Chapter 41
Forty-One
Dathka and I left the Habitation of Phradumius and started east.
“Once Gerzog finds out you’ve escaped, won’t he change his plans?”
“Doubtful. He couldn’t have known I could hear some of their conversations through the vents of the room I was held in.
Gerzog’s found a buyer and they’re going to meet later to exchange the treasure for a chest full of coins.
I intend to relieve him of both those things, as well as his miserable life. ”
“And you’re going to do that with what? Your piece of glass?”
“I’ll find a way.”
“Yeah, I’ve already got a way. Slow down.” When she kept walking, I grabbed her by the arm to stop her.
“Unhand me.”
“No.” I glared at her, because I’d had about enough of this snooty Latro thinking she was better than me.
“Not until you listen.” One of the black-coated Paladins of Kielgrad looked askance at me manhandling a woman, so I quickly let her go and lowered my voice.
“Use your brain or I’m out. I’m not one of your idiot gang.
You can go fight a band of mercenaries on your own, or you can go back and beg your fiend for someone else to come save you. ”
“Brotbeck is not a fiend.” I noticed she’d palmed her improvised weapon again, prepared to gut me right here in the street in front of hundreds of nice church-going folks. “Take that back.”
It was funny she thought that was the most offensive thing I’d said. “Fine. But we do this the smart way. How many men will Gerzog have with him?”
“I don’t know. More members of his company showed up at their hideout and left with him. So at least four or five. Then we might also need to contend with whoever his buyer is.”
“Two of us against that? Bad odds. I’ve got friends coming to meet me here.”
“There’s no time to wait.” Dathka looked toward the setting sun. “They’re supposed to meet an hour after the gate’s closing, and we still have a ways to walk.”
I pointed toward where she had her glass shard hidden. “Then cut yourself.”
“What’s wrong with you?”
“So Trax can follow us. It doesn’t need to be deep. Just enough to leave a drop or two every block will be enough for his nose. He’s really good at that.”
Dathka was aghast. “Why don’t you cut yourself?”
“Because my father wasn’t an angry gangster I need to impress.” I’d gotten a couple cuts on the island, but they were dried out. “You want the Outcasts with us or not?”
She growled at me, but didn’t hesitate too long. “Fine.” She looked me right in the eyes as she held out her arm and sliced a small cut. She did her best to hide the fact it hurt.
I glanced back, but thankfully, the paladin hadn’t noticed the bloodletting. I didn’t know how the Saint of Loyalty felt about strange deadlander girls cutting themselves in the street, and didn’t really care to find out.
“Satisfied, Carnavon? I’m not too proud to turn down the aid of one of the elite Squalo Hunter Killers before a battle.”
I’d forgotten she believed that about Trax, and I wasn’t about to correct her misconception while she was standing there with a bloody shard of glass in hand. “Now we can go.”
We set a brisk pace through the Cantor’s District.
From all the singing coming from the various churches, now I understood how this place had gotten its name.
My people sang on the barges, and even sang while we worked, but our songs were simple, honest, sometimes funny, often dirty, and always had a rhythm you could swing a pick to.
The songs here were… uplifting. I wasn’t used to reverence.
These people were singing in such a way their saints might listen.
“Where are we going?”
“They’re meeting on the lift platform that goes up to the Cathedral.
I couldn’t make out all the details or with who, but Gerzog was crowing about how they were going to get so many Obols, they’d never need to work again.
They’re probably selling it to some rich fool wizard, who’ll hide it in his treasure room, where all that precious Permanence will go unused.
Just another wealthy man’s bauble, when instead it should be used for good. ”
The way she said the last part, I could tell she was genuinely angry about that. “For good? Why do you care? Carcalla would do the same thing.”
“No, he wouldn’t,” she snapped.
“Trogshit. Don’t get all high and mighty with me. Your dad’s a crook. If things had gone according to plan, and we’d brought the lamp back to him, he’d be selling it to the highest bidder right now, same as Gerzog.”
“You know nothing.”
“How am I wrong? How are the Latrocinium who rob and murder and tax the Slumps going to use this bit of lost element for good? If Carcalla actually cared about doing good, he’d donate it to the Council so they could keep the Great Machine running that much longer.”
She sneered at me and remained silent. It was probably good we dropped the subject, as I was angry and running on almost no sleep, so was likely to say something offensive enough that would cause her to run back to Daddy, demanding to have me scalped.
When Dathka mentioned the meeting was on a lift, I’d expected something like the lifts we’d used for carrying Red up to the barges.
Ours were just big enough to hold two men and a cart, and were hoisted by pulleys, rope, and muscle.
This thing was thirty paces across, enclosed with clear glass walls, and rose smoothly even with two dozen people and a couple wagons aboard.
It must have used the same kind of levitation enchantment as a barge or air cart, but it kept on rising, so it was capable of reaching much higher altitudes than either of those.
The base of the Cathedral was probably four hundred yards above.
Living beneath the Slump, I was no stranger to seeing the undersides of sky islands, but our slowly descending and perpetually-threatening-to-crush-us-all roof was ugly, jagged rock, crumbling basements, and leaky pipes.
For this one, the magically suspended rock was polished smooth beneath, and painted with religious murals. It was rather impressive.
There was also a great curling roadway and stairs up to the Cathedral, but it seemed everyone coming from the Cantor’s District preferred to wait for the magical lift. I couldn’t fault them that decision. My legs burned just looking at all those stairs.
With hundreds of people in the lift plaza, it wouldn’t be too hard for us to find a spot to sit and wait unseen to watch for Gerzog. We didn’t even stand out with our hoods up, as most everyone who wasn’t originally from some freezing realm was dressed for the weather.
There were several carts here selling food. I was so tired that I’d nearly forgotten how famished I was, but now that I could smell the cooking meat and spices, my stomach reminded me with a violent rumble.
“You hungry?” I asked Dathka.
“I’ve not eaten in two days. What do you think?”
“I’ll take that as a yes.”
“No. Gerzog took my coin purse,” she muttered.
She wasn’t too proud to get help stalking a bunch of mercenaries, but apparently, asking for food was a line too far.
I thought Dathka was a horrible person, who worked for even worse people, but I was also a gentleman, and it was the tradition of the cadre folk to never let someone go hungry if we could help it.
“I’ll be right back.”
I found a stall selling roasted chicken parts, except when I checked my pockets, I didn’t have nearly enough.
Food was pricy in this district. I couldn’t afford the next one either, but at the end of the line were some of the little frog-faced creatures, who were cooking mysterious kinds of meat on skewers over a burn barrel.
It dripped oil that caused the fire to pop and spit, and it smelled weird, but I was too hungry to be proud.
They didn’t speak the trade tongue, but by pointing and holding up fingers, we came to a deal that I could afford.
I returned to Dathka carrying two sticks full of some kind of cooked animal and held one out to her. “Here you go.”
She eyed the meat suspiciously. “Do I look like I would eat that?”
“You look like you’d eat corpse flesh straight from the coffin.” I took a bite from one. It was chewy. The flavor was… present. “It’s not that bad.”
“That’s a brave man, eating something prepared by filthy Kurbogs.”
I managed to swallow the greasy clump. “So that’s what those frog fellows are called?”
“Kurbogs are a scavenger race, so you’re likely eating ratlets they snared from the sewers.”
“Naw, I know what ratlet meat looks like. I live with Trax, remember.” I happily took another bite. “You want this or would you prefer to be self-righteous and starve?”
Dathka relented and took the stick from me. “If I die of dysentery, my ghost will haunt you.”
I sat next to her. “We’ve got so many ghosts in the Tube, what’s one more?”
We ate and watched the crowd. I didn’t spot any watchmen.
Occasionally, a paladin would pass through, wearing different colors and heraldry to mark their order.
There were a lot of priests going up and down the lift, each roundtrip of which took about ten minutes.
Carriages rolled through, both magical and pulled by animals.
If Gerzog arrived in one of those, we’d have a problem, unless we got lucky and caught sight of his ugly green face through a window.
I decided to try and make conversation with the surly deadlander. “When I showed you that molten bullet spell—which you stole like a rotten thief—you mentioned having a bunch of people you intended to kill. Anybody in particular you feel like telling me about?”
“That’s none of your business.”
“Keep your secrets, then. I’m plotting a great and terrible revenge myself, against a real bastard of a pirate. He’s an elf actually. I heard Carcalla’s only half elf. How’s that work?”
“How do you think it works?”
“Assuming elf parts match up to humans, the actual workings of the endeavor seem straightforward and aren’t really in question.
I mean, how does that kind of existence fit into the grand scheme of things?
With the elves being near immortal string pullers in all the positions of authority, do they accept your dad?
Or do they treat him like he seems to treat you? ”
Oh, that drew her ire. “Go to hell, Carnavon.”
“I grew up in Fogo, which by most accounts is pretty similar to Hell. Except we’re still alive upon our lake of fire and not quite as damned for eternity.”
“I lived on the literal doorstep of Hell. You know nothing of the place. Now be silent so I can end this orc and get my property back.”
“Yeah, he took all your stuff. Does that include your shadow-walking charm? Because that’s a potent spell. If he’s learned to use it…”
“It’s a higher-level enchantment. I doubt it.”
I didn’t care for how she dismissed my reasonable concern. “How’d you wind up with a charm that powerful anyway?”
She paused for way too long before replying, “It was a gift.”
“Did your dad give it to you?”
“No. It doesn’t matter who gave it to me, only that it’s unlikely Gerzog’s figured out how to use it already. Even with my affinity being shadow magic, it took me far more than a single day to make it work at all.”
“Only morons underestimate their enemies, Dathka. If what Gerzog told me is true, and I’ve got no reason to doubt this part, he’s a rank higher than me, and I beat you even when you had that charm. I wouldn’t be so arrogant.”
She gritted her teeth.
That attempt at conversation ended rather poorly. It made me thankful the Outcast’s deadlander wasn’t a stuck-up sour-puss. Though, to be fair, Dathka was a lot nicer to look at than Rade. It was unfortunate she had the personality of gurgler.
Time passed with no sign of the orc. The sun sank behind the mountains, but it didn’t really matter because this district had more light charms hanging everywhere than the Collegium did.
It was so bright, it might as well have been noon time, except the charms here were set to give off a warm, rosy glow.
Combined with the echoing hymns, it gave the district a very peaceful feel…
Which we would likely be ruining very soon.
With a belly full of mystery meat, it took everything in my power to not nod off to sleep. I actually might have for a bit, but I didn’t know for how long, because Dathka elbowing me in the arm brought me right back.
Gerzog the Marauder had arrived.