Hoarder of Sharps

Graffiti. Again.

“How do the Fae keep managing to get into the Lair?” Brick signed. She meant the domed community in which they lived.

They stood upon the ruins of what had been a human civilisation in the old days. Domes were few and so far between that it was rare for one person to have seen another. Some thought their own dome was the last to remain. The one in which the sisters now stood spanned days of travel. Purple geodesic shine lain into a glassy surface ran from the ground to nearly the top. Beyond the purple was a sickening, roiling foam that they thought of as sky. A single black streak ran through the dome's centre, splitting it like a reptilian eye. This black tingled with starlight, as though the foam could be parted and something could exist beyond.

Clearly those "stars" were illusions.

Brick’s sister, Mortar, sighed through her nose. She replied mostly with one hand, but she was not distracted. “Imagine what could happen if humans and Fae worked together.”

Brick made a soft, incoherent cry in astonishment. “We're contraltos,” she reminded her sister. Contraltos were a cross between police and custodian, responsible for keeping a Lair socially clean. Once informed of their employment, they were either cast out of the Lair for refusing or they did their job until it killed them.

Killing Fae and removing all trace of Fae influence was their single biggest challenge.

The beat of silence between the sisters could easily have carried a bitter tone, but the firmness and pace of Brick's gestures were affectionate and proud. “I don’t want to imagine anything.”

Mortar glanced about the street. Scattered pedestrians picked their way throughout the area. In the before times, it had been paved with a tarry material whose name and production were lost. Now it looked like a skin infection, cracked into scaly chunks separated by pools and bundles of earth. Bizarre buildings surrounded them like broken trees, made mostly of stone and metal with some strange sinews occasionally poking out in hair-like bundles. “I don’t see any ladders,” she signed as she made eye contact. “And the imagery doesn't seem complete.”

Brick made a quick puckering sound with her lower lip. It was the easiest way to curse without costing her anything. The graffiti was high up a wall. Both surrounding buildings had collapsed away from this one and it ran long, huddled between alleys full of shattered materials. Snapped girders, more of those hair-rope-things, and all manner of small houses with wheels. One of those wheel houses was upside-down on the roof of the building.

“The usual?” Brick signed.

Mortar was already rummaging through her pack. All contraltos were equipped the same way. Their uniform, such as it was, was the typical mish mash of clothing materials (mostly denim and canvas), outfitted with a multi-purpose harness with rings, hooks, and pockets. Special pitons let them connect short fall arrest ropes which they moved up as they went, so that they looked like four-legged spiders from a distance.

Brick waited for Mortar to reach the imagery. She was watching for signs of Fae who might still be in the area. Contraltos almost never spotted a Fae after graffiti had been discovered. Or at all, for that matter. But they watched anyway. Brick’s real task was to mind Mortar’s stuff and provide feedback from a different point of view.

The climbing took longer than the cleaning. Despite the fact that Fae arts were different from human methods, the contraltos had tools for cleaning it up. Every citizen of a Lair had what was called a Sharp: a sliver of Venusium metal in the shape of a needle. Mortar touched hers to the first image of the graffiti and it took in the art the way a person finished off a bowl of soup.

Since the graffiti wasn’t connected, each separate image had to be touched with a Sharp in order to remove it. Sharps cost voice to use for a wide variety of purposes. How long a life felt had less to do with years than with how much a person could still murmur, scream, laugh, whistle, sing, or talk.

Mortar climbed down for a break, followed by walking over enough to climb to the next image. She always insisted on being the one to remove the graffiti. It looked like dedication.

Every time a contralto used her Sharp, she touched it off of a special metallically limned tattoo on her throat. Mortar did the same as she activated her Sharp for the cleaning of magical residue. Like vacuuming up the dust left from dreams.

When they finished, passersby were waiting for them a couple of metres away from the building’s wall. It was courtesy to help out contraltos, as public servants, by making some purchases with them. While there were occasional barters of goods or services – which happened everywhere – contraltos were looking to regain the voice cost. One person tapped his Sharp on his throat tattoo (everyone had one), then touched it on Mortar’s. He’d paid some of his timbre for an arm sleeve tattoo, bordered by tribals, which he described to her at length in sign language.

Fae graffiti was inefficient as an ink supply since most of the image was lost to the magic scrubbing. The imagery that had just been above them could have been read off the building from three blocks away if it were in a language the citizens knew. Most of it was consumed for that one sleeve.

Once they bade farewell to today’s trade partners, Brick and Mortar packed up and prepared to explore the surrounding buildings for hazards.

An F note began a song. No one knew where these songs came from, but they were the closest the community had to any real timekeeping. Breaks were taken as needed, so long as the work got done. Mortar and Brick went to one of the more trustworthy ruins and sat upon a shattered chunk of concrete to eat some of the nutrient bars for which they’d traded. The songs didn’t last long.

When relative silence resumed, Mortar signed to her sister: “Hold. Let’s go in there.” She pointed to a hole in one of the buildings. It looked like a soft clay tower that had been pressed into the ground from above. The walls spread out from its central mass in a ruinous, crumbled pile. There was a gargantuan crack granting access to the remains of a hallway and several rooms. “We need to talk.”

Forehead lifted with curiosity, Brick followed her sister into one of the rooms. A pane of distorted glass allowed in some of the purplish light of the Lair. Mortar took a breath and wasted no time.

“I’m a -” and she signed a word Brick didn’t recognize.

She spelled it out and, using the word, explained: “Changelings are Fae. We’re switched with human babies in their dreams. Even while the Flats are still nursing them.” Flats were people who’d spent the entirety of their voices. Once that happened, their Sharps were taken from them and they served the public with what little remained to them.

Usually, they generated and raised young.

When Brick failed to close her hanging mouth, Mortar went on: “That’s how we get into a Lair."

“This isn’t funny,” Brick signed in mounting horror. “And it doesn’t make sense. You grew up with me. We've always been together. It's not like you could sneak away for meetings!”

“Dreams,” Mortar answered. “Not even walls of cold iron can keep dreams out. It’s how my kind stay sane, how we talk…”

“Stop!” Brick said it out loud. The pitch was off. They weren’t wealthy.

“Sister…” Mortar signed.

Brick’s movements were harsh, fast, and angular; the sign language version of yelling. “Don’t call me…you can’t be! Prove it!”

Mortar took off one of her gloves. “Hold out that piece of cold iron you keep in your pocket,” she signed.

“You have one too!” The only sounds in the room were the flaps and rushes of emphatic sign language and their breathing – especially Brick’s, which was coming in fraught gasps.

“I keep it thoroughly wrapped up and in my bag.”

“For neatness!”

“No. Fae thrive on wilderness. We pretend to be neat so…”

“Why?” There was hurt in Brick’s eyes.

Mortar knew what her sister meant. “The world isn’t what you think. The dragon Usurat is lying to you.”

“What did you do with my sister?” Brick demanded in twitchy signs, lips trembling.

Mortar pointed to herself.

“I mean the human. My real sister.”

It was Mortar’s turn to look hurt. She sighed. “I don’t know,” she replied.

Brick stared incredulously.

“It’s true! The less we know about the ones with the Flats, the less likely we are to give them up! I don’t know any more than you do about where babies actually come from.”

“The Flats and Usurat’s grace, obviously,” Brick's hands jerked.

“We’re just trying to survive, same as you,” Mortar signed in a slow, sad way. Brick realised with shock that her sister had always been that way. Melancholy. A certain stylised, aloof wonderment at odd things.

Brick held out the lump of cold iron. Like all samples of its kind, it was brought back to the Lair by armoured Kindlers – hunters of the Fae. Neither of the sisters knew much more about it than that, though Mortar knew exactly how she would feel from direct contact.

Black tendrils of dying spread from the point of contact. Mortar hissed with the pain, but it was Brick who pulled back first. She stood, cold iron in bare and dirty hand, gazing into space as she took all this in. This concept of Changelings meant any random person in the Lair could secretly be a Fae! There were logistical questions, but they seemed small to Brick just now.

“I don’t understand,” Brick signed.

“We use the same graffiti in the other Lairs,” Mortar signed.

“Every Kindler who actually comes back…” Brick was signing.

Mortar held up a hand, then signed: “It’s harder to sort dreams between people who’ve never met, especially over long distances. The Dreaming knows no space, but we do. Still. We know it wasn’t always like this. Even with so much of the world in ruin.”

“Say I believe you. Say there are Fae in all the domes, and somehow Usurat is unaware. All the people are unaware...” Brick started.

“Fae are people,” Mortar put in. It broke her heart to see Brick’s scowl at the notion.

“Anyway,” Brick signed, “how could you know anything of Usurat beyond what humans know?”

“Fae can breathe in the world,” Mortar signed. Lairs were not thought of as being in the world. Only the domes had breathable air. Only they had plants and animals of palatable form.

Brick started pacing and threw her arms up in the air before whirling about and vigorously signing, “What am I supposed to do with this?”

“Our Courts are also divided. In belief, not in place,” Mortar flapped a hand about vaguely. “And the Kindlers have been doing so much harm. To all of us.”

Brick frowned. “That doesn’t answer my question. And why not just avoid the domes?”

“You know the stories of the before times? Entire Lairs of trees? Skies that tell time and have no shape?”

Brick nodded, flicking her gaze sidelong to indicate bafflement.

“Well, we become the wilderness we live in…”

Brick’s eyes widened, her dimples lengthening into little valleys of dismay. “So we’re the only…”

“...art,” Mortar signed. It wasn’t the idea Brick had in mind, but her head bobbled as she made connections.

“I should kill you,” Brick said in a hoarse whisper.

Mortar’s hands were still.

Brick’s eyes slowly closed. Her hands clasped her harness straps. Taking a breath, she slowly regarded the young woman with whom she’d grown as family. “Let’s join the Kindlers.”

It was Mortar’s turn to look mortified.

“No human you can trust will let you out of the Lair,” Brick signed. “For that matter, I can’t get out.”

“...unless we’re hunting my kind,” Mortar concluded. “But what do you get out of this?”

“I have to know how much of my life was a lie,” Brick signed, cold as iron.

Mortar flinched, though this meant that Brick believed her. At least, she hoped that's what it meant. “Even working together, there’s so much my people don’t know. And even if you all…”

“Let’s go,” Brick signed sharply.

The next several weeks were a blur for both contraltos. For one, they ceased to be contraltos. It was painful for Brick to continue to show the same faith she’d always had for her sister, when she now wasn’t sure if she’d ever truly had one. Recruitment and training were almost an afterthought, or perhaps a pre-thought. There was just the mission, the departure from the dome; leaving the Lair to learn if she had a home.

Mortar nearly came undone because of the things Brick considered trivial. They wielded cold iron weapons in tests and training exercises. Mortar was grateful for the fact that she was known to wear gloves and to be compulsively clean. It hid the burning of her hands. There were quizzes, obsidian mirrors playing over torture scenarios for Fae. Mortar had been hiding her identity all her life.

This had been something else again.

Eventually, Mortar and Brick stepped through the second set of airlock doors. The Lair sealed behind them. Neither looked back at first. Brick looked down as she walked. As ruinous as the geography of the before times had seemed while they were in the Lair, nature had wholly marched on outside of its dome.

Gardens had soil, and that was one thing. What they walked upon out here was earth. As far as Brick could see. It felt different as she stepped upon it. Not soft and wholesome, but not hard, either. Nothing could grow in it, but many things died to create this layer. It was not rock.

Mortar wept for the first hour. Openly and without shame. Each of them wore Armour, with a special glass jar-mask that presented them with what the Kindlers called a HUD. They'd had to set passwords before donning the Armour in order to secure control of its magitech. These were set up using the wearer's Sharp, which was stowed inside the Armour because there was no reason to use one outside a Lair.

What's more, the possibility of losing one's Sharp was an unconscionable risk.

The Armours' masks allowed them to hear each other. When the doors closed behind them, Mortar had looked up.

The heavens were smeared with iridescence like molten rainbows turned sick. All above and in every direction spanned the pustulent foam that was the clouds. The black stripe was visible on the dome, but there was no slash in the foam above.

From the outside, the dome was a yellow eye. They couldn’t see any glittering of starlight in the pupil. “Can it see us?” Mortar asked.

“You’re the one with magic,” Brick said. Her tone was too neutral to tell if it was a jibe.

They took in the world around them.

“Raucous,” Brick rasped a curse. Speaking aloud, without fear of her voice being stolen by an eavesdropper, was eerie for her.

“Underhill,” murmured Mortar in a higher pitch. It made her sound prepubescent, but she’d spent her lower register and several decibels beside to pay her share of the Lair’s climate control fees.

Mortar couldn’t wipe the tears from her cheeks with the Armour on. “Why not let me go alone for proof?” She asked Brick. “You wouldn’t be risking yourself. And if a Kindler realises, it would be easier by their hand…”

“You weren’t this dramatic before. Is this the real you?” Brick asked.

“Nothing this dramatic ever happened to me before. And I’ve always been the real me.” Mortar kept her tone aggressively neutral.

“Well, you heard them: these suits have three days of water and nourishment. If we’re not back by then…”

“But we’re not coming back.”

“No. Did your dreams come with maps?” Brick was trying to be angry. Stand-offish. But Mortar knew that left lean of the head. Brick was curious.

“Mostly metaphors. Streets paved with animal hides, edible buildings, flying fire hydrants. That sort of thing.”

Brick hid a giggle by pretending it was a cough.

Four days went by. Brick wrestled with the urge to ask why Mortar had revealed that she was a Changeling that day, now months ago. It was a more or less routine cleaning job. Their lives were as good as the Lair could provide. Some part of her feared the answer. Mortar had lived that way all her life. A Changeling the whole time.

Why now?

They made their way through a cleft in a steep rock face because they saw a tornado coming through. Either the tornado couldn’t climb the mountain, or it just wasn’t headed their way. They’d never seen the sky twist its wind into a rope like that before.

There were things at several points that could have generously been called animals. “We could try to kill one…” Brick suggested.

Mortar glanced at her sister, who wasn’t looking her way. “I’m not sure magic could make the meat safe to eat. If that even is meat.”

They did their best to stay out of sight.

At the end of four such days, taking turns to sleep and missing the notes that used to ring out in the Lair, they came upon a metal mountain. Not a building that was vaguely mountainous, but more cold iron than they’d ever seen – intentionally forged into the shape of a mountain. If the clouds had been the white in the old stories, this Fae-forbidden monolith would have gleamed for miles. Under a sky the colour of bad dreams, however, it actually camouflaged with natural rock.

Brick was trying to decide, through the torn fabric of her heartbeat, if the sister she’d trusted more than herself all her life could be safely left behind. Mortar, however, marched ahead – and promptly stood still as soon as she stepped upon the metal walkway.

“Mortar?” Nothing.

“Fae, I have no time for this. These Armours come with cold iron blades. You know that!”

Nothing.

“Mortar!”

Silence.

Brick made her cautious way to the edge of where metal met what passed for ground. When she got a proper chance, she was going to get to the bottom of how the world had come to be as it was now. For the moment, however, she took three deep breaths and then grasped her sister, yanking her away from the metal.

As soon as they landed in a heap together, Mortar’s voice came through. “-me! Help me! Answer me! Why can’t I move!? What’s going on? Oh, Brick, don’t tou-”

“Mortar!”

“Brick!”

Mortar whipped around and clung to her sister for all the world as though she would fall into the sky without Brick. Brick held just as tightly, until she remembered that Mortar didn’t deserve Brick’s relief. But that came with a stab of guilt.

“What happened?” Brick asked.

“I don’t know.” Mortar stood and kept talking as she helped up the human of the pair. “The Armour got angry and just kept saying, 'Reset your password.' Even the HUB stopped.”

“HUD.”

“Really? Now?”

Brick laughed, an awkward sound with her patchy vocal range. “Okay, let me try.”

“Wai-” Silence.

Brick couldn’t move. It wasn’t paralysis of her muscles. It was like the Armour had become a sealed, body-tight tomb. Small wonder Mortar had panicked!

Brick hadn’t had to wait for more than three breaths before Mortar had hauled her off the walkway.

“No one wants us in there,” Mortar remarked.

“What would you do for a nutrient bar?” Brick asked.

“If I thought the cold iron ended, I’d walk to that cave entrance,” Mortar answered.

“It doesn’t hurt me.”

“The air will kill you.”

Brick took a long, slow breath. “Do the Fae need practice with their magic?”

“It’s…hard to explain. It’s not like becoming a carpenter, where there’s teaching and talent and experience. It’s more like…um…art, I guess. Why? I can’t fly, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

“How is it like art? Can’t that also have mentors and the other stuff you said?” Brick didn’t look at Mortar. She was still looking at the ground. Even when building a fire, she used the techniques that started with the bottom. Foundational. Time-tested.

“There are things like writer’s block. Or you get into some stuff for a while – like a certain kind of dance – and then you get bored of it. Can’t bring yourself to bother, even when the pressure’s on. Sometimes there’s inspiration. Influences matter. But Changelings are often warned in our dreams about using magic in a Lair. It gets Usurat’s attention.”

“You’ve seen the influences,” and Brick spoke contemplatively. As though listing ingredients. “Armour. Buildings. Even the littler ones, with the wheels and only enough room for seats. The dome itself. The quarter for the Flats, where no one else goes and babies come to the Lair.”

Mortar’s jaw slowly dropped. She had no tears left, but it was like she had a heartbeat in her hair; a Fae feeling of connectedness. Brick hadn’t let go! Her chin fled from her nose still farther as the Changeling realised what her sister was getting at. “No.”

“We don’t have a lot of air left anyway.”

“Take mine. I turned it off once we were out of sight of the Lair. Lots left.”

“Wouldn’t matter. A few hours, at most? And what about water? Food?” Their thirst and hunger were becoming more real by the moment.

Mortar let out a shuddering breath. “All right.” She swallowed. “Start taking off your Armour.”

Those minutes had been bloated with extra seconds of tension. Now, however, Brick was inside the cold iron mountain with a magical bubble of air over her head. Just her head, and she had to be very careful that the bubble didn't touch any cold iron walls or ceilings.

Brick was wearing the thermal suit for under the Armour, and part of her thought she was marching off into danger like in the old stories – but wearing pyjamas. Without the Armour, she had no way to communicate with Mortar.

So the Changeling waited outside and hoped.

“Whoa…” Brick muttered. She couldn’t help herself. The tunnel she walked opened into an elaborate super-facility like some of the ruins connected to the dome of the Lair. The colour and sheen of the metal changed; no longer cold iron. Derelict, cyclopean machinery promised wonders of a by-gone age. What she saw here, however, was sleek and fully operational!

There were some manner of floating floor, catwalks, ladders, ramps, numerous doors and spiral stairwells, things she couldn’t name, and machines that moved like people. They reminded her of legends of clay men, but they were made of a material rarely used in the Lair. Items of its make could be found in the ruins, spires, and sometimes even the streets. Too lightweight to be metal, too smooth and thin to be wood.

She had to hope that they saw with the visors they had on the part where a person’s face would be. There were storage rooms where automated pots and clay men sorted more supplies than she ever dared hope for. Everything a Lair could possibly need, from flint and tinder to nutrient bars and Armour components!

She and her sister could reload and restock their Armour and carry a week of supplies apiece!

But there were voices.

After climbing, hiding, quietly scurrying, and even stowing away on one of those pots, she managed to tuck herself into a stone tunnel above a vault. Ropes like the ones she’d seen in the ruins, coated in a strange material and metal on the inside, conveyed countless automatons and supplies throughout a vast network of holes and transport connections. She peeked from a perch that allowed the rope next to her to perform its duties without hurting her or giving her away.

Upon the centre of the floor below stood the dragon, Usurat himself. Brick would want to describe him to Mortar at great length, because he was both more and less than she expected. It was like his presence was more than his being. His scales were a pale green accented with a shade like magenta. Despite being a monstrous reptile with a tail, four legs, and wings, he seemed…earthy, in a way she didn’t have words for.

He was speaking to a conclave of Fae!

Brick knew nothing of the different kinds of Fae. Their Courts, if they still had such a thing; their ranks and types; even their ways and beliefs, she now realised, were a mystery to her. Kindler training taught them mostly how to look for Changelings, which were human-shaped infiltrators. The ones she saw below were unmistakably inhuman.

Usurat stood beside a vat or a pot like the ones coming and going beside her and, while the Fae spoke, did something repugnant. He undulated his neck and half-coughed, like a cat with a hairball. Inside of the legendary breath she’d heard so much about, what he produced was a tinkling of unclaimed Sharps!

Was that why nothing else was made of Venusium?

“Truly, pulchritudinous Usurat, we honour you for the work you’ve done in salvaging the world,” one of the Fae was saying. “We accept, if we do not understand, that you believe we share blame with the humans for their representative currencies, and how that led to the world turning upon itself. We do not accept the continued hunt of our people.”

“You will accept what I give you, Folk, and I decide if you are Fair. Such is my power. Human song powers the magic I need, but you are merely a convenient distraction so the humans do not obstruct me. Remember your place, and be grateful for access to the hoard.”

One of the Fae in their group was not fully paying attention to the discussion. Brick desperately wanted to learn more, but she couldn’t afford to be noticed. As soon as one of the pots came up on the line beside her – a pot with Sharps inside – she clambered aboard. She grabbed as many as she dared, knowing she’d have to double back for the foodstuffs and other supplies.

The tunnel was long and dark. With everything automated, nothing needed to see. She didn’t dare look back, for fear that the Fae might have noticed her. Even if the conclave couldn’t fly, Usurat sure could. Brick’s head was spinning. They made it sound like the dragon was the only thing keeping the world from ending. But if he was keeping humans penned in domes to farm their voices away, was that better?

Changeling or not, she would need her sister.