Challenge #04671-L287: Fair Exchange

Unusual icon statues begin popping up all over the world. One puts in gold coins, and from the slot below, the exact amount of silver and copper coins comes out. The few times someone powerful enough to smash one managed to do so, they would find it not filled with coins at all. Merely more runes and sigils as it put itself back together again. -- Anon Guest

They were odd little altars. A figure of a Ravenfolk with an open beak clutching a bowl with its foot-talons. The wing-hands each held the image of a silver and copper coin. There was no explanation to their purpose, but they appeared at common crossroads in the city.

All over the city.

Of course the children tried it first. The beak was open like the image of the Ravenfolk expected to be fed something, and the toddlers and kindergartners of Luegovur were eager to supply. Stones and breadcrumbs passed into the mouth and out into the bowl. Bottlecaps went in, but copper coins came out. When copper coins went in, they passed through without changing.

It was Tudi, who found a silver coin, who discovered the true purpose of the statues. The silver vanished in that ceramic maw, and the bowl filled with a clattering of copper coins. The exact number that could be exchanged for one silver.

Word got out quickly after that. There was no more need for the money-counters who charged for making change. There was no need to purchase something to break a coin into smaller denominations. There was no need to fear holding the wrong denomination when the Watch was around. They just had to slip a coin into the waiting maw and receive exact change.

And just as quickly, those who used to retain such power over others attempted to wrest that control back.

Attempts to steal them did not go well. They were heavier than they looked, at least to anyone trying to move them for their own purposes. Even the strongest available brute couldn't move them. Fortunately, brutes have other ways to solve their problems. Fists or literally heavy weapons.

Dyorgis had a maul as her favoured weapon, and a lot of anger regarding the relatively small clay figure set up at the corner of the city streets. The anger and maul rained down and shattered it off its simple plinth.

There were no coins inside the shards. Nothing more valuable than shattered clay-craft. And a few runes that started to glow.

The shards gathered themselves back up and sealed themselves together as if they'd never been broken. Though the figure of the Ravenfolk looked a little more smug than it had previously.

Dyorgis spent so long trying to permanently smash the idol that the Watch actually turned up to drag her away. Swearing at it the entire time.

The short-changers and the gatekeeping merchants had their power removed. Those who used to criminalise wealth held by those who weren't 'supposed' to have it... found that power impossible to maintain. The heavy hand was forcibly removed from the scales of justice. And of course those who valued their positions of elevation were protesting the sudden loss of control over social mobility.

They never found the Artificer Larlqis Nettauw, working away in hir workshop in the shadier quarter of Luegovur. Carefully testing and working with materials on prototype after prototype until perfection finally arrived. Then it was merely a matter of creating copies and distributing them all over town.

All to break what sorely needed to be broken.

[Photo by Miles Burke on Unsplash]

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