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At 4:50 PM a hand emerges from the recuprecoon's soft green interior, grabs the ringing alarm clock and tosses it into the wall. It dents the plaster, and the neighbors yell this isn't a time for decent people to be awake, the sun hasn't even set, freak. They don't yell too loudly, though. They are olive blooded, and the hand that has been throwing said alarm clock since the law trials belongs to a teal. They know she doesn't take offense, so they can yell, and complain to the landlord when they feel like dodging tentacles, but they don't yell too loudly. It's a safety precaution.
In the recuprecoon, pointy horns break the surface.
At 4:50 PM far out in the country, another sleepless day has drawn to a close, and a heavy eyed woman arranges her new pelt crown between her horns as she crouches over a spring in a cave, hoping that her reflection will stop rippling.
Words swirl through her mind. Some of them are The Words, which have run up her spine and earthed themselves in between her ears like fire. She will die with them still crashing around in her think pan. It's a comfort. There's part of him still with her.
Some are just words, Tuna-kitty screaming around in her horns. His voice is growing fainter and fainter, half way numbers at this point. But she's there and ready to receive it, because his broken soul needs someone to protect it. The Dockyard hasn't finished rebuilding him. Normally he'd be a pirate chaser or maybe a planetary fighter, but sometimes he's whispering about oxygen and pressurization and she's terrified that means that he's going underwater.
At 6:00 PM a neophyte takes the grav train into the heart of the city. The conductor used to comment about the massive dragon on the roof. No one comments any more. One nice thing about Alternia is that if you can fight for something and win, no one will object.
She disembarks, swinging her cane of office, which is still shiny and new and she's even trying to clean the blood off. When people see shiny and new, they think fresh meat, and that is what she wants them to think. Her office is a cubicle on the 6th floor out of 12. She files reports there, and fabricates facts as needed to take people down. Last week, she took over a field assignment from her boss by staying alive longer than the previous lady. This week, her world is paperwork—
There's a missive on her computer, apparently sent by herself, in code.
The neophyte legilascerator looks around, cracks her knuckles, and begins to play the game, carefully decoding this puzzle.
At 6:00 PM she is waiting for rabbeasties. Her snares for the daylight creatures have already netter her some delicious fauna, but daylight beasts have almost all their fat cooked from them by the suns, and she needs more lard for her food and her sunscreen, as well as soap she makes in memory of a woman without the recourse for screaming.
It's been sweeps, but she's getting by day to day, remembering.
At 8:00 PM in the city she stares at her screen. She suspected—Of course she suspected, not having a suspicious mind is a death sentence, particularly in her profession—She had suspected the contents of the e-mail would be this. It's not even an order. It's just an invitation. If a motherfucker is clever enough to figure the invitation out.
She can pretend that she didn't decode the message. The reputation of such an invitation is a nasty one, even for Alternia, even for the legal system. Particularly nasty if you didn't attend the ceremonies, and didn't attend the feast days, and indeed, did not honor the Mirthful Carnival with a joke on the right occasion. She can pretend that she didn't understand the time and place concealed in the message. It's that kind of invitation. A dare to prove yourself.
You're not supposed to get such an invitation in your first sweep on the job. The neophyte grins. She won't miss the appointment for the world. Besides, she has a dragon, how bad can it possibly be?
Later there will be roars of laughter when she relates that she looked forward to the possibility of running from the law almost as much as she looked forward to serving it.
At 8:00 PM in the forest the pelt draped troll has caught herself some rabbeasties and one young faunicorn. It's barely half a sweep old, there will be others, and she couldn't help purrself. It was asking to be killed. One should not take more than is needed, but well, what if she has guests!
She never has guests. She returns to her cave, ready to bleed her catch and begin to manufacture ink. There is a small village of pupa hives not too far away; if she is really productive today maybe she can get her mad forest woman Leijon disguise on, get into town, mingle and see about the gossip.
At 9:00 PM the neophyte puts down her newspaper, and gets off the busserpent. The schedules are all timed so that the serpents arrive at the Grand Pavilion at auspicious times. Some believer in fickle luck planned that, she is sure.
Her dragon alights rather heavily on the silk draped roof. The architects of this cathedral to the carnival were all tortured, or so the story goes, until they went mad and designed a delicate lace work of stone that would let the sun into every righteous corner. As the neophyte cranes her neck to view the bright pinwheel of light, silk, and darkness broken by stars, she thinks about the value of a good story for impressing people. Pyralsprite's tail drifts in luminescent white among the canopy.
The neophyte trains her red visored gaze on the bloody altar, and then the seat set aside for the Condesce, should she ever choose to attend holy mass. The neophyte doesn't think that once in the history of Alternia the Empress has ever bothered with the landdweller cult, beyond using it to gain landdweller support. There had been a long lecture about this in the neophyte's Imperial Law and History 101 school feeding. The professor was taken away and culled before his thought strain could be added to next sweep's intake. That's why the neophyte is pretty sure the story is true. However, in the throne-like chair studded in mother of pearl, another ruler lounges, as content within his own domain as Pyralsprite is in the air.
She walks through the line of supplicants, and boy do they part. The blind prophets never wrote "1 GOT 4 PR1NT OUT W1TH YOUR N4M3 ON 1T" but they probably should have. It is a phrase that won't go down in history, but it is fateful, because the higblood from his throne laughs, even while glancing through the shrouds at the slatey sky.
"My name's on pretty much every little slip of white, these days. Address, everything, the whole motherfucking twelve yards. So what does a supplicant newbie, servant of law, and just bringer of violence like yourself want with the tumbling chaos of the carnival, miraculous in its lights and colors. Some of which, I note, a motherfucking dragon lusus is doin' her mighty best to block from the sky."
"Not this name," the neophyte grins, because she thinks she has one of the most important secrets of Alternia under her thumb: The unexpected surprise of audacity makes danger pause, just in case it has run into something as dangerous as it is. Once they pause, it's your show. "So, what's a continental governor, shadow of the throne, need with one of the long arms of the Condesce's law?"
"There's to be a raptureful departure soon," bright purple eyes glitter behind the black and white. "And when the mighty fleet is launched, well, there are some boring ass motherfuckers like myself, who figure on sticking around, keeping the fires burning for the coming of the twin serpents' herald, and doing all the little things Her Imperious Angler of the Abyss needs done. Thing is, with the changes coming on, well, there are some books that need to be balanced."
"Oh, I am all over the balancing of books. I've even got a sword juggling routine to go along with it."
He chuckles. Again, the blind prophets should have written this down because as a survival guide it's top notch stuff. "And one day, the blissful court of lights and music would be blessed before all others to witness such entertainment. But for now, find out if a certain cat's alive, and make sure," he snaps his fingers, and a flunky zooms to his side, a file in hand, "the answer is a resounding motherfucking 'NO.'"
At 9:00 PM new ink is on the boil, and the rest of the bodies are being butchered. Said cat from a previous conversation not too many hive towns, lawn rings, and city neighborhoods away, works with a gusto, humming to herself, and glancing occasionally at the stars outside her cave. She's gotten quite good at reading time from star positions. She taught her beloved how—
It's an agony, just existing.
She is old, and getting older. The wild joys of being twelve sweeps old are dull aches and pains where bones were broken, and teeth knocked out for speaking about the state of things and offering people another way. But those words won't ever stop being true. Being thought. Those words will always be said, somewhere, somehow. The fear filled whisper is still a whisper, and she knows it is making its way around the world, lodging in the back of every think pan it touches, sometimes joining with other whispers and other truths.
Sure, there's the Revelation and the Lack of Mystery. A scream of anger spoke of things that would make blind prophets cower. But it's all well and good saying everything will come again in time. There is the here and now to deal with, and there are people who need the words that drew this disciple in far more than they'll ever need the momentous revelation.
She washes her hands in the spring, covers her meat and bones, then throws a pelt on, and goes to wander among the people who might take comfort in the thoughts written on her wall.
At 10:00 PM, the legilacerator is pouring over the files at her desk when the world aligns in one of those awful ways those who believe in luck blame it for doing, and a fax comes in from a blueblood hive cluster all about poaching of their rare and valued fauna, and an old witch who they swear is selling their prized faunicorn blood as ink in a nearby village. The blueblood's matesprit is something of an amateur photographer and has sent along snapshots.
At 10:00 PM the lone troll in the woods arrives at the hive town, and walks about, admiring the lamplight—they've gotten the generator fixed, finally, after pirates attacked the power station down the coast. She walks, and greets, having fun scaring the pupas out and about with her boogeyman disguise. They're angorable at that stage between grubhood and final moult. Hell, they're purrty sweet as grubs, but it doesn't pay to get too attached to them before pupation. They even make pursonable adults, but by then the realities of life have ground their cruel rut into them, and there's a lot of bitter along with the sweet.
At 10:30 PM, a dragon lands in the local market place, and a city bred legilascerator hops off. She ascertains through some quick questioning that the local witch was here, bargained a frozen eye jelly covered in fauna blood sauce from the local treats and sweets vendor, and then disappeared into the woods.
Woods craft is not the legilascerator's thing. She's a city girl through and through, but Pyralsprite remembers dappled shade on her shell and the smell of leaves in the air. She takes the lead, and they fly through whipping branches. The legilascerator yells a bit and then covers her face as they spiral down landing on a cliff. A giant purrbeast of a woman, additionally draped in more purrbeast pelts, looks at the dragon as Latula Pyrope, Legilascerator Extraordinaire, hops down.
"It's polite of you not to open your eyes, but I've hunted bigger than you before," the pelt draped troll observes with all the arrogance of someone who is headed towards sagging skin and slow reflexes, but is not there yet. She takes a lick of the frozen jelly contemplatively, and fixes the legilascerator with a long stare. "I haven't got enough of this to share, but there's some meat back in the cave. You want some?"
"Nah. Can't taste much, so it's just nutrition cubes for me, and there's no reason to take your supply," anyone who addresses Pyralsprite with respect deserves the same repaid in kind. "You do know I'm here to bring you in for extensive questioning about your supply of faunicorn blood."
That actually makes the Disciple of the Signless, speaker of the forbidden words, keeper of the heretical memories, stare. "Faunicorn blood. When did they make that illegal?"
"When a local blueblood complained. You know how this works."
"Oh, right," she looks less than impressed. "Well, whatever, you know I'm not going."
"Something on that scale of biscuit had occurred to me," the legilascerator grins, bringing up her cane. "After all, it's an easy leap to make from faunicorn blood to completely illicit cults that operated without the Condesce's permission, and whose ringleaders are supposed to have gone the way of all grubrolls."
"You're not a member of the Mirthful chorus, and you shouldn't pretend to be, grrrrrrrrrl," the Disciple turns her back, then spins to slam her shoulder into the legilascerator's face. Black and white lights explode behind Laytula's eyes as an elbow is forcefully introduced to her sternum. A fully muscled arm wraps around her neck, and indicates with it's tightness that if this purrbeast woman chooses to flex Latula's neck will snap. Together they back away, the disciple growling in her ear, "Tell your lusus that if she flickers even an eyelid, we both go up in flames."
Latula mimes at the dragon with exaggeration. They don't need it to understand one another, but it always helps the onlookers to know communication has happened. Besides, she is being dragged back to the cave and all the boring stuff like evidence that she will actually need to make her investigation look legitimate.
There is just enough air to ask a question. "How'd you know I'm not a follower of the dark carnival?"
"Beyond the fact that you've clearly never performed a blood sacfurice? I mean look at your nails. You've even painted them. It's totally angorable, but troll blood sticks under the cracks and stinks to high heaven. Those rituals require a girl to get her hands on the work. But I knew when you furgot to make any blood puns. They always make blood puns. Or liver puns. Or torture puns. They think it makes them look scary. They want to be the sinister clown, when at heart, they've furgotten that there can only be one white faced clown and everyone else just dances in the circus around him as he purrleases," she pauses, getting off the rant sack she is breathing down the neophyte's ear.
"Also I gave you an opening for a ringmaster pun that you completely evaded. That's not Dark Carnival," the disciple whirls again in a full disconcerting circle, letting go of the legilascerator and shoving her more deeply into the darkness of the cave. "That's an eager bounty hunter. I entertain those less often."
The neophyte fetches up against the edge of an indoor pool, but the rush to kick her fully into the water and drown her as she is expecting never comes. She turns slowly. The disciple has a lot of advantages on her, mostly to do with size and weight. In a battle of equals, no matter how you put your finger on the balance, or move the fulcrum, size and weight count for a lot. And there's more than a hint that this troll is better than a fresh and shiny legilacerator. She's old, for starters, and you've read the file, you know what happened to her, but there's no sign of weakness at the break points. That either means she's great at faking, or those weak points that you were told should be blinking red aren't blinking at all.
The Neophyte breathes out, and readies her cane. Her target holds out a thick and lumpy pot made of clay. It's got something steaming gently inside. "Tea?"
"What?!"
"Would you like some tea? I think it's good to lay out options over tea. It's cozy, and I don't get to talk to many people any more."
Pyrope took it uncertainly, nearly scalding her fingers. "I'd prefer a fight."
"And I don't. Don't get me wrong. I was a warrior. I protected people who needed it. But I know from those people that just because I knew the final solution to a problem didn't mean that I could ignore the other pawssibilities. And you brought a dragon. That's a real insurance scheme and a half. Anyway, would you really prefer a fight? You've got your cane of office, and I'm here holding blood tea."
"Ah-ha! Implicating me in your perfidity," but the legilacerator is grinning now. She knew there wasn't a rule made that couldn't be bent if needed.
"Yes, my purrrrrrfidity," the Disciple sits in the middle of the cave. She's got a spring loaded way of sitting. If the neophyte moves wrong she's going to have all of that muscle bearing down on her like a spring loaded ballbearing, but it's still sitting. Non-threatening only because the Disciple has complete control over the threat. "Usually what happens is I club the sucker sent out to find me, grab my things, and leave, with only the worlds on these walls echoing in my wake. Some people volunteer for the club so they have a good story to bring back, some people get," pause, grin, "judicious application of the peaceful measure. How much do you know about why I'm wanted?"
"You were part of a cult. It when poorly when you tried to take on the Dark Carnival."
This makes the disciple look bitter. "Oh, I like that. I like that very much! That's how they're choosing to tell the tail, now, is that it? We were a cult. It was all religious? We didn't have a stake in the real world?"
"The Mirthful would say religion is the real—"
"You know as well as I do the Mirthful are faithless and a tool for other things! If the Damned Highblood at the top actually is believing his own lies now, I'd start asking around to see if any of the assassination attempts actually managed to poison him a little. You'd be amazed at what neuro-toxins can do with just a glancing blow. But that's not the colorpoint!
"By and large, what's the majority of Alternia? They don't follow the Dark Carnival. They don't follow the cult of the Vast Glub, except for a few ancient seadwellers. They don't follow, hah, they don't follow the Words and the Deeds of the Signless, I can tell you that. You talk to most trolls and they aren't interested in Troll Jegus. They're interested in what helps them survive the day, and they hear about religion and well, they think about the Carnival. They think about the Followers of the Speaker. They think about trolls who have hit such a different level of reality it's not part of their day to day," she rose suddenly, pacing. If she had a tail, she probably would have lashed it.
"You tell people that the words of peace are the religion of one troll, they don't see it as the revolution of one troll, even if those words are at the same time a religion and a revolution. They can be both! Your master is painting them, in the blood of my lover, as neither. He's making the scream die out. He's turning it into a story. We were history."
In the rising moons, her eyes are snapping green flecked fires. The neophyte looks around the lair, following the pacing. She sees the walls now. She sees the words, dull black things, painted in the blood of fauna rather than trolls, and yet they hold something that make this woman lash, that roared into the universe through her head. These words might mean something. The idea scares her, her skin tingles in excitement. Latula Pyrope walks into danger, but this danger won't even bother to pause.
"History's just the dull stuff," Pyrope says, wanting to see the full force of the contradiction. Hit the target in a sore spot, and that weak point is blazing red now.
"Dull but impurrtant!" the disciple hissed. "Everyone wants to talk about the the big stuff. The grand stuff. Yes, it was glorious and it was tragic. These are The Words. They take your pumpbicuit to a place where angels fly and devils lurk. They run like a sea of fire and blood through your think pan and slosh out your ears. But that big soul changing stuff—it's case by case. You have to have been there and seen it happen, heard the echoes, faced the void inside yourself and come out stronger. The stuff that matters? That's the small stuff, like a history where your greeting to your neighbor is not checked through what caste you both belong to. Hisstory is in the details of the society, and it's just as important to get those whole details—the crumbs of the message, as it is to let your mind soar with revelation of the past and what is to come.
"What I am saying is, The Words are both history and myth. It's when they're made to be only one that they can't be either, and I refuse to let that happen. That's why I write it down, everywhere. Starting from the Last Rant, and through and on, letting my thoughts cascade across my walls. And that's why, I suspect, your master is still worried about me. Because these words can't be silenced, and these thoughts can't be stopped, and they're going to spread in ways he'll never know, and ways he can't control."
She crosses her arms, smug, assured. The neophyte looks at the walls. "I still have to kill you."
"If you can catch me."
"True. And I'll need a few days to collect all of this evidence that you've left for me here."
Latula sits down to read. They both pretend that the Disciple has left, and she does, soon enough, once her favfurite passages have been spoken aloud. Her presence lingers though. The pride and the sorrow is there. It's all equal and all relevant.
Latula reads it all, and knows that there is more. Some of it has been written on another cave wall somewhere. Some of it is waiting for another pot of ink, and another brush dipped in blood. Latula sits and thinks about the balance between history and myth, and how she can see it right.
She starts writing the report—her least favorite part of the job—making copies of every single detail, in triplicate, just as is required for the job. These forms are supposed to be lost within the bureaucratic archive, but she knows which secretaries are the nosiest, and which plodders read the reports. She's writing this for them, to read and think about.
She thinks about what she has read. She smiles. And she flies back to the capitol to report that the Disciple is still at large, but this little neophyte has found a cave, and she's got leads on more, boss, don't you worry. The evidence is stacking up. When she leaves a complacent highblood, still lounging on the throne that does not carry his sign, she hears a rustblood laughing nastily with someone about this being no more than 'they' deserve, and she thinks the out of context quote is right, because 'they' can be anyone she wants them to be.
She does not see that the rustblood was speaking to no one, and disappears soon after walking across the square to wash her hands.