Gamori

Part 11

The population of Portsgate grows yet more cosmopolitan. Every month ships arrive bringing travelers and immigrants from places like Badaj, Jennesett, Zragash, and Botha Binn. Several new restaurants and cafes have opened, offering Nasadi cuisine. I especially recommend the Ifrit's Fabulous Feast-Hall on Dolphin Street, and the Jittery Jerboa Coffeehouse on Sea Anemone Lane. The cinnamon kirwen and tangerine tarts there are superb.

The first speaker of the high council, Bluthber Vlumpt, has stated on many occasions that the newcomers have enriched both the community and the government coffers. He began saying this not long after he moved into his palatial new manor and married a woman hailing from Zragash. Speaker Vlumpt has also been sporting more jewelry of late, and his plumpness has increased.

Portsgate has always had its criminal elements. Local gangs like the Shark Fin Boys, Irate Sculpins, and Unstoppable Stingrays are just a fact of life in the Docks District. The Blocini and Zeppio Crime Families have had a piece of just about everything for the last hundred years. Nothing gets pickled in Portsgate without the permission of Luganzo "The Blowfish" Blocini. The Crazed Kicking Snakes and Mad Menacing Monkeys operate out of Zin Town, constantly warring in the streets and causing unbelievable mayhem. Now a new symbol, often drawn in human blood, has begun popping up on walls in every district: a crimson spider.

The Red Widow set things in motion here months before meeting me at the Flying Fist. Jezrin had not lied; she hadn't personally gone on assassination missions in years. She was too busy assigning them. From beneath the Hivesprawl of Botha Binn, City of Blades, she spun many a fateful strand, expanding the Deathspiders into a global criminal enterprise.

Many major cities now have an underweb, controlled by a black widow. The widows are served by shadowweavers, who in turn are served by gloomspinners and broodmothers. A spiderling is typically recruited at the age of eight. By the time she reaches sixteen she will have will have become an assassin, adept at the use of weapons, traps, poisons, and the arts of stealth and ambush. After her training as a professional killer is complete, she may continue along the path of a sicarius or, depending on talent, become a spy, tracer, painspider or other specialist. A girl of exceptional ability may learn certain arcana and become one of the gossamer reavers, better known as dreamstealers.

Every criminal organization needs its low-level employees and associates. Brothels need running, fronts need maintaining, crates need unloading, and debts won't collect themselves. So the Deathspiders are surrounded and insulated by pimps, patsies, madams, middle men, toadies, hustlers, card sharks, brutes, bouncers, hired muscle, hooligans, swindlers, burglars, ne'er-do-wells, lumps, and lookouts. Not much upward mobility, but the pay is decent, I hear.

Then there those like me who get caught up in the web: the flies. As long as we buzz the way we are told, and do not pester and annoy, the widows will not swat us, and there is sweet liquid to drink. We can live the "fly's dream".

Unlike those like me, the Red Widow considers this fly a close companion. She keeps my fortune secure, and I shall never want for anything except my freedom. I moved from living above my shop, which I sold to a Nasadi buyer, to a gorgeous villa, complete with servants. All that is required is to keep track of shipments, making sure certain merchandise is loaded and offloaded in the proper manner, and to be in Jezrin's company from time to time.

I briefly considered seeking sanctuary amongst the oolar. They may be hooting freaks who dwell underground, but even they seem sane compared to the malevolent bedlam that is creeping like mold in the cities. Alas, even if I were to locate one of their clan-warrens, and convince them to take me in, she would just send a tracer and retrieve me like a misplaced toy.

A new two-story shop has opened near the Sea Lion Market. Posters throughout the city advertise it as "The Oracle's Cameo, Emporium of the Exotic, Curious & Bizarre, owned and operated by Miss Jezebel Qareen". The entrance has a picturesque arched trellis festooned with duskvine, and there is complimentary tea and pastries.