Venturia · the four weeks before the Autumn Masquerade
The Settling
What it is
Nobody gets through the Settling without being asked for something.
Ask a Venturian which of those two things the season is named for and you will be told, with total confidence, one or the other. Nobody argues about it.
Something might settle into it is a thing you say about a mask left facedown, and a thing you say about a debt left standing. Both are obviously true.
Eight days, and the city keeps every one of them.
The Days
Counted down to the turning of the year
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28days out
Opening day
Il Conto — the Reckoning
Guilds and houses post their accounts and every debt in the city is formally called. Nothing is enforced. Today is only the asking.
The Burnt Quill prints a special sheet, the Covenant Archive stays open past dark, and the Watch stands about looking bored on purpose.
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26days out
The season's oldest day
Low Water
Once a year the tide draws further out than it has any business going, and three courses of the Penny Shrine come up streaming and cold, packed solid with nine centuries of folded paper. Venturians don't call it a holiday. They call it going down to ask.
You write a question. You wrap a penny in it — your penny, not a borrowed one — and wedge it into the dry stone. Then you go up and drink wine with everyone else while the tide comes in and takes it. Sometimes an answer comes back.
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21days out
First masks in the street
The Small Faces
The first day masks may be worn outdoors, and only children may wear them. Every child in the city is somebody else until sundown, and adults are expected to play along and pretend not to recognize them.
Masquers' Sodality apprentices make and give away hundreds.
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17days out
Standing, counted
The Guilds' Table
The night the great houses and the guilds host their dinners. Invitations are a matter of standing and are published nowhere.
Declining one says something about a relationship that everybody hears.
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12days out
The gondoliers' day
The Ferriers' Feast
Free passage for anyone who asks. Boats lashed together across the canals into floating tables, and by dark half the city is eating on the water.
No whistling after midnight. The Ferriers don't, and they know why.
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9days out
One hour after sundown
The Nameless Hour
No one may be addressed by name. You are what you are doing: the baker, the one with the cane, the tall one.
Held to be lucky. Held, more quietly, to be a good hour for saying difficult things.
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2days out
Shutters closed
The Quiet Night
No music, no work, no callers. Finished masks are set face-up on windowsills to air.
You do not touch someone else's.
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0the night
The year turns
The Autumn Masquerade
Everyone is somebody else.
Whatever is owed will be asked for. Whatever you wear, you chose.
Session One opens on Il Conto