paradoxcase (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
paradoxcase) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
rainbowfic2025-04-06 05:13 pm
paradoxcase) wrote in rainbowfic2025-04-06 05:13 pm
Ecru #1 [The Fulcrum]
Name: The Rules of War
Story: The Fulcrum
Colors: Ecru #1: Inform
Styles and Supplies: Chiaroscuro, Panorama, Stickers ("Allodoxaphobia is the fear of other people’s opinions.")
Word Count: 1906
Rating: T
Warnings: Implied threats
Characters: Setsiana, Cyaru
In-Universe Date: Summer of 1904
Summary: Cyaru takes Setsiana to look at some art.
Cyaru lead Setsiana to a line of market stalls on the eastern side of the Fair selling artisan pieces of various kinds, mostly T’arsi, but a few in artistic styles she didn’t recognize. She had to hop a bit to keep up with his stride. They passed a stall full of ceramics decorated with the green glaze common to T’arsi work, and a glassblower’s stall full of decorative centerpieces, before moving on to a stall with many small rugs and three giant ones hanging from the top of the stall with the fringes almost lying on the ground at the bottom.
“They have so many fragile things here,” said Setsiana, thinking of the glassblower. The ceramics also were well-known enough, but it was rare to see an entire stall’s worth of them at the Fair. The merchants always told her it was risky to transport so many breakable pieces.
“They don’t have this Fair in your time?” Cyaru asked.
“They do,” said Setsiana. “Well, some years, anyway. Sometimes the caravan gets ambushed coming through Meandhshen and they never make it.”
Cyaru seemed amused. “They don’t have to come overland through Meandhshen anymore,” he said. “They come directly by ship now.”
“All the way from T’arse? Without getting lost at sea?”
“Navigation is much better than it was in your time. They sail from T’arse to Shayansee, as well, and apparently Northern Kingdoms sailors even discovered a lone island in the middle of the Endless Ocean that’s thousands of miles from anywhere else. Qhoroali claims it all happened because of clockwork, but she would say that.”
Cyaru seemed to be content to look at the rugs, so Setsiana turned her attention to them as well while she considered her next plan of action. The three large ones in the middle were striking. On the left was a rug consisting of many disembodied hands, with skin colors ranging from near Qhoroali’s all the way to a deeper brown than that of the rug merchant, who was one of the darkest people Setsiana had ever seen. The hands bore a variety of tools: an ax, a scythe, a chisel, a net containing a fish, a pickax, a sword, and one very carefully manicured and callous-free almond-colored hand that was adorned in rings and held a scepter. Each hand wore an unadorned silvery metal bracelet, and each bracelet linked together with the bracelets on the other hands, joining them together like a chainmail mesh. The rightmost carpet depicted a woman who could only be the Will of T’arse, dark and regal and seated on a silver throne inlaid with gemstones, holding a similarly styled scepter, wearing finery dyed with rich blues and purples and trimmed with gold. Her hair was braided into a hundred beautiful patterns using what must be thousands of individual braids, prime among them the traditional braided coronet that encircled her head. The center carpet was maybe the strangest; a full-body portrait of a person of indeterminate gender, holding out their hand, with a river of plants, animals, and celestial objects emerging from it. But every inch and every line of their body, their hair, and their clothing also formed a secondary picture of a host of other, much smaller people: in their stomach, bakers baked bread and farmers sowed crops; in their legs, miners quarried ore and lumberjacks chopped trees; along the stretch of their arms, soldiers marched formation, and in the thin spaces of their fingers, jewelers set tiny gems and engravers minted coins. Their hair was made of weavers and tailors, at work with looms and patterns. Their eyes were telescopes being used by astronomers, and in the center of their forehead stood the same Will with her scepter, watching over all the rest. These large pieces were not for the regular visitors to the Fair to buy; they were there to tempt the nobles and officials of Governor’s court, who would likely hang them on the wall of a parlor to impress their visitors with their knowledge and appreciation of T’arsi culture.
The merchant moved to reposition a smaller rug featuring a songbird, and she jangled as she moved — Setsiana noticed she had three identical bracelets on her right hand of exactly the type depicted on the left-hand rug. She’d seen similar bracelets at the Fair before, and briefly wondered about their significance, but today she had other things to occupy her thoughts. She put her right hand into her pocket and grasped the hilt of the knife.
She could attack him here — maybe just a cut across his hand to make him release her - and run. Could he run faster than her? She might have to do more to disable him first. But it was risky… her eyes strayed to the guard that stood positioned between the stall to the right and the next one over. If she could get to a temple and explain her situation, they would save her — the priesthood had a higher authority over their own than the Emperor did. But if the guard caught her first…
She could see the hilt of the guard’s sword on his left side, but she now noticed that he was also wearing what looked like a wide, bent black metal tube on his right hip, with some details that were too small to make out from this distance. A vague flicker of worry crossed her mind and circled back; she couldn’t afford a miscalculation. She released the knife in her pocket to point at the strange object. “What is he wearing?”
Cyaru looked up from the rugs and in the direction she was indicating. “It’s a gun,” he said mildly. “Don’t you have them?” When Setsiana shook her head, he asked, “Cannons?” After another head shake, he said, “I’m pretty sure we saw cannons by 1647. You know fireworks, right? From Shayansee?”
“Of course.” They were expensive, but the nobles like to buy them in great quantities and set them off on Nyufeisyälye Ciria; it was maybe the only part of Ciria she actually enjoyed.
“On the eastern continent,” said Cyaru, “they build huge metal tubes, closed on one end, and put a big firework, more or less, in the bottom of it, and a huge ball of metal in front. Then they set off the firework, and propel the ball through the stone walls of whatever T’arse is trying to conquer this time. That’s a cannon. A gun is just a very small hand-held cannon that destroys people, rather than castles. In my… village, they said that when T’arse first got the recipe for the gunpowder, they kept it a secret from the Northern Kingdoms, leveled one castle with it, and then both their target and also two other uninvolved kingdoms all swore to abolish the debt slavery immediately.”
“They use fireworks in war now?” Setsiana asked, startled. “But that’s a war crime.”
“In Shayansee, you mean? Sure, it’s against the gentlemen’s agreement that all of the Shayanseen kings have with each other, but that’s in the west. War in Shayansee is like an elaborate aristocratic game that they play with the lives of the commoners, or a formal duel — it’s fought over matters of honor, or insults, or other such things that only the kings care about, but when the chips are down, that’s all it is. No one is conquering anyone else, and they all have a basic fundamental respect for each other that allows them to make those kinds of rules of engagement and expect that they’ll be followed. War in the east is for bigger stakes: in the north, it’s the crusade against slavery; in Meandhshen, it’s the right to exist as a citizen of a country other than T’arse; the right to speak the language you grew up with, or practice the religion you know, or retain your own culture. The League of Meandhshen makes rules, of course, but they really only apply within the League, and are mostly just a list of reasons they can use to prosecute and jail T’arsi prisoners of war. There’s too much at stake there for them to make a law banning gunpowder.”
As he gave this speech, he looked at her very thoughtfully, and she was sure he suspected she was up to something, but he did not look at the pocket of her skirt, and he did not ask why the gun had caught her attention. The casualness and calmness with which he said it put a chill down her spine, as if the mere existence of such a weapon weren’t bad enough. It was probably only out of awareness of the T’arsi woman in the stall in front of them; there was no way she would understand QuCheanya, or maybe even register it as a different language than Vrelian, but she might recognize what Tärasa meant and be alarmed at a different tone of voice.
Maybe the knife was a bad idea after all. Could she escape without it? There should be a way — she was morally in the right, had done nothing wrong, was training to be a priestess, and priestesses had always been popular with commoners in her experience. Her captors were reprobates who were stealing the priesthood’s secrets and trying to kill God. She was a young woman currently being held captive by a man. Couldn’t she simply scream for help, say that she was being kidnapped or trafficked, that Cyaru had stolen her temple’s secrets? Wouldn’t bystanders come to her aid? Wouldn’t the guard?
But then she remembered Liselye’s reaction to her outfit that morning back in 1911, and what they’d said before about how her Vrelian would sound like it was from a play in this later time period. If she screamed, would she be mistaken for a street performer, and simply be given money and applause? She didn’t think she could bear it if that happened. It would be worse than being shot with the gun.
She made her right hand into a fist beside where the knife lurked inside her modified pocket. She would have to think more carefully about this, if there was some chance that she would be allowed outside the apartment again. She hadn’t come here prepared with the knowledge she needed to escape.
The rug merchant directed a question at them, something that sounded only vaguely reminiscent of the T’arsi that Setsiana knew, and Cyaru replied with something that sounded like a polite refusal. He pulled her along to other stalls, and eventually haggled for and bought a small wooden carving of a bird. He did not ask if Setsiana wanted to buy anything, which was a blessing, since that was the furthest thing from her mind at the moment. She was watching the guards; how they wore their guns, the ease with which they could reach for them. She saw a man cause a commotion at a neighboring stall, and saw the guard nearby casually put his hand on his gun, and then move it away again once the man had come to an agreement with the merchant. The man seemed not to notice, but Setsiana noted that the merchant had glanced in the direction of the guard.
Eventually, the great clock overlooking the port approached the first of the afternoon hours, and Cyaru pulled her away to the part of the Fair dominated by those selling food, in search of the dumpling vendor.
Story: The Fulcrum
Colors: Ecru #1: Inform
Styles and Supplies: Chiaroscuro, Panorama, Stickers ("Allodoxaphobia is the fear of other people’s opinions.")
Word Count: 1906
Rating: T
Warnings: Implied threats
Characters: Setsiana, Cyaru
In-Universe Date: Summer of 1904
Summary: Cyaru takes Setsiana to look at some art.
Cyaru lead Setsiana to a line of market stalls on the eastern side of the Fair selling artisan pieces of various kinds, mostly T’arsi, but a few in artistic styles she didn’t recognize. She had to hop a bit to keep up with his stride. They passed a stall full of ceramics decorated with the green glaze common to T’arsi work, and a glassblower’s stall full of decorative centerpieces, before moving on to a stall with many small rugs and three giant ones hanging from the top of the stall with the fringes almost lying on the ground at the bottom.
“They have so many fragile things here,” said Setsiana, thinking of the glassblower. The ceramics also were well-known enough, but it was rare to see an entire stall’s worth of them at the Fair. The merchants always told her it was risky to transport so many breakable pieces.
“They don’t have this Fair in your time?” Cyaru asked.
“They do,” said Setsiana. “Well, some years, anyway. Sometimes the caravan gets ambushed coming through Meandhshen and they never make it.”
Cyaru seemed amused. “They don’t have to come overland through Meandhshen anymore,” he said. “They come directly by ship now.”
“All the way from T’arse? Without getting lost at sea?”
“Navigation is much better than it was in your time. They sail from T’arse to Shayansee, as well, and apparently Northern Kingdoms sailors even discovered a lone island in the middle of the Endless Ocean that’s thousands of miles from anywhere else. Qhoroali claims it all happened because of clockwork, but she would say that.”
Cyaru seemed to be content to look at the rugs, so Setsiana turned her attention to them as well while she considered her next plan of action. The three large ones in the middle were striking. On the left was a rug consisting of many disembodied hands, with skin colors ranging from near Qhoroali’s all the way to a deeper brown than that of the rug merchant, who was one of the darkest people Setsiana had ever seen. The hands bore a variety of tools: an ax, a scythe, a chisel, a net containing a fish, a pickax, a sword, and one very carefully manicured and callous-free almond-colored hand that was adorned in rings and held a scepter. Each hand wore an unadorned silvery metal bracelet, and each bracelet linked together with the bracelets on the other hands, joining them together like a chainmail mesh. The rightmost carpet depicted a woman who could only be the Will of T’arse, dark and regal and seated on a silver throne inlaid with gemstones, holding a similarly styled scepter, wearing finery dyed with rich blues and purples and trimmed with gold. Her hair was braided into a hundred beautiful patterns using what must be thousands of individual braids, prime among them the traditional braided coronet that encircled her head. The center carpet was maybe the strangest; a full-body portrait of a person of indeterminate gender, holding out their hand, with a river of plants, animals, and celestial objects emerging from it. But every inch and every line of their body, their hair, and their clothing also formed a secondary picture of a host of other, much smaller people: in their stomach, bakers baked bread and farmers sowed crops; in their legs, miners quarried ore and lumberjacks chopped trees; along the stretch of their arms, soldiers marched formation, and in the thin spaces of their fingers, jewelers set tiny gems and engravers minted coins. Their hair was made of weavers and tailors, at work with looms and patterns. Their eyes were telescopes being used by astronomers, and in the center of their forehead stood the same Will with her scepter, watching over all the rest. These large pieces were not for the regular visitors to the Fair to buy; they were there to tempt the nobles and officials of Governor’s court, who would likely hang them on the wall of a parlor to impress their visitors with their knowledge and appreciation of T’arsi culture.
The merchant moved to reposition a smaller rug featuring a songbird, and she jangled as she moved — Setsiana noticed she had three identical bracelets on her right hand of exactly the type depicted on the left-hand rug. She’d seen similar bracelets at the Fair before, and briefly wondered about their significance, but today she had other things to occupy her thoughts. She put her right hand into her pocket and grasped the hilt of the knife.
She could attack him here — maybe just a cut across his hand to make him release her - and run. Could he run faster than her? She might have to do more to disable him first. But it was risky… her eyes strayed to the guard that stood positioned between the stall to the right and the next one over. If she could get to a temple and explain her situation, they would save her — the priesthood had a higher authority over their own than the Emperor did. But if the guard caught her first…
She could see the hilt of the guard’s sword on his left side, but she now noticed that he was also wearing what looked like a wide, bent black metal tube on his right hip, with some details that were too small to make out from this distance. A vague flicker of worry crossed her mind and circled back; she couldn’t afford a miscalculation. She released the knife in her pocket to point at the strange object. “What is he wearing?”
Cyaru looked up from the rugs and in the direction she was indicating. “It’s a gun,” he said mildly. “Don’t you have them?” When Setsiana shook her head, he asked, “Cannons?” After another head shake, he said, “I’m pretty sure we saw cannons by 1647. You know fireworks, right? From Shayansee?”
“Of course.” They were expensive, but the nobles like to buy them in great quantities and set them off on Nyufeisyälye Ciria; it was maybe the only part of Ciria she actually enjoyed.
“On the eastern continent,” said Cyaru, “they build huge metal tubes, closed on one end, and put a big firework, more or less, in the bottom of it, and a huge ball of metal in front. Then they set off the firework, and propel the ball through the stone walls of whatever T’arse is trying to conquer this time. That’s a cannon. A gun is just a very small hand-held cannon that destroys people, rather than castles. In my… village, they said that when T’arse first got the recipe for the gunpowder, they kept it a secret from the Northern Kingdoms, leveled one castle with it, and then both their target and also two other uninvolved kingdoms all swore to abolish the debt slavery immediately.”
“They use fireworks in war now?” Setsiana asked, startled. “But that’s a war crime.”
“In Shayansee, you mean? Sure, it’s against the gentlemen’s agreement that all of the Shayanseen kings have with each other, but that’s in the west. War in Shayansee is like an elaborate aristocratic game that they play with the lives of the commoners, or a formal duel — it’s fought over matters of honor, or insults, or other such things that only the kings care about, but when the chips are down, that’s all it is. No one is conquering anyone else, and they all have a basic fundamental respect for each other that allows them to make those kinds of rules of engagement and expect that they’ll be followed. War in the east is for bigger stakes: in the north, it’s the crusade against slavery; in Meandhshen, it’s the right to exist as a citizen of a country other than T’arse; the right to speak the language you grew up with, or practice the religion you know, or retain your own culture. The League of Meandhshen makes rules, of course, but they really only apply within the League, and are mostly just a list of reasons they can use to prosecute and jail T’arsi prisoners of war. There’s too much at stake there for them to make a law banning gunpowder.”
As he gave this speech, he looked at her very thoughtfully, and she was sure he suspected she was up to something, but he did not look at the pocket of her skirt, and he did not ask why the gun had caught her attention. The casualness and calmness with which he said it put a chill down her spine, as if the mere existence of such a weapon weren’t bad enough. It was probably only out of awareness of the T’arsi woman in the stall in front of them; there was no way she would understand QuCheanya, or maybe even register it as a different language than Vrelian, but she might recognize what Tärasa meant and be alarmed at a different tone of voice.
Maybe the knife was a bad idea after all. Could she escape without it? There should be a way — she was morally in the right, had done nothing wrong, was training to be a priestess, and priestesses had always been popular with commoners in her experience. Her captors were reprobates who were stealing the priesthood’s secrets and trying to kill God. She was a young woman currently being held captive by a man. Couldn’t she simply scream for help, say that she was being kidnapped or trafficked, that Cyaru had stolen her temple’s secrets? Wouldn’t bystanders come to her aid? Wouldn’t the guard?
But then she remembered Liselye’s reaction to her outfit that morning back in 1911, and what they’d said before about how her Vrelian would sound like it was from a play in this later time period. If she screamed, would she be mistaken for a street performer, and simply be given money and applause? She didn’t think she could bear it if that happened. It would be worse than being shot with the gun.
She made her right hand into a fist beside where the knife lurked inside her modified pocket. She would have to think more carefully about this, if there was some chance that she would be allowed outside the apartment again. She hadn’t come here prepared with the knowledge she needed to escape.
The rug merchant directed a question at them, something that sounded only vaguely reminiscent of the T’arsi that Setsiana knew, and Cyaru replied with something that sounded like a polite refusal. He pulled her along to other stalls, and eventually haggled for and bought a small wooden carving of a bird. He did not ask if Setsiana wanted to buy anything, which was a blessing, since that was the furthest thing from her mind at the moment. She was watching the guards; how they wore their guns, the ease with which they could reach for them. She saw a man cause a commotion at a neighboring stall, and saw the guard nearby casually put his hand on his gun, and then move it away again once the man had come to an agreement with the merchant. The man seemed not to notice, but Setsiana noted that the merchant had glanced in the direction of the guard.
Eventually, the great clock overlooking the port approached the first of the afternoon hours, and Cyaru pulled her away to the part of the Fair dominated by those selling food, in search of the dumpling vendor.
no subject
no subject
Thank you! And yes, this isn't the only issue she will encounter...
no subject
no subject
Thanks! There will be more information about T'arse later that should explicate the rugs a little more, too.