Work Text:
In Tetrahex at this time of the year it was always night. A red wind from the Sonic Canyons brought up a cloud of dust that blocked out the sun and moons and blasted the paint off walls. Flyers called it the Sea of Darkness and would not launch in it, not even Cyclonus who was named for a storm. For weeks there would be no commerce or worship. Homes were lit from the inside, the wind howled and sawed, and mecha stayed indoors.
Whirl had his workshop deep in the roots of Cyclonus’ home, removed from the sound of wind and the imperatives of flight. It was a narrow space, windowless, comfortably austere: tools on hooks and a nice long worktable and drawers upon drawers of cogs, screws, springs, wires, batteries, bevels, crystals, chips of finest silica—everything exactly where it was supposed to be, nothing out of place, walls buttered with gold light. Tailgate had learned on his first day in there that this was no place for fooling around. Combustible though he was in his daily life, Whirl was regular and orderly in his work, and he couldn’t abide a mess.
Together, they made clocks.
It was on the strength of Cyclonus’ counterfeit horn – its grace and similitude, the fact that you could barely see where it was welded – that Tailgate had been granted access to this space. Whirl knew good handiwork when he saw it, just as he saw opportunities where others might miss them. The two of them made a good team. Whirl had a mind for timepieces; Tailgate had the deft hands of a craftsman. On his own, neither had a job; together, they had an enterprise. And if he minded being bossed around in a big-sisterly way, Tailgate didn’t show it; he did exactly as he was told, and the work he produced under Whirl’s direction was extraordinary. Their first commissions trickled in slowly and with an air of obligation, and Tailgate suspected Cyclonus had wrung them out of the Tetrahexian bon ton as part of larger debts owing. But soon they came in quite on their own speed, and in greater numbers, so that nowadays to buy a piece from Whirl & Tailgate was to be put on a waitlist several months long.
At least the weather was giving them a chance to catch up on their work. Nobody went abroad when it was like this, and even telecommunication became difficult, frequencies swept away in the dark red haze that blew over the mesa. Cyclonus, who since arriving in his new-old home had spent scarcely a day inside and instead flew constantly to and fro on mysterious errands, resurrecting his name within the city’s unfathomable social order, was once again reduced to brooding at windows.
Whirl dozed on his work stool, claws twitching. He often powered down like this, suddenly and helplessly, centuries of looking out for number one relieving him of duty at last. Tailgate took the opportunity to extract from the drawer his own project, neither clock nor commission. Gently he unwrapped the hefty thing from its chamois bundle and admired its gleam in the lamplight.
He’d wanted to make a new horn for Cyclonus almost as soon as he’d completed the old one. He was still proud of his original effort – at the time, it had seemed to him a perfect copy, all the more remarkable for being made without reference from scrap – but it was not long before he realized how imperfect it was. Cyclonus’ horns were supposed to move, pivoting and drawing together as he pulled his head into his collar. It was only a matter of time before the replica caught in transformation and jammed his works, or worse. And so Tailgate made a clandestine study of the mechanisms, gently tilting and swiveling Cyclonus’ right horn while the old warrior slumbered next to him at night, even going so far as to remove his replica so he could get a better look at the socket: little transgressions performed, he told himself, for the sake of an upgrade he knew Cyclonus would never ask for but needed all the same.
The new horn was coming along well, and Tailgate drew out the final stages, polishing here, truing an edge there, pleased to be completing something so handsome that he had made on his own, without direction. When they’d first journeyed here in the wake of their bonding, Cyclonus had murmured ceaselessly to Tailgate as he cradled him in flight, enumerating the delights that awaited them in their new home. He had promised Tailgate a room with a view where they’d make love every night until the stars went out, and he had given it to him. He had promised to open the doors of Tetrahex to him, and he did, and kept by him as he navigated unfamiliar streets and made the acquaintance of mecha who all seemed to know who Cyclonus was, even if they’d never met him and pronounced his name strangely. He had bought Whirl’s freedom and brought him here to live, which he had not done for Tailgate’s sake, but which had, in the end, saved Tailgate from the obsolescence he felt creeping up on him every day he spent without a job.
Whirl stirred in his seat, eye booting up and antenna craned to the door. “Better hide that, pipsqueak.”
No sooner had Tailgate bundled the object away than Cyclonus entered the room, balancing a tray with three small glasses on it.
“Oh!” cried Whirl, throwing up his claws. “He comes to distribute refreshments in the sweatshop!”
Cyclonus tilted his head diplomatically from side to side in the way he did when he acknowledged a joke but didn’t find it funny.
“You will drink with me,” he declared as he set the tray down on the worktable. “It’s late.”
“Is it?” Whirl accepted his glass. “It’s so easy to lose track of time down here.”
Cyclonus paused in his wifely distribution of engex to aim a complicated, affectionate glare in his friend’s direction. Then his armour rattled briefly, violently, and his vents snapped shut. Tailgate glanced up at him in reproach and alarm, and Cyclonus returned the look impassively, as if it were an argument he’d accepted and was deciding to ignore. He was not worried about a cough, even though he knew where it came from, even if it meant some mornings that his armour would be faded the colour of pale, dusky lilac. Besides, there were no doctors in Upper Tetrahex, only priests, and none would come because Cyclonus was a heretic.
He knelt beside Tailgate’s stool, kissed the minibot on the palms of his hands, and asked him what he’d made today. But his eyes were dim as he listened to Tailgate's reply, and Tailgate realized it wasn't late at all; Cyclonus was in his roundabout way merely hurrying him along to recharge, because he was tired, and because he never liked to be the first one to bed.
“You know, dainty legs,” said Whirl, after Cyclonus took the empty glasses and left them alone again. “You know he asked me to sign a deed, right?”
Tailgate did what he usually did and pretended to know, while Whirl as always saw through his pretense and carried on regardless.
“But only so I can hand it over to you. He means for you to own everything.”
*
Over time their home became known for its gatherings. Though infamous for his shrewdness, Cyclonus was generous, and Tailgate made friends as easily as Cyclonus made money. When they were joined by Whirl, who gained in Tetrahex the reputation of a wit, the three of them together comprised the ideal host. So enjoyable were their parties that no guest complained when, upon leaving, he realized that he had in the course of his stay bought a clockmaker’s commission and sold a valuable piece of real estate at less than its market price. Even when the dark season came and the flights bays stayed shut and nobody came to call, the three alone could be very merry. They drank to excess and told the same stories over and over, and the votive lights that Cyclonus lit against the red wind lit their home like a treasure-house.
But the prohibition against flying weighed heavier on him than it did on Whirl, who had his craft, and as the storm lengthened and settled in, Cyclonus’ habitual gloominess returned, darkened further under the mantle of sickness.
*
The finished product was a beautiful thing to behold. Though indistinguishable from its counterpart, Cyclonus somehow devised a way of subtly advertising its origin, and so began Tailgate’s profitable sideline in parts. But he was never able to say it. What did a nobody know about love? All he could do was make gestures: the third act, over and over. So he wrote it in small characters of the primal vernacular inside the barrel of the horn before he welded it shut.
When the storms ended and the dust cleared, the city relaxed and opened its doors. Cyclonus once more took to the skies, looking grey in the paint and very old: a diminished potentate in a kingdom of winds.
Whirl, on the other hand, remained in his workshop, having time to make, and time to keep, and other, better things to do.