The most important letter in the city of Caspin traveled on white gloves and shaky hands through rain-stained, cobbled streets. The woman the letter was intended for was blissfully unaware of it as the she slipped out of her luxuriously soft sheets with nothing between her deep-hued skin and the white cotton. The sheet slipped down her perfect arm to leave her with goosebumps over her flesh as she crossed the room to a chair that loyally presented her with her white robe. The entire room was white with gold touches and memories from the old country. Despite her Caspin upbringing, the woman was extraordinarily proud of her Idrayen blood, a virtue among her constituents. Proconsul Vivian Mahsa was the first woman to take the seat of any territory under Caspin rule and she was hardly a native of the mainland. The Mahsa family were brought on the Tin Ruby along with the other nobles of Berber when Caspin claimed the land of spice and gold for their own in a bold attempt to have presence in the vast deserts of Abarshane Idraye.
The rich came over first, as they could afford the airship passes and the Consul could not see any flaw in allowing the influential people of Idrayen society to hold positions of influence within his cabinet. With them, they brought liquidated assets and a fear of death as they fled just as the Black Paper Death began to creep across the poor communities through the brothels on the water docks. The disease had taken thousands in the port cities. The rich were convinced that an air dock away from those who would carry the virus was far more sterile, and a throng of thousands boarded the Tin Ruby, which acted as their luxury liner to float them across the ocean to Caspin.
The Mahsa city estate in Caspin was not far from the Council of Equals headquarters and the main military quarters, which put the political family in the heart of the district’s bustle. It was a row house against the cobblestone path that overlooked the main square. Every morning, Vivian stood in the top window with a cup of steaming coffee that she sipped as she watched the men in the yard exercising for the day. She smiled softly over the brim of the cup while her plush robe wrapped her cocoa body and her heavy lips teased at the slight bend of the ceramic. Despite having just left the bed, she was not without her white lace gloves that so elegantly contrasted her deep skin tone. A proper lady should always wear gloves when holding fine porcelain, and she would drink from nothing but the finest porcelain when watching the men in the yard perform their morning drills.
She had lost track of time when the chain was pulled at the door to announce the arrival of the courier with her daily mail from the Council headquarters, but despite the distraction of her headmistress receiving the scroll, her eyes were fixed to the man calling out the drills. Even through the bubbled glass, she could hear his despotic voice. She had known General Maximilian Hathus for a decade, yet every time the words of the order and brutality of his command were uttered from him in her presence, his gravel crawled up her shoulder, up her throat, and caressed the shell of her ear in such a way that pricked the hairs along her spine.
He was never considered an eloquent man, but his rank and authority surpassed his charm and where that lacked, his undebased history of demanding and achieving lofty perfection would precede his foul tongue. He knew she was there, though he couldn’t see her, her amber-green eyes burned his skin as he removed his coat after the early run. He stole glances to her window, a silent missive of affection and when she caught them, she returned with her lace palm on the glass. In the middle of such an exchange, the door to her bedroom opened with a creak and her headmistress entered with the letter from the Consul rested in her black gloves. Vivian turned slowly and the black curls of her coif tumbled over her white fabric shoulder.
“From the chambers.” She offered the letter from the Consul first, which Vivian took in her free hand and crossed the room to her writing desk where she pulled a pair of gold rimmed spectacles to place on her nose. With extreme caution not to break the seal, she slowly chipped the wax from the paper and kept it in tact as she opened it and flattened it on the woodgrain to read. The writing was in deep black ink and the splatters from the self-feeding pen were not masked by his assistant, a fact that Vivian noted with a subtle smirk and a shake of her head at hubris a pen that refilled its own tip with a complex series of gears.
After several beats, she folded the glasses from her nose once more and rested them on the desk. “I will need my white courting gown and I will have to begin preparing for tonight. There is a meeting on the Tin Ruby, I anticipate it is a formal one.”
The headmistress nodded and her brown braid loops bounced. She escaped to the dressing and bathing chambers to begin to prepare the Lady of the house for her dinner date. Vivian waited until the girl was lost in the doorway to cross to the window once more. The General was still performing drills and about half the company was on the ground in the early throes of agony. He cackled as they suffered, partially cruel, but also the rib of an older brother as he broke down their barriers to form camaraderie with the greenhorns. The corner of her mouth ticked upward in mild amusement at his accomplishment, though as he called the troops back to quarters, she began to leave the window. Before she turned around completely, she took one more glance out the warped glass to see Maximilian and his entire novice battalion at attention with eyes to her bedroom window. On his command, the scores of youth saluted her window along with their commander who had the broadest smile. She returned the salute with matched formality despite the fact she was obscured by the glass and the morning sun. With that gesture, once again, her skin crawled as if his fingers set out on a journey toward her throat from her wrist. She shivered and attempted to shake off the distraction as she heard the calls from the dressing chambers calling her to her bath. Reluctance ultimately lost out and she trudged to the quarters to begin her day.
“Charcoal is abundant, my time is not.” Vesna’s mouse-like physique seemed even more absurd as she moved around her work area in the caves beneath Caspin. She skittered around the room in search of materials, but every time she picked up a pebble or cog, she set it down. It was unclear what she was doing, but Archibald Thorpe stood firm in the center of the work room with his arms crossed. He was easily three times her height, but his height even by human standards was unprecedented and when his height worked against his skeletal frame, he took the form of a dapper tree. His sleeves were rolled to his elbow and his pressed white shirt managed to stay tidy even in the black and dusty mine. The gas lamps around them flickered and the mouse-girl scratched as she paced in search of supplies.
“What do you plan to do then? A more efficient… pencil sharpener?” Archibald frowned bemusedly as his gaze studied Vesna’s ball-jointed hands and tiny talons wrapped around a particularly bright pebble. She looked up at Archibald with a winning smile and removed her goggles from her eyes. Her freckled skin was stained with soot and her long, coiled, white curls bounced, though they looked dull from the environment. Her round ears stuck out a little bit, but even though she had some of the hints of the halfling race, Vesna looked more girl than Kobold. She lifted the the the stone proudly.
“A self-sharpening pencil! It will automatically feed surplus charcoal into a well, much like those mechanical pens I gave to the Consul, only this will be a large machine that will have a writing utensil at every drafting table in our work quarters.” She spoke with the pace of a darting rodent and rocked from toe to heel and back once more. “Less time with broken tools, more time to work. Should increase our efficiency by 22.49 percent, which does not seem like much, but if you consider how many more plans I will be able to draft without having to stop to sharpen a pencil or leave to buy more, we will only increase revenue.”
Archibald slowly began to smile. His thin mustache tickled the corner of his lip and he lifted a remarkably clean hand to adjust the rogue, auburn hair. He spoke her language and he wrung his hands as he imagined the the money entering his grasp.
“Who will work on your plans while you build it?” The clean man approached Vesna. She barely came to his thigh, but in his eyes her height was all the more appealing as his fingers found those sooty gray curls and slipped into them to stroke her scalp with mild affention. Vesna gave a soft little squeak and a sound that could only be described as “Murr” as her head nestled into the palm and she let her eyes fall closed while is soft fingertips toyed with her follicles.
“It will take no time to build. We have the materials. I will make one, create the schematic, and the Kobolds will make the rest of them.” She waved over toward the workers. Though they could not be seen, if one followed the loose wooden boards through the cave, they would find a broad-barred gate that served as the entry into the mine, proper. Behind that gate, the Kobolds were picking away at ore to gather supplies.
“You get to work then, my pet.” He gripped the hair tendrils in his curled fingers and forced her head back so his eyes could meet hers. Her chin rested on his thigh and she stared up at him with the adoration of a loyal hound. “I prefer you when you are… most enterprising.”
The soot from her chin left a black dusting on the top of his tan riding pants and his dour face returned. His age showed when he was most upset and the lines along his chin were deep beneath the down-turned corners of his pursed lips. “I am off to remove this filth from myself.” He gave her a stern glance as he let go of her hair. “You are expected in two hours. The bath will be ready.”
He stepped back and he nearly leaned down to kiss her, but the soot on her lips caused him to hesitate and he shook his head quickly before he suddenly about-faced on the wood slats. His spatted dress shoes tapped quickly on the loose wood all the way to the stairs at the end of the tunnel where he disappeared from the cave below. Vesna watched him leave and absently turned a clacking gear on her desk to a particular point and a quiet ding pitted the air. The tick-tock of clockwork gears began and her timer was set.
As she worked on the schematic for the self-sharpening pencil, she picked at a spot on her arm that was particularly distressing. It was a souvenir from her last foray in the day-world when she learned that cloud covering did not necessarily mean sanctuary and the deep brown boil grew painfully right int he crook of her elbow. Like any tactile creature, the more she flicked at it with her talon-nails, the less it healed, and though Archibald has punished her time and time again for refusing to let it be, the damned thing would not stop itching and smarting. She peeled the top of it once more and her orange-tinged blood filled the welt quickly. She cursed the wound, but it was not enough to distract from the duty of her creation.
As the wind blew, it brought the young companions to the center of the city and they rode the breeze straight onto the deck of the Tin Ruby. It was docked on its perch which, over time, became more than just a wood-framed hill, but rows and rows of shanty towns and tent cities constructed by the workers who kept the ship in operating condition. Four sprightly feet padded elegantly onto the wood-veneered observation deck. The two fae materialized once they arrived, the boy, in a burst of red petals, and the girl in a burst of black shadow. They held hands and stood in perfect silence as they waited for a safe moment to begin movement and fully take on their humanoid cloaks.
Their spiderweb parachutes were the first to disappear as they folded into themselves to disintegrate into dust particles and their skin tones changed to something in the right spectrum from his pink tone and her gray-blue. Once the transformation was complete, two teenagers who would be recognized as Rose-Merline and Sandley Sanschagrin from the island nation of Tristès Nan Marie were standing in the place of the fae. Sandley reached over to tug at one of Rose-Merline’s dreadlocks that had come undone from her hair bun and her head whipped toward him involuntarily. She spun around quickly and punched him straight in the arm and he snickered when the punch forced him to stumble and fall onto the deck.
“Ah, Sist-a, you are far too jumpy, cher. I was just trying to fix the…” He waved a finger at the lock. “The wind must-a caught at it.”
She reached up to fasten it back into the gold lace band that held them all in a tight, large bun at the very top of her head. Her face adorned jewels along her scowling eyebrows and her lips turned deep red to appear painted to match the preferences of the women of the upper crust. Her brother, just as young, pulled his locks back into a long tail that stretched to the center of his back. Each lock had a gold bead at the end to match the gold trim of his foppish attire. He brushed the gold brocade on his very red vest and his white breeches to smooth them. His face made a similar transformation as gold and red shadow lined his eyes and his lips appeared with a gold lip line down the dead center of them. As a duo, the Sanschagrins often appeared in the society columns with commentary on their exotic fashion. The two were responsible for an exuberant burst of trends inspired by the garb of Tristès Nan Marie took Caspin when they seemed to appear on the scene months ago.