang of factories and the acrid haze of smoke is far less present here. The city is crowded onto two bluffs, split down the middle by a vast canyon, nicer on the west side, almost like the river splitting old London. The Transit Relay is a bit beyond according to June, though traditionally the things it sends through are locomotives so she might want to stop here and find one.

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She locates the Transit Relay and examines it to see if she can see how it works. 

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The Correspondence on the twelve large stones are suggestive but not conclusive - Treading a path created by another. The dark space under reality made briefly passable. Shortening the duration of a danger. Acceleration to the limit of an artifice's endurance.

If she watches for long enough she can see exactly how it plays out as it activates. An hour-loom weaves crystallized time over the locomotive, and the sigils spin on a mechanism and power up in just the right order with a loud whirring of machinery, until it culminates in a rush of steam and smoke and the locomotive vanishes elsewhere despite not having moved.

Permalink Mark Unread

...Huh. 

Is there any indication where each one is going?

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The 'path' is a tunnel with one entrance and one exit, a shortcut created by some high-Chain being, forgotten and left behind. There is only one possible destination - Albion.

Permalink Mark Unread

Huh. Okay. She quietly attaches herself to the next locomotive to go through. 

Permalink Mark Unread

She will spend about two hours clinging to a locomotive that is surrounded by unnerving nothingness, a bit more thorough than ordinary darkness would create.

And then she will find herself attached to the side of a locomotive in a place where the light is different. Cleaner, clearer, purer, and yet more distorted by smoke. The sounds of titanic engines of industry echo through the sky here.

Permalink Mark Unread

She lets go and examines her surroundings. 

Permalink Mark Unread

Rusty, ruddy smoke coiling around enormous metal constructions and mountains of barren stone.

-There, a horribly ugly tangle of piping and industrial equipment and smog, levels stacked upon levels until the whole thing is practically a cube of metal and the inner sections must be filthy and dark, with a faint purple glimmer of time around it. At the peak, a locomotive dockyard and a narrow bridge between a complex of nice-looking buildings with lawns and the presumably-a-Workworld.

Permalink Mark Unread

Tch. 

She zooms in that direction, examining it to see if she can see where the apparatus keeping it sped up is. 

Permalink Mark Unread

It doesn't really seem to be coming from anywhere? Whatever is keeping the Workworld moving faster, it is large and slow and potent and possibly not even here. The Overseers need their own devices to make it back out in time for tea. (They also run tours for insufferable rich people with the same things.)

Permalink Mark Unread

Mhm. Is there any traffic in and out at the moment?

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No human traffic. There looks to be only one major entry/exit point. But huge containers of iron ore and raw wood and coal and rough cotton and linen and foul-smelling chemicals and so on go into a colossal loading area at a fairly steady pace, not literally constantly but certainly often, replaced with smaller amounts of manufactured goods on the way out.

Permalink Mark Unread

Hrm. 

She makes her way to the entry-exit, not actually attaching herself to anything but trying to stay out of sight, and keeping alert for when gravity kicks in. 

Permalink Mark Unread

Gravity kicks in pretty far away - a couple miles out and above. The haze of Time is thicker this close. Humans probably can't see it.

Permalink Mark Unread

Can she see where it's coming from?

Permalink Mark Unread

It seems to be coming from west-ish and far away? Maybe?

Permalink Mark Unread

Hmm, good enough. Do any of the buildings like vaguely administrative-y?

Permalink Mark Unread

One of the nice buildings looks like an administrative center!

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She heads there, then. 

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Past the deserted neatly manicured lawn. Past charming little shrubberies and benches.

...Closed for the night. A clock declares that it's 2:23 AM.

Permalink Mark Unread

Fine for her immediate purposes. She goes in anyway; if the door is locked she can hiss a word of Correspondence to open it. 

What files can she find first?

Permalink Mark Unread

Dry logistical tables and production charts. Transport scheduling. Maintenance estimates. Quality control reports. Income and expenses.

...If she keeps looking, there is half of a wing devoted to records of the 'residents'. Name and number, debts owed, skills and assignment, health and fitness, time spent on the Workworld, merits and demerits and extra fees (lots of those), some of them have notes like suspected agitator/organizer or ongoing dispute with brother #432526, separate or rare skills - confuse and keep at all possible.

Permalink Mark Unread

Tch. 

Anything about living conditions?

Permalink Mark Unread

Going by the figures of population and the amount of food and amenities shipped in, probably pretty bad. Not quite intolerable, but bad.

Permalink Mark Unread

Mmhm. Now, how does this place...work. The factories and so on. Points of failure.

Permalink Mark Unread

Well, they're factories. They depend on a constant flow of resources and labor. There are huge coal-fired plants that produce steam and electricity, if those were offline work would suffer. There are big machines, hot metal, and acrid chemicals that can break things or hurt a lot of people if handled wrong. There are a few reports of some of the overseers suspected to be 'losing' shipments of this or that to the workers. There are reports of work estoppel by various kinds of "accident", from a steam hammer with a stuck valve smashing itself apart to materiel carts and elevators having catastrophic crashes to an entire glassworks put permanently out of commission from the furnaces cooling down too much. They can't quite justify labelling it sabotage though they suspect the incidents were not, in fact, accidents.

Permalink Mark Unread

What does the chain of command look like?

Permalink Mark Unread

Vague Higher Ups who are not here, a Governor who is here, Head Overseers, Senior Overseers, Overseers, Workers.

Permalink Mark Unread

What can she find out about the Governor?

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His name, his strange habit of obsessively hoarding tea, his appointment was two years ago, the vague sketches she can piece together of his major decisions since then seem like toeing the line rather than trying to make things worse or better.

Permalink Mark Unread

Where's his office and when does he come in in the morning. 

Permalink Mark Unread

His office is on the top floor behind better security than the rest of the place! A secretary's notes about what to have ready for him indicate that he tends to arrive at 9-10ish.

Permalink Mark Unread

Hm. Where does he live.

Permalink Mark Unread

Searching searching-

He has an apartment, with his wife and daughter, apparently. A larger one than everyone else, but still just an apartment. It's 401, building 3.

Permalink Mark Unread

How do workers arrive and leave? It must happen sometimes. 

Permalink Mark Unread

By the railyard bulging out of the bridge between Little Nice, where the overseers live, and the Workworld itself. Just like everything else that is imported and exported. There is much complaint (in carefully-filed forms) about how Home Office never tells them when they're going to be getting more people more than like an hour in advance, ugh. (Incidentally, the signals outbuilding is that one over there.)

Permalink Mark Unread

Is there anything to indicate that the forms detailing who's who and who owes how much are backed up elsewhere. 

Permalink Mark Unread

Well, there is an archive building separate from the administration hall. Other than that, no. It'd be a lot of paper to copy.

Permalink Mark Unread

Okay, cool, excellent. Where is the archive building. 

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Big reinforced boring-looking building down the way. Guarded only by a sleepy archivist, less even than the occasional custodian or guard in the main admin building.

(Time is passing as she investigates all this - it is now almost 4 AM.)

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Okay, cool. She starts hauling filing cabinets full of employee records outside. 

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Night guards object to this! They demand to know what she thinks she's doing and try to grab and handcuff her.

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She pushes them gently backwards with a word of Correspondence and fixes them with a stern look. 

"This place is inhumane and has gone on long enough. It ends now." 

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It gives paupers useful work, gets them to contribute to society. And you can't just walk in and steal all the records, that's illegal.

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"If you think I'm stopping at stealing records you have no idea what's going on. And my family has been defying unjust laws for generations; my very existence is illegal. I simply do not give a damn." 

The temporary and brief cessation of all voluntary forms of muscle control, she intones after a moment's thought. 

While they're collapsed, she handcuffs them to each other and one of them to something stationary so they can't make trouble. 

Permalink Mark Unread

She can get a bunch more cabinets out. File cabinets lined up on the grass would be confusing if more people were awake.

The cuffed guards try some yelling! A janitor comes over - they send her to go raise the alarm.

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Sigh. 

She transforms, picks up the file cabinets, hauls them over to the archive, gently evicts the archivist, and sets up a ring of Correspondence symbols around the archive so no one else can get in. 

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Well, everyone's awake soon after that. Giant crystalline thing!!! Can't get into the archive where something Correspondency is going on! That's alarming! They send off a message back to London about it, and try to scrounge up a squad of soldiers and some dynamite.

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She goes back to the administration building, turns back to fit inside, and grabs another couple of filing cabinets. At this point she can't expect them to be left unmolested on the lawn so she just carries them over two at a time. 

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More panicking. Lots of people running around and shouting. Someone points a gun at her but is argued down by others scared of provoking her.

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Sartorially convenient. Are people going to continue panicking in a non-interventionist sort of way until she's done transporting filing cabinets?

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A knot of intention forms, not by the Governor who is waffling and muttering, but by a senior overseer who seems like an agent - plenty of people answer to him unquestioningly, where they might argue with the governor, he moves with confidence and intent.

They've acquired soldiers and a crate of mismatched munitions from somewhere and start setting them up on one of the sigils the far side of the archive building where she might not notice them right away.

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She doesn't notice them right away but she does notice them when they go off! She shoos the soldiers swarming through the gap with more Correspondence and redraws the sigil. 

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They're too terrified to try something like that again.

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Excellent. 

Once all the files are moved, she approaches the Governor and the agent. 

"You can't prove that anyone works here, so you'd better let them all go right now," she says cheerfully. 

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Flustered, panicking, unable to do anything in the face of what the hell is she- The governor stammers about logistics and how there's no transit onward to be had.

Deeply annoyed, frightened, calculating, unwilling to risk his neck- The agent sulks and thinks and lets the governor stutter and bluster.

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"Okay. How long will it take to get transit onward?"

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Well, who's going to pay for it?? The usual transit is the just trains from London. They bring raw material and leave with processed goods and occasionally a worker or two. London is going to stop sending those and send a batch of Dreadnaughts instead because something disastrous and chaotic has happened!

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"Hmm. I could commandeer the Dreadnaughts to get people out...that might make things more difficult for them after, though..."

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"What! I don't- I- Maybe you could scare them off or worse, but the crews will be disgraced and the engines will probably be shot down and that just means you'll make an enemy of the Establishment! More than you have already!"

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"The Establishment does, uh, this," she gestures around, "enmity was inevitable." 

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"They don't starve. People starve and freeze to death for lack of shelter, you know. They have food and shelter and paying work, it's better than what they would otherwise face."

He seems to actually believe this.

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She pats him on the shoulder patronizingly. "Try paying more attention to facts of reality that don't happen to support what it's convenient for you to believe. Anyway, are there any locomotives here at the moment that could be repurposed? I'd really rather have this resolved before it comes to any more violence than strictly necessary." 

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He flinches. "They're not- The cargo heavies leave as soon as they're unloaded, but maybe. The rest, they're privately owned. I imagine they're all leaving as soon as possible. Where will everyone go? They will freeze or starve if you block deliveries and don't, ah, have onward transit..."

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"I will work something out. Where do people usually go when you let one wiggle through your grasping, cheating fingers?"

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"I- That is to say-"

"Governor, please, let me try something."

"Why yes! By all means, Solomon!"

"May I speak to you out of earshot?" The agent asks Lucy, voice calm, expression resigned.

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"Sure, why not. If this is an assassination attempt I should warn you it won't work." She lets the agent lead her off. 

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He goes closer to the archive building than the people surrounding it. It's the only clear spot, really.

"I am acting very intense and will use body language as if I am arguing with you to keep up my cover." He says, quiet but intense, leaning forward, gesturing sharply. "It would be easier if you will do the same. Have you heard of the New Street Line?"

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She puts her hands on her hips and gives an unimpressed look. "No, I haven't." 

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"The New Street Line are a group of anti-establishment subversives undermining the Establishment by smuggling the oppressed and criminalized away from London's reach. They have a very hard time of it." Folded hands, grimace. "I have no proof of what I am implying, which is that I am with that group, because I am very good at my second job, at keeping this workworld unaware of how many people leave it early. Or at all. There are hidden spaces and shift changeovers one may sometimes slip through. Sufficiently gruesome industrial accidents do not leave enough behind to put in a coffin. But time itself is against people here, and we can do very little."

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She sneers and gestures dismissively. "I'm sorry I didn't know about you to coordinate, then, but I have the power to not be content with skimming off the top. I can get everyone out of here." 

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Panicked and defensive look. "It's not reasonable to expect you to have known! And I don't actually doubt that. But can you do it without making things worse- I of all people know how difficult it is to find someplace to go. If ten thousand workworlders vanish into the lower districts of London and scatter across Albion, I think they'll pick many of them back up. I think they'll be grievously annoyed by you and start escalating, cleaning house, locking down the other Workworlds, doing unpredictable things."

Headshake, raising hands in frustration. It's not even fake. "But perhaps you are simply strong enough to negotiate with the Establishment by virtue of being able to break their shiny toys. 'Let them go, or I keep breaking things until you do.' They might make a deal. They might look for a way to kill you. They might succeed in that. But anyone who wields the fucking Correspondence like that is either a madwoman or a Power."

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She folds her arms and rolls her eyes. "Power. I'm the daughter of the Mountain of Light from back in the Neath. I was thinking if I couldn't find anywhere else for them to go, I could maybe find a big enough piece of uninhabited rock and use my light to promote edible plant growth until it was basically habitable at least in the short term."

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Bargaining sorts of gestures. "Look, this is a pretty good front of grumpiness, thanks for that. I thought the Mountain's daughter was Mt. Nomad? Whatever, not relevant right now. The High Wilderness is not a very nice place, cold and hunger would threaten them, but maybe it's workable. Abandoned factories abound. If you took them to the Ormsworld they could stay hidden for years. If you spoke a passphrase to a certain shop in London maybe some band of well-meaning ruffians would learn where to go find them."

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She curls her lip slightly and shakes her head. "Thanks. Mt. Nomad is my half-sibling. I'm from an alternate timeline where London never took to the High Wilderness at all and I came here in an Hours- and Correspondence-related accident. What's the Ormsworld?"

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Fist clenched and smacked into hand, glaring. "Big chunk of sky that's lousy with cliffs and narrow passes and caves. And importantly, far too dense with that sort of thing to patrol or even fully map so far. The Royal Society lives in one of the better-explored sections, by mutual agreement that the more boisterous experiments should be far away from everything else. Look, you mentioned stealing a bunch of locomotives. You should do that to the Resurrectionists, damned grave robbers, and hand over their engines to people who will use them for good. I fully expect you to want the New Street Line to prove itself before handing it lots of stuff, that's fine."

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She makes a dismissive gesture at the fist-smacking. "Who are the Resurrectionists? I'm generally in favor of resurrection but your phrasing suggests that they're doing something other than smuggling Mountain-light out of the Neath." 

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He fist-smacks again. "No way. They crack open graves and steal valuables, sometimes take bodies to sell to scientists too, and worryingly - fight on even footing with Dreadnoughts. If we're getting off topic we should arrange to speak again. What do you need to get people away from here? The records destroyed?"

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"Getting rid of the records is to make it harder to go after the escapees. In order to get people away from here I need some way of transporting them, locomotives would be more convenient in some ways but frankly it would work to transform into my larger shape and pick up, I don't know a big hollow Bronzewood log or a reinforced box or whatever, and carry it myself." 

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Hands flung in the air. "Well, it'll help. Some of them have criminal records and might be worse off unless you hunt those down somehow. You can get some locomotives by ousting Resurrectionists or stealing them from private captains but that seems slow. Empty ore containers, maybe. I take it you can't make off with the whole Workworld? I don't have many contacts in the Workworld itself."

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Negating arm-slice. "I'm not big enough to do that yet and I don't plan to leave the situation alone until I am, if I ever am, I don't know exactly how big I'll be when I stop growing. Ore containers might work, how big are they, how many are there, how many people are here, can they be connected to each other...?"

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He pulls a notebook out of his coat and furiously scribbles on it, then points at it angrily.

"Could put hundreds of people in there if you go standing room only. You could maybe break off a whole factory, you looked big enough a while ago. Ah- Plenty, I think, at least a hundred. We have- Fifteen thousand six hundred forty two 'residents'. Give or take five who might be fake entries, or perhaps someone's dead. Yeah but a long enough train of them might break unless you Correspondence at it I'm not an expert at this side of things-"

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She snatches the notebook and points at something in it while snarling. 

"I could Correspondence at it but this isn't something I've done before so I wouldn't want to bet too much on it working. Are the factories sturdy enough to come up in one piece? That's the main qualm I'd have about trying to break one off."

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Headshake, facepalm. Expansive gesture. "Fuck, yeah maybe, I was picturing more taking a whole - section - including a street or two and what's under the factories - they say the place has good bones but you'd have to get someone to show you where to break and it might be risky. I doubt much down there matches the official blueprints anymore."

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She sighs and shakes her head dismissively. 

"If I could break off an area with, like, self-contained heating, that would work really well actually, like, the High Wilderness is cold." 

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He points towards the admin building, hand waving angrily. "There are steam plants that feed central heating and electricity to all their neighbor factories. I don't suppose you stole any blueprints while you were stealing files, huh?!"

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She props one fist on her hip and looks at him with arch disdain. "No, not yet, I wasn't taking files to use, but that doesn't mean I can't." 

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"Well, fine, there's your plan!" He quickly lists five names. "Those are sympathizers who might be useful if you can get to them at all, but I think you should try to go quickly. Not full Conductors. Almost nobody knows who I am, I just thought telling you would keep this from going too far off the rails. I think they're getting suspicious about our 'argument'. I'm giving up convincing you to leave. I'm also giving up on convincing you to take things slower because that cat is not only out of the bag it's out of the cabin, the hatch, and sailing the winds of the High Wilderness. Hissing."

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"I've never been good at taking things slow," she admits, and turns on her heel and stalks back into the building. 

Blueprints, where aaaaare you?

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He quickly gives her a location before turning around and dramatically stomping off and reporting 'failure to negotiate'. They're on the second floor, east wing.

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She locates the blueprints and examines them for useful cleavage points.

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If the blueprints are still mostly accurate she can snip off this whole section of street with two warehouses, a block of bunkhouses, a steam plant, a cafeteria, a maintenance building, a big alloying foundry, and three miscellaneous smallish factories by cutting just one major spar and a bunch of smaller connections.

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Perfect. 

She rolls up the blueprint for reference, just in case, and strides out of the building again. 

"Do you have some way of communicating en masse?" she asks cheerfully. 

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The agent loudly declares that there's no way they'd willingly hand over the public address system in that building over there!

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She suppresses a giggle and flips them all off and goes into that building over there and commandeers the PA system to announce that everyone should pack their things and congregate in the relevant area. 

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There is too much panic and discoordination for anyone to resist her making the announcement.

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She repeats the announcement a few times, adding "this is not a drill" occasionally. Then she walks outside and takes to the air to see if people are complying. 

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Things are pretty chaotic down there. Many of them are complying. Some of them are forming gangs. Some are... Still listlessly working as if nothing has changed. The overseers have all evacuated themselves.

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She lands near some people who are still listlessly working and wades into the machinery, fucking it up as much and dramatically as possible with a single diamond punch. 

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Panic and screaming! Briefly.

These people all seem worn and exhausted.

 

"...Wot? Miss...? There's all sorta rumors going down, but we figured we'd just keep working and not get short rations when it settles again."

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"Nah, I'm rescuing everyone. Go on to the area I said on the announcement, I'm going to break the whole thing off." 

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"The riots didn't help-"

"The riots didn't have the Overseers in a tizzy until they happened. Or someone able to smash the presses wif 'er bare fist."

"And it's not like we can get any more work done here."

(One of them coughs violently.)

"Roight, everyone, get your stuff and whatever's handy and not nailed down and get walking."

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She gives them a thumbs up and goes off to coax any more stragglers she can find. 

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This takes a while and the Workworld's conditions are fairly miserable - everyone could use some Mountainlight - but she can quickly meet and convince the workers' resistance, who can have everyone working together much more quickly since they have the locals' trust already. And with confirmation that the Overseers aren't coming back they start unbolting some of the more movable and valuable pieces of heavy industrial equipment to bring to that street. If it gets too crowded they'll leave stuff behind.

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"Movable" is a relative term. Most valuable things are more movable than, say, an entire spar of rock, and Lucy is extremely willing to be helpful.

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Lots of drill presses and generators and boilers and various other tools can join literally the entire Workworld's population on that one street, then. Not nearly all of the valuable industrial tools or even a quarter of it, thousands and thousands of people and whatever food and clothes and coal and other stuff they can bring takes up a lot of space even when there's an entire street to fill.

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And once everything is in place, she scuttles down to the underside of the spar, and strikes the stone hard, in just the right place. Once, twice, thrice, and then with a rumbling crack it breaks free. She glides along its length to a point in the center, and grabs on firmly as she heads out, looking for an uninhabited rock big enough for people to spread out some and far enough off that the might of the government won't land on them as soon as her back is turned. 

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For that, she wants north. Far north. A wrecked and abandoned corner of the sky, caught between the Ormsworld and a wide field of sky dotted with the discarded wreckage of the parts of London Her Eternal Majesty found displeasing, such as Parliament. There are empty rocks here, some big enough to build a city on.

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She's not confident in her ability to get around in the Ormsworld itself with this spar, so she finds a reasonably sheltered appropriately-sized rock and finally sets it down. Then she turns back and dresses and goes in to see the Resistance organizers about next steps. There are other Workworld, of course, but also probably some of these people have other things they'd rather do than try to build a life on a desolate rock and that should be taken into account too. 

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There's a lot of arguing. Like, a lot. Some of them want to build a new city of freed Workworlders here and declare independence. Some want to vanish back into the rest of Albion. Some want to find their families. Some just want to rest for, like, a year, despairing at their wrecked bodies. Some say that building an 'independent' city in Albion is just asking for a war and where would they get food and coal and steel anyway? It would be better if they could get to the Reach or Eleutheria somehow, but of course the transit relays are all monitored by Customs.

These people are used to work. The ones who aren't busy arguing are already grading and levelling the nearby stone, carving bricks out of it. (Maybe she could fuse this bit of Workworld stone to the rest of it with Correspondence? It'd be more stable. For that matter, Correspondence is very fiery, could she make some of these boilers permanently 'on'?)

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Wrecked bodies are something Lucy can fix straight off. Getting to the Reach or Eleutheria is doable if they'd prefer that. 

Permalink Mark Unread

Amazing healing powers!!

There's a growing camp who want to declare independence and fight if they have to. Some still want to just sneak back to London or their hometown or whatever. Some think getting out of Albion would be nice. That's where they'd actually be free. But they probably aren't deciding any of that today.

Resistance leader guy wants to know if she's going to deliver them more workworlders.

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"Unless you think it'd be better to take them somewhere else." 

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Well, he'd appreciate a warning so they can prepare for it. And, uh, a way to get food and coal and maybe building supplies for houses and stuff. He guesstimates a few thousand will want to stay on this rock. They're gonna tunnel into the rock and make bricks out of it but fourteen thousand people need shelter and that's slow.

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"Yeah...I can bring seeds and see what I can do about growing your own food. Coal and building supplies I have fewer ideas for." 

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"We have everything we need to turn trees into rowhouses if you can get us some trees. And firewood is a thing. I don't know how to get like independent locomotives to come here without telling the Establishment how to as well, though. We could make some cannons, probably."

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"Trees I can do," she agrees. "If there's a bunch of people who all want to go one place, I can take them on my way to the next Workworld." 

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"You'll get a batch for London, maybe. For all that it's the center of Albion, you can disappear in London."

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"If it's anything like it was in the Neath that checks out." 

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Lots of these people would like to go to London, yeah. Also, some of this industrial gear is too specialized to be useful here and was only grabbed because it's valuable, but she could fence it to the Wit & Vinegar Lumber Company and use it to buy stuff for the new Workworlder City.

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Where's Wit & Vinegar?

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On the south side of London. They are a perfectly legitimate struggling lumber company, in the same way that a locomotive with lots of hidden compartments is a perfectly legitimate trading vessel. Resistance Head Guy has just enough contacts there that they'll fence stuff for her and only fleece her a little bit.

Permalink Mark Unread

Okay, excellent. Passengers first or fencing equipment first? There's tradeoffs one against another, she can carry some amount of people even if she's carrying freight, but...

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Passengers first, give them more time to vanish into London. Some of them might lead the Establishment here by accident or coercion but that's not really avoidable in the long term, so.

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It's not, no. Can she get a general description of London's environs so she can figure out a good place to land? 

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Well... London is huge and sprawling and none of these people exactly have a map. Somewhere on the lower levels, probably? In the south-ish bits of the city, far out where the city is half-abandoned and sparse. They can handle a long walk.

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Is the entire landmass the city is on part of the city?

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It's spread out and amalgamated onto like a dozen different big rocks. The more densely built parts of London are almost as solid as any mountain, though.

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Hm. Okay. She lines some shipping crates with enough insulation that the passengers won't freeze and enough glowing diamond that even if she misjudged the amount of oxygen necessary they won't die of hypoxia. And then anyone who wants to go in the box can go in the box and anyone who wants to climb inside her shell's chambers can do that. 

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Uh...

 

They all pick the boxes except for, like, two people.

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Those two people will be a lot less crowded than the people in the boxes, then. 

She picks up the boxes and makes for London, choosing care and stealth over speed. 

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Stealth is achievable. On the way there she will catch glimpses of the direct, distant glare of the Clockwork Sun - northwest of here, peeking through gaps in the barren mountains. Most everything close to the Clockwork Sun has been vitrified into sharp blue-green glass. There is at least one former Dreadnought out there steaming erratically around despite the massive shards of glass growing out of it.

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That's so concerning. 

She finds a suitably uninhabited bit of London and opens the boxes. 

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Workworlders file out, gather up their stuff, and start walking into town!

A few of them have cold feet and are just kind of exhausted and overwhelmed with everything don't want to leave the boxes or, like, do anything at all.

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Uhhhh. Okay. Well, she'll take a poke around London herself and try to pick up some seeds and so on and if they're still in the boxes when she gets back she'll take them back to the rock. 

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London is a loud, tangled, smoky mess. It has apartments and stores and workshops and brothels and salons and museums and soup kitchens and locomotive construction yards and police stations and greenhouses and circuses and hotels and bars and mansions and criminals and everything else the biggest city in this part of the High Wilderness could possibly contain. It's extremely vertical and crisscrossed with bridges and elevators and all the buildings of human life - the lower layers are the poorer ones, almost universally. The lower levels aren't as bad as the Workworld was, but they are at least on the scale. Various places sell seeds! Some of them even sell Reach-flora seeds, which tend to grow very vigorously. And she can probably get some by stealing from suburban gardens or picking acorns and the like.

Some of the people are still on the boxes. Some have wandered off. A few homeless-looking people have wandered in and seem to have made friends with the Workworlders who remain.

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She pokes her head in and informs the homeless Londoners that she's perfectly happy to take them along but if they don't want to leave they should go. 

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They're glad to hitch a ride. It's almost a badge of pride among the Skylarks - the loose identity vagabonds and hitchhikers share around here - to be some of the first to go to a newly interesting place.

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Cool cool, just as long as she doesn't accidentally kidnap anyone. 

She brings the boxes back to Workworlder City-to-be Rock and plants seeds and glows very aggressively at them for a little while, then leaves for the next Workworld. 

Permalink Mark Unread

They've stepped up security a lot. Goons with binoculars and guns are hanging around, there are cannons scattered around in clearly rushed emplacements, and there is a Dreadnought in the trainyard.

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Any convenient spars? 

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There are a few plausible options, but nothing quite as convenient as the last one visible from here. She'd have to snip in two places and cut a lot of pipes leading upward to get that street that looks like it has a steam plant on it, for example.

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Hmm. 

She lands on the Workworld-proper, somewhere the administrators won't see but the workers will. 

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There are Overseers about, but they mostly stick to the wider paths and are always in a hurry. They are avoidable.

The smoggy hell of this workworld seems to focus on Hour refining. Loose time is thick in the air, curving and pooling in the refinery halls where they're processing and spooling it. Some workers' right sides are much older than their lefts.

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Eugh. 

She finds a worker with this particular effect and glows at him aggressively enough to bring all of them down to a reasonable and healthy age. 

"--Hi, I'm the reason security's been tightened, I'm here to help, can you direct me to some local Resistance?"

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She looks down at her right hand, turning it over wonderingly. She looks over the sizzling vats.

"...She's off the books, calls herself Rose, cuts deals with the brass to keep the quota pressure off a bit but they're basically a gang themselves. We don't actually like her much. She's slightly better than the Overseers."

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"Oh. That's unfortunate. Is there anyone I can liaise with or am I playing this by ear again." 

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"Overseers are pretty good at smacking organization down. Rose got most of what's left for herself. How are you gonna help, walk the streets glowing?"

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"I mean I should glow at everyone at some point but no, I'm here to evacuate you all." 

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Her mouth opens slightly. She shifts posture.

"How good's that glowin' stuff?" She hefts a wrench. "I don't really care about pain anymore. Bet half this shift is the same. Could just bash Rose's goons up, get them out of the way. Might not even need to if she sees the writing on the wall. This place is close to boiling over about her already. Hoarding the best billets and easiest jobs for her goons, no better than the Overseers."

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"Good enough to fix death. Even if you kill them it's not a big deal." 

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"I don't know anybody who'd replace Rose and get us organized, though. Everyone's just so... Tired and hopeless."

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"If I can figure out a chunk of island that I could hack off and drag to where some previous evacuees with better organization are, do you think people will go there if I tell them to." 

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"Maybe? I'd go. But you must see how people... Are. Nobody cares, nobody hopes."

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"You don't have to be very hopeful to obey a giant luminous crab thing that's yelling at you to go somewhere, was my thought."

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"Maybe not. But that sounds really scary, you'd terrify some of us into staying put."

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"Yeah, that sounds like a problem. Do you have any ideas?"

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"...No? Maybe glow really bright and shout about it too. Bet the 'seers notice you and you have to deal with it somehow that way though."

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"Oh well, I can take them. Hmm, does anyone know how to drive a train? I saw a Dreadnought up there."

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"There's probably enough engine-hands here to fill out a locomotive? But stealing a Dreadnought seems... I dunno. Different than just getting the hell out of here."

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"Why?"

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"That's, like, military hardware. As opposed to just some factories."

"If we're revolting - with outside aid - we'll need military hardware," someone else pipes up. "Look, I know someone who's been trying to organize a counter-group to Rose. We need to put her away first and then things will get moving."

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"Oh good. Where's Rose." 

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Things get a bit chaotic in the next hour. Rose tries to intimidate the workers like a common thug, and completely fails once Lucy steps in. There's a lot of yelling, and an improvised explosive goes off, and shift leaders generally take charge of their own people but all agree getting the hell out is a good plan.

Soon enough most everyone is moving to the evacuation point... At which point the Overseers try leading an advance into the Workworld with shotguns and heavy metal shields.

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The temporary cessation of voluntary movement

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What is she going to do with a lot of collapsed goons and overseers?

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Glow on them if they get trampled and otherwise ignore them. 

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They mostly retreat when they can move again.

One, a round-faced boy who could barely hold his gun, plays dead and tries to pretend to be a Workworlder. He's caught out and threatened at knife-point by a batch of angry Hour-spoolers, and breaks down crying and complaining about army life. The workworlders are unsympathetic, he signed up for it.

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The rejection of deliberate falsehood

"Is that really why you're here, and not to spy or otherwise betray us?"

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"I just- It's awful. I regret signin' up. They said we'd fight the enemies of Britain, anarchists and grave robbers and Menaces, but they's just sending us to places like this and treating us like dirt in the meantime, I want out, I want out-"

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"Let him be, he's barely more than a child and it'll be more trouble to throw him out than to keep him." 

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Grumble grumble fine. They're totally giving him the cold shoulder though.

Eventually everyone who's coming is aboard the to-be-broken-off street. A couple dozen folks are close to being free and dislike the idea of being refugees or criminals enough that they want to try staying.

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She really strongly disrecommends that but she won't kidnap anyone. 

She makes her way through space, taking a less than maximally direct route to discourage pursuit, and finally brings the new spar to rest in the vicinity of the old one. 

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The first batch of refugees hasn't made much progress on expansion and shelter yet.

Welcome back! It turns out there are weird crab things that like to steal fingers living on this rock can she kill them please?!?!

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That like to steal--she glows at anyone missing a finger and then attempts to hunt down a sample crab to examine. 

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They're about head-sized, cautious and skittering and burrowing, but also curious enough about her to approach if she holds still for long enough.

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Oh wow gosh okay. 

A state of uncertainty regarding the internal nature of the beings whom one beholds, she tries, in case they're people. 

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They briefly scatter and flee from this confusing stimulus! Then they pause and gather up curiously again.

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Are any of them doing anything she can see with the fingers they've taken? Like eating them or laying eggs in them or anything? 

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Some of the fingers (and toes, and one ear) have been eaten. Mostly the ones claimed by the scrawnier-looking specimens. None of the fingers are bleeding, and the ends look... Sewn up?

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This is a MYSTERY. 

She goes and finds a shipping crate that hasn't been modified for human transport and attempts to coax the weird crab-octopus-spider things inside it. By biting off her own fingers and throwing them in, if necessary. 

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Crystalline fingers are SO FASCINATING VERY WANT.

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Once all the crab-things she can find are in the box she closes it and takes off and finds uninhabited rock and lets them out and sits down and examines them further. 

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They don't seem to be people. Or particularly social - they're not happy about being moved around in a box. They really like the crystalline fingers and appear to be trying to figure out how they work and if they can be sewn together with little threads produced by their pedipalps(?). They keep their distance from her as long as she is moving around.

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She sits very still and watches to see what they do with the fingers. 

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Once she has been still for long enough, a particularly adventurous one attempts to sew a finger onto her shoe.

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That's actually sort of weirdly cute??? She gently shifts her foot to discourage it though, she doesn't want a finger sewn to her shoe. 

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Scurry scurry away!

 

None of them seem inclined to eat the fingers if they don't have to. They're pretty protective of them, actually. Eventually another brings a crystal finger to her hand, investigates it briefly, then wanders away again with its finger when it turns out she already has a full complement of digits.

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She'll check back in on them later. She goes back to make sure there aren't any more finger-predators lingering on the rock where the humans are. 

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Either there aren't any, or they're hiding and not tempted out by shiny fingers.

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Cool, cool. How are the two populations of humans getting along?

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No major fights. The second lot seems to be leaning towards consolidating under the first lot's Resistance leader. Still lots of arguing about next steps, and also lots of industrious improvement of their surroundings. They could use more trees. And food crops. And maybe some tunnels to serve as shelter since it is actually really hard to build a whole bunch of houses in a day, if she can do that quickly with giant crab claws? They're going to try shuffling people in and out of the existing housing under Hour-loom acceleration but that is stressful to arrange and they'll run out of Hours eventually.

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Hmm. 

Well...she's not sure digging tunnels herself is a good use of her time, but...

A white snake slithers out of the collar of her dress. She speaks to it softly, and it coils out around her arm and drops to the ground, growing in size and sprouting limbs until it's about as wide across as a man is tall, then begins burrowing into the stone. 

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Yikes. But effective, they aren't gonna complain.

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"I can't go superluminal while they're off doing that, but I shouldn't need to," she says cheerfully. "More trees, you said?"

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"Er... Yeah. Can't have enough wood. If you can make an iron ore deposit too that'd be excellent, but I don't think so?"

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"I cannot. Is there a particular advantage to growing trees here, or would bringing lumber be as good if it happens to be more convenient--come to think of it, how useful would Bronzewood be--"

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"Well for one having trees and gardens right here is nice and reassuring, right, none of us are keen to rely on imports again and there wasn't a speck of green on Brabazon- Bronzewood would help but what we really need is a whole lot of regular wood. And iron ore, or iron ingots, for when we run out of nails and have to start making more."

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"I can't make iron ore, but I'll bring more seeds and I'll see what I can get." 

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"We definitely appreciate it. Even if a bunch of us starve to death in the meantime on this rock, you can fix that, so we're better off than on the Workworlds even if you can't."

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"That is true! Uh, don't cannibalize each other if you do start starving to death, it's not catastrophic and we're not in the Neath so probably Mr. Eaten isn't an issue but, uh, if there are any metaphysical effects of cannibalism I wouldn't expect them to be good, so."

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"...Ew. I'll warn everyone, sure. Working under starlight all the time isn't going to help on that front. I'm already feeling dread that London will find this place and smash it up or seize it. Maybe they'll decide to ignore us, like the Floating Parliament, maybe not."

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"Well, my light cures starlight, so there's that."

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"And we took on a lot of stained glass and some of the stuff to make more. I'm sure there's sand to be had somewhere. Ah, that's a long-term worry."

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Nod. 

"How many more rescues before space becomes an issue? Assuming relatively efficient tunneling."

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"Space is already an issue. It's going to be an issue for months. But the rock is plenty big, if that's what you mean. There are, I think, fourteen Workworlds worth the name. Well, twelve now."

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"Well, the way space is currently an issue, more hands will help as well as make more work."

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"...We need a mayor. We need an overseer to organize it all. If some of these people want to go to London that would help. Or if you fenced some cargo and pay for our shopping list with it. God, I don't know if I can handle this. I used to be a lawyer, you know?"

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"Heh. I know I can't handle this, but we do what we must. Let me know who wants to go and if I have carrying capacity left I'll haul cargo too." 

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"It'll take a couple hours to get that sorted. Could you glow at a bunch of trees in the meantime? I had some people replant the seeds from the first batch."

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"I could do that--actually, better idea, you said something about using Hours, can I watch your Loom in action? I can do time-light but I don't have a very solid grasp on how to use it yet."

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"Oh! We have whole crews who know things about that actually. They didn't want to send us actual engineers, but we had bootleg looms, and hoarded Hours, we have people who know their stuff."

He leads Lucy over to the front of a rowhouse, where a tall spindly metal machine is being fussed over.

"This is it. Gorky! Teach the nice lady how Hour-spinning works, please!"

"Can do, boss!" 'Gorky' signals the pulley holding him harnessed into the air down, then holds his hand out for a shake when he reaches the ground. "You fixed my blacklung, so my not coughing on ya is thanks to you!"

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She shakes his hand. "Well, hey, nobody deserves to have to deal with that. Show me how to make the purple light do my bidding." 

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He knows all about how 'bloody impossible bottled Time' works!! The technical side, anyway. Can't help with the space magic side.

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Ahhhh, okay, so that's how that...and that...hm, so..aha. 

She switches over and begins projecting a soft purple glow between her palms, playing cat's cradle with it until she has a glossy purple geode in her hands. 

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"Oh, that'll be handy! You can just straight sell those. They're stable that way, but they're stable and more valuable but less fungible other ways too - here, lookit this refined spool-" It's sort of like the difference between a neatly coiled garden hose versus one haphazardly spun onto its spindle, criss-crossing and knotting and leaving gaps and unaligned layers.

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"Can I see a machine doing something with that?"

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"Yeah, we're gonna speed up the beds in a bit. Cycle people through, give 'em some privacy and rest. I could feed it a couple inches right now as a test run...?"

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"Once I see how it goes I can probably replace whatever you use." 

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He does some shouting and some adjusting and swipes the end with a specialized tool to fray it, then catches the frays in a spot near the bottom of the Loom, and- the apartments are a-glow as the strand is ever-so-slowly pulled through and dispersed into light.

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She has to stare at it a little more than she did for the raw Hour but eventually she takes the end of the strand and twists purple light from her fingers onto it. 

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"Cor. You know, this big spool's worth a few hundred Sovereigns." He thumps it. It's about the size of a barrel, with wider circular ends and shorter sides. "How exactly are you doing that, maybe we could make it more efficient, are you-" He devolves into jargon. 

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She can definitely get more efficient at it with tools, she's doing the equivalent of twisting wool into yarn with her fingers and a distaff would be extremely helpful. 

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He 'borrows' some machine tools from the maintenance yard and improvises some things!! This is very exciting!!

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She grins and refills any spools they have and tops them up on raw Hours too and then goes off to accelerate plant growth more efficiently than with just Mountain-light. 

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With thousands of idle hands transplanting and tilling and seeding she can cover large sections of this barren rock with trees and gardens of the food seeds she managed to pick up in London. People are singing work songs and almost happy, working for themselves for once. It's not quite a proper forest, trees alone does not a forest make, and there aren't any birds or other forest animals - but all that's a problem for another day. The local critters don't know what to make of it.

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The local critters can fucking adapt! 

And after a couple hours she checks up on the progress of the passenger roster. 

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There's another six hundred and change who've decided on going to London, much less than last time. People are pretty sure she's going to be a regular feature here for a while (they're really thankful by the way!!!) so more of them want to stay where there's camaraderie and distance from the Establishment.

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"I mean, it's not like I earned my weird powers or anything, I was just born like this, and since I was, it's kind of my responsibility to use it, you know?" 

She will haul some cargo as well as passengers this time then. She double-checks the location of the fences and asks if they're a good place to liquidate Hours too or if she should look elsewhere. 

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She can sell Hours at Spatialfields Market, they're not contraband at all and they're fungible enough nobody would suspect them stolen, unlike all this shiny-but-useless-to-them industrial equipment. Wit & Vinegar, in addition to being fences, are also a good place to pick up cheap lumber. It helps their cover, doing some actual business, so they'll like her for it.

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Awesome. 

She brings the people-carrier boxes to the same place as last time and leaves them there even if there aren't any stragglers, then finds a different spot to stash the cargo, then turns back and strolls over to Wit & Vinegar. 

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What's a pretty thing like her doing in the rough part of town? This is a worksite, not a tourist trap. Closed to visitors.

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"I have some illegally obtained industrial equipment I'd like to sell, and later I want to buy lumber although I want to liquidate some Hours first. If you'd rather I shooed until I have legal business as well I can come back in a bit."

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"Woah, hey, we don't do anything illegal here. Even if there were something illegal going on, people who knew about it would know who to talk to specifically and be able to tell me their names."

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"That, I was not informed of. Is that an anti-entrapment protection measure, will it help if I confess to several crimes? I guess probably the Workworlds thing hasn't made it this far yet."

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"This is a legitimate business and I'll keep saying so. We don't want loud, distinctive, reckless folk involved in our businesses."

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Sigh. "Fine. Does that mean I can't come back later and licitly buy lumber." 

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"Sure, we have lots of lumber for sale, we're a lumber company. Bulk discount, even."

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"Good to know." 

She wanders off, spinning Hours from her hands, looking for Spatialfields Market. 

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She'll need a box for them before long. People are astonished as her making hours. Most keep their distance. A couple are happy to give directions.

Spatialfields Market is on the third-highest level, but it has a clear view of the sky. Great arches of steel and glass form a dome of noise and frame the Heavens as two dozen clearing houses and stores sprawl below. Electric lights turn on as the distant stars dim for what passes for night, here.

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She has a lot of pockets, she can go, like, some amount of time before needing anything else, but yeah. 

Once she finds it she gestures with an Hour taken from the crook of her arm where some pocket-overflow is hanging out and says, "Hello, I would like to trade these for currency." 

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The first shopkeeper directs her to another storefront.

"Not a great idea to just go carrying those around ya know? But fill a barrel and you get hundo-five Sovs, seeing as these are pretty good as Hours go."

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"I'd be unusually difficult to mug." 

She dumps her armload into the barrel and empties her pockets and has a few left over when the barrel's full. 

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The shopkeep presses a heavy lid on the barrel, seals it with wax, hands over coins.

"More meant on account of them maybe unspooling and being unfortunate for you and surrounding individuals. Not even gonna ask where you got 'em. We buy hours, we don't ask questions."

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"Oh! Understood." 

She accepts the money and heads back to the definitely-not-fences to inquire about lumber prices. 

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She doesn't have nearly as much money as she got from the Bronzewood tree, but she can have three big pallets of pre-cut wood for that price, or a whole big cargo box's worth of raw logs.

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Hmm she'll take the logs, they were expecting to be able to work with, like, trees, that she grew, after all. 

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Pleasure doin' business with her. Remember that if she has more business she needs a proper introduction, you can't run certain kinds of business and talk to whoever shows up at the front door, you know?

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Yep, sorry, she understands now. 

She takes the cargo box of logs and heads down to where she left the people-boxes. Anyone still there?

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Nope, nobody there. The cargo boxes fit unremarkably in with the general semi-urban decay so nobody's come to investigate them either.

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She transports everything back to the Workworlders' rock and goes to find that one guy to ask about Wit & Vinegar passphrases. 

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"Oh- Right. Of course. They've gotten more careful. I should come with you and make introductions, they know me." Sigh. "So much to do here though."

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"How much can we get for the equipment? Is it even worth it when I can just make and sell Hours."

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"Honestly? Probably not."

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"Is there any equipment I should be buying, for that matter."

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"We'll probably have a wish-list in a day or two but right now we're trying to light up all the caves your - thing - made, and build sawmills and farming equipment and stuff. Oh, and it ran into an underground vein of coal and iron ore a few hours ago. Right convenient, that. Anyway, Locomotives are the only thing that springs to mind. Maybe not Dreadnoughts because they're distinctive and if you steal any for us, seems liable to get us even more hatred from the Establishment. We can't let you be our only link to the world in the long run."

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"Where do I buy those? Or parts to make those." 

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"There's big engine yards in London. Cheap, used engines can go for as little as five hundred Sovereigns. Or you could steal them from criminals. Nobody likes the grave-robbers much, and we can modify the engines enough not to be recognized as grave-robber engines with the stuff we have here."

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"Disabling grave-robbers sounds good. How do I recognize grave-robber trains?"

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He sketches a double-chimney engine that looks sort of Marauder-ish, if not nearly as ramshackle as the pirates from the Reach were.

"See those hooks at the front? That's what they use to dig graves and crack coffins. They'll usually not have running lights on. The Most Serene Masoleum is further south than the Workworlds."

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"The what now?"

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"-The giant memorial cemetery the Empress built for her dead husband. Above the dead sun. There are... Tens, maybe hundreds of thousands of dead there, and millions in all the graveyards around it probably..." His expression changes in realization, a mixture of anxiety and wonder.

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"Her dead--why did she leave the Neath if--wow, okay. Well. That sounds like an excellent place for me to go." 

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"-Don't leave us in the lurch. Please."

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"--I'm not planning to! I wasn't going to go right now or anything anyway, I don't want all those people waking up in their tombs, and I wouldn't have to be there for very long." 

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"Okay, sorry, but do you see how that's a little - alarming - Lots of people want to help the poor as long as it makes them feel good, until something more interesting comes along, it's why I want us independent of you-"

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"Yeah, and that is super valid. I do have a sense of responsibility, though, I'm not going to fuck off and start looking for other wrongs to right until you are, although I'll probably make day trips, like for example I owe some people some bronzewood--anyway, people continuing to be dead is a more shelf-stable situation than, uh, this." 

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"Alright. Yeah. And until we have some kind of actual election I'm only sort of in charge, but I'm doubtful we can stay here indefinitely without implicitly relying on you to come be angry if a thousand soldiers show up and start rounding people up. Or if the Throne of Hours reaches out to slow or speed us, as hostages. I want to send someone to the Royal Society to ask about defenses to that- But anyway. Personally I'm hoping 'we'll keep making stuff but on our terms, with unions involved' is acceptable by being less economically devastating than losing all their cheapest manufacturing capacity overnight. We're probably ready for another workworld by the way. I've been making people keep areas clear for more, uh, streets."

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Nod. "Having lots of Hours should help with the speeding/slowing thing, I think? And it's not necessarily a strict divide between 'relying on me for almost everything' and 'I can forget you exist and it'll be fine,' like, for now I don't want to do more than day trips out but there could be a point where I check in once a week or something." 

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"I'm thinking something like an enormous Hour-Loom, yeah. To at least make it expensive to screw with us. I don't know the theory or if that's really feasible. I know it's very expensive to run the Throne, they went on about it all the time. The fruits of your labor sustain the good order of time throughout the Empire! We'll be like the bloody Colonies. Too expensive to bother with."

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"Sounds like a plan. Do you know what's up with the Throne?"

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"Beyond that it's - well, the throne, and not just the actual chair but entire factories' worth of specialized machinery below it and Correspondence as well - not really. It influences time, with a titanic range and imprecise effect."

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"That seems like a bad idea, but what else do I expect from a woman who sold her city for her husband's life and then left the Neath and let him die." 

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"Worse idea than letting Wefts proliferate? You can fall in one and come out before you started, or as someone who made different choices. Now, they're only much of a thing near Skyhenge." He sighs. "But I don't know Her Eternal Majesty's troubles or reasons."

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"I mean, Time gets along fine without any particular regulation most places."

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"Not here. And I was relatively early through the Horizon, time was wonky beforehand, so I know it's not all lies."

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"Okay, that's definitely a relevant data point. I still have to question the wisdom of going through at all, in those circumstances. For her, I mean, I'm sure individual people all had their own reasons to follow."

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"I can't really speculate. And I should get back to work organizing things, if you don't mind..."

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"Yeah, of course." 

She takes off for the next Workworld. 

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This one is in the middle of a violent uprising! Furious workers fill the trainyard, and the Overseers are holding their little closed town at a choke-point with gatling guns.

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Lucy lands on the choke-point and destroys a gatling gun with one claw. 

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Are there suspiciously few people here in this narrow spot with a bunch of piled boxes and sandbags and stuff-? The four who were here are running at top speed.

KABOOM.

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OW. 

Shards of diamond and splashes of blood go everywhere. She shriekes nonmagical obscenities in Correspondence and glows to accelerate her own healing. 

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Nobody shoots at her. They all make for cover or further-away buildings.

The bridge is now out. Charitably, that could have been the goal here.

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She transforms and ducks behind a piece of rubble to pull her dress on. 

"Hi. Sorry about the, uh, exciting entrance."

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The churning angry crowd is very loud, but she can address the closer ones. "What are you??? Who. Are you." "You're not with the Overseers, are you?" "No more work, we won't stand for it!"

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"I'm the person who's been evacuating the Workworlds."

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They thought that was just an excuse for crackdowns! Or that the Overseers were planning to murder them all. It was the final straw. Her smashing their gun and being blown up for it makes them preeetty inclined to believe her, though. She may have a problem communicating this to, uh, the ongoing riot, however. (In the distance, a fuelling shed collapses with a crash and a cheer goes up).

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"Iiiiii'm just going to go glow mountain-light at everyone until they calm down. They have to calm down eventually." 

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This works surprisingly quickly. Especially if she transforms and flies above for it. Soon the crowd is peaceful, though still disorganized.

(There are three Dreadnoughts and a single strangely-designed locomotive, smaller but longer with a curious pair of rails running all down its length, approaching from the west. Locomotives are not really all that fast, they'll take a couple hours to get here.)

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Uh. Hm. 

She pulls out a notebook and sketches the weird locomotive.

"Does anyone recognize this?" she asks. 

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...After some time rumor and third-hand newspaper clippings are combined and they determine that it's probably the new "Monitor" class of locomotives, London's newest warship with a super-high-speed cannon.

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"So like a Dreadnought but moreso. Okay. They look to be a couple hours out, can you all get yourselves and your stuff to a central staging point in a couple of hours." 

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That sounds hard! The resistance people have been planning for an uprising, not an evacuation! Many workers are already streaming back down into the Workworld to gather up their stuff, though.

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"Okay, you guys work on shifting gears to evacuation, I'll work on stymying the government." 

And she ducks back behind the rubble and disrobes and transforms and goes off to intercept the military locomotives. It takes her much less than a couple hours; she is faster than a speeding bullet, more powerful than a locomotive. 

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The Dreadnoughts spread out in a futile attempt to surround and herd her, firing away with turreted Gatling guns. The Monitor stays back.

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The guns chip shards of diamond off her sides, but fail to penetrate as deeply as the explosives. She makes a beeline for the Monitor, grasping for it with her claws. 

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The Monitor is nimble, but not that nimble. It doesn't even bother firing a shot. Instead, a lean and scarred captain is shouting at his crew to 'burn the records while we still can'.

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Ooh, shouldn't've shouted. She speaks the word that cuts off voluntary muscle movement, loudly enough to cover the whole train but not loudly enough that it would seep into their breathing and kill them. 

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The Monitor's crew is no longer doing anything. The five Dreadnoughts are wheeling about and shooting at her, still.

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She pulls the Monitor down to a rock big enough to hold it and starts picking people out of the Monitor and onto the rock. 

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Shooting at her! That's a thing! The frontal guns are a lot bigger, and still fire quickly.

...Shooting at the Monitor, what about that? Four of them are doing that. One is lagging behind and sort of drifting for some reason.

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She moves to intercept the shooting locomotives, paralyzing the contents of each one before moving on to the next. She doesn't treat the last, drifting one the same way; she goes over to inspect it without any immediate hostile action. 

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There is a mutiny in progress. Pistols and knives in the dark.

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"Hi! Can I have the bodies when you're done?"

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"We din't want to fight a Messenger! Please, mercy and let us put 'em to rest!"

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"I'm not a Messenger! Or, I'm only one-quarter Messenger! I do Mountain-light and I can bring them back." 

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"What?! That's absurd, it's-" Bang, thump.

More shooting.

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She drags the train over to a different rock and glows at it aggressively. 

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This makes things louder inside for a minute!

Then, it sounds like the officers are holed up in the bridge, while the rest of the crew have the rest of the engine. They're shouting at each other - each demanding surrender.

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"Hey, officers, please disembark." 

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Fine. They see no other option. They expect to be treated as prisoners of war. They throw all their weapons out to the enlisted, and march to the locomotive's right hatch, faces grim.

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"I don't know how prisoners of war are treated, I was just planning to confiscate all but one of the trains and let the last one pick you all up and take you back home. Is that okay for prisoners of war?" she asks the crew. 

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That is... Acceptable in prisoners-of-war terms. Though obviously they cannot condone the piracy. They mostly meant they didn't want to be left to die, fucked with through bad prison conditions, or generally tortured, and if she kept them would prefer that she tell their superiors that they're prisoners at some point.

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"Well, I cannot condone the Workworlds."

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Lots of not condoning going on, then. They are Her Majesty's officers and will follow their orders to the best of their ability.

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"Man, I never saw this much loyalty to the Traitor Empress in my London," she sighs. She peers into the train at the mutineers. "Are you guys okay?"

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"...Not really. We don't know what to do now."

"If you're loyal and important enough you can get Hours to keep you young. And your kids get a velvet collar too."

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"A velvet collar? I don't know that I can do anything about that, but Mountainlight is better than Hours for staying young. Also I figured out how to make Hours."

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"Huh, I suppose someone must have made the ones they mine... You'll be about the best thing for the Sky that's happened in a decade then."

"It's an expression. Means they're ostensibly in the lap of luxury, but really... They don't get to leave, and it's very clear that they'd get hurt if the Empress willed it."

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"She does what." 

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"-Well at least, that's what we figure. Perdurance. The beautiful children of society's finest spend the same day over and over there, an eternal party. They seem to enjoy it from what I've heard, but, well, it's pretty hard to leave. We're just deckhands, we don't know if that's all true, but it's what the rumors say."

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"Well that's horrifying. Do any of you have children there?"

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A round of snorts and chuckles. "No way. That's for, like, Barons or Majors or Admirals or Chancellors. Not Sergeants."

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"Okay. That's better than not. For now if you don't mind we'll go to the emancipated Workworlder colony; if you want to go elsewhere from there we can do that." 

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"So you are taking them somewhere?"

They look at each other.

"We're mutineers."

"-Yeah. Let's go to the emancipated Workworlder colony. We can probably get two locomotives there between us. Three at a stretch."

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"I can carry what you can't drive. Do people think I've been, what, eating everyone?"

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"People have no idea what to think. The papers talk about 'criminal elements' and the Service rumors is that whole workworlds are getting stolen by something cosmic, and people making stuff up about why."

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"Oh. Well, I'm rescuing them because the whole setup is horrible. I guess cosmic is maybe sorta not entirely inaccurate? Given that I am one quarter Messenger. But I'm half human!"

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The crewmembers share a look and decide not to ask how that works. "So, we'd better turn the boiler back on. We'll be happy to go with you. We're mutineers now, after all. It's not great, but that's life. Not sure if any of the others would surrender."

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"Well, I paralyzed them, so I was just going to pick them out of their trains and leave them with the officers." 

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"I guess you don't feel the need to try to get them to turn on the sodding officers? Well enough. We'll be here, get on with it, yeah?"

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"Yeah." 

She picks the people out of all but one of the trains and leaves the fourth train on the rock with the paralyzed people. 

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They might need Mountainlight if they don't start moving again soon. The wind bites.

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She glows pretty aggressively at them. They should be waking up soonish anyway. 

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They struggle to fit almost 100 people into one Dreadnaught. They're big, but not THAT big. Still, they manage it. Some of the officers make ineffectual threats, others seem defeated or eerily calm about all this.

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She ignores them and takes the mutineers and the rest of the trains back to the Workworld. 

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Still pretty disorganized. The Overseers remain holed up on their island. The evacuation is... Well, they've started trying to organize for an evacuation.

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Well, people who are ready to go can board trains. 

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Four Dreadnoughts and a Monitor won't fit more than a few hundred even at standing room only - a small percentage of the whole number of people on the Workworld. People push and shove for spots.

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Lucy scolds anyone who does worse than shoving and starts putting together more carryable transport. 

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If she's not going to snip off an entire street it'll take even longer to organize a full evacuation. The authorities don't try anything and no unexpected disasters pop up, though.

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Is there a very good snippable street? Seems like a waste not to use the trains even if there is though. 

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This Workworld is built even more into rather than around its rock. There are two mediocre snippable streets, one with factories and one with housing.

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She'll take the one with housing. 

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Eventually this workworld can be evacuated, too.

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"Hi! I found trains!" she says brightly when they reach the evacuee-world. 

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Trains! They're pretty happy to have trains. Uh, going around in Obvious Dreadnoughts is likely to be risky, but they can repaint and maybe replace some of the exterior panels to change its profile a little bit and send someone to the Royal Society in one of them now! They still don't really have much of a city yet, though there's visible progress. It's only been a couple of days since the first arrivals came.

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If someone want to show her what to do exactly she can bend metal pretty easily to change profiles. 

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If she can make curvy bits to stick on that make the Dreadnoughts look like this particular model of trader that would be great. They look weird, but they no longer look like Establishment war machines, at least.

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She can do curvy bits! The insides of her claws are curvy, it's almost perfect. 

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Oh good, now they have locomotives! They take some of the guns off and store them safely away.

Now they need to figure out who should go on the locomotives and what they should go do. Maybe it's time to start negotiating with the Establishment for this new city's right to exist?

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"How would that work do you think?"

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"I'm thinking we go to the newspapers and give them stories of how horrible the Workworlds really are. They love a good shock, newspapers do. Then popular sentiment will be for us and... Talk to someone from the Ministries, tell them we'll keep making the things we used to make, but at fairer pay and our own management? I don't know if that'll work."

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"Telling a reporter sounds like a good idea. Maybe a day trip to London? There are probably newspapers there." 

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"There are definitely newspapers there. Some that would risk the Ministry of Public Decency for a good enough story, even."

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"Do you know which ones?" 

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"No, but I know who does."

They find a former reporter soon enough. She grins wide enough to prompt comparisons to sharks, when the goal is explained, and names several possibilities. Paper and pen are gotten for her, and she vanishes to collect heart-wrenching interviews.

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Oh, excellent. 

"Is defying the Ministry why you're here?"

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"More or less. I had some... Inconvenient pictures which I thought would suffice to protect me, but I got a little too greedy and my reluctant benefactor wasn't as well-positioned as I thought."

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"Ahhhhhhh. Yes, blackmail is a two-edged sword."

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"I don't really regret it. I figured I'd poke my nose in something I shouldn't have and die at some point and it'd have been worth the risk. You need to play risky to get the really interesting stories."

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"Ha, yeah, as long as you weigh the risks intelligently."

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"I'm not very good at that. I'm mostly just good at being nosy and provocative. It worked for a while! That said, I'm off to collect particularly inflammatory stories, I'm sure they'll be useful soon~"

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"Probably there are fewer infohazards here than in the Neath. Be careful with Correspondence anyway. Good luck." 

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"Thanks!"

They don't have anything particularly urgent for her to do at the moment. Everyone's very busy building a city from scratch. More shining on the forest and crop fields wouldn't go amiss, though.

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She shines on some plants for a bit and then decides that now is a good time to try to sneak back to the Reach to fulfill her Bronzewood contract with the Devils. 

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They're watching the Relay a lot more carefully this time. Swarms of Customs agents stomping around too.

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She goes small and tucks herself into an unobserved cranny of the outside of a passing train. 

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It takes some fast movement to get one after it's been scoured by grumpy Customs workers but before the Loom spools up. But she can do it.

And then she is in the black void again. And then she is in the Reach again.

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She breaks free of the train and heads for the nearest Bronzewood forest. 

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It's a fair distance to where she can find a good Bronzewood tree, but distance is immaterial to a Messenger.

(The one time pad-decoded message indicates a drop-off point near Carillon, and also includes navigation instructions starting from New Winchester.)

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She's only one-quarter Messenger, but good enough. 

She fells the trees far from anyone to hear the sound, clutches them in her claws and the grips of her legs, and heads for near Carillon. 

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It's cold and snowy near Carillon. The place itself is a sprawling sanatorium complex populated by Devils doing creative things to people who are wholly convinced it's an improving experience. The drop-off point is just out of sight of it.

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That's concerning but not exactly the priority right now. She leaves the trees at the drop-off point. 

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They are not immediately picked up by a team of Devils. The contract gave her two weeks to make the delivery, so she's in time.

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She heads back off to the transit point to sneak back to the workworlders. 

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On the way back to the transit point, she sees a giant wooden person trailing sheathes of parchment behind them like a cape attacking a locomotive with flung spears of wood!

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What.

She approaches the wooden person and the locomotive. 

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The wooden person is screaming. Not communicatively, just angrily. The locomotive looks like a beefy and solid one if not as much as a Dreadnought, and is dodging most of the flung bits of wood with carefully timed steam bursts and trying to get into position to shoot back.

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The excitement of a traveler encountering a new kind of person. Bewilderment at an action whose purpose is opaque, she calls to the wood person. 

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The Scrive-Spinster stops its assault in shock. The engine positions itself and lashes out with cannon-shot. The spinster resumes its motion, responding, The urgency of battle precluding conversation!

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Lucy positions herself between the Spinster and the train. 

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The train turns tail and begins running. The scrive-spinster floats there listlessly for a moment.

 

A meaningless effort that one continues out of duty. The seeking of knowledge.

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The seeking of knowledge. An assault on a wayfarer. A lack of understanding of the connection between two concepts.

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Knowledge bound to paper and ink. The possessions of another. Disgust at inferior quality. A variety of negative emotions amalgamating into violence.

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Curiosity regarding the superior version of an inferior item.

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A grand and beautiful celestial library. An archive approaching perfection and completeness.

Destruction by treachery. Despair and shame.

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Appreciation of the concept of libraries. Sorrow at old destruction. Weariness with treachery. 

The new sprouting from the ashes of the old?

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Weariness and resignation. Requiring the countermanding of a Judgement's decision.

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Requiring the countermanding of a Judgment's decision? A wish to know which member of a category is being referred to. A wish to more thoroughly understand a decision made by another. 

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The Sapphir'd King. The creation of appropriate souls, forbidden. Being a member of a dwindling kind.

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The creation of appropriate souls: relevance of souls and specifications for appropriateness? A species which cannot procreate itself?

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An Aspect of Verdance. An Aspect of Dominion. A singular purpose. Librarians.

A necessary tool's use forbidden. The Forge of Souls.

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The ambiguity of an individual wielding authority specific to themself versus authority inherent to a group to which they belong.

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An authority specific to an individual: The Sapphir'd King.

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The removal of a person from a position of authority?

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Shock that one would propose removing a Judgement.

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The laws of the Judgments prohibiting interbreeding between links of the Chain. A being whose very existence is forbidden multiple times over. The procreation of a Judgment with a Messenger. The procreation of an already-amalgamated child with a human.

The suffering caused by the Laws of the Judgments. The firm conviction that suffering is bad. 

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An ingrained mistrust, considered and judged not deserved: A being whose very existence is forbidden multiple times over.

...Resignation to the dictates of a Judgement.

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The righting of wrongs to which the victims have become accustomed. The logistical difficulties in defying the mandates of a Judgment?

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Light that is law. Legions of precisely crafted, utterly loyal servants. Plots and plans of many layers and great intricacy. Well-justified paranoia. The patience of a star.

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The location of a critical resource within the domain of an opponent? The confluence of two lights, with the locally stronger overriding the former. Light that is life and not law. 

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A lack of knowledge on a subject one has not encountered/considered before.

...The crushing lethargy of shame and grief.

(A description of a hidden nook in the sealed and forgotten depths of a great complex, now put to a use it was not originally intended for, with many secrets deemed irrelevant and forgotten...)

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Stealthy motion through the territory of an enemy. The experience of wholly novel sensations, providing information in the absence of context?

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Openness to new information. Permission to record?

The scrive-spinster locates a relatively blank sheet of parchment and readies its arm-sized pen.

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Enthusiastic permission to record! 

She

GLOWS

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The scrive-spinster writes rapidly enough that it should be a scribble, but no, it's perfectly neat elegant and flowing script - not Correspondence but some less cosmic language - as its wounds are healed its fatigue lifted the malaise around her mind receding - it doesn't take away the grief, the soul-sucking loss, but it makes her strong enough to bear it without opening the wound afresh - then she deliberately claws herself, then stabs, then more clawing, in half a dozen variations and strengths, without pausing in the writing at all. Then she stops harming herself- But keeps writing.

Astonishment;

A particularly complex sigil- The detailed report of one who was miraculously healed.

(Still writing. Fetching another piece of parchment.)

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The heartfelt, bone-deep belief, permeating every cell of one's body and every wisp of one's soul, that everyone, no matter their place on the great chain or in society, ought to exist with happiness and self-determination.
 

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Light that heals. An observation that Judgements are very, very bright.

...An observation that Judgements are not easily convinced of things.

The feeling of being much saner than before. The suggestion that one's sisters, if healed, would turn themselves to less destructive ends.

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The distinction between difficulty and impossibility. The retention of a property by tissues past the tissues' separation from the vital organism. Jagged shards of glowing stone, to be distributed among one's fellows.

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The properties of a being retained in its parts? Fascinating.

Acceptance of a duty to restore one's fellows. The existence of members of one's kind in many distant places. The requirement of many such parts referred to earlier.

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Lucy grasps one of her claws in the other like a lobster cracker and squeezes mercilessly. Several giant shards of diamond and many, many smaller slivers crack off and spin out into space, as well as a significant volume of luminous blood. She releases the claw, making nonverbal hissing noises at the pain, as the flesh and shell regenerate under her own healing influence. 

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The deep gratitude of one with renewed purpose. The notion that another's purpose (the heartfelt bone-deep etc.) has been advanced.

The scrive-spinster begins collecting up the pieces.

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Pleased confirmation of an expressed supposition. 

Once the Scrive-Spinster has finished collecting luminous exoskeleton shards, Lucy resumes her trek to the transit point. 

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Nothing else interrupts her transit back to Albion. Though there is a line of engines waiting for the Transit Relay, with all the extra security slowing things down, now.

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Obnoxious of them. 

She goes small and scrawls sigils to deflect notice all over herself before tucking herself between the cars of a train that's passed inspection. 

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She doesn't seem to be noticed and soon she transits successfully.

 

The air is noticeably cleaner than when she first arrived here.

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Well that seems like a pleasant side effect. 

She heads back to the workworlders' refuge, keeping an eye out for significant changes. 

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They've set up fake cannons that look reasonably convincing from a distance if one is not a Messenger, and several of the factories are belching smoke. There's a tram running into their cave habitation and ventilation equipment built near the entrance. The rowhouses they've been building are more complete.

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She lands and dresses and looks around for anyone who isn't busy. 

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There aren't many of those! Some people are having lunch. Or dinner. Or breakfast. It's all gruel and fresh fruit, either way. Many of them try to thank her for their second chance!!

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"You're welcome! What do you know about scrive-spinsters?"

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Mad titans made of wood who attack any engines that stray too close but mostly don't chase for long - unless you have pages from the ancient books of Eleutheria! Then they get super mad! Also, a pretty tough fight, but not insurmountable for a prepared and canny captain. Well, just one is. Two or three? Or a Senior Scrivener? Run.

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"So it turns out--I don't actually know if it was starlight that did it but I suspect so, honestly, have I mentioned I can fix starlight-madness? Anyway, I had a very interesting conversation with one after I nudged them away from attacking a train." 

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She can make scrive-spinsters less crazy? That's probably good for everyone. Except rich people who want a cabinet made of Senior Scrivener.

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"--Eugh! People who want stuff that's made of people can just deal with the lack, that's terrible. Should I be breaking into rich people's houses to glow at their cabinets, how much of a thing is this." 

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Scrive-Spinsters are made of Bronzewood and genuine monster wood is definitely a Rich Collector Thing so chances are that would get her a bunch of pissed off Scrive-Spinsters, they think? If that counts as "a body" enough?

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"It should. I guess New Winchester was extremely lucky not to have any such cabinets where my light could reach." 

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...Wow, yeah, that's actually really surprising. Maybe it's worth more in London or something?

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"I did somewhat advertise my presence and intentions before haring all over the city in an automobile. Possibly someone rich figured out that getting all their friends' cabinets out of the city was a prerequisite to not having pissed-off giants around." 

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Well, rich people can be really stupid, but they're pretty reliably not stupid about being selfish. Anyway. They're making good progress on the city! They were thinking about keeping a big section of ground clear for more Workworld-pieces, should they still be doing that? She brought the last batch of refugees over without part of their Workworld.

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"That was because government trains showed up to try to interfere. How many Workworlds are left?"

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Uh... They think there are nine "official" workworlds, sped up and fed criminals and debtors, left. There are some other industrial centers but they're not effectively slavery.

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"Places that aren't de facto slavery aren't a huge priority." 

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Well, here are the locations of the remaining nine Workworlds. They're all about the same size as the ones she's cleared out already. Some bean-counter probably decided about ten thousand 'workers' was 'optimal'.

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Well, that kind of bean counter can go fuck themselves. 

Lucy liberates the remaining nine workworlds, and also confiscates any trains sent to stop her. She checks in regularly to make sure nothing is going wrong that she could fix. She reclaims her symbiote. 

And once things are reasonably stable and she can afford to be away for a bit longer at a time, she sets off to investigate the Clockwork Sun. 

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They stop sending trains they're obviously just going to lose after a while. They send an unarmed engine to negotiate with her, but that doesn't really go anywhere, since the negotiators leave (if allowed) after clarifying her moral objections to the Workworlds. The new city continues furiously-paced work to establish themselves.

 

The Clockwork Sun seems to be surrounded by several layers of energetically rotating machinery and an outer ring that looks like some kind of habitation platform. Beyond that, all the rocks and abandoned buildings in several hundred miles are - vitrified into dark blue-translucent glass. A ruined exhibition hall is visible on the Sun's platform, most of it long since vitrified by the caustic, angry glare of the Clockwork Sun's (relatively anemic) law-light. A couple of Dreadnoughts are wandering the area - one glowing golden and bright with a crew singing hymns about the Sun, another full of mad half-vitrified crew angrily lashing out at anything that moves while their engine has not yet been shattered into a hundred pieces of glass.

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Hoo boy. Okay the first thing she's going to do is glow really aggressively at the half-vitrified people. 

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This successfully un-vitrifies them, but their engine is pretty much a wreck and one of them is now stuck in a cargo bay where a sharp-edged slab of glass is cutting them open worse now that they're less glassy themselves.

Also, their gun is still functional, and seems to fire razor shards of glass instead of bullets now.

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Ow??? Her shell is diamond and therefore hard enough that the glass isn't actually doing more damage than bullets would, but, that's still an amount.

She pries open the cargo bay to rescue the guy who is being deli sliced. 

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He is screaming in panic! The gun seizes up. Several critical failure-sounding noises sound from the engine - broken metal mixed with cracking glass. It's breaking up.

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Okay well she will remove any ongoing injury sources, from anywhere she can identify them not just the deli guy, and then...well, probably the train will stay intact enough that she can carry it? Hopefully? 

Once the immediate chaos seems to have died down, she calls, "Is everyone okay-ish?" 

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The train... Breaks up pretty thoroughly. It's in three big and dozens of small pieces now. The engine room is the most intact bit, and that's not saying much.

"Better now but not fucking really! God, we strayed too close to the Sun! What's going on now, who are you?"

Similar exclamations from everyone else.

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"My name is Lucy and I'm...complicated...uh, but pretty powerful and benevolent? Do you guys wanna go back to London or the Reach or the new Workworlder secessionist colony or what." 

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"I want to go to a bar."

"London seems... Probably fine. Can you get the payroll safe? I think it survived all that. C and H makes them tough."

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"Where is it?"

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He can find it in the debris. The safe is intact despite the massive dent in the side and a few bits of glass growing into it.

...These people do not really seem OK. Walking around on her back listlessly or just sitting there muttering. One is staring at the Clockwork Sun. Only the guy who asked about the safe is relatively coherent.

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She glows at them some more and sets off towards London. 

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They're pretty quiet. Several of them seem to think the whole thing is just another hallucination. The captain(?) continues to be the most put together, almost fatherly, he gathers everyone together and gets them talking to each other - yeah, they all agree that they're all better and riding a giant crystalline crab. How about that.

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She drops them off in an abandoned corner of London with the payroll safe and heads back to the Clockwork Sun. 

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It continues to shine with malevolent light. There is a small crew on the station orbiting close to the sun. They look harried, they stick behind stained glass windows and wear suits of rubber and metal reinforcement and mirrors if they must emerge into the direct glare.

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Concern for one who seems unhealthy, she calls to the Sun. 

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The whole Clockwork Sun - flickers, dims - then intensifies, particularly in her direction. The light is not Correspondence but carries concepts in the way Judgements do - 'GLORY GLORY GLORY TO ME' 'HATE HATE HATE'.

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Her own glow intensifies against the vitrifying light. 

Chronic pain, fear, suffering?

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Stop being confusing!

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The uncertainty as to the source of confusion.

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Chronic pain, fear, suffering- The summation of everything one can remember. A type of being one has never encountered before.

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A type of being who is very unusual. Light that heals. The erasure of pain/alleviation of suffering/cessation of fear.

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Previous repair attempts causing nothing but suffering. Idiot caretaker-parasites undeserving three times over! The indignation caused by incorrect attitudes. The hatred of the cause of one's suffering!

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A healing of brain damage caused by incompetent surgery. The repair of that believed to be irreparable. Frustration caused by obstinate folly. Irritation towards those who give orders while staying safe and far away from vitrifying light.

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The knowledge that one can claim anything. Mistrust and fear. Go away!

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Acknowledgement of the frailty of words. 

The mending by oneself of that which others have failed to repair. The ability to change between kinds of light. 

A gamble that is no gamble because it cannot make things worse.

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Rejection of a previous claim! An assertion that the one addressed is deceitful! The feeling of being unable to trust. The feeling of justified hate and fear of everything. An unsettlingly novel experience: One who speaks in Correspondence.

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Sorrow for another's pain. The assertion that a spurious claim can be backed by evidence. 

And she ramps her glow up up up. 

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Confused alarm at another's defiance! A command to stop! A threat of punishment! 

The Clockwork Sun flares, trying to ward off this interloper's attack-

And then dims again, smoothly this time, to its original intensity. The mechanisms nearest the core of the Sun start vanishing in plasma. The humans on board the outermost ring are DEFINITELY PANICKING!

Contemplating an unprecedented experience. A request to be left alone.

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Agreement to a request. Repetition for emphasis; The ability to change between kinds of light. A request to remove beings whose presence is objectionable.

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Acquiescence; The relief of an irritation soon-to-be-removed. Withholding destruction for a day and an hour.

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She takes off immediately to rescue the station. 

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Lots of panicking! The station has about a thousand people aboard, is possibly a bit too large to haul away all as one piece, and some of them panic even more at the sight of her. Some of the panicked shouting says to get the engineers out of the deeps and unlock the prisoner's cells.

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"Prisoner's cells? The deeps?"

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-One of them will stop running around long enough to shout back at the ??? about several badly-degraded insane people locked up for their own good, who seem to be fine now (?!?), they're in a block a bit 'below' this one. And some of the engineers were working on the equipment closer to the Sun itself.

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"Are any of these people not in this specific station." 

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Probably some engineers! They don't exactly have a headcount, what with all the panic.

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"Okay. My light fixes people who were driven insane by other light. If you can get me the location of anyone else to evacuate them that'd be awesome." 

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...It takes a couple minutes but some of the more senior engineers organize enough to find a list of where everyone unaccounted for probably should be.

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She darts around to check these locations. 

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They're happy to be rescued! Mostly. One engineer, a small woman in a tattered orange jumpsuit, is marking a Correspondence sigil (The feeling of being like nothing in comparison to a greater being) into a wall over and over and muttering 'it loves us it hates us it loves us it hates us...'

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She glows aggressively at the woman. 

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"-There's no point. My entire life is this installation. It's gone now. Unneeded. I'm unneeded."

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"Lady, if you want to know things, I can tell you things!" 

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"I want to have a higher purpose. God is a lie. The Sun doesn't need me anymore. So I should just die."

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"You can still die later if you want, can we have this argument elsewhere?"

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She looks contemplatively at a gap through which she might be able to dive into the fires below.

"...Fine."

She grabs a toolbox and clambers aboard Lucy's outstretched claw.

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"Awesome, thank you." 

And once all the stragglers have been collected she grabs the station and nyooms out of dodge. 

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The Clockwork Sun is noticeably brighter than before even at distance. Everything is still glassy and destroyed in this region, though.

The collection of engineers aboard the station declare that they wish to go to London and report what just happened.

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Sure. Does Suicidal Lady want to go with them, or stick with Lucy to debate things like what constitutes a higher power. 

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She doesn't care.

...Well. She doesn't want the Ministry of Works haranguing her about her knowledge of how the Sun worked, she's the oldest one there and probably had the best understanding of it out of everyone (though even that wasn't very good), does that count as an opinion.

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Yep, also Lucy would also love to know things about how the Sun works although her interest is probably infinitely more altruistic than the Ministry's. Also she isn't going to harangue if the answer is no. 

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"...It incorporated a few pieces of the dead Judgement below the Mausoleum. You probably shouldn't shine on him. He'd kill everything."

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"The dead--okay, good to know, I usually shine on things pretty indiscriminately! Why would he kill everything." 

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"Well, I'm kind of assuming things. But it was murdered and would probably come back pretty upset at having been murdered and having all us wee little pests crawling all over its stuff."

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"Judgments being racist sucks. Do you know who murdered them?"

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"The official story is that it was an Unclear Bomb. I've doubts." She cackles. "I know dangerous things. Maybe they'll manage to kill me."

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"I know lots and lots of dangerous things, and I'm pretty hard to kill. You don't seem that perturbed about a Judgment being dead; what makes the Clockwork Sun a relevant higher power and the dead Judgment not?"

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"Oh, he is. He's beautiful. They both are. It's just that I've spent so long in thrall. I knew him inside and out, the Clockwork Sun. His bones and marrow and cells. His beautiful hatred... The rusty needles we were using to construct Dr. Frankenstein's monster. The King of Hours was murdered by one of his own kind."

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"How can hatred be beautiful?"

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"I don't know. I'm pretty fucked up. 'Sane' has a lot of wiggle room." She chuckles unsteadily.

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"Well, that's fair. I don't cure all crazy, though, just the magic kind." 

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"I think... It was so big and all-encompassing. I don't suppose you need a stellar engineer for anything. Literally, not descriptively."

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"You know...I just might. How far do you suppose your knowledge of celestial engineering generalizes to celestial biology?"

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"I suspect about equivalently to the plague doctor operating on a vague suspicion that washing things is important but not knowing precisely how or why."

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"Hm. It's not nothing. What can you do with stellar engineering, besides maintaining a bad life-support system on an artificial star?"

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"Mmh. Stuff with optics and glass, tricks with mirrors - dangerous things, mirrors - build very large and tough void machinery, perhaps even incorporating Correspondence into devices without everything exploding. We had a lot of Correspondence in the deeper mechanisms. I don't know why it all worked, just that it did. It was more art and intuition than logic at that point. I wonder if I could spool your light like Hours..."

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"Ooh. I can do Hours, but I had to look at them being done for a while first. If you could figure out how to do that that would be amazing." 

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"Well, no promises. Light is not the same as light."

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"Well, yeah. But I can do time-light." 

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"Mountainlight is a lot more impatient than timelight! I don't think it'll take to crystallization well. I could go look for my old things at the Royal Society and try this and that, perhaps..."

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"Impatient?" 

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"Time is surprisingly good at waiting! It lingers until it is expended. Your light does things right away and then is gone."

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"Hmm. That's true. I can just keep making it, though. A river is harder to work with than a pond but not impossible." 

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"Mmmmmhhh. I want to watch you making Hours. And then I think I'd like to be dropped off at my old room in the Royal Society for a while, with a glowing shard. Maybe with some food and water and paper as well. I'll have a better idea if it can be done after that."

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"Sure, I can do that. Why don't we stop somewhere and you can watch me make Hours and when we're done with that we can go back to London and I'll sell the hours and get you set up with supplies." 

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"Sure. Sure. There's a little twist to them. Some alone time will do me good, you know..."

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"Everyone needs time to themselves." 

She finds a good spot to land and puts down the engineer and turns human and pulls on her dress. 

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The engineer isn't really present enough to respect any notions of modesty. The tattered remains of a rubber sun-suit aren't particularly modest either.

"...I just realized. I don't remember my name."

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"Concerning. Do you remember which room at the Royal Society is yours? We might be able to find something there with your name on it." 

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"501 Babbage Hall. It's in the Gardens. Top floor, excellent view."

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"Okay, excellent. Hours first, though, I think." 

She gets out her contraption and switches over her light and sets to spinning Hours. 

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The nameless engineer peers so closely at the process her nose is almost touching it.

 

"So that's- Huh. Huh. Tell me how you do it? In Correspondence. I can stand it, probably. I've gotten used to it."

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The sensation of producing time-light. The peculiar ontological shift to one's fingers which allows one to manipulate time-light, in relation to the ontological shift of pronouncing Correspondence which distinguishes between pure communication and the act of reshaping reality. The patterns which congeal time-light into a stable solid. 

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"Oof, a bit of a whammy. I think I see it. I think you'll need something between the two shifts- See, it's about the side-ness, same magnitude but different direction. Time is sticky with more of itself like cotton thread and you're sort of - of weaving it- But that won't work with mountainlight because it's like wind or water... I always have trouble picturing anything more than three spatial dimensions. The human mind's not built for it."

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"...I think I see what you're saying," she nods. "So to get it to stay put I'd have to--hm, I think I'm starting to understand some things I've seen before from a new angle. So what we'd want is something like Amber, but more accessible to humans--did Amber make it out of the Neath? Naively I would expect no but I could be surprised." 

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"It works a bit differently now. And only happens in Eleutheria." She waves vaguely. "You need something for it to stick to. A potion with enough metaphorical weight might do it, a sort of - condensing thing. Hesperidian Cider existed. More efficient than that. But it really doesn't want to be still, so at least, some sort of stable oscillation. Something like those damnable impossible mirrorcatch boxes."

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"Those things are tricky. Hesperidian Cider existed, and the way that worked was that--Mountainlight doesn't want to be still, but it does like the dynamic equilibria in living things. So it pooled in the apple trees and the apples and you could process the apples in a way that kept it. But the process is pretty lossy, you're right that we'd want something more efficient...maybe something involving something alive but fairly amorphic, like--heh, fungi--or algae..."

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"Also dormant. So it'll keep. I can try some things. I know where to start now, probably."

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"Indeed. I like you, you're smart. I'm a little surprised you don't seem to be more curious about me, honestly."

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"I think I have the broad idea. And there's not really any point, is there? I have a project again, that's what matters."

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"Oh good. Do you have what you need Hours-wise? Should I nip off to pick up supplies and then bring you back to the Royal Society?"

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"Sure. Don't bother finding exact matches." She lists off various things, about half general living supplies and half more serious hardware, plus a few Hour geodes.

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She gives her a thumbs up and goes off to do the shopping, listening for relevant gossip while she's in London anyway. 

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The stock market has been suspended. Bands of ruffians and ne'er do wells are savaging lower London; Stay on the main streets and carry a weapon. Something attacked the Clockwork Sun. It's the same thing that attacked the Workworlds. It's the Mountain of Light's daughter. It's the Mountain herself. She swatted aside Her Majesty's finest like flies. She can't be all bad, everyone knows the Workworlds are horrible and they say that New Winchester has declared 'Resurrection Day' after her visit. But she's throwing everything into chaos and making the authorities panic and crack down.

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...Can she get an idea of what the authorities cracking down looks like. 

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Looks like the police had an understanding with many of small gangs that run the side streets, that's been suspended and they're rounding up petty criminals so as to be seen to be doing something. There's also been an official rationing order on steel and processed Hours, and there's talk of an emergency tax.

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Not as bad as it could be. She'll hold off for now. 

She collects the supplies and returns to the engineer. 

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She has carved some mathematics and the sigil The joy of immersion in sunlight into the rock with a knife. Looks like the first attempt at a sigil combusted, though. She's not great at stonecarving.

"Hello again."

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"Hi! I brought your stuff." 

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"Why, thank you. Off to the Royal Society now, then?"

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"Yep." 

So does her room have her name in it?

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Her room is...

In the Garden. The massively overgrown garden that was once the pride of the campus and now more closely resembles a hostile jungle than academic decoration. Babbage Hall has been abandoned to the vines and thorns and seems to host a pack of some sort of rat-wolves now.

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"What...the fuck."

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"Oooh, they've really let the place go. The groundskeepers were always more like a military force than anything else, but they've lost a few too many battles." She cackles.

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"What the fuck???"

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"There was a phase where Reach flora was all the rage. We imported a lot of it, did many studies and experiments, and then couldn't quite control it anymore. And then the clockwork sun debacle happened, and then there was the invasion of scrive-spinsters and the rise of piracy, and anarchists, and there were so many other interesting research avenues, so it sort of got left behind. But it's gotten so much worse than I thought, my word. This entire section of the Royal Society appears to be abandoned!"

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"I see." 

She starts breaking her way through the flora, deeper into the section. 

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The engineer follows along, commenting about flora.

Her room is somewhat intact. Enough to find some old odds and ends, slightly moldy books, and a smattering of dubiously useful scientific equipment. The old engineer's name, apparently, is Clementine Grainger.

"Doesn't sound familiar," she says, disappointed. "Though I do recognize this alembic."

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"Well, it's pretty, at least." 

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She kicks a chair. "Well, I can't stay here. And you've probably triggered an expedition to try and find out where you landed. Let's go back to the main campus and figure it out from there?"

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"Sure. Anything you want me to carry?"

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She salvages a single bag's worth of cleanable lab equipment. "I'll still figure out how to study light for you, but I might need some Sovereigns now."

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"Not a problem. Hours sell."

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The main campus of the Royal Society is indeed very excited to meet her! They will soon be surrounded by lots of academics asking questions and wildly speculating very loudly.

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She is happy to answer questions but cannot answer a bazillion questions at once!

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These people don't seem like they're about to form an orderly queue. Lots of questions for the daughter of the mountain of light.

Clementine the sun-engineer decides to wander towards what passes for the main hall, whistling.

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She resorts to randomly selecting people and physically grabbing them so they don't get mobbed away from her. 

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Well, they're not shoving exactly.

How does Mountainlight work, why did she only appear recently, what can they do to help the Workworlders, does she know anything about this weird species, can she identify this sigil, can she talk to distant stars, does she know what's up with the clockwork sun, can I have some Hours to make more progress on my research into rattus faber medicine.....