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Finish It: Scheffenon

This is written for my third Finish It! Bingo Card, coming after R is for Rituals and Linguistic Tricks.

If Eliška Konvalinka had been male and still an Informer, she would have found some friendly person and asked them to show her how to tie the complicated head-scarf she’d – he’d – seen here and there throughout the crowds. If she’d guessed right, the person she asked would have a tie to the people with those scarves, who spoke in a strange language when speaking to each other and who held themselves apart from the rest of Scheffenon.

Since she was firstly an Informer, she repeated the teaching poem of Scheffenon to herself several times, taking notes of the parts that might relate, and then she spent the evenings of two weeks in the library, reading up on all of the strange histories of Scheffenon.

What she learned about the people whose men wore head-scarves and whose language had trilled r’s and susurration in their s’s could have filled, were she a small-fingered woman, a thimble. She learned far more about the Cornesc-speaking people, who made up most of the population of Scheffenon (and, it seemed, almost all of the city’s government, their rich, and their powerful); she learned how they had come south to Scheffenon – south, to a city so far north parts of its harbor froze in the winter – back before the Empire had reached this far, and how they had taken a small fishing town and turned it into the jewel of the Northern Sea that it was now. Scheffenon, she learned, was not a Cornesc word, but one from the people who had been here before.

What she learned about the statues – the nerieds and the octopi and such – was that nobody liked to write about them, nobody liked to talk about them, and that the one Informer who had asked too many questions of local government officials had simply vanished.

Informers did that; it was a hazard of the profession. Normally, that would trigger several more Informers to be sent to the vanished location en masse, but in the case of Scheffenon, the powers-that-be had sent a single Informer with the instruction “be careful.”

Eliška learned one more thing of interest – although the majority of the people in Scheffenon spoke Cornesc and had been doing so for centuries, they were most definitely not of the original Western Torvaldic ethnic and religious group which had given birth to the language, and the very oldest records here showed an abrupt and complete switch from some unknown language to Cornesc. And Cornesc, itself, was a heavily idiomatic, strangely-inflected relative of other West Torvaldic languages, spoken nowhere else at all in the Empire.

She saved that piece of information in a series of carefully encrypted notes. Scheffenon had a long and very cold winter, and she could spend that time doing some linguistic study of the West Torvaldic languages. Now, the weather was as warm as it was going to get, and Eliška had some more hands-on research to do.

She had no man in a head-scarf to ask the aid of, but she’d noticed that one of the maids at the Informers’ Embassy wore her hair with three parts and kept a sheathed knife on a necklace just under her Embassy uniform. It would have to do.

She waited until the maid was cleaning her room, something the girl did once every week. “Excuse me.” Eliška used her most careful Cornesc, that sounded uncertain. “I want to go out on the street, to meet some people, but all the clothes I have with me, they’re mostly from down in the far South, and they make me stand out. And my hair, I last learned how to do anything with it in the Capital, and I keep seeing these three-parted braids which look fascinating…”

The maid’s hand went to her hair. “The three-part, it is…” She started to say something, stopped, and tried again. “If you want to look like you belong here in Scheffenon, the three-parted braid is not the way to go. The women here, the Scheffenonan women, they don’t do that.”

“But you do.” Eliška feigned ignorance well. Feigning ignorance was an entire series of classes in the Informer curriculum. “And I’ve seen other women, and they look as if they belong here…”

“There are women that do. There will always be women who wear the three-part, here in Scheffenon. But it’s not the way to look like you belong.”

Eliška pretended to parse that. “So it’s, mmm, oh. Like, in my home city, there is a small group of people, I don’t think we make up more than one in a hundred, and that number has been dwindling.” She ducked her head, as if embarrassed that she had been one of the ones to make it dwindle more. “There tends to be a lot of outward migration. But our people, when we’re home – even when I go home, we wear the pilezcth, it’s a type of scarf that covers your head and your shoulders, all the way down to your elbows, men and women both. You can tell where in the city someone comes from by the weave in their pilezcth and the way they tie it, here, and here,” she touched her temples and her right shoulder.

It was all true, of course. The best stories came from truth – something there were also classes on in the Informer training. But it had the advantage of also getting the reaction she was aiming for.

“Like that, I think. There aren’t that many of us who still wear the three-part, who still keep the old ways. The Scheffenonan, there are more of them every year, like little fish that don’t fear the shark.” She clucked quietly. “But you, you are an Informer and you want to know everything?”

“It’s my job to know everything.” That hadn’t been the direction Eliška had been expecting from this conversation.

“Then I will take you to a place, a family place. They’ll show you the three-braid and some other things, things that help, when knowing this city.” The maid considered Eliška for a moment. “The skirt you wore when you left yesterday? Would you wear that with your family-scarf?”

“It came from my mother,” Eliška admitted with a small smile. “It seemed like it would fit, here in Scheffenon.”

“It’s a good choice. Wear that and a family scarf, so that they understand that you, too, know what traditions are like.” The maid’s smile was a little too knowing. “You know quite a bit, but the trick is to convince others that you know it, too.”

Eliška smiled back at the maid, but she was beginning to wonder exactly who was gathering information on whom. “When would you like to take me to meet these people?”

“The day after tomorrow, in the afternoon. You have your meetings in the morning, yes?”

“Yes.” Eliška managed not to stop smiling. The main, of course the maid would know the habits of the people she cleaned for, and that was all that was. Of course.

The Fedder’s-Day afternoon found Eliška putting on clothes she hadn’t worn, except in training classes, since the joined the ranks of the Informers. She folded and wrapped her head-scarf carefully, the three end folds hanging over her left ear, the pleats in the front telling anyone who could read them the block and street she’d grown up on. The skirt was of a kind, but seen much more commonly around the empire: fitted at the waist with a wide, sturdy waistband, then with plenty of walking room around the knees and ankles. The blouse was sturdy and work-worthy, and the vest fitted and matching the skirt. She looked, she thought, like any of a thousand different groups of working-women, except the scarf. The scarf, like a language, narrowed things down.

The maid met her at her chamber door, dressed not in her Embassy uniform but in a vest like Eliška’s and a narrower, heavier skirt. It was a split skirt, Eliška realized, trading width for mobility in separate legs. “Good,” she declared, on looking over Eliška. “You look more like a person now, and less like the Empire.”

But she was the Empire, Eliška wanted to protest. She was always the Empire, everywhere she went, whatever she was wearing.

“I’m HenÞer, by the way. The Scheffenonan around here, they call me Hennie, they don’t like that sound in the middle.”

“HenÞer,” Eliška tried. “It’s a lovely name. Do you want me to call you that or Hennie?”

HenÞer was looking at her sidelong; Eliška thought she might have won this round. “You have a way with language, you Informers. The one before you was good, too. But she didn’t notice the hair.”

“We each have our own strengths. It’s why we rotate out so frequently.” It was part of why they rotated out, but she was not so far gone as to give away all of the Informers’ secrets. “Shall we go?”

“Of course.” HenÞer led Eliška through back-alleys and cobbled lanes that had been bypassed by wider, smoother roads. Once she led her up two flights of stairs, through a sort of mid-building courtyard, and down the other side into a more conventional courtyard.

Eliška noticed, among other things in their unconventional route, that in a city full of oceanic statues, mosaics and friezes, there was very little of that sort – almost none – along their route. One sad God-of-the-Sea eyed them from a bulletin board; HenÞer averted her eyes and did not pass near it.

There was – well, this was beyond “more to this than met the eye;” this was into “something rotten in Scheffenon” territory and verging close on “choose when the Empire must interfere, and choose it carefully.” Eliška was not certain yet what was going on; that would take more time. But she was now certain something was definitely happening.

That was for another time. Today, she followed HenÞer into a cheese shop, stopping politely to smell the pleasantly funky odors permeating the narrow store, and then out the back door into another courtyard.

In this courtyard, seven women and five men sat, the women working at embroiders and carving, the men working at knitting and small paintings. They were as Eliška had noted in other places – the women with their three-parted hairdos, the men with the headscarves.

Suddenly, in a way she had not in the streets, Eliška felt out of place. She called on every bit of her Informer training: she shifted her posture to act as an interested bystander; she looked around, cataloging the unusual things about the courtyard (The artwork was all geometric; in a small space crowded with design, every pattern was made up of interlocking shapes. There were planters everywhere, and fountains, and in all of this there was not a single depiction of marine life, or any life at all); she smiled.

The matron of the group walked over to them with the posture and stride of a soldier. “HenÞer. This is the Informer?”

“This is the Imperial Informer. Mother, Eliška, daughter of…”

“Iva,” Eliška put in.

“-Iva. Eliška na Iva, my mother, Trishka daughter of Henshker.”

Eliksa inclined her head politely. “I think you for the honor of this meeting.”

“We thank the Empire for noticing us. And, i believe, I can thank the Empire for noticing many things in your vision.”

“I am trained to notice things, Dame Trishka.”

“Training is one thing. Your eyes, your eyes are another. You see us, and I do not believe you saw us in the mirror. You see Scheffenon. You see the locked and the jailers.”

Eliška repeated the terms back, carefully. The woman was speaking Cornesc, but those weren’t words she’d expected to hear. “The locked and the jailers?” There were many things those terms could mean. Was she looking at a civil war in Scheffenon?

“The locked,” Trishka repeated, “and the jailers, those who lock, those things that lock.”

There was something about her eyes, the color of the sea on a cloudy day, the way they seemed to bore into Eliška. She swallowed as she considered the question.

That was all it took. “The locked,” she repeated, and this time she understood. “Yes, I see. And those – and that – which locks them.” The statues, and the friezes, and the mosaics. They were… “They’re locks. They’re bindings, we knew that. The fountains… oh, by the breast of the holiest mother, they’re chains. Not just the fountains; the whole of Scheffenon is, is’t it?” They’d know there were bindings, were locks. But what had been locked… They were locking up the water – no, not just the sea. They were locking up all in their reach of the sea. “How awful,” Eliška breathed.

HenÞer and her mother shared a look. “She sees,” HenÞer murmured. “She does.”

“Indeed.” Triska’s gaze bored into Eliška. “But what will do with the sight?”

This was not a question, Eliška realized; it was a challenge. It was a test, possibly her final test.

Elika raised her chin.

“The people of Scheffenon hold secrets close
But the answers are written on their walls & their shores,” she recited.
“The Scheffenon people have locked up the water;
bound up the sea and locked the magic it holds.
The people who conquered, they conquered and conquered
And conquer yet still with their fountains and concourses..”

The poem went on, and she spun it as she went. Triska and HenÞer nodded along.

Eliška took another breath.

“The city of Scheffenon serves as a lock
Every street is a tumbler, every fountain a hasp
The Keys to the Scheffenon lock must be found
To unlock the children of the water here bound.”

She met eyes with Triska and then with HenÞer. Both women nodded.

“I’ll contact my office tonight. But if something fails me in that time… you’ve heard the words. You can repeat them to any Informer, and they will understand. All right?”

“She sees,” Triska repeated quietly. “And she speaks.” She touched Eliška’s headdress with light fingers. “It may be too late. Locks rust closed, after time, and old passageways are replaced by new. But we thank you, nevertheless. For the seeing.”

“Go now,” HenÞer murmured. “Go now and see, as I go, as I see.”

It was the Informer’s private good-bye, what they said to each other when they didn’t know if they’d meet again. Eliška swallowed, feeling that there was still more she wasn’t seeing.

“Go now,” she finished the ritual, “and learn, as I go, as I learn.”

She had a feeling she would either not be in in Sheffenon for long – or she would be here forever.

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Child of the Unburnt Ash

After Æ is for Ash, for the Finish It! Bingo Round Two.

This came out super-weird, in part because Æ is for Ash seemed like a complete story to me as was. So it’s… tangential? Sort of? Also, it didn’t want to end.

The Unburnt Tree, it was said, guarded all within Corthwin and protected them from harm, mindful or accidental.

It was a bit poetic, of course. The tree – and the younger ash trees grown from its seeds – did not protect the entire city. People still died. Small fires still burned sometimes, in the city. Buildings fell and fists were raised in anger.

(There were cities whose gods were less wooden and slow, where those things no longer happened. Those cities were terrifying places to visit, and those who could leave did so posthaste).

But, poetic license or not, every child was brought before the giant ash, the Unburnt Tree, to give and receive blessings. Children who for one reason or another were considered especially at risk were given names calling one the ash, thus to invoke even more of its protection.

Æscleah had been brought before the tree, a skinny, sickly, weak and early-born child, when she was just a week old. Her parents and family had hoped to forestall the illness they were certain would kill her, so they had fed to her a paste made of the Unburnt Tree’s seeds, and for a week, they had left her cradle in the roots of the tree, feeding her but otherwise leaving her to the ash’s care.

She had thrived, against all hope, beyond all prayers. She had grown chubby, that week hugged by the Unburnt tree. She had gained color and strength, although she remained a quiet child, not prone to crying. And she had, after her rough start, an amazingly robust and lively childhood.

And yet… (Because even gods who do not terrify with their overbearing control are still gods, are still beyond the ken of mankind) …she remained quiet, this child of a boisterous family. She remained still when others were excited, calm when others cried. She reacted, true, but she reacted slowly and with deliberation.

People whispered. Many children had been set in the Unburnt Tree’s protection; many had been named after the Ash. Many had been blessed — and of all those many, only Æscleah had been so very firmly marked.

“She’s a changeling,” whispered people who had never seen a true change-child.

“She’s cursed,” muttered people who were new to the city, or who were uncertain about the ring of ash trees now growing up around Corthwin.

The tree-minders looked on her, when she was finally brought before them, and shook their heads, not recognizing what was before them. “She is a child,” they declared. “Nothing more, and nothing less. Treat her as a child, and nothing more… and nothing less.”

And so Æscleah’s family did their best. She was not their only child, not by far, and they treated her the same as any other child. When she did her chores, they praised her; when she wandered off to the ring of unburnt ash unbidden and un-permissioned, they punished her.

And she wandered, punishment or not, permission or not, more and more as she grew quicker and quicker with her chores and her schoolwork. If she was missing, she would be in the crook of the Unburnt Tree, or tending the ground or the branches of one of the small scions, or weeding the beds of companion plants surrounding the trees surrounding the city.

As she grew older, the punishments grew harsher and Æscleah’s disobedience grew larger. She would skip all of her chores for a week, only to do them without fail for two weeks. She would vanish for days and nights on end, only to reappear as if no time had passed at all. And she seemed to mind not any punishment her parents or her teachers meted out.

Desperate to curtail her behaviour, Æscleah’s parents finally locked her in an interior room, a room of stone, far from the Unburnt Ash, far from the sun and the sky. “Do your chores,” they told her, “and you may be in the sun for five minutes. Do your siblings’ chores as well, and you may spend an additional five minutes outside.”

This worked for two weeks, as Æscleah grew wanner and quieter, as she seemed to wilt and wither, as a wind whipped up around the Unburnt Ash and its saplings. On the evening of the fifteenth day, Æscleah went outside for her allotted five minutes of sun – and vanished.

Her mother had been watching her. Her little brother had been playing with her. Her father had been by the gate. Nobody had seen her leave. Nobody in the streets had seen her pass. And the tree-minders who watched the Unburnt tree claimed that no, this time, they hadn’t seen her pass.

Nobody could find her. For hours they searched, and then for days, and then for weeks. When two weeks and a day had passed, when her parents had given up hope, thinking that Æshleah had gone to some other city, run away to join the circus, come afoul of some cretin not afraid of ash trees or their vengeance, when they had lain flowers in the bone-yard for her and said their words, then and only then did the Unburnt Ash reveal her.

She stepped from the tree as if she had been inside it, her hair gone white-grey and her skin seeming a bit green. She ignored the tree-minders. She ignored her parents. She spoke with a voice that was not her own to the people who stood by the gate. “Fetch the mayor.”

People muttered, and people complained. Her parents spoke strongly to her. Æshleah ignored them all to look at one young tree-minder, not that much older than she was. “Fetch the mayor,” she told the tree-minder. “Now.”

The tree-minder, who was used to the look of old people ignoring what was in front of them, who herself had been given to the Unburnt Ash as a child, who was not so stupid and willful as her elders thought she was, she ran for the mayor. She ran the whole way, and when she reached said notable, neither explained nor cajoled.

“The Unburnt Tree wants you,” she told him, and dragged him until he, not wishing his dignity to be quite that insulted, came along with her.

There, in the middle of people shouting at her and untouched by all of them, Æshleah stared at the mayor. “This is what I say. Once in a generation, you will give me a voice. You have given me a voice, and this body is it. Once in every generation, you will do as I say.”

Even the most recalcitrant people fell quiet now. The voice was not Æshleah’s. The words were neither Æshleah’s nor anyone else they had ever heard.

The mayor ahemed and coughed. “To whom am I speaking?” Because it did not due to assume, in the Empire. Cities had faltered and died over less.

“I am the Unburnt. I am all those that will not burn. I am the protection of the city. And, for that, I have my price.

The city was silent. Everything had its price. Ever god demanded something. They had been lucky for so long.

But still… they had been lucky for so long.

“What price would you have?” the Mayor asked. The Mayor had not been elected to rock the boat. The Mayor was quite good at not rocking any boats, Empiric or sylvan or otherwise.

“Every generation, you will give me a voice. And this voice… This voice you will mind, when the time comes.” Æshleah, or the body that had been Æshleah , sat down. “I cannot protect you if you do not listen.”

“Protect us from what?” someone in the crowd complained. And “what about the girl?” someone else shouted. It opened up a flood of questions. Æshleah’s body looked here and there, seeming to make eye contact with every single person who shouted a question.

When the crowd silenced again, she answered. “All those who are given to me have a little of me in them. This one required the most healing, and thus has always been mostly me. She is here, your Ash-Meadow-Daughter, the same as she has always been: a sprite within my will. Nothing has changed except your sight and your hearing.

“And your hearing must change more!” Her voice rose to a shout. “Or I cannot protect you. The fire is coming. There is flame even I fear. There are storms even I cannot stand. It is all coming, and you will need to listen.”

Suddenly, the voice changed. It sounded like a girl again, like Æshleah again. “But you won’t, will you?” She shook her head. “Because that’s how people are. Very well. When you’re ready to listen, come to the tree, and it will be explained.” She stepped into the arms of the Unburnt Ash, and was gone.

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Flying by the seat of his pants…

okay, so I have listened to too much Hamilton over the last few months, and I woke up with this line in my head:

    I’m a girl in a world in which
    My only job is to marry rich
    My father has no sons so I’m the one
    Who has to social climb for one
    Satisfied (http://genius.com/7912429)

Historically, this is untrue, but it got me thinking, what about a situation where it was?

And, uh, being me, slavery ended up involved. (Have I ever told you about like the first time I can remember slavery being involved in a fictional world of mine?)

“Take the knee,” she urged.

In another world, in another place, she might have said Join the priesthood and be my confessor, and then we can be together. He may have given her the same face as he did in this one: dubious skepticism.
“Marry me,” he countered. “Be my bride, and we’ll change the world together.”

“Take the knee,” she repeated. “My father’s in negotiations with Prandor Cathel. He’s under no impression that this is a love match, and he won’t bedruge me a, ah, a companion.”

“A bedroom partner, you mean.” HIs voice was harsh now. “A slave. I could tell you stories of the number of men tricked into service and sold over the Misty Sea under just such a suggestion.”

“By liars and cheats, sneaks and thieves. Do you take me as such?” Her eyebrows rose. “Take the knee, and be with me.”

“Marry me, and be with me in truth, in perpetuity—”

“You’d have me be your chattel, then.”

“You’d have me be yours!” He softened, slightly, at the offended look on her face. “Besides, Cathel might accept you having a… companion, but I can’t see him being the sort that would pay out his own hard-earned money for such. If I take the knee and you can’t afford me…”

“What do you think me for? I have my own money.” Unlike you, she did not say nor need to. “Gifts, investments, a little side work I did over the years, all quite legitimate. I could afford you twice over.”

“Then…” no, even his slightly-dented pride could not allow him to say Then we could live on your money until I find income. “You do love me, don’t you?”

“I do.” She, seeing what he couldn’t say writ more clearly than if he’d said it, softened in turn. “You know this world won’t allow me to marry you.”

“Renounce your family?” He did not mean it, couldn’t mean it, but he asked anyway.

“I cannot.” reluctance and rue tinged her words, and this time, she had no more hope than he did, but she asked anyway: “Take the knee? Change the world anyway, just change it from comfort.”

“I… cannot.” Should you have asked them, later, whose heart had been breaking more that moment, they each would have said the other — and each would have been lying. “Goodbye.”

“Should you change your mind…” She was the woman, and thought weaker, so in this, she had to be stronger. “You need only contact me.”

“Thank you.” Because he was allowed the luxury of some weakness, he didn’t say We both know I won’t. “Be well, in your new marriage.”

“Be well, changing the world.”

They both turned. They both walked away. But it would be a lie to say that they did not look back…
…A lie they both grew proficient at telling, over the years.

Nice going, Angelica, he was right
You will never be satisfied

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1181732.html. You can comment here or there. comment count unavailable

A Difficult Case – a story beginning of ThingsUnspoken

Written to an anonymous prompt here to my Summer Giraffe Call.

“This is going to be a difficult case.”

Viola Candroon frowned at the case file. Her secretary’s tidy handwriting filled three pages, detailing every piece of the puzzle laid before them. For the most part, the text was devoid of expression. Maxwell was a very solid investigator in his own right and tended to keep the interviewer out of the interview, as the saying went.

“I dare say ‘difficult’ isn’t going to be the half of it, ma’am,” Maxwell offered. “If you’ll see…”

“I see, yes.” In the middle of page three, Maxwell had circled and underlined The Lord and Lady Hatsfordshire. “This is… this is going to take a delicate touch.” The residents of Hatsfordshires Manor were very set in their ways, and their ways did not involve the techniques Miss Candroon and her agency employed. “Who’s the client?”

“Ah. That would be their butler. He was quite uncomfortable with the whole matter — but then again, he’s been working for them for two months and has already taken to spending every free moment in town, with his elderly mother and even more elderly aunt.”

Viola cringed. “So he knows.”

“He is, shall we say, newly converted to seeing things as they are. He did not believe the rumors — until his first full moon working for the Hatsfordshires. But the evidence he brought forth.”

“I see it, yes.” Viola glared at the paperwork. “So the rumors are true.”

“True, and more so. If you’ll see note three on page two…”

Viola read it again. “You’d think they’d thank us for burning the place. It would get rid of all the evidence.”

“Nevertheless, our dossiers on these two suggest that there will be no thanking involved. Shall you go about things in the direct manner, or would you prefer to investigate first?”

“I do believe I’ll make a cursory investigation. At least then, when we go to set the fire, we’ll know best where to lay the accelerant.”

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If the Blind Will See – a story of Things Unspoken for my Summer Giraffe Call

Written to [personal profile] alatefeline‘s prompt here to my Summer Giraffe Call.

“Oh, look, Matilda, isn’t that lovely?”

Allan didn’t hate tourists, not the way his sister did, but he found many of them a little too blind to be believable.

Like these two. The routine they were watching was… well, it probably was lovely. Allan and five women, all of them native to this small coastal island, were swinging weighted strings in a carefully-choreographed routine that meant sometimes a weight swung fractions of a an inch from his face. The art had been old long before his people had stolen it from a much more ancient people, and even then it had been more than a show of skill. But from the look on the women’s faces, they saw nothing but a pretty show.

On the side of the stage, Allene stomped three times. Allan stepped forward on cue. He bowed his head and caught the oldest woman’s eye: Bold, brazen, shameless. He winked.

Allan knew they had magic on the mainland. He’d heard that they pretended not to, that they explained it away with explanations so thin a child could discredit them. But they had the magic there; they had the demons there. And they saw… lovely dancing.

They tourists thought he was lovely, too. That was half the reason he danced this routine, although it was traditionally a woman’s dance. The lady tourists tipped very nicely to see him topless. The male tourists tipped because their pride was piqued.

Allene stomped again. From the sidelines, their uncle Edward swung in one more string. The tourists gasped. Allene’s poi lit on fire; she did a loud shuffle step, and they all did their own shuffle-step just so.

In a moment, all the strings were lit. As the sun went down, Allan caught the tourist’s eye again. He say her eyebrows lift as they completed the blessing, Allan’s fire tracing the ritual lines in the air.

He didn’t hate them, no matter what his sister said. For Allan, the challenge was getting them to admit that they were not truly blind.

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Landing Page: Things Unspoken

…And seriously creepy. Did I mention the creepy? – kelkyag

It is best to keep your head about you in this world, because if you do not, someone else may keep it for you.

The shadows whisper, the Empire reaches, and all around, progress marches slowly on, heedless of the Old Things lurking in its way.

The world is a continent-spanning empire, and other places that are not the empire and thus less important but no less interesting. The era is that of steam engines and ridiculous fashion, of public shows of manners and private displays of lewdness.

The empire consists of many nations. Every one of them has their own secrets, their own governments. Each nation is semi-autonomous – but only semi. For the Empire rules over everything.

And if strange things creep in the shadows? Well, in the end, those things too are ruled by the Empire.


 

The Stories

Unspoken Worldbuilding

Linguistic Tricks, a story for the Giraffe Call

This is a sibling piece with N is for Nereid, O is for Octopi, and P is for Poinsettias, and follows after R is for Rituals.

It is set in the Things Unspoken ‘verse, and was written to [personal profile] chanter_greenie‘s prompt here to the current Giraffe Call.

Eliška Konvalinka had been in Scheffenon for less than a month, and already she found herself learning a new language.

One of the key skills looked for in potential Informers – next to a keen eye for detail and a flawless memory – was a good ear for languages and dialects. Eliška’s primary linguistic family was the West Torvaldic, of which Cornesc, the language spoken in Scheffenon, was a key example. That was one of the reasons the Informers had placed her here. In three days, she was speaking Cornesc, if not like a native, then like a long-time visitor.

And it was once that she had Cornesc firmly settled in her mind and on her tongue that Eliška began to hear another language.

A large portion of the Informers’ job was to mingle, to shop and to listen. Informers did not have servants run errands for them, although sometimes they dressed in the garb of the Informers’ Embassy to run those errands. Informers listened, and they learned.

And what Eliška was listening to was a small but notable minority of Scheffenon who were speaking in an utterly different language. Not a different dialect – this language was not even of the same family as Cornesc. The r’s were rolled in a way that only the far-Western languages did, and the s’s were soft and susserated, the consonants languid.

It took Eliška a week to place the speakers – not all of the speakers, but the ones who spoke it the most languidly, with the smoothest trilled r’s. The men wore elaborate head-scarves, while the women went bare-headed, their hair parted three times. The women wore small sheathed knives on necklaces; the man wore very loose pants. And they all averted their eyes from the mermaid fountains and octopus murals that were splashed all over Scheffenon.

Eliška was fascinated. She made notes in her logs; she added a paragraph to the teaching poem of Scheffenon. And she began to listen in earnest to this new language, so strange in the harsh-consonants lands of the West Torvaldic linguistic family.



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Æ is for Ash

From [personal profile] thnidu‘s prompt here in honor of the Things Unspoken landing page

They called it the Unburnt Tree. In Corthwin, which had burned thrice in known history, and, from the records in the places not yet rebuilt, appeared to have burned at least three times before they began counting such things, there stood an Ash Tree. It was unbelievably tall – the tallest thing in the city – and incredibly wide. And nobody built within a hundred meters of its spread in any direction.

They called it the Unburnt Tree for good reason. By all indications, the tree had been growing for longer than Corthwin had stood. In a city which had burned so many times, in a land where massive forest fires had once ranged, the Unburnt Tree stood. When the Empire had taken over the nation of which Corthwin was a major city, the Unburnt Tree stood, unharmed, untouched, even when the catapults flung burning pitch over the walls. When an earlier Emperor had, soon before he was quietly helped to the next life, sought to eliminate sources of “superstition” throughout the Empire and ordered the Unburnt Tree cut down, the axes had bounced off.

What was more, scions of the tree or seedlings grown from its seeds, all of those that survived to be saplings or larger took on the properties of their ancestor. Now, surrounding Corthwin, there grew a wall of trees, some no thicker than a finger, but all of them bearing the promise: the world might burn, but these trees would not. And, what’s more, all those who sheltered under their leaves would be safe.

The Unburnt tree could not protect all of Corthwin. But with its children, it could protect the people.

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Prince Rodegard Considers His Situation

First: Prince Rodegard Visits the Imperial Capital

Previous: The Merger of Railways

To [personal profile] thnidu‘s commissioned continuation.

Rodegard knew he wasn’t considered the brightest candle. He was big, enthusiastic, and sometimes clumsy – “like an overgrown puppy,” his father liked to say. His skills didn’t help, either: even though their nation desperately needed it, being good with the earth was considered a low skill, a dumb skill.

But he could read which way the river was flowing, and he could see the spaces where his minder wasn’t saying things. He let the train roll by. He let his breath steady. He watched Kneginja Esedora watching him.

“So you’re preparing me to be Empressina Nadia’s consort.” He found the idea neither terrified him nor thrilled him nearly as much as it should.



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The Merger of Railways

First: Prince Rodegard Visits the Imperial Capital

Previous: Edora Begins to Explain Life to Prince Rodegard

For the “Do up whatever story/stories suit your fancy or for whomever most wants/needs ’em.” commission and the poll here.

~~

Edora stared out the train window. The countryside of Prince Rodegard’s mother’s nation rolled by at a stately, weedy pace: Iscandia. The place was at the far western edge of the Empire, pressed against the mountains on one side, the sea on the second side, the Empire on one long side, and on its far side – a unruly collection of states that the Empire did not dignify with a name. It was a weedy, poor place, not good for much, but the Imperial territory it touched was a rich, prosperous country with many natural resources. It behooved the Empire to keep Iscandia within its borders.

“Do you know who built these tracks, Rodegard?”

The prince was not looking out the window, she knew. He was staring at her, trying not to bounce in his seat like a toddler. Her question made him make a noise, somewhere between a groan and a whine, that he quickly suppressed.

“What’s that have to do with anything? I mean. I mean, the Empire built them, didn’t it?”

Edora shook her head. “These tracks in particular were built by a company called Cortenar Railways. The Empire owns the land under them, and it leases the land – and travel rights, and the right to make money off of the trains travelling the tracks – to various railway companies. Nearer the Capital, it’s Helarna-Jakobs Railway and Shipping, and so on.”

“But what does that have to do with–” Rodegard cut himself off. “I’m sorry, Da- Your Highness.”

“All of these railways have to join. There are at least seventeen of these companies – I’m not a railways expert, so please don’t quote me on the number – and they have to link together just so to make the Imperial railway system work. Do you follow?”

“Yes, ma’am.” He was slouching in his seat. He wasn’t listening as well as he should be. Well, he would learn.

“The whole Empire is like that. Millions of tiny pieces that all have to link up just so. Nations with their own royalties, their own laws… and they all have to link up properly with the Empire’s rules and laws. And what’s more than that, millions of people that have to link up.”

“It’s politics.” He nodded slowly. “Takaranne and Caredorn are better at politics than I am. I was always better with crops.”

“Well, that’s part of what I’m here to teach you. It may have been a while ago that I was put on a train like this – but I remember everything I had to learn.”

He narrowed his eyes thoughtfully. “Twenty years ago, the Empressina’s cousin – the Crown Emperito – he, ah. He was killed.”

“You know your history.” Edora kept all emotion out of her voice. Emperito Mateusz had been a bit older than her, but he had been kind. After all this time, that was most of what she could remember.

“Empressina Nadia is not married yet.” He was speaking very slowly, carefully, picking his way through the rocks and gopher-holes.

“She is… not exactly married yet.”

There was a moment where Rodegard’s shoulders relaxed, and then his eyes narrowed again and he tensed. “This is more complicated than lining up railroad tracks, isn’t it?”

“People always are.” Edora allowed herself a smile. He might not be entirely useless. “People are always more complicated.”

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