[Witches' Horses] Chevalier de Grammont
Title: a name
'Verse/characters: Le Chevalier de Grammont; Grammont and Sinclair
Prompt: 12B "hate"
Word Count: 709
Notes: prepwork is such a pain; prompted by a poll response.
There is an index for this story here. This is slightly before drawing lines.
There was a wasteful gloriousness to using water as a cleaning agent, but they had neither tools nor equipment to give her one of the systems he'd described, so he washed his innermost skin with her water, let her steal away traces of salt and chains of hydrocarbons for her own use in exchange.
He was accustomed to working damp, layers of his skins sticking together and his braid dripping down his neck. She watched him flicking droplets back from his wrists before they could leak on the table he was working at, wipe absently at his neck and then his sleeve to transfer water.
"I hate forging Russian papers," he muttered, and she focused in to look at what he was working on.
"Why?" she inquired with something more than idle curiousity.
"They're designed to be very easy, if you go through legitimate channels. You bring the horse to be registered to any of ten thousand stables, hand over specs and results of tests, and then they hand you a set of papers that let you trade anywhere Russian's spoken, and everyone speaks Russian these days." His irritated handflick threw a spray of water into the air, and she reached out, sucked the drops up before they could hit anything but air or intake. "Forging the papers, on the other hand, means writing out a program to fool their system into thinking that all the tests have been done and passed already, and you're not exactly set up to help me with that."
He grimaced. "The trick is lying the perfect blend of believable, so we can use public stables, and ridiculous, so that we look mysterious enough that people want to use us for cargo runs, or more interesting fare."
"Tell me," she didn't quite command, but he grinned like she had, insolent eyes turned up to face her.
He did, though, spoke of a horse whose papers named her Le Chevalier de Grammont, which was almost certainly not her first name, captained by a man called Wolfe Sinclair who liked neither government nor soldiers. Told her the tests the horse had passed with carefully neutral colours, and the quiet gaps where the tests of her true top speed weren't, listed repairs and upgrades at shipyards and stables that had been damaged in the war.
He talked until his voice was hoarse, and she wondered how much was carefully twisted truth and how much the product of waiting in the freezing cold, hoping to be eaten by a witch's horse, but she took notes, the templates he'd been working from, and stitched together a set of papers and a history that to discerning eyes would be delicately gapped, filled with spaces for strange work and stranger payments. He'd have to translate some of her programming, make it fit to interact with the humans' computers, but it would be minor refinements, not building from scratch.
He didn't thank her, when she projected her work on the table for him to see, but he did smile a strange, feral smile, and said he would take his little sledge out in the morning, take her work and his lists of things to bring to her. He'd meet her near here, when he could, and she agreed to listen for him--and everything else she could hear, because she could tell he wouldn't tell her everything--be here when he called.
In the morning, she watched him leave, then stretched her legs. It felt good to run, just to run, and not have to keep an eye out for the colts or the younger mares.
She slowed as she approached the edges of the ion cloud, let its charges flare and flicker across her eyes and her senses.
If she were human, she would have taken a deep breath before she plunged into the storm, let it out in a scream of surprise and idle pain as the charges grounded on her skin, stripped away the enamel-colours, left her flanks gunmetal gray and scarred her belly.
She wasn't human. She let out gasps of crackle, instead, charged the particles even more intensely, spun herself within the storm and did not let herself think of dying, caught in a net of witches' words and sparks.
'Verse/characters: Le Chevalier de Grammont; Grammont and Sinclair
Prompt: 12B "hate"
Word Count: 709
Notes: prepwork is such a pain; prompted by a poll response.
There is an index for this story here. This is slightly before drawing lines.
There was a wasteful gloriousness to using water as a cleaning agent, but they had neither tools nor equipment to give her one of the systems he'd described, so he washed his innermost skin with her water, let her steal away traces of salt and chains of hydrocarbons for her own use in exchange.
He was accustomed to working damp, layers of his skins sticking together and his braid dripping down his neck. She watched him flicking droplets back from his wrists before they could leak on the table he was working at, wipe absently at his neck and then his sleeve to transfer water.
"I hate forging Russian papers," he muttered, and she focused in to look at what he was working on.
"Why?" she inquired with something more than idle curiousity.
"They're designed to be very easy, if you go through legitimate channels. You bring the horse to be registered to any of ten thousand stables, hand over specs and results of tests, and then they hand you a set of papers that let you trade anywhere Russian's spoken, and everyone speaks Russian these days." His irritated handflick threw a spray of water into the air, and she reached out, sucked the drops up before they could hit anything but air or intake. "Forging the papers, on the other hand, means writing out a program to fool their system into thinking that all the tests have been done and passed already, and you're not exactly set up to help me with that."
He grimaced. "The trick is lying the perfect blend of believable, so we can use public stables, and ridiculous, so that we look mysterious enough that people want to use us for cargo runs, or more interesting fare."
"Tell me," she didn't quite command, but he grinned like she had, insolent eyes turned up to face her.
He did, though, spoke of a horse whose papers named her Le Chevalier de Grammont, which was almost certainly not her first name, captained by a man called Wolfe Sinclair who liked neither government nor soldiers. Told her the tests the horse had passed with carefully neutral colours, and the quiet gaps where the tests of her true top speed weren't, listed repairs and upgrades at shipyards and stables that had been damaged in the war.
He talked until his voice was hoarse, and she wondered how much was carefully twisted truth and how much the product of waiting in the freezing cold, hoping to be eaten by a witch's horse, but she took notes, the templates he'd been working from, and stitched together a set of papers and a history that to discerning eyes would be delicately gapped, filled with spaces for strange work and stranger payments. He'd have to translate some of her programming, make it fit to interact with the humans' computers, but it would be minor refinements, not building from scratch.
He didn't thank her, when she projected her work on the table for him to see, but he did smile a strange, feral smile, and said he would take his little sledge out in the morning, take her work and his lists of things to bring to her. He'd meet her near here, when he could, and she agreed to listen for him--and everything else she could hear, because she could tell he wouldn't tell her everything--be here when he called.
In the morning, she watched him leave, then stretched her legs. It felt good to run, just to run, and not have to keep an eye out for the colts or the younger mares.
She slowed as she approached the edges of the ion cloud, let its charges flare and flicker across her eyes and her senses.
If she were human, she would have taken a deep breath before she plunged into the storm, let it out in a scream of surprise and idle pain as the charges grounded on her skin, stripped away the enamel-colours, left her flanks gunmetal gray and scarred her belly.
She wasn't human. She let out gasps of crackle, instead, charged the particles even more intensely, spun herself within the storm and did not let herself think of dying, caught in a net of witches' words and sparks.