Archive of Our Own ^beta

Each month, you pass through the finely-wrought ormulu door of the Bazaar, clad in a robe carefully rigged to mimic the bulk of the other Masters while you wait for your own form to grow into what it was meant to be. There you are greeted by one of your new peers, before being subjected to the needed procedures for allowing the wretched body you were born with to eventually become something different, something more. You are tutored and tested on the laws and culture of the Masters’ kind, the Curators, and what will be expected of you when you fully assume your new title. You leave drenched in sweat underneath the robe and guise of Mr Cards, your throat hoarse from the screams your body was too agonized to vocalize and head swimming with new information, with no cure for the overwhelming pain but fixating on the future, and the new doors that are opening for you. 

As time crawls by, and you fall into what passes as routine for a burgeoning Master, your brain cannot help but fixate on the one consistent difference in the painful blur of burning concoctions and twisting flesh and bone, the one burning recurrence in your new life: the Masters themselves. No Master oversees you two months in a row, and in desperation for anything new to focus on to block out the pain, you have begun cautiously noting the differences, both subtle and severe, in how they handle the newest among their number. 

Mr Hearts is the most frequently recurring presence, the scent of blood and guts following in its wake even before it begins the month’s alterations. It seems to take the work most seriously out of all the Masters, going through your peculiar curriculum with a pristine precision and attention that goes beyond even its fellow Masters. Why is that so

One month, you find yourself asking that very question as it is ushering you towards the chamber’s exit. It looks at you as if you had spontaneously reverted back to a normal human form.

“Remember your lessons, fledgling,” it simply replies. “And you will have your answer.” 

You find yourself thinking back, to the endless pontifications of laws and customs, of the need to keep promises and uphold bargains. Is that really all it is, a desire for Hearts to not be seen breaking its word to a winner of one of its games, with nothing more to it than that? 

Mr Hearts sees the expression on your face, and nods its hooded head. Your lesson in avoiding sentiment absorbed, you return the nod and hurry out of the Bazaar. 

Mr Spices has been a much rarer presence since the birth of its child. This is entirely because it is preoccupied with taking care of the young Mr Transport. Any mocking suggestions by other Masters that you and Transport should be considered siblings or that Mr Spices had been turning its activated parental instincts onto you as well are nought but slander, and unfortunate things shall happen to whoever falsely repeats them.

You notice that Mr Cups seems to come alive when the subject of its collections comes up. During the Red Science procedures, it is languid and apathetic almost to the point of negligence, and when teaching any other needed subject it seems to be working to get it over with as fast as possible so it can leave, but when the topic of a Curator’s collection of choice comes up a distinct glint of passion becomes clear in its eye. 

“Each of us have our own domain, our own place in the chain to occupy,” it explains one day. “But one must never let their domain become a prison. Look at me, for instance. Many short-sighted members of your former kind think they can mock my supposed domain over pottery and antiquities. They treat my chosen handle as a subject of humor, thinking I don’t hear them.”

It clenches one claw for emphasis, the smallest glimmer of a great and terrible maw smirking visible. “And yet, through interpreting my dominion to include that which is lost and collected, I have secured possession even of those valuables that are normally the purview of others.”

You are reminded with an uncomfortable stab of the Veils-Velvet Scrap hidden in one of the deepest recesses of your lair, retrieved from one of Mr Cups’ Relickers, after years of careful scraping and saving. Knowing better than to take the bait it has laid out in front of you, you nod and continue the lesson, your slowly-altering mind flitting to the many ways one could interpret cards and gambling and what domains and industries you may control in the coming centuries.

Mr Stones is the only one who demands payment in return for its sessions. All of the others, even those feared and hated within London like Veils and Fires, do as your agreement with the Masters dictates unflinchingly. But then, you do not know Veils and Fires quite the way you know Stones. 

When you see the gilded, jewel-encrusted robe of Stones waiting beyond the door, you know full well what you must do. You reach into your robe and clumsily withdraw a fine-cut diamond, glimmering slightly in the dim pulsating light of the Bazaar’s interior. It snatches a claw out to take it, making a show of ostentatiously examining it and verifying its value, before putting it away. 

“Acceptable,” it concedes, before directing you to remove your robe so you can begin with a slash of its other claw. From the shifting of its eyes, glowing faintly like the pinprick shine of rubies found in the bottom of a mineshaft, you can tell it looks forward to getting this over with.

Most in your position would try to push back, or at least try to complain to another Master. You know better. Even if it would accomplish anything more than risking what privileges you’ve attained already… a part of you cannot help but pity Stones despite its monstrous nature. After what you saw together in a lacre-soaked mine those years ago, the glimpse of its deepest desires and darkest shames, you can understand why it would be so reluctant to spend time near you.

The first time Mr Pages is assigned to oversee matters, it spends the entire time alternating between harrying you for a timeline on when you expect the Marvellous to resume, and talking at exhausting, multi-syllabic length about its graciousness in defeat and lack of bitterness about your ascension at the expense of its own heart’s desire. 

When one of the others peeks into the chamber after half a day to find you having not even begun, Pages on minute seven of its latest soliloquy, it takes you aside to finish the job itself. It is a long time before Mr Pages is assigned to you again. 

The other Masters save their lessons on what it means to be a curator for after the experiments, either out of tradition or a desire to get the most unpleasant part over with first. Mr Iron is different. 

On its first day overseeing your transformation, you enter a chamber seemingly deserted only to find a knife buried in your back the moment you crossed the threshold, a clawed hand covering your mouth. You wake up dumped unceremoniously outside the chamber, your bones aching from the completed procedure, body covered in shallow cuts and lacerations. 

Your second session with Mr Iron ends the same way, as does the third. By the time of your fourth, you have thought ahead and worn armor underneath your robe. Your assailant’s raw strength and the knife’s sharpness still allow it to thrust through and cut into your skin, but you remain conscious and standing just long enough to turn and stab your own dagger deep into Mr Iron’s side before passing out.

When you awaken, you have a note pressed into your hand. ‘AN IMPROVEMENT. WHEN YOUR WINGS GROW EVASION WILL BE EASIER. LATER OPPONENTS WILL BE ARMED WITH WORSE THAN HUMAN BLADES.’ 

You redouble your combat training from that day forward, and make sure to always bring multiple weapons each visit to the Bazaar’s interior just in case. Once or twice it even proves to be enough.  

Whenever you get a glimpse of Mr Fires waiting for you inside the Bazaar, you mentally flip a coin on how things will go. When it needs or wants something from you, its voice becomes like a tiger’s purr, soft but menacing, all reassurances and friendly inquiries meant to conciliate you. When you are at your least lucid, right as the Red Science’s work is most strongly coursing through your veins and bones, it finally ‘remembers’ to ask the favours it needs of you, tries to claim debts that you owe. So far that you can remember, you have been able to retain the presence of mind to refuse it.

After your refusal, it promptly defaults to what you see when it is not looking to wheedle things from you. Its posture stiffens, it suddenly forgets to refer to you by your title. When you get a question wrong during a lesson, it lectures at length about the punishments it enjoys meting out on inefficient humans but cannot on fellow curators in a way that makes it clear which it would view you as if allowed. 

You count yourself fortunate. If it was still able to remember your other recent history together, your sabotage of its ambitions for London and her workers, it wouldn’t be stopping at mere words. 

Mr Veils… 

You choose not to remember Mr Veils. The rows of teeth and rending claws perilously close to your vulnerable form, the faint whispers in your ear as you’re strapped down, the way it seems to enjoy the agony your transformation inflicts on you in a way none of the other Masters do. 

You quickly learn to keep a box of memory-wiping Irrigo light on hand for months when Mr Veils is in charge of you. After its work is done, you no longer remember where those scars came from, and just feel grateful that your long practice in makeup and shapeling arts are enough to keep them hidden. 

Even before you’ve spent enough time close enough to distinguish the slight differences in build and voice, you’ve learned to tell when Mr Wines is your designated chaperone for the session by what it asks about. Of all the Masters, it seems to be the only one remotely interested in your (former?) species. Each session is punctuated by questions about human behavior, your former kin’s fascinating preoccupation with charity and quaint incendiary reactions to certain brews and tinctures. 

“I will confess to being pleasantly surprised,” it remarks one day as you rise from the operating table. “Many of the others expected you reconsider your wish after experiencing the first costs, or to ignore the responsibilities and duties that came with it. Yet here you are, hardly even screaming, paying attention to each needed lesson as if you were a naturally-born fledgling.” 

You carefully weighing how much to admit. At last, you cautiously let on that you are long-used to your body of birth being uncomfortable and painful, that it helps to at least have a form of discomfort that comes with palpable progress towards a better form. 

Mr Wines doesn’t respond, though you have the impression that the face under its cloak would be raising an eyebrow were it capable of the act. “I see.” 

The conversation is soon set aside in favour of the month’s lessons, and you forget about it until a week later when several ladies from the Parlour of Virtue come by to deposit a multitude of dresses that match your measurements suspiciously well. The resulting scandal over so many ladies of the night being seen coming and going from your Lodgings at once is horrendously tedious to deal with, but you try your best to focus on the uncannily generous sentiment instead of how the press hounds you. 

After each session, each furthered transformation, you inevitably end the day collapsed into your own bed, body occasionally twitching involuntarily from what was done to you. Many more decades of agony lie ahead, and who knows how many decades and centuries more beyond that as you grow into your new life, but for all the pain, all the unknowns, one thing is certain in your mind. 

Whatever an outsider might think, this was your heart’s desire, and you will go to any lengths to continue working towards it.