Chapter Text
The Great Casino In The Sky is the dwelling place of Cinnia Fortuna, goddess of luck, the patron of gamblers, fools and the generally reckless.
It’s said every game of chance in all the worlds is played simultaneously in The Great Casino, and Cinny Cinnamon is at the table for all of them, be it devils wagering souls in a poker tournament in the hells, or jacks being dropped in the alley of a Madrigali slum.
She’s certainly the invisible participant in the game of One-Won currently being played in the shadow of a colossal metal tank, in the port of Batiste, which is where our story begins.
***
It was a sultry morning in the swamp-side city, and the treacle tank was moaning, as usual.
The citizens of Batiste loved rum; and over the years, their version of it had grown a reputation in the respectable parts of the world as one of the finest liquors the New Continents had to offer.
It became their main export - besides piracy, of course - and the reason for it’s wild popularity amongst the classy folk in distant cities, where you didn’t have to fend off an alligator with a broom before breakfast, was it’s distinctive toffee and liquorice flavour. And that came from it’s main ingredient: treacle.
So the construction of a tank big enough to hold millions of gallons of the stuff had been a no-brainer to the owners of the Menards Rum Distillery. The structure dominated the waterfront- a fifty-foot high drum of steel, drooling brown liquid from every joint and rivet, looming over the disorganised mess of wooden shacks and hovels scattered around it’s base.
It was currently at capacity, and like any other ugly giant finding itself uncomfortably full of sugar on a hot day, it was groaning. A lot.
Beneath it, under an awning hastily constructed from old sailcloth, four people sat around a wobbly card table. None of them paid the sounds coming from the tank any mind, save one.
Remi Lemonade eyed the brown-stained steel wall nervously over the tight fan of his One-Won cards.
“Should it really be making those noises, old chum?” he asked Fairuza, sitting opposite him.
The woman shrugged.
“Stop stalling and play, Mr Lemonade,” she said, not looking up from her own hand.
It was a game so easy you could teach it to even the thickest goblin in less than five minutes. Just match the sigil or the colourful character on the card the previous player put down. If you can’t match it, you draw another card from the deck.
Some of the characters had families - if you could lay down a family streak, you’d get rid of your cards quicker, and everyone had to draw an equal number of cards and throw in extra wagers into the pot. And once you laid down your last card, you won. One, won. One-Won. Get it?
Remi was on a three game losing streak already; and down to his last few copper bits.
He looked at the topmost card, then at his hand, then back again, sighed, and took another one from the draw deck.
Blast my luck!
Above him, the tank groaned again; and inside it, the treacle went, gloop.
***
Remi was a halfling, but that was just a reductive label, an inadequate description for his many sparkling facets. He was also a gadabout, a louche, and a molly; and he looked like all of them - clad in deep plum silken robes cut a little like a smoking jacket, and a lot like the sort of kimono dressing gown favoured by the patrons of interesting men-only spas.
He was accelerating through his forties like he was trying to outrun someone. He was rumpled in the face, the lines around his eyes like bedsheets after a particularly energetic tumble. His hair had been business in the front, party in the back for some time - but business hadn’t been booming for a while, and the party was also winding down. The long strands stroking his collar were getting thinner every year; and the top of his head was now a barren wasteland.
He needed a parasol lest his pate burn in the tropical sun, but he couldn’t lower himself to buy a pointy hat to cover it.
He wasn’t a fucking wizard after all.
Unlike the vast majority of his kind, Remi was also sorcerous. It had come as a surprise to his mother and the rest of the village when his powers emerged in his teens - there hadn’t been a halfling in Spudley Hill capable of wielding magic in centuries - but once the shock had worn off, Remi was the toast of the town, right up to the moment he turned the mayor into a pig.
He hadn’t meant to, of course. He’d been in the beer garden of the local pub, attempting to impress a gang of his friends in a fit of youthful braggadocio; by enlarging a jacket potato to gargantuan proportions.
Even now, he wasn’t quite sure how the spell had gone wrong. He’d been clearly visualising the swelling of the golden-brown, lightly steaming tuber, split open, fluffy inside, and glistening with oodles of melting butter.
How big does it need to be for all six of us?, he’d thought, focusing determinedly on the disappointingly fist-sized spud in front of him. Six halflings could eat a lot of potato.
About the size of a cat? No, no, still too small… what about a piglet? Or, even better, a pig! Like one of Donald Hashbrown’s prize hogs… yes, yes, thats what I want. And really, it’s borderline offensive we don’t already have a potato that big in front of us! All I need to do is just correct that little error the way of the world…
His magic expanded outwards in an invisible bubble of change as his friends cheered. Atoms reorganised themselves…
The wood of the table they’d been sat around changed from pine to oak… the dish in front of Remi was suddenly blue instead of white… the potato swelled…
And the mayor of Spudley Hill, who’d happened to be ambling past their table with a pint in hand, dropped his drink with a squeal.
After it was determined Remi didn’t know how he’d turned Mr Waffle into a one-hundred-and-forty-pound Spotted Saddleback; and also didn’t have the faintest clue on how to turn him back, the remaining, non-porcine members of the village council decided it would be in everyone’s best interests if Remi were to seek schooling in the arcane arts.
Somewhere far, far away from Spudley Hill.
However, they all admitted, as he was leaving, that they were very impressed with the size of the potato.
Remi went to Madrigal first, the capital of the Empire, where he’d enrolled on a basic magical theory course at a thaumaturgy technical college. He’d lasted all of six months, working as a fry cook in a halfling restaurant to pay his tuition, before he’d been expelled for inadvertently animating the ornamental dragon skeleton in the atrium.
In truth, Remi hadn’t minded all that much. Wizards were boring, and fussed needlessly over tedious details like the colour of ink to use when drawing a warding glyph, and the exact tone the music of the spheres should make.
It was so much easier to use magic on the world the way a guerrilla graffiti artist would use paint and chutzpah in a stuffy portrait gallery: Have a laugh, don’t be afraid to be audacious; and run like hell when something goes tits-up.
Sure, sometimes it gets a bit smeary, and people might not approve, but it’s all part of the fun.
Remi had an absolute riot in Madrigal. He’d spent his twenties taking odd jobs by day and living it up by night in the casinos and cabarets of the city’s more bohemian neighborhoods. When money got tight (and it was always tight), his natural charm and propensity for bullshit meant he was able to fall back on some light con-artistry, ensuring he always had enough gold for a seat at the Caroc game; and to buy drinks for the pretty half-elf lads, hanging around the bars with secret smiles dancing on their eyes and lips.
Close-up magic was where he found his niche. He’d slide into booths next to couples struggling to make small talk over their drinks, and transform their cocktail umbrellas into chrysanthemums, or cause their napkins to fold themselves into paper cranes and flutter away.
Or make the gold in their pockets mysteriously vanish, and reappear in Remi’s.
He got caught eventually, of course, spent some time in prison, and when he got out, he made for Sal Sevajj across the sea. When the heat on him got too much there, he bought passage to Cazette. Cazette had two things which suited him down to the ground: an abundance of sailors; and a taste for mysticism amongst it’s upper classes. Remi bought a turban, and passed himself off as a guru of sorts, dispensing profound-sounding nonsense as he sat, pantsless and cross-legged on a silk carpet. It worked great for a while… until it didn’t. After another short spell in the big house, Remi washed up in Batiste.
Batiste was wild. Independent of the Empire and founded by a runaway prince from Sethyn’s Sand who’d turned pirate, it was packed to the craw with cut throats and troublemakers, whores and sailors, musicians and artists, necromancers and soothsayers.
It was built on numerous islands on the delta of the bloated River Zolan, at the lip of the swamp forming the Orcish Sovereign Territories. Most of the houses were ramshackle wooden huts on sticks. When it flooded, residents would pole-boat themselves around, armed with cudgels to ward off the alligators that also made the Zolan, and occasionally the streets themselves, their home.
It was loud, and fun, and colourful. The rum flowed like water, the parties never seemed to end, and the people were crazy about gambling.
The local temple of Cinnia Fortuna was a huge paddleboat that went up and down the middle of the Zolan, the outer decks strewn with witch-lights and covered with tables offering twenty-sided craps, Caroc tournaments; and the constant rattle of the Wheel of Fortune. The inside was packed with one-armed bandits - much less violent than the two-armed bandits who roamed the shore, but no less inclined to rob you; and there was a stage offering up lounge singers; and dancers of both sexes and several species, who wore nothing but a few feathers and a smile.
Remi, of course, was banned from the floating temple for life. He’d been losing badly at blackjack, and tried to ensorcel a croupier in desperation. Once everyone had calmed down and the rain of frogs eased off, he’d been unceremoniously tossed overboard, and almost eaten by an alligator for his troubles.
And now here he was, beneath the treacle tank, trying to scrape together enough money to cover his room in a rather tawdry boarding house, by playing two elderly women and a small girl at One-Won.
***
“Mr Lemonade,” said the human woman opposite him in stern tones, skin as brown as the treacle periodically dripping onto the awning, “If you’re going to wear robes, might I suggest you invest in underwear? Or at least close your gods-damned legs. I can see everything- it’s like what’s left on the floor after the gut-speaker’s done for the day.”
“I do beg your pardon, my dear,” he demurred, and re-arranged himself so the reason he’d been popular in prison wasn’t in full view of the ladies.
It had been a deliberate ploy to unsettle his opponent. Unfortunately, Fairuza had been round the block more than a few times, and thus hard to shock.
Fairuza Bon Chance was one of Batiste’s many witches, and she was keen to advertise - the mountain of braids piled high on her head was topped by a baby gator skull at a jaunty angle. She blacked her teeth daily; and her arms and neck hung heavy with pendants and bangles featuring animal bones, crystals, sigils and the teeth of many beasts and sapient species.
She’d once told Remi she longed for the opportunity to retire to the swamp proper, build herself a hut from twigs and kudzu, and really get stuck in to her hag era. But alas, her daughter had four kids and a demanding job as captain of a corsair raiding vessel, and as such, was in bad need of reliable childcare.
One of Fairuza’s grandkids was on Remi’s right - a girl of around ten called Ruby, with jug ears and a creatively foul mouth. Her only redeeming feature in Remi’s eyes was she was terrible at One-Won. On his left was Zadie, the pale-faced, sunken-cheeked, purple haired, chain-smoking chef from a bar on Buccaneer Boulevard. Zadie frequently boasted she made the best rum cocktails and crayfish chowder in the city. That both came seasoned with a sprinkle of cigarette ash was rarely commented on, or at least, not more than once.
Zadie was currently kicking Remi’s pink arse. The pile of coins in front of her had been steadily growing, as was her triumphant crowing.
“Oh Remi Lemmy, you’re about to be in a sticky dilemmy,” she cackled, laying down two cards bearing the Sigil of the All-Seeing Eye.
She’s probably been cooking up that little quip for hours, thought Remi, sourly. And she’ll reheat it over and over again in the next few rounds, like she does her chowder.
Fairuza put down a card.
Hgggnh!, went the tank. Blop-blop went the treacle. Ruby leaned her chair back, giving Remi a helpful view of her pitiful hand, and ran a finger down the side. She sucked the treacle off the end of it, and then bunged the same finger up her nose.
“Some shitheel down the market said ‘e saw Big White Al this morning,” she said, casually.
Remi went clammy.
“You don’t say,” he said.
***
It wasn’t exactly his fault there was a thirty-foot long albino alligator living in the Zolan. But he didn’t think anyone else would see it that way.
When the casino’s orcish bouncers had flung him from the paddleboat into the river, you see, he’d panicked. Remi wasn’t one of life’s natural swimmers - he was more of a sauna and steam room kind of guy - and his robes had been dragging him down and there was a gator floating lazily towards him.
On the positive side, it wasn’t a very big one. On the negative, he was three foot tall, so it didn’t need to be.
This just won’t do!, Remi thought.
It was outrageous he was living in a world where there was even a possibility he was about to be seized by a big lizard and pulled under for a dose of roly-poly watery death.
What he needed was a wave to wash him fast to shore. So, as he flailed and spluttered, he’d visualised a white crested surge of water, and one way he could make it happen is by displacement. If something suddenly gets a lot bigger when it’s submerged in water, well… that water’s got to go somewhere.
He didn’t know why the spell also turned the alligator white, but he wasn’t keen on dwelling on the experience. And now Big White Al was haunting the bayou like a scaly ghost, periodically vanishing into the depths of the swamp before popping up in the Zolan again to cause havoc.
Prince Kobe had put a price thing’s head almost as handsome as him, and some of the best orcish hunters had gone into the swamp to claim the monster’s pale hide. None ever returned.
***
“Speaking of big things you don’t want to see in the morning…,” started Fairuza.
“Madam,” said Remi primly cutting her off, “I assure you there’s no way you can see my…”
“It’s not your junk this time, halfling,” snapped the witch, jerking her chin at something behind Remi, “Aggro’s on his way.”
Ruby turned, once again flashing her cards for Remi.
“Aaah shit,” she muttered, grimacing. Her teeth were brown from all the treacle she’d been eating.
Remi felt the orc rent-a-guard loom, and held the cards tighter to his chest.
“You ain’t ‘sposed to be ‘ere,” he rumbled, like the early warning of a tropical storm. “It’s Menards company property. We can’t have a bunch o’ bums near the tank. You might damage it, or nick the treacle.”
“We ain’t interested in stealin’ your fuckin’ treacle, Numb-nuts,” said Ruby, who was currently the stickiest child Remi had ever seen. “And we ain’t fuckin’ with the tank, neither, so do one.”
Remi turned his head, to see Aggro baring his teeth at Ruby, who was eyeballing him haughtily back, like she was an empress, and not a guttersnipe covered in refined sugar.
“You’ve got quite the gob on you, little human. You kiss your muvver wiv dat mouth?”
“She does. And her mother is Veronique Bon Chance,” said Fairuza in casual tones, who’d returned her attention to her cards. “Perhaps you’ve heard of her.”
There was a subtle shift in the air. It was never really quiet in Batiste, especially on the waterfront, there was just too much going on, but for a second, there was a lull, whilst Aggro considered his position in the city and swamp’s complex food web, and how that might change.
The treacle went glop-glub, and it’s container gave another bilious groan.
“I’m just doin’ my job,” he mumbled. “Company manager said no one’s to go near the tank - but I don’t see why ‘cos it’s real good craftsmanship!”
He patted the side. The dull donk noise of his fist on the steel was followed by a determined glugging, and a kind of threatening hogggoggogg.
“If it’s that soundly made,” said Remi, “then why does it keep doing that?”
Aggro shrugged. “I dunno, I ain’t no engineer. I got tolds it was dwarf-made, an’ everyone knows you goes to the tunnel-rats when you wants quality.”
Fairuza and Remi made eye contact. Remi didn’t need to read her mind to know they were thinking the exact same thing.
Dwarven made? I don’t think so! It’s got gnomish rush-job written all over it.
Zadie had lit a fresh cigarette off the smouldering ember of her old one, and gestured at the elaborate-looking sigils scrawled all over the plates of the tank from top to bottom.
“What’s all that foreign writing on it?”
“Runes,” answered Aggro, with the confidence of someone who didn’t have the faintest clue what they were talking about, but rarely found it mattered, because you’d have to be insane to contradict him. “Special magic binding runes wot…” he squinted, clearly trying to remember what he was told, “…’prevent leaks and ensure structural integrity’.”
Remi hadn’t really paid much attention to the writing - most of it was obscured by the layer of brown goo leeching out at all times. But now he’d bothered to look, his misgivings grew.
I suppose college was useful for something - this is a load of old bollocks. Half of these runes are draconic, half are dwarven, a couple of the characters appear to be elven… and that one’s just a crudely drawn cock...
“Mr Aggro,” he said, trying to sound nonchalant, as his eyes roved wildly over the symbols. “Who drew these runes, do you know?”
That bit translates to ‘Eat my shit, Menards’!
“The company paid a wizard to come and do ‘em. Dunno ‘is name, but ‘e comes out every new moon to refresh the magic.”
“You’re sure it was a wizard?,” said Remi, before he could stop himself. “Did they have a spellbook?”
Aggro scratched his head.
“They ‘ad a pointy ‘at?,” he offered.
Fairuza was raising her eyebrows.
“Anything else of note?” she asked.
“Umm… ‘e ‘ad fevvers. Lots of black fevvers.”
“Black feathers… it wasn’t a kenku, was it?,” asked Fairzua, her voice incredulous.
“Yeah, prob’ly”
Oooh dear…
Kenku were bird-folk, and some of the least trustworthy and most annoying creatures in the New Continents: smarter than goblins, rarer and grottier than tieflings, and with less fucks to give than a clockwork nun.
They roosted on the rooftops of tall buildings in small groups that were part family, part coven; and were an absolute nightmare if they showed up in your town, because every single kenku was a practitioner of their own particular brand of conjure-magic.
Kenku conjuring was ill-regarded, complicated and unsafe. But kenku practised it constantly, and the source of their power came from the stuff everyone else chucked away. They foraged in bins daily, looking for food and supplies for their spells.
The rum company probably paid the kenku in banana peels and used preventatives…
Remi craned his neck up to take in the full height of the tank.
They got what they paid for.
“They use literal garbage in their magic, you know that?,” said Fairuza, still not quite believing what she’d heard.
“That’s rich comin’ from a swamp witch,” said the orc, grumpily. “Now… I’m gonna allow you to stay ‘ere and finished your card game, right? But don’t cause any trouble, and stop lettin’ the kid lick the treacle.”
The guard wandered off, swinging his cudgel. Ruby raised the middle fingers of both her hands at his retreating back.
“Up yours, I’ll lick what I want, you big green twat.”
She’d dropped her cards on the ground as she’d flipped the orc off. When she picked them up, they were brown and stuck together.
Buh-gong, went the tank.
***
The sun got higher. The city steamed. The treacle in the tank expanded…
Zadie, surrounded by a lilac cloud of smoke, wasn’t far off winning her fourth game, and Remi was starting to sweat. Unlike Ruby, the chef kept her cards very close to her wizened chest, and there weren’t many of them left.
She glanced over to him to shoot a smug smile with her cat’s-anus of a mouth, and when her eyes met Remi’s, he sent his chubby little thought-form shambling into her mind.
Zadie’s brain is a busy kitchen, with huge vats of orange chowder bubbling away. The possum-shaped thought-form pushes itself through a narrow window close to the ceiling, and sees the scrawny woman stirring the chowder with a fag hanging from her lips. The ash plops into the chowder and dusts a crayfish.
She’s not really looking at the food, she’s looking at the cards she’s holding, and now Remi’s looking at them too, and winces.
Remi had held off cheating this far, but he couldn’t afford to lose. He owed back rent, and the thought of getting a legitimate job at this stage in his lie made him feel faint.
What I really need is a Turnabout card… send the game back the other way, so I can One-Won before her, he thought.
His eye fell on the draw deck.
Dare I?
It shouldn’t be too difficult, there was a Turnabout in there, he was sure. It just needed to be in his hand, rather than sitting somewhere in the middle of the dozens of other cards, being of no use to him.
A straight swap, just a little movement of two objects in space. Simple.
Remy concentrated on a superfluous card in his hand - a depiction of a fat little dragon-man playing the accordion - and his eyes crossed.
Just a quick shift…
***
If there’s one thing that really gets Cinnia Fortuna’s rhinestoned knickers in a bunch, it’s cheating.
In the Great Casino In the Sky, the Cinnamon Lady leans over the rickety card table, emerald eyes blazing.
“Oh, no you don’t!”, she says, with relish.
Unfortunately for Remi, his unstable magic, the badly built tank; and the sweltering heat of the Batistan sun, all give The Cinnamon Lady the three bells on the one-armed bandit, and the chance to really fuck with the pants-less little bastard.
Cinnia reaches out through the invisible winds of magic, and gives Remi’s spell a little flick in the wrong direction with a shiny red fingernail.
***
With a grunt, Remi’s fat dragon-man playing the accordion vanished, and was replaced with the Turnabout card he required.
He had about a split second to enjoy his feeling of triumph before, with a final groan of tortured metal, the tank exploded.