Chapter 5
Five
Coming from a humble realm, it was odd to me that a criminal organization should have their own estate, bigger than the fort belonging to the noble family who owned my family.
Then again, Fogo was poor, and the Core City was so wealthy that even the gang which ruled its lowest parts could lord it over our nobles.
The Latrocinium’s holdings were nice enough; they would’ve fit in better in the Collegium than here.
With most residents of the Slumps living in wretched poverty, it was clear to whose pocket most of the coins in these two districts flowed.
As befitted its position floating in the sky, the Slump was nicer than the Under Slump beneath it, and the Latrocinium’s blocks were the nicest part of the Slump.
These were real homes, not shacks. There were craftsmen and markets.
We passed pubs and brothels. The ladies upon the balconies blew kisses and hiked up their tiny skirts to expose even more thigh.
The thugs escorting me loved the attention.
I was just amazed that Core dwellers could wear so little clothing in this chilly place without perishing.
None of those girls were from Fogo, that was for sure!
The huge structure in the middle of the district must have been some kind of important government building before the Upper Aventine had begun sinking its way into Slumphood.
Now it served as a casino. Bands were playing.
People were singing. There was a huge crowd gathered for the many entertainments.
Those wearing masks to hide their identity were surely respectable types from the other, more law-abiding parts of the city, come here to engage in a bit of debauchery.
As fun as this place seemed, there were reminders as to the nature of who ran this establishment. I watched as one crying man was dragged past, screaming and begging for mercy, because some Latros were going to toss him over the edge of the district for failing to pay his gambling debts.
On one end of the casino’s plaza was a mansion the likes of which I’d never seen before.
The building was covered in beautiful pillars and arches, yet the more I looked, the more I realized it was as much fortress as a home.
The towers and walls weren’t just decorative, but defensive.
This was the only place I’d been in the Slumps where the ancient statues hadn’t been torn down and carried off.
There were even fountains that spit water.
Upon the mansion’s central peak flew a black flag with a yellow sign, marking this as the headquarters of the infamous Carcalla.
There were guards everywhere, and despite being criminals, they seemed more squared away than the Argent enforcers had back home.
They were probably quite a bit tougher too, because the Latrocinium had far more opportunities to fight.
From what I’d been told, there wasn’t a crooked endeavor in this great city that the Latros weren’t involved in.
We went up the steps, past the statues of naked women whose bottom halves were fish.
“Why don’t they have legs?”
“They’re supposed to be mermaids,” Joran said.
Seeing as how the fish tails probably meant they came from the water realm, I’d have to ask Trax if mermaids were real. That whole arrangement seemed rather impractical.
I got checked at the door for weapons and then checked again on the other side by a mage with some kind of device designed to spot hidden magic.
Once he was sure I didn’t have any extra dimensional pockets or illusions upon me, most of my escort left.
It was just Joran and the two Latro wizards now.
“Take your boots off and leave them in the entry hall,” Joran ordered as he took his own off.
“Why?”
“Because we’re fucking civilized here.”
It was hard for me to comprehend, but the inside of this place was even richer than the exterior. This house was as big as the barge I’d been raised on, and the front room was as wide as our cargo bay had been.
I’d heard of paintings, but I’d never seen any until arriving in the Core.
Now I was walking past dozens of them. From the many wildly different styles, I assumed they’d been collected from across many different realms and kingdoms. I knew some of the portraits must have been of various saints, because the artists liked to put glowing halos around their heads.
The wildly different items in their hands must have been symbolic and helped identified which saint was which, but I’d not gone to enough church to identify most of these.
None of these saints were posed in a land of fire and carrying mining tools, so my patron, Ketekunan, Saint of Persistence, wasn’t represented.
Of the many landscapes, I recognized the Great Machine towering over the market, but what lands the others showed were mysteries to me.
There were flat green plains of endless grass.
There were cities on clouds with herds of giant floating animals between and no ground beneath.
There was a village inside an enormous cave, lit by glowing crystals on the walls, where the odd-looking residents lived in giant hollowed-out mushrooms.
Sadly, Joran never slowed so I could get a better look at any of them.
It seemed odd to shove so much beauty into a place it clearly didn’t belong. As if Carcalla was trying to create his own personal fake Collegium here, but all the riches were piled up in such a way it was gaudy to me.
From my staring, Joran must have assumed I was overcome by the opulence. “You a connoisseur of art, Carnavon?”
“Nope. Canvas catches on fire where I’m from. My barge cadre had a set of the Encyclopedia Ettymus which was illustrated, but half of the volumes had been lost or burned by the time I was old enough to read them. I don’t know a thing about this stuff.”
“Me neither.”
“I do like all the pretty colors, though.”
“I couldn’t care less about that shit.”
At the end of the hall was a huge door. On either side was a matching black stone statue, sculpted to be some kind of spikey, armored creature, roughly humanoid, but with bug-like features, and each had an extra set of arms. Two ended in hands, while the other ended in swords.
“Those are a lot uglier than the mermaids. What’re they based on? Because I’ll avoid whatever kingdom that race is from if possible!”
“Those aren’t artwork, dummy. Those are some of Master Carcalla’s security.”
One of the statues tilted its elongated face to the side to study me with its blank stone eyes. I knew very little about the golems, beyond creating them required several different elements and a very skilled enchanter, and that they could be very dangerous.
“I’ll remain on my best behavior,” I assured it.
“They don’t talk. I wish I could say the same for you. Have a seat and shut up. Carcalla should be here in a minute.”
The room reminded me a bit of Bargemaster Gax’s office on Barge 519, in that this was clearly a place for a commander to ponder important issues and then hand down orders, except it was bigger and nicer in every way.
Which was appropriate, since Carcalla was managing a far larger operation than one little Red mining cadre.
When we walked in, it was soft beneath my socks, and when I looked down, I was surprised to see the entirety of the floor was covered in short brown fur.
“It’s called carpet,” Joran answered before I could even ask. “Saints alive, you are a fucking bumpkin.”
There was a gigantic round table in the center of the room, and detailed maps of all the Core City’s many districts on the walls.
There were books everywhere. Hundreds of them.
More books than I’d ever seen anywhere, except maybe in all the market’s booksellers booths I’d ever passed by combined.
If these weren’t just a display of wealth, and Carcalla had actually read all of them, he must be a very smart man.
There was a desk at the end of the room, with a couple of leather chairs in front. Behind the desk was a big picture window, from which could be seen some of the city’s magnificent palaces and bridges magically suspended high above us, golden, and currently capped in snow.
Unlike this slowly sinking neighborhood, those splendid floating districts were still safely anchored in place by air magic. They were governed by the watch. We got gangsters. I was a bit jealous.
I sat on one chair. Joran had to pull the sheathed cleaver sword off his belt to fit between the armrests of the other.
Having his sword already resting on his lap would also make it easier for him to swiftly strike me down should his master say so.
I doubted that would happen, because this marvelous carpet thing was far too luxurious to risk soaking all my blood into it.
The two wizards remained standing by the table behind us.
A moment later, I realized it wasn’t a window behind the desk at all, because the image shifted, and we were no longer looking at the Core City, but at some strange realm, where the sky was made of furious clouds and dancing lightning, with incredibly tall but thin mountains stretching upward.
I could see the distant lights of civilization clinging precariously to those rocky walls.
“You like the window?”
It was incredible. “Is it some kind of far seer?”
“Don’t be a rube. There’s no seeing into other realms except for when that realm is aligned through the Nexus upon the Great Machine.
Today’s the 18th. That’s the third Landay of the month, which means today the gate’s open to Tarklinberg on the Plane of Earth.
While that image there is of Beskrajan, upon the Plane of Air. ”
“You’ve been there?”
“Yes, to both.” Joran was well travelled for a gangster’s lackey.