CW: blood/injury, drug use

Cannabis in the military is pretty common, it’s just not encouraged by the higher-ups; most of them, anyway. It’s my experience that a lot of officers are very, very good at sounding holier-than-thou about it until they’re actually offered a brownie and then they get over it pretty quickly. Just don’t bring it to the mixers.

—Roxanna Olivadocht Baer, in a letter home to her younger sister, 1920

Csindra wasn’t sure what exactly she’d expected from Rook’s house. She wasn’t terribly surprised, exactly; but she was… Well, entertained was probably a good word.

“You live here?”

“Well, yeah. What’d you expect?”

Csindra got out of the car, wrinkling her nose again at the smell of gasoline and leather polish. She’d never ridden in a car in her life before now, and now twice in one day. All in all, she thought she’d done a decent job of hiding it, although she’d still take a rickshaw or a bike any day. Trains smelled just as bad, but at least they didn’t jostle so much, or make so much noise if you weren’t near the engine. What was the benefit of riding on top of the engine? Who thought that was a good idea?

Probably the same person, she decided, who had built Den Elessa’s rowhouses. They were about three stories tall, all connected, all surging up above her with flat brick faces, balconies that looked just a little too rickety for her taste, and anbaric streetlamps that rose up almost to the second level, which meant nobody on the second storey got any sleep, most likely. They were ugly things, and about what she’d expected from the epitome of Elessa’s nightmarish urban center… which was exactly why the balcony on the third floor with the four birdhouses, an awning, what looked like a music stand, and ivy winding through the bars was definitely Rook’s apartment.

“You’re the third floor, right?”

“Why’d you say that?” Rook answered, although there was a bit of a wry grin on his face. He reached over, stealing his familiar back; Csindra had to admit she was thankful. She liked the little creature just fine, but between her shoulders getting tired and her anxiety insisting she was courting bad fates, it was a bit of a relief. Plus, it meant he didn’t think she was going to run off.

“The birdhouses are cute.”

“I didn’t make them,” Rook grumbled.

“So where’d they come from?”

“People keep giving them to me. I kept some of them. The rest I just – got rid of.”

“Got rid of?”

“Uh. Put them places.”

Csindra followed him into the building, trying to figure out why on earth people would give someone that many birdhouses. “They really couldn’t come up with anything else?”

“Not at first. It was books for the first year. Then the birdhouses caught on between my name and this little fuck being different birds several months in a row. Eventually I got into Songwork and started getting actually useful stuff.”

“Who was doing all of this? I mean -” She hesitated. It didn’t seem polite to mention that Rook didn’t seem to have any family, and his relationship with Scheffen hadn’t given off tremendous amounts of warmth. “The people in the office? The uh— what are they called? Company?”

Rook rang the lift bell, which she was a little surprised by given how he’d handled the stairs at the Centrum, and gave a tired laugh. “Hospital. I didn’t know anybody in Akelei Company yet.”

“Oh.” She had a million other questions to ask to that, but none of them were any more polite, and Rook wasn’t offering up any more information. The birdhouses were still cute.

The lift slowly rattled down towards them, and Rook opened the gate, giving the liftman – liftboy, really – a little wave. Csindra found herself pausing at the entrance to the lift. She knew how these worked. Theoretically.

“What’s the matter?” the liftboy asked, eyes wide and very annoyingly blue. “Ain’t you never seen a lift before?”

Little boy, I am going to break your neck, Csindra thought before sucking it up and taking the few steps in. At least she had her axe back, a comforting weight on her back. It made the rest of this much, much easier.

The liftboy pushed the lever up. The lift rattled into motion – and Csindra clutched at the railing behind her.

The liftboy stared back at her.

“Mind your own business,” she snapped.

“You better listen to her, Marcus, she bites,” Rook teased, and Marcus turned a little white before turning back to the lever. Then Rook leaned over to her. “So, you haven’t-”

“I just don’t like them,” she grumbled.

“Come on.”

“So what if I haven’t?”

Rook laughed, crossing his arms. “The Zweispars aren’t that b-”

“Say backwards and I’ll rip your tongue out of your head.”

“You’re not very nice.”

“Says the pot to the kettle.”

“Fine, fine. I know for a fact that the Zweispars have lifts. And cars.”

Shit. He had noticed. “And I avoid them. What’s your point?”

“That I’m very, very curious.”

“So curiosity’s going to kill the bird, too. Shame.”

Rook rolled his eyes at that, although he did seem to be enjoying the conversation. It was helping her relax, too. She’d never been this far north, and Den Elessa… well, she’d heard plenty from her mother. She knew lots about it. That was very different from actually being here.

“Want me to go get your bags, Master Rook?”

“Yeah, sure. And how many times-” Rook added, but Marcus was already gone. “Master Rook,” he grumbled. “Can’t he at least say Major?”

“You don’t carry your own bags?”

“Eh, he’s so eager, might as well let him,” Rook said casually. Csindra wasn’t sure that was the only reason, though. She hadn’t noticed it at first, but Rook was starting to waver a little on his feet. He was hiding it well, but she caught it as they walked down the hallway – he was steadying himself on the wall, wincing a little. She probably wouldn’t even have noticed if she wasn’t paying such close attention, and even then, she wasn’t sure it was anything, really. He was just tired. “Here.” He unlocked the door, and Csindra caught just a hint of Bloodwork as he disarmed… something on the other side. “I’ve got a spare room but I need to uh – empty it out a bit.”

“What? What were you keeping in there?”

“Books, mostly. I just have to get them off the bed and it’ll be fine.” Rook was stumbling a little. He flicked the light on and moved into the kitchen.

The inside was just as disorganized and strange as the outside balcony; in fact, if anything, it was more so. There was a gramophone balanced on top of a waist-high bookshelf, next to a loveseat that had clearly seen better days and she suspected was second- or third-hand; the anbaric lights on the ceiling competed with oil lamps and candles, some of which had been burned down into tiny stubs, others still tall and straight. Just inside of the balcony door, there was an explosion of plants, many of which she recognized. Herbs, mostly, but there was a good mix, taking up almost an entire half of the room. Astragalus, ferns, mushrooms, basil, feverfew, chamomile, valerian – even some poppies, which she suspected Rook wasn’t supposed to have growing in his apartment.

Csindra came a little closer to the plants, reaching down –

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” Rook murmured, pulling a mug down from his cupboard.

“What? Why?”

“Flytrap.”

Csindra pulled her hand back then bent down. There it was – a Venus flytrap nestled between one flower she didn’t recognize and another that she thought might be St. John’s Wort. “They don’t bite people.”

“Aw, ruin my fun.”

“You like freaking people out with it, huh?”

“Can’t help it if people are stupid.” Rook finished what he was doing, and Csindra began to smell it; some sort of herbal tea. Not what she would have thought Rook would drink. He took the mug and sat down on the loveseat, watching her with the plants. “You seem to know what you’re doing. I thought you were a Bloodworker.”

“I am, but my mother does some Smokework. Plus, plenty of these are good for stuff outside of Smokework.”

“Mm.” Rook sipped at his tea, but he was looking worse by the minute. “Jacob was watering them for me. That and tracking my pigeons.”

She tried not to smile. The soldier he liked so much. She wasn’t nearly as enthused with the man, but he could have been worse, and besides, she wasn’t fond of any soldier, even Rook. But no matter her opinion of Elessans, there was something very sweet about watching Rook navigate what he didn’t even seem to want to acknowledge was a crush. She’d known she was, well, kanaka for years, but Elessans were different about these things. Repressed, really. “You told me Scheffen’s the one who found you. How does he come into it?”

“I told you. We’re not friends.”

“So pretend for a moment. It’s relevant anyway.”

“I don’t see how,” Rook grumbled, probably just because he was embarrassed. He took another sip of tea, and relented. “He works for her. That’s all.”

“That’s all?”

“And he’s nice to me. Always has been.”

“Like a dad.”

“Not like a dad,” Rook shot back, a little too defensively. “He’s not old enough to be my father.”

“No?”

“He’s twenty-nine. I did the math.” He paused. “Just out of curiosity. Years ago.”

She tried, so hard, not to laugh at him – and mostly managed it. Rook just pulled a face at her in response. “Yeah, shut up. I hired you to help me with Bloodwork, not to make snarky comments about my social circle.”

“That I do for free.”

Rook shrugged, then slid a little further down onto the loveseat. “…You can actually help, right? At least a little?” he asked, cautiously. It was the most he’d actually admitted to any vulnerability or worry.

Csindra paused, rubbing the fronds of one of the ferns between her fingers. “I think so,” she said. It was still kind of over-promising, but édjan’na was – well, Elessans didn’t know much about it at all. She didn’t feel right about giving an Elessan any more information about it, but if she played it right, she could help him without shining any light on what her people deliberately kept dark. And if she didn’t –

Her fingers twitched a little. She kind of liked Rook, but not enough to feel guilty about the fact that she’d kill him if she had to. Elessans had done enough damage. Only… she had a feeling there were a lot of other things that’d beat her to it.

“I don’t know how much,” she added after a bit. This was a bad idea. She shouldn’t have said yes. She –

She was talking to empty air. She raised her head. “Rook?”

Rook had fallen asleep. Very quickly, actually, which raised her hackles a little. He’d dropped the mug gently on the carpet below him, and she got carefully to her feet, creeping over to pick it up. It was empty, but she sniffed it – and pulled a face. She’d only smelled the valerian and chamomile before. Up close, she could smell the cannabis and laudanum in it as well – very faintly, but there nonetheless. “Odjòn’n vol’,” she grumbled under her breath. So she was stuck with a druggie. That would have been good to know ahead of time, although a druggie who fell asleep and drank tea instead of smoking was admittedly a pretty good option.

But that left her with a choice.

No handcuffs. No restrictions. And whatever military process Scheffen had been talking about, she hadn’t actually started it yet. Csindra hadn’t signed anything yet.

Don’t rush it. Explore a bit first.

That was fair. She’d gotten interested in Rook for a reason, and she’d already lectured herself once over this; she’d known exactly what she was signing up for. Well, mostly. The room full of semi-illicit plants and books to the ceiling was a bit of a surprise, but not a huge one. So she’d just see if there were any more surprises.

The kitchen wasn’t much of a kitchen. There was a hot plate with a kettle perched on it, a few suspicious-looking cans, and not much else. There was a fireplace, although in rowhouse apartments like this Csindra wasn’t sure how much to trust it, and cupboards that upon inspection, contained more dustbunnies and a couple bags of pasta and dried beans. She was starting to wonder what Rook actually ate, although to be fair, he’d been down south for a while.

Then there were the three closed doors. One led to the bathroom, and Csindra checked to make sure Rook was actually asleep before fiddling with the taps on the sink. She made sure they were off before leaving and closing the door, but she was allowed to have some fun with indoor plumbing. The second was the spare room he’d mentioned. He hadn’t really gotten across that the “books he just had to get off the bed” were several stacks taking up the entire twin bed, and she wondered if she could just take the loveseat instead. It was practically a library in here. As dusty as one, too.

The third door…

Csindra’s arms started tingling the moment she touched the handle, and she pulled her hand back, throat constricting. Something was wrong.

She glanced back over at Rook’s sleeping form, and scanned the apartment for the snake. She couldn’t see him, but that didn’t mean anything with snakes. They were sneaky little fuckers.

She could leave it alone, she supposed. Maybe if she wasn’t feeling goosebumps and the tell-tale spark of Bloodwork along her arms, she would have. It was probably just that he cast a lot of magic in there. That was all.

She gripped the handle and opened the door.

The smell of blood hit her first, copper-and-salt at the back of her throat, before she even realized what she was looking at. The bed in the center of the room was drenched in blood, white sheets stained with red, dripping onto the hardwood. Fresh blood, not dried – and the sounds hit her next, infuriated screaming-

I DON’T WANT YOUR HELP LEAVE ME ALONE

LET GO OF ME

Others, words unintelligible –

Her vision cleared. The bed wasn’t stained with blood, of course it wasn’t; Rook hadn’t been in this apartment for a good while. He’d been away.

Her hands began to shake.

What had he done in here before he left?

She’d been giving him all of this good faith. Not all Bloodworkers were bad. She assumed most weren’t. Some were. She forgot that sometimes. And he’s Elessan, Csindra, he’s part of the military, you can’t possibly think he’s innocent-

She slammed the door shut, feeling like she might throw up. Magic, just magic, that wasn’t real, that wasn’t real, but it had been, it had been an echo of something-

She had to go. Now. Before it was too late. And just to remind her of it, Rook began to stir on the couch where he was sleeping.

Csindra walked – not ran – for the front door. She took the stairs this time, all the way down until she was back on the street – and even though she didn’t know which way she was going, she picked a direction, gripped the handle of her axe to remind herself it was still there, and left.

COMMENTS

I don’t think this is the first time it comes up, but it might be – Elessa uses ‘anbar’ instead of ‘electric’, which is, yes, a deliberate shout-out to Phillip Pullman. (I was ecstatic to, after giving him up as lost to me, see him loudly and stubbornly voice his support for trans people to the TERF Queen’s face.) I grew up reading His Dark Materials so even if I did have to consign the author to the ‘sadness and regrets’ pile, it’d likely be impossible to avoid showing their influence – more than one person has commented that Rook’s relationship with his snake has more than a little bit of ‘daemon’ about it. [N.B. He’s apparently gone and been a Racist White Man again since, which. Sighs. You win some, you lose some, but I still like the reference.]

This is a good place to back up what I said in an earlier chapter; a lot of drugs that we see in our modern world as illegal or recreational drugs are a lot easier to access in this setting, and will be showing up a decent amount. Some of them, actually, are still technically illegal in Elessa – but especially in the absence of synthesized medicine, well, it happens. Much like with Cutter magic’s self-harm aspect, the drugs are going to be a recurring and fairly-prominent theme, so if you think it’s likely to bother you, this is probably a decent time to tap out. (I’ll still be using trigger warnings, but TWs can only get across so much in terms of where a story’s going and what it’s planning to do with it.)

Edited as of June 30th, 2022.

SONG: Vanya’s Orchestra I by Jeff Russo

Bell, Clock and Candle is free to read online and I don’t plan on changing that; however, if you like it and want to support its author, please consider supporting me with a Patreon pledge or a Ko-fi donation! For bonus goodies, Patreon readers get every chapter a week early, and pledging to the Elementals tier ($5+) gets you access to deleted scenes and conlang progress posts.

CW: amnesia/memory loss anxiety, abandonment

FROSCHSTADT HOSPITAAL, MEERGAARTEN, 1915

Anybody can be a thaumatist, in theory; the problem is that most of them take so many years of schooling that in practice it’s limited to the rich and privileged. Of course, every now and again you find the bright sparks. The safest thing to do is bring them to Den Elessa, because the last thing you want is some poor kid making a mistake with homemade glass that a few basic lessons in optics and Mirrorwork could have saved them from.

–Thaumatist-Major Sylvia Christadocht Scheffen, letter of advice to Kringwalde Mayoral Office, 1916

According to the doctors who kept inspecting him, he was twelve years old. Roughly speaking, anyway.

According to the thaumatists who kept prodding at him, he wasn’t dangerous… probably.

According to the men in the lighthouse, there was no way he should exist. There were never ships on Bay Frosch. Nobody was stupid enough to sail on the ocean, let alone fish in it; people who drowned in the ocean were never recovered, and the lighthouse’s job was to watch for practically-mythic danger. Perhaps they had missed something, they would concede, but nothing the size of a boat.

All in all, Rook wasn’t quite sure how he was disappointing so many people just by existing. He knew how to write, apparently. That was a nice surprise. It wasn’t as good as he’d hoped, but it meant he could get his thoughts down.

Which also would have been nice if he’d really known what he was thinking.

Mostly he just stayed in bed.

He picked up information, bit by bit, from books and the daily newspaper, and from the overheard conversations from other people in the building where he was staying. Hospital. It was called a hospital. Maybe that was just where they kept kids here. He didn’t like the way it sounded. It had ‘spit’ in the middle, and words that started with ‘h’ felt like they were out of breath. He was somewhere called Elessa. Except sometimes people called it Meergaarten. He wasn’t totally sure on the spelling; he’d only seen it written once, and it sounded… strange. Not bad like ‘hospital’ did. Mee-er-gar-tin. Was it three syllables or four? He supposed you could say ‘Meer’ as one syllable if you tried really hard, but that seemed like a lot of work. Eventually he put together that Meergaarten was in Elessa, and then the hospital was in Meergaarten.

The days stretched on. Another week passed, and another, and Rook finally realized that they’d been waiting for someone to come find him. He realized it because the woman who’d found him was at the front desk, asking if anybody had come in. She looked so worried. Worry was something he was slowly learning to identify on faces; emotions were more difficult than he’d expected. Other details were easier. He could index them as semi-permanent, and when they changed, it was something to note.

Rook hid behind the corner. She made him… well, he wasn’t sure what it was called. That was the trouble. He knew a lot of words. He just wasn’t sure what they referred to, yet. He probably had known, before, but he only had other people’s word to go off of – and the skills he did seem to have, like walking and talking and writing – that there had been a before. Maybe there hadn’t been. But Sylvia made him… Not angry. Not that one. There was some happiness, if happiness was the one where recognizing someone made your chest do a funny thing. But also he was… Scared? Maybe. Nervous? That might be it. She made him nervous.

Sylvia rounded the corner – the opposite way that he’d expected, and right into him. He cowered a little, even though there was nothing saying he couldn’t leave his room. He wasn’t doing anything wrong. She might think otherwise, though.

Instead, though, she smiled down at him, crossing her arms gently. “I see someone’s eavesdropping.”

Eaves-dropping. He didn’t know that one. “What are eaves?”

“Oh, sorry. Figure of speech.” —and he noted figure of speech as another thing to learn— “Were you listening?”

“…Yes. Sorry.”

“It’s okay.” She started walking, and he stumbled into step next to her, trying not to give away how much he was emulating her movements. He just wasn’t entirely sure he was moving the way he was supposed to. It was nice to check. “How much did you hear? Or understand, I suppose.”

“I understand plenty,” he complained. “A few things throw me off.”

“Oh? Tell me what you heard, then.”

He felt himself go pink. “…Um.” He did understand, mostly. “You’re… trying to find out if anybody’s looking for me.”

“That’s right.”

“…You, uh, haven’t had any luck, though.”

Sylvia didn’t answer that one – but her sad smile said plenty.

“And you’re going to try something called -” He frowned. “Okay, that word lost me a bit. But something to see if you can find out anything else.”

Sylvia blinked a little. “Thaumaturgy. You caught more than I thought.”

“I told you. I understand plenty. What’s thaumaturgy?”

“Let’s get you back to your room and I can show you.”

Rook had the faint sense he was being bribed. But it was working, so, whatever. Besides, he had plenty of stuff in his room.

Sylvia raised her eyebrows as she looked around. “Where did you get all of these books?”

“Hospital library. Also some of the nurses brought me stuff.” Rook sat cross-legged on the bed. “I’m getting tired of re-reading them, though.”

“Re-r-” Sylvia laughed and shook her head. “You’re bright. I don’t know why that surprises me.”

“Did you think I was dumb?”

“I don’t know,” she replied – a more honest answer than he’d expected. She sat down on his bed, chewing her lip, and Rook mentally indexed what she was wearing, mostly because it wasn’t the regimented uniform that he’d seen before. Other people in the hospital wore the same or similar kind of uniform; it was the main reason he was noticing the lack of it now. Dark green, silver-steel buttons in two rows down the front, things on the shoulders that were slightly different from person to person. He suspected that meant something, but he hadn’t figured out exactly what yet. Instead, she had a black dress on, her hair loose around her shoulders and a dark-red… oh, he was bad at words again. Cardigan. Jacket. Shrug. Something. Usually her hair was tied in a bun or a low ponytail. Quietly, he pinned the possible connection; that tying her hair back was part of the uniform. Maybe.

“I suppose I don’t know what I was expecting,” she said after a moment. “Part of me hoped you were someone’s runaway, that we’d get you home and this would all just be a little episode. It doesn’t seem like that will be the case.”

So they didn’t know what to do with him. Rook tried not to take it personally.

But Sylvia didn’t seem disappointed. Almost the opposite. “Thaumaturgy is… well, we’re not supposed to call it magic. Many of us do anyway.”

“Magic?”

She nodded, lips quirking upwards. “Magic exists on its own. It does what it wants to, which – well, isn’t always what we want. But most things are like that. Oil may burn, but it won’t power cars or trains on its own. And lightning strikes where it will – how do you harness something you don’t understand?”

Rook nodded slowly. He thought he was following.

Sylvia pulled something out from around her neck. “Open the curtains.”

“Huh?”

“I’m going to give you your first lesson in Mirrorwork.”

He didn’t need any more encouragement — he practically pounced to his feet, pulling open the curtains and shielding his eyes until they’d adjusted. He was sensitive to light, but he was getting better all the time.

Sylvia walked over to him, and showed him what she was holding. “This is a prism.”

“Prism. I like that word.”

“I thought you might. Now, you see how the light bounces off the dust? You can see it floating in the air.”

He nodded, eyes taking it in. You couldn’t see all of that in the dark. In the dark, it looked like the air was clear, but in the light, well, the room was full of stuff.

“Light goes in a straight line, unless something tells it otherwise. Most things would, given the chance.”

“That’s not true. When I throw something, it falls down eventually.”

She laughed at that, eyes sparkling. “I thought I was teaching you. But you’re right. Which way do they fall?”

“…Down. Everything falls down. Things can’t fall up.” He paused. “Can they? I don’t think I’d forget something like that.”

“No, you’re right. Gravity pulls everything towards the earth. But not light – or rather, if gravity affects light, it’s so barely that we can’t see it.”

Rook looked at the light streaming through the window again. He wasn’t sure what this had to do with magic, but he still liked it. He liked the way Sylvia talked — she didn’t treat him like he was stupid, but she wasn’t throwing so much at him that he couldn’t think, either. Then he stuck his hand out into the rays of light. “Straight line, til it stops.” The sun was warm on his hand. He was stopping it with his hand. Nothing else.

“You are clever. And your hand’s brighter, isn’t it?”

“…It is. Because it’s getting lit up, right?”

“Mhm. Light doesn’t just stop, it bounces. That’s why all the dust is lit up. But what happens if you don’t bounce it — you bend it?”

“How do you bend light?”

If he’d thought Sylvia was smiling before, he was wrong. Now she was grinning, looking almost as young as him. “Your hand looks smooth, but it’s not, is it? Skin isn’t smooth. It’s got all those bumps on it.”

“Right.”

“But this —” She showed him the prism. “It’s smooth, and it’s clear. It’s just made of something different than air. It’s thicker than air, and heavier, too. It won’t stop the light. It’s just going to slow it down, so you can see it properly.”

He blinked, suddenly raising his head and shoulders all the more. It hadn’t occurred to him that you weren’t really seeing light; just the fire it left in its path.

Sylvia raised the prism to the sunlight —

—and a rainbow burst out of the other side.

A shout of joy left his mouth before he’d even heard it, and he stuck his hands into the rainbow, watching his skin change hues. Blue, red, green…

He looked up at Sylvia, something lighting up inside his chest as well. “Teach me more.”

She hesitated; he could see it, although he wasn’t sure why. She seemed to like teaching him, but maybe he was doing something wrong without realizing it. But then her face softened, and she lowered the prism. “I suppose,” she said with a rueful note, “you can’t wait here forever.”

He wasn’t dumb. He knew what that meant; that if someone was going to find him, that if he had a past, it should have caught up by now. Rook would have been more upset — but you couldn’t really grieve a past you didn’t remember. That was what he thought, anyway.

COMMENTS

At first, I didn’t have these flashbacks; then I realized that especially with a magic system as complicated as Elessa’s, I really needed some outsider perspective. Csindra’s a bit of an outsider, but not enough of one; she knows enough about the magic system that she doesn’t need it explained to her. Baby Rook, on the other hand, has no idea. And as I went on, I realized this was a great way to establish his character and his relationship with Sylvia (and Jacob) prior to the story; starting in medias res is great and all, but it leaves a lot of extra ground to cover. Plus, this is cute.

All errors in science are either my own, or artifacts of the setting working with 1910s science. (Even the present day is like VERY early 20s.)

Edited June 19th!

SONG: CANDLES AND CLOCKWORK by TYLER DEVER (Homestuck OST)

Bell, Clock and Candle is free to read online and I don’t plan on changing that; however, if you like it and want to support its author, please consider supporting me with a Patreon pledge or a Ko-fi donation! For bonus goodies, Patreon readers get every chapter a week early, and pledging to the Elementals tier ($5+) gets you access to deleted scenes and conlang progress posts.