Promissories

The enduring consequences of the Vague Revolution are often as entrenched as otherwise they might be subtle, but the implementation of currency was nothing less than fundamental to the great changes that came with Parquet. The Troges provided Drouais with the currency that is still in form no different to that today. Before the revolution, then whilst gold struck as coins in the wider world had great value, barter was the heart of all trade. So too is this much the case today, albeit where most commonly coinage is the most convenient of goods for that trade (since of course it encompasses all things). Coins were then, as they are now, produced by the Troges. Most particularly the peritus thesaurus, that by their own hidden processes form each coin of many woods intricately joined together so that every coin is a beautiful thing. In distinctive bands and patterns each wood and precise lacquer forms a smooth whole. Each is certainly weightier than its size, that the end of a moderate spyglass, would suggest. Drouais at first called them ‘parquet’, but the name never stuck since he was in the habit of calling so many things by the same name. Not least his comite, and soon his society! The newest coins delivered were termed the parquet-courant, it was ‘courant’ that most used. Such lasted right until the British wave dominated the Delves, so that whilst in the Obscures, the gambling houses of the Grails and certainly the Looms the term is preferred even when increasingly now a fresh, whole coin is called a ‘currant’. Delves slang (always happy to embrace poor wit) means that consequently a purse is more commonly called a bun, a stolen purse a hot cross bun, and a purse only made to look like it contains coin a Bath bun. Such coarse and common slang is disliked by the young, hard labouring citizens decently born to Parquet, but such is the curious nature of society that is the older, the quality, and the fashionable that adopt it themselves to the disapproval of their conservative children. Currants are not eternal however. The coins are made such that they wear away, most quickly when handled but which still over time flake and crack, and become useless. Where they are handled they diminish in size, and consequently in value. In bands as they are made it is easy to determine their size. So too inevitably have the older terms for these smaller coins changed, so that again whilst some cling to the ‘use’ for the three-quarter sized coin it is more commonly called the mary, from use-less Mary. The stories as to whom the apocryphal Mary might have been (and why she was quite so useless), are too varied to offer any accuracy of derivation. A half-sized coin was a moitie, now a matty. A quarter sized coin was a trimestie, now a tasty. Where after this the tiny coin as remains might be anywhere from a day to a month from suddenly going from hard little decorative nugget to fragile scraps, it was a rien, but ever is called a penny. Curiously the rien being a penny goes back to before the true British wave, where the mongers profiting from the uncertain markets in early Parquet used English as their own language. Many of them were English, indeed at the time of the revolution if the Spanish survived as the quality, the Italians and the French as the rulers, then the English as were had largely become prominent amongst the traders, the mongers, of society. English was then the language of commerce, so the rien was a penny long before the French gave way in the larger coinage. The English mongers were the ones happiest to take the smallest coins, many things were sold ‘by the penny’, so the name struck true.

Coinage does not last then, unless carefully preserved and those that have the knack of that are few, three in fact. Doubtless by different process these are the promissories, and which will both accept for storage and lend (called a promissory) to citizens in need of immediate wealth. The three do not compete, they rarely need to. The Marcese Gordura in the Looms, Gullgrope in the Grails, and Zahhak in the Obscures.

Coin wears away, and theft is rife, and with every touch and passing the coin wears that little more. Fiddles and pesker are cheap. Rents range wildly between the expense of the Grails, to the steady resolve of the Obscures, to laughable in the very idea in William Lane. The citizens spend. There is labour to be had, appearances to be kept up. People make homes, with coins carefully untouched or hastily passed on so that compared to the wider world citizens have a great deal of clothing and other possessions. Furnishings are good, cunning locks are invested in. Homes are often brimming with knock-knacks and curios. And they drink. The promissory care little for tiny amounts; they do not occupy themselves with trifling books added to weekly. For many citizens all wealth is passing, and the coin has value because everyone believes that it has value. And whilst there is labour then a citizen can live well. And if they foul up that labour, then there is William Lane. Such (as is laughably called) an economy in Parquet is all concerned with grappa today, and tomorrow is for tomorrow. A windfall means an extravagant hat. When disaster comes, when a shift occurs, when of a sudden there is no labour, or no pesker for the table, then there is hunger, and there is the rumbling of the mob. The agitators, ever better able to swim in unhappy waters, thrive. There is discontent, there are riots and rumblings, these known as moses.

Yet there is labour. An ordinary citizen can labour well, can have their clothes sent to launder, can haunt their favourite taberna of a night and their café of a morning. And the coin tumbles down from above. From the Looms, and the quality. The Troges make the coin and with the assistance of the Tesoro line and their milicio they distribute it. Not to the caelum, nor to the citizens. But to the quality. It is indeed the sole real duty of the quality to make sure that the pudding of Parquet has its currants. They spend, they patronise, they hold grand balls, they gamble, but they must always be to whatever degree (but to the same result) extravagant. From the Looms the passing wealth flows down. Regular as rain, leaving the Delves wet with it, but which puddles dry out.

As a system, the disbursement of wealth of Parquet has only reputedly been questioned in any depth by the ethnologers Jiri Fric and Dix. Unusually for the rivals that often disagree over the shape of light and length of blood sausage, they are in this united; it is a nonsense. Yet not so much a nonsense as the attempt by M. Comptable some thirty years now gone to forge the coin. It could be done too, it was discovered. Passingly well at least. To achieve the feel, the smell, and especially the weight, not to mention the colour, the pattern, was ruinously expensive. Worse still, in a culture where a citizen would never think about the source or means of the captive air, the sihr pearls, or the vollies that dart about them, then still each and every one can tell a fake coin blindfolded, bagged, and arguably dead. True, gold coins forged in the wider world have the greatest value but that is rarely given up by the sea now. In earlier days perhaps, indeed certainly. But that is held by the promissories to keep value to their bookkeeping, and the quality because it is shiny. Seek not to question the wearing coins, citizens. Feel the quality of these stockings. Hmm, stockings!