Prism Cannoneer

The Prism Cannoneer is on the Crimson Hand's southern-bureau roll under the work-name Facet (no surname; the intake-clerks have learned not to ask), age twenty-seven, and is the bureau's heavy-weapons specialist for what the bureau-master classifies as 'loud-closure' contracts — engagements where the political-cover window does not require silence and overwhelming application of supporting fire is the method of choice. Facet was a gem-cutter's apprentice in the Arcane Syndicate's lapidary quarter before the sky broke, with white hair even then; the cutter's shop was one of the places the far side came through, and Facet walked out of it with the shop's stone-rack, the cutter's prototype cannon, and no colour left anywhere in them. The Hand picked them up within the month. The bureau-master's intake note reads 'fires only when required; conclusively when it does,' which the clerks assumed was the bureau-master's phrase and which was Facet's.

The cannon is crystal, shouldered, and fires raw gemstones as beams: a stone loaded into the breech is consumed as light, and the colour of the beam is the colour of the stone, so the bureau's clerks can tell from a street away which contract Facet is closing by what the sky does. The bureau records their contracts not in hours but in carats — 'closure: fourteen carats, within budget' — and Facet keeps the budget the way the gunnery schools keep recoil-discipline: the disturbance a loud closure is allowed is written into the contract, and the stones spent are matched to it, and a closure that comes in under budget is filed and a closure that comes in over has not happened. Their eyes are the white of the beam. The Hand's physician has recorded that this is not an injury. The Hand's physician has not recorded what it is.

They have paired twice with Contour, the bureau's cartographer, on operations where the map said the wall was thinner than the plan and the cannon was asked to agree; both closures came in under budget and the bureau-master has not commented, though the southern-bureau clerks have noticed. A senior handler has written to the bureau-master that the Hand should not be relying on two operatives under thirty for its loud and its quiet work both; the bureau-master has not responded in writing. Facet has read the note. They have said, of it, that the handler is correct and that the budget does not care. The one stone they will not fire is a rough diamond the size of a thumbnail, uncut, from the cutter's bench, and the bureau has stopped asking whether it is ammunition.