Three cut­ters crouched in the under­brush. Three ner­vous stalk­ers in sweat­ed leathers, shroud­ed by dewy leaves. They shift­ed, uneasy, on the damp earth, wor­ry­ing the grips of sabres and gun­springs gripped on the mulch before them, breath­ing shal­low the thick and min­er­al air.

Down the way, in broad view of the ambus­cade, there stretched a sum­mer road over­hung low by fig boughs drip­ping with just-quit rain. Far down that road, a gang of wiry, rag-wrapped fig­ures made their rough and swag­ger­ing way, hunched and squint­ing ‘gainst the dap­pled mid­day sun. Half a dozen rag­wretch­es, their spindly horns like black, ridged stilet­tos. They car­ried stained sacks and rust­ed arms, glanc­ing ner­vous about with red­shot eyes.

In the brush, the lead cut­ter, paint­ed in soot, grinned. She licked sweat and rain­wa­ter from a lip scarred by many splits. “Ready to knock’em up?” she whis­pered.

“Shite yes, Boss.” A blond beside cut­ter nod­ded, eye atwitch. 

“Goody,” said Boss, lean­ing eager­ly out. Behind, the oth­ers undid their safeties, licked their lips. 

The wretch­es drew a shy ten meters near, slow­ly stopped. One, the first ahead, lift­ed a clawed hand, tipped its chin, drew a long sniff through the criss­crossed trap­pings over its nose. Its ragged pupils widened. “Man­flesh,” it rasped, show­ing a red and white smile of wet teeth.

At that, there cracked the steely, ham­mer­like retorts and steely slith­ers of three gun­springs dis­charg­ing, cycling. The lead wretch twitched. A pair of flechettes drew lines of red and torn cloth through its gut and ster­num, dot­ted the road. Anoth­er vol­ley. Its fel­lows jerked, too, pierced or gone into a hunched and pan­icked scut­tle. They began to scat­ter. 

“Eat shite, jack­bags!” cried Boss, ris­ing from the brush. Her pis­tol bucked four times more, putting steel nee­dles through two more wretch­es. She drew a broad knife. Her fel­lows, their mag­a­zines emp­ty, sprang to arms.

Just two wretch­es remained stand­ing. Their eyes flicked fear­ful­ly to com­pan­ions, spilled crooked­ly on the wet road. They turned to run. The cut­ters pur­sued, hob­nailed boots dig­ging wet clods from the earth­en lane.

“Gotcha,” yelped the blond cut­ter, leapt into a scram­bling lunge, saber out­stretched. Its tip caught one wretch under the scapu­la, tore and stuck in cloth and flesh. The crea­ture went down, yam­mer­ing croak­i­ly.

Boss and the third cut­ter, a teenag­er in red-striped stock­ings strapped with leather chaps, pur­sued the last: a long-legged mon­ster trail­ing drool. They sprint­ed furi­ous­ly, elbows flail­ing. Their charge gig­gled mani­a­cal­ly, fear­ful­ly.

The stock­ing-clad cut­ter lev­eled a lev­erette, paused, and aimed. * The lon­garm cracked. A flèchette whis­tled past the wretch’s left horn. The crea­ture hoot­ed hoarse­ly, in relief, kept run­ning. Behind, Stock­ings sighed, mis­er­ably fum­bled a new round from her ban­dolier.

Boss heaved ahead. She gained on the wretch, legs seething. It sniffed. Its gig­gling turned to whim­pers. “C’mere!” Boss growled, lunged, snagged it by the trap­pings. She tack­led it down. Both fig­ures went to ground in a spill of flail­ing limbs, lay momen­tar­i­ly flat. The wretch shook its head, went for a cheese knife stuck in its footwrap. 

“Nope,” said Boss, kick­ing hard at its ankle. Her steel toes crunched hard into reach­ing fin­gers. The wretch yelped, tried to scram­ble aright. Boss tack­led it again about the hips, bore it half bent-over, then upright in a head­lock, knife pressed to swad­dled neck.

The oth­er cut­ters sprint­ed over, began hap­pi­ly blud­geon­ing the thing about the face, gut, and groin as Boss restrained it, grin­ning toothily. The wretch gig­gled ner­vous­ly, at first, then screamed and hollered rough­ly as a duster-clad** punch crashed through its snag­gled teeth. Wet, champ­ing blows echoed short­ly down the rain-dripped lane. The cut­ters laughed, glee­ful. 

Near­by, there was a puffy pop, a fiery bloom of blue-white. The cut­ters quit their min­is­tra­tions, frowned, looked to its source. 

Close­by, a small, whiskery man had just low­ered a black, wood-and-brass box from his eye. It had a lens on the front and a black tarp hood in the back. Smoke rose from the seams in the box.

“Excel­lent,” said the man, pulling his head from the hood. He drew, from a draw­er slot in the box’s bot­tom, a small, cop­per plate shed­ding smoke. He held it gin­ger­ly, blew on it, squint­ed.  

“What the shite? Pho­tograver-guy.” queried Stock­ings. “You’re still here?”

“Oh, yes,” said the man. He peered at the square, beam­ing. “And a good thing I caught up. How can­did! Such raw bru­tal­i­ty, and in fine light, too. It’ll print well.”

“What’s that? What’d he do?” said the blond cut­ter, look­ing ner­vous­ly from his Boss to the man.

“He took a ream­ing pho­to­type of us,” said Boss. Frown­ing, she punched her knife quick­ly through the squirm­ing rag­wretch’s skull. The blood­ied crea­ture choked, went limp. She tossed it away, turned to the pho­tograver. “Give me the bloody thing.”

“Why? Want to see?” said the man. 

“Give it.” Boss seized the plate, frowned at it. Her com­pan­ions gath­ered round, frowned as well.

On the cop­per, waxy and slight­ly charred, showed an image in counter-relief. Though small and invert­ed, its detail remained clear: Boss’s grin­ning, sooty face and flex­ing arm wrapped round the wretch’s neck. Stock­ing’s glee­ful, striped kick, buried in its groin. The blond cut­ter’s fist, caught just as it pulled a splash of red and shat­tered teeth from cry­ing jaws. A framed, frozen beat­ing.

“Shite.”

“We look like a bunch of rat­bags,” said Stock­ings, crest­fall­en.

Boss frowned. “Don’t do this,” she said, wav­ing the pho­to­type at its cre­ator. 

“But,” said the Pho­tograver. “It’s what you paid me to do.”

“We paid you,” said Boss. “To take good types.”

The Pho­tograver smiled awk­ward­ly. “But, this is an excel­lent type.”“Good ones,” said Boss. She leaned in, tapped her tem­ple with the cop­per type. “Action types. Sav­ing peo­ple. Not embar­rass­ing shite.” She tossed it to the mud­dy road.

“Oh,” said the Pho­tograver, head bowed, fold­ing his cam­era-hood. “You want to look like heroes.” He looked to Boss.

“There. You’ve got it straight,” she replied.

The Pho­tograver shrugged. Thought­ful, he plucked a new plate, cov­ered in wax paper, from his pock­et, slot­ted it care­ful­ly into the cam­er­a’s draw­er. It clicked into place. “I will do what I can.” 

The cut­ters nod­ded seri­ous­ly. “Goody.”

“Just do remem­ber,” said the whiskery man.  He knelt, cam­era direct­ed at the dead rag­wretch, knife still embed­ded between its crossed eyes. “This machine…”

His lens flashed blue-white, popped, smoked. He looked up, smiled thinly.Ribbons of smoke curled between his hands. 

“It reflects only the truth.”

Photogravure

Eleven years ago, on a street cor­ner in Sorelle, the first pho­to­type was graven. Graven by a mouse with an odd, lensed box: A so-called cam­era; the first machine to cap­ture the world in all its truth

With­in a year, the mouse, an etch­er by the name of Jame Spice, was hailed as the Coast’s most pre­em­i­nent inven­tor. By the fan­tas­tic results of his now near­ly-per­fect method, he acquired investors in his new, rev­o­lu­tion­ary tech­nol­o­gy: Pho­togravure, the pro­duc­tion of print­able images on cop­per­plate. The pro­duc­tions of true images, free of the bias of an artist’s hand.

Today, the design of Spice’s cam­era remains much the same:

A shut­tered lens per­mits light moment­ly with­in a pitch-dark cham­ber, expos­ing a cop­per plate treat­ed with an emul­sion of pho­tore­ac­tive salts. Expo­sure ignites the salts, flash-etch­ing the under­ly­ing met­al and cre­at­ing near-instant­ly a prod­uct that, with some clean­ing, may be used to cre­ate intaglio prints. Said expo­sure is screened by a fine, 160 line-per-inch mesh before it hits the plate, caus­ing the treat­ment to burn in a pointil­list matrix. This screen­ing, informed by Spice’s back­ground in etch­ing, cre­ates the “teeth” and “val­leys” required to sup­port ink and print­ing. As a result, the “pho­tographs” print­ed off a pho­to­type are com­posed of many dots of gra­di­ent size.

A pho­to­type is a replic­a­ble, dis­trib­utable thing. One, once tak­en, may be used to print unlim­it­ed pho­tographs in its image. Dupli­cate cop­per­plates may be read­i­ly graven in quan­ti­ty or altered size in a pho­togravure dark­room. They are read­i­ly, if not quite afford­ably, dis­trib­uted and made ready for the print of pho­tographs in pub­li­ca­tions of all kinds. Their preva­lence is rev­o­lu­tion­ary.

By this rev­o­lu­tion, civ­i­lized folk have come to know the true appear­ance of the world’s faces, places, and things. By their books, their posters. By their mag­a­zines, pam­phlets, and news­pa­pers, peo­ple enjoy numer­ous and detailed pho­tographs. They know the like­ness of their politi­cians, their celebri­ties, their pub­lic ene­mies, and their dis­tant rel­a­tives. They mar­vel at the lay and make of cities and lands they will nev­er ven­ture to see. They fear the strange and fear­ful vis­ages of folk, crea­tures, and mon­sters rarely sur­vived to tell the sight of, if not for the cam­era. 

Pho­togravure is a tech­nol­o­gy for, if not by, the mass­es. A pre­pared cop­per­plate, ready for use in a cam­era, costs around a shilling, often four pence, from a pho­togravure sup­pli­er; far more than a con­sumer may usu­al­ly afford. A cam­era itself may run a score of pounds or more. By this pro­hib­i­tive cost, most folk nev­er come to grave a type them­selves. Rather, they enjoy and mar­vel at those who can. Pro­fes­sion­als, usu­al­ly. Por­traitists and framers of images, once painters, whose spa­tial eye and sense of light befits its art­ful cap­ture. These exec­u­tive pho­togravers serve high-qual­i­ty prints to pub­lish­ers, whose works are the pur­vey of the mass­es. 

In ten years, pho­togravure’s effect on soci­ety has been sub­tle, but pal­pa­ble. By the pow­er of the graven image, visu­al iden­ti­ties have gained new weight. Bureau­cra­cies in gov­ern­ment, law, and finance now know their ser­vants, crim­i­nals, and work­ers not as names, but as faces; track­able and rec­og­niz­able. Folk know their Roy­als, their gov­er­nors, their elect­ed offi­cials. They know their crim­i­nals by want­ed posters, and their solic­i­tors by ads. They know their col­leagues and them­selves, be they bar­men, bar­bers, union labor­ers, or cut­ters, by their own faces star­ing back on licensed doc­u­ments.

Folk also know what once they were nev­er meant to see. By the truth of the pho­to­type, com­mon­ers know the marks of hid­den things. Assas­si­na­tions, for instance: A pho­to of the Duke of Leah, her hair spilled and bloody where she was gar­rot­ed on a mar­ble floor. Scan­dal, too: A shad­owed pho­to, shot through rose bush­es and lead­ed glass, but still rec­og­niz­able, of the Suzerain of Perth bed­ding his own sis­ter. Heresy, even, and per­haps most famous of all: A pho­to­graph titled Woman in Alta­mo­ra, wide­ly dis­trib­uted before being banned in the reli­gious South, which dared claim to cap­ture the Lord her­self on a bal­cony of her mile-high minaret.

Any and all such images are received with trust and can­dor, for all folk who know the pho­to­type trust one thing: It reflects only the truth.

Note

This one did­n’t post when it was meant to. Inci­den­tal April Fool.