That surprise information was just enough to leave me off-balance for when the gang lord master of the Slumps and my new landlord walked past us on the way to his desk. Cutter Joran had surely timed that on purpose.
Carcalla was tall and thin, dressed in the kind of dark silk suit that was fashionable in the Collegium. There was no hair atop his head, but he had a pointy white beard on his chin. A scar ran from forehead to cheek, crossing one eye. At first, I thought he was young, but his manner suggested he was old, and then I saw those damnable pointy ears and knew he was both at the same time.
I should’ve known Carcalla would be a fucking elf.
It was said elves lived so long, they had a tendency to end up in charge of things and then stay that way forever. I’d had bad luck with elves. Well, I’d only met two so far. One was a pirate who’d killed half my family and shot down our barge. The other had been a standoffish academy instructor who’d turned out to be mildly helpful. I suppose my luck was more like fifty-fifty. I guess when it comes to me and elves, flip a coin.
“This is the hotlander?” Carcalla asked.
“Delivered as requested,” Joran replied.
“Then why does he not rise and pay me the respect I am due?”
“You know what they say about hotlanders, boss. They’ve got strong backs and feeble minds.”
I promptly stood up and bowed my head, as I’d been taught as a child to do whenever a nobleman was around. For all practical purposes, Carcalla and the Argents were the same thing to me—powerful bullies with the clout to ruin or end my life on a whim.
“Apologies, sir. I’m from a humble realm. I don’t know the protocols around… landlords.” I’d almost saidgangstersbut caught myself in time.
“Barely sufficient.” Carcalla went around the desk and sat in the plush chair on the other side. Behind him, the window changed to a land of unforgiving glaciers and endless ice. He scowled as he looked me over. “Sit.”
I did as I was told.
The elf leaned back and steepled his fingers. There was a magic ring on every single one. “I will begin by saying that I’m amazed you had the audacity to think you could get away with running a scam in my territory… andnotpay me for the privilege?”
Threatened or not, that was an insult. “The Outcast Academy is no scam.”
“I do not mind you fleecing desperate fools deluded enough to think they could someday become respectable wizards, but to do so while not giving me my rightful percentage is unforgivable.” Carcalla had an odd manner of speaking, regal yet disinterested, but there were terrible consequences implicit in every word he said. “You’ve got some stones on you, boy. I ought to have Cutter remove them.”
It appeared this elven coin flip was going to be tails.
“With all due respect, sir, you’ve been given a mistaken impression of us. Our students do intend to become respectable wizards. We’ve all tested too low and lack the means to get into the usual traditional academies, but we’re no frauds.”
“These students of yours are paying youtuition, are they not?”
“I wish. That’s the idea to cover our costs and eventually pay some teachers and a tester, as the regular academies do, but most of our students show up as broke as I was when I came through the gate. We’ve not actually collected much in the way of tuition yet.” I didn’t want to tell him how pathetic we really were, but if it hadn’t been for Morton and Sifuso getting a bit of moneyfrom their families, we’d be catching and eating ratlets to survive by now.
“And you take these paupers in anyway?” Carcalla asked, suspicious. He might have a portrait of Saint Charity in the room below, but she did not live in his heart. “Why?”
“That’s a good question. They’re all rejects, same as I was. The reasoning is if they’ve got a spell to share, that’s one more for the rest of us to learn, and each spell makes us a bit better. The more spells we learn, the more we train, the more experience we get, the more our magical ability grows, the better we’ll test, and the higher we’ll rank. Higher ranks grant better opportunities. Eventually, or so our theory goes, given enough time and magic, we’ll become proper mages, same as those trained in the Collegium above.”
“Fascinating.” Except Carcalla said that so deadpan that I couldn’t tell if he was being sarcastic or not. “And how many of these lost sheep have you gathered to your flock?”
We didn’t have sheep on Fogo, but I knew those were the wooly ones. They must have had a problem with wandering off and getting lost. “About a dozen.”
“That part’s true, and among their number are dangerous sorts like a great white Squalo and a good-sized lobgoblin,” Joran said. “I saw for myself he’s assembled a decent-sized gang.”
“We’re not a gang,” I protested. “We are what we say we are. Students of magic. That’s all… My first week here, a wise man told me that wizards run this city, so they’re real particular who they let into their club. If you want in, you’ve either got to be too talented to ignore, they like you for some reason, or you’re paying them enough to like you. We’re not that good, they don’t like us, and we’re too poor to afford the bribes… So, we’re just circumventing a system designed to keep our kind out.”
Joran scoffed. “You’re supposedly running a magical academy, not a soup kitchen for the poor.”
“I guess you could consider us the community gruel pot of wizardry, then.”
Joran looked toward his boss. “He’s lying or he’s the most gullible fool to cross the Nexus in a long time.”
“And this city eats fools.” Carcalla stared through me, cold as the glaciers on the window behind him. It was then that I realized one of his eyes was fake and made out of some kind of glass that looked almost but not quite natural. Whatever had given him that scar had taken his real eye as well.
I didn’t flinch away from that judgmental gaze. There’s a certain power that comes from having a bit of integrity.
