This is how we set ourselves to go to the casino in the

tower, in the middle of Misnomer Lake. A structure slowly

sinking.

      Anubis rode ahead of me; Balder behind, to make sure I

wouldn’t make any attempt at an escape. I breathed in the

cooling air. I watched the lake through the trees. Then, coming around a bend, I saw the tower standing out in the water, lit from the inside.

        There was a causeway jutting out from the shore toward it.

        Our road came out of the forest and connected to a greater highway, an open road active with traffic. There were carriages made from oversized walnut shells, sewn together with leafy vines. I saw lanky ogres walking along the side of the road. There were many fairies on horseback, never with a saddle or even reins. I saw an old woman driving a shoe. A team of cyclists, their bicycles built as absurdly as our motorcycles.

There was no order to the highway. Everyone was going toward the tower. There didn’t seem to be any traffic going in the opposite direction. The night was young, after all. The festivities were just about to begin.

Lanterns hung from poles along both sides of the wide road, all the way out onto the lake.

I followed Anubis through this madness, and Balder followed me. There was a carriage ahead of us, the lower part of its body made from a sea shell, large enough to fit four inside. The only roof it had was a covering of transparent silk pieces, hung from three silver posts, valances. Anubis veered to pass it, lane-splitting.

        As I rode past the carriage myself the white veils floated apart for a moment, and I saw the two occupants inside. Twin fairies with faces like children, stricken with cold dignity. Their heads turning toward me, their wide eyes watching me. A single white horse was pulling them, its mien just as proud.

        Then I realized that the causeway was no causeway at all. It ended before reaching the tower. It was more of a jetty, a little engineered peninsula.

        There was valet parking. The tower itself was unreachable by foot or on the bikes. It lay out another hundred feet or so over the water. I could see it quite well now, its slightly tilted form coming up out of the water. Lights in every window, the faint music drifting out from its cavities. And in between it and us, a system of swans, big as horses, gliding over the water.

        An attendant came to us, a kind of gangly, long-limbed dryad dressed in vines and foliage. Anubis checked all three bikes, and kept all three claim tickets. He directed us down to the docks. There were many others there, waiting for passage across the water.

        ‘Do you think we’ll find anyone in there that could help us?’ I asked as we went down the steps to wait with the others.

        It is our best hope, Alexander. If we fail here, it might be that we shall have to return to the Aaru without completing our mission.

        It was not the most encouraging response I might have received. I breathed in the cool air that came off the water. I thought of childhood canoe trips. There were a few small ships   a-sail, lit with torches or phosphorescent wreaths. These were magical ships, each made differently. Some had sails woven from the pliable bones of extinct winds, while others had hulls of blown glass. Rigging wrought from the laughter of children. Sails made from dragon breath. Of misspent wishes. Prows made from the hinged spines of fallen stars, glowing like freshly cut radium.

        There was suddenly such beauty. I wanted words for it, this incredible splendour. The glowing fruit upon the trees, the purest winds I have ever breathed, the strangely lighted ships. The tower and the swans. I looked at Anubis. He must have enjoyed seeing me so inspired.

And then I stopped my search for those words. I don’t know why. I was just able to let go. I stopped trying to make the beauty belong to me, to my language.

        We waited in line, ostracized by the fairies, who were almost all repelled by our smell. The smell of death and ghosts. Looking at the tower I could see the gates that had been carved out of the curved hull of the outer wall. A raised portcullis and hanging lanterns. The swans carried their passengers inside, where they disembarked at the receiving docks.

        Before too long it was our turn to cross, and we each mounted one of the ferry-swans. None of them needed any directing, even though there were reins. They were magnificent, pacific. With no apparent effort they thrust away from the docks and headed out toward the tower.

        Anubis and Balder flanked me. I watched the painfully beautiful, high-rez faces of the fairies, riding the swans about us. They steered away from us, made a point to avoid the three of us. I passed my gloved hands over the white feathers, tried to imagine their soft brush against my fingers. In my visor they appeared almost iridescent.

 

        Into a gallery of flickering lights, noise and people. The ports inside were made of square granite blocks, smoothed by the caress of the water. We each disembarked with no greeting, no gloved hands to help us off our mounts- luxuries afforded the more elite of the visitors. Though the majority of the people there were fairies, there were others from outside as well. I saw a tall man in a long dark coat with a falcon on his shoulder. A group of scantily clad warrior women with what appeared to be two enslaved postal workers in shackles and chains. A bare-footed man in Japanese robes with his hands clasped and hidden in his long sleeves. Those forced to wear the same goggles, the same gloves and boots.

        As we climbed the shallow steps up toward the elevators and the check-in desk, I could see how the room wore its new ill-fitted identity as a docking area. It managed the crowd poorly. Bodies got pushed into mobs that wanted to ascend, moving against those that wanted to stay. The ceiling had once been very low, but had been removed, knocking out the floor above. There was a landing above so that those who could fly could subtract themselves from the problematic clotting below.

        This had once been a section of the tower with a much different function than the one it now has. Barracks, perhaps, or a larder. The entrance-way and the portcullis were of course not part of the original architecture. Now there were the most ornate silver chandeliers hanging from the high ceiling. There were tapestries along the walls, banners of kings I had never heard of. I could smell licorice.

        Our ability to repel the fairies with our own smell began to work to our advantage, clearing a way for us through the crowd. The only ones who would tolerate our presence were other strangers to the land. I found myself quite close to the Amazon-type warrior women. Close enough to see the many silver body piercings they had. I looked at the pair of subjugated postmen, whose chains were held by the Chieftess.

        We moved toward the elevators in the back of the room, past the rental desks, the check-in. To our right was the opening for the stairway, which was just as crowded as the rest of the place. We found ourselves waiting for one of the lifts alone, most of the fairies refusing to even look our direction. Some of them were so beautiful. The pixies and dryads, the sumptuous nymphs. They made me felt so ugly.

        Though I didn’t see him approach us, we were suddenly joined by another: the man in the long, dark coat. He stood near enough to intimate that he was waiting for the same lift, but at such a distance to maintain his personal space. His goggles were sleeker than ours, a newer design. His gloves and boots appeared less bulky.             The falcon on his shoulder eyed me in a manner that was not particularly friendly.

‘Hope you don’t mind if I ride with you,’ said the man. He articulated each syllable perfectly and slowly. There was an accent, not one that I could place. ‘You seem to have a talent for keeping your privacy.’

        Anubis looked at him. Only in this venue, he answered, not unkindly.

       ‘Am I infringing?’

        We have no claim on this, nor any other of the lifts.

        The man nodded. The lift docked, triggering a little bell that hung above our heads. Anubis pulled the gates open, and we all stepped inside. I saw, as the man passed me, that he was armed with a kind of bayonet under his long coat.

        Balder pushed the button for the top floor. The casino. He didn’t bother to ask the man in the long coat which floor he would like.

​

        The casino was not comparable to anything one would conventionally find in Las Vegas. It had not the garish qualities, no cheap reproductions. The danger was tangible. There were no neon lights. The tables were wrought iron, inlaid with opals, emeralds.  Real chandeliers, candelabras.

        It was a night of fervour. The house band consisted of four fairies playing stringed instruments unlike any I have ever seen or dare describe. The music was lively, old. It made me think of Gaelic seas crashing up onto the rocks of a craggy cliff.

        The casino was a feudal microcosm. There were fiefdoms and baronies, borders laid out over the tables which shifted by measures that were sometimes great, sometimes small. Before we left the tower we would find that we had pushed those lines, helped direct them in their succession. There were alliances between barons, betrayals and treason.

        We knew we had to be very, very careful.

        The blackjack tables were governed by a volatile oligarchy of trolls, who apparently had found this form of hustling more lucrative than their former employment of leaping out from beneath bridges to maul unsuspecting travelers. A great, sleepy-eyes lion wordlessly watched over the roulette table. There was the One-eyed Mistress who was, as far as I gathered, a phantom that cursed or blessed the players at the keno tables. A leprechaun with a wicked grin and a big cigar clenched in his teeth presided over a substantial Parcheesi empire. A rumoured-about wraith monopolized the strange, archaic slot machines. There were many others; games that were unrecognizable to me, near-tyrants with comic book titles. They all got along, though in some ways uneasily.

        Once we reached the top floor, the man in the long coat pulled both the inner and the outer gate open. ‘See you chaps later,’ he said. ‘And remember,’ he added, once outside the lift, ‘losing your coin is always a much more temporal condition than losing your head.’

        Balder smiled his pejorative smile. ‘Thank you,’ he responded, without meaning it.

        The man walked away into the crowd, his long coat flowing.

        I looked around. ‘I suppose we just have to ask about this Windspeaker guy? If he’s even here?’

        That is our best bet, Anubis said, with more than a little irony.

We began to learn of the man called Windspeaker from several discrete inquiries. The answers garnered from those we interrogated were sparse. There were conflicting rumours. We had to piece together his story from several crippled accounts, like prospectors panning for gold.

    The Windspeaker, it turned out, had a weakness for gambling, and an even greater weakness for the company of green-eyed nymphs. He had lost a certain overwhelming sum at the poker tables, to the King of the Orcs who reigned over that quadrant of the casino. Instead of going to work in the mines, or to the debtor’s prison, he offered to remunerate the Orc King by offering his services as counselor. His Repugnance- whose politics were rather grisly and might be better termed as ‘marauding’- found this a suitable bargain.

        The orcs were most protective of their counselor. Kept him under armed guard, we were told. He was rarely in the casino, but was in one of the Orc King’s suites. To speak to him we would have to request special permission of the Orc King. An endeavour less likely to succeed, we were enlightened, than if we were to try growing geraniums from our rectums.

        ‘This is getting us nowhere,’ I said, after an hour.

        Anubis was very pensive, turning over the situation. Problems and solutions. I will talk to this Orc King, he said.

        ‘You’ll need some kind of leverage,’ Balder pointed out, impassively.

        That is a good point.

        Balder yawned. ‘You’ll need to get his attention.’

        ‘And how do we do that?’ I asked.

        The same way you do anything here, Anubis said, looking around. With luck.

        It became apparent what we would have to do in order to win the prize we sought. There was only one way: we would have to break the poker tables.

        Balder had a plan as to how to accomplish this. As before, our first hurdle was to gain some currency with which to deal. Seed capital. Unfortunately the remaining money we did have was useless in Faërie.

        We moved to the roulette tables.

      At one table the there was a short woman who wore blue jeans and a blue plaid shirt which was so threadbare it was held together at the seams with shining safety pins. A whole spine of them up her sleeves. Her goggles were decorated with carmine-red spray paint. Balder chose her for two reasons: one, because she was human and wouldn’t be immediately off-put by us. And two, because she was losing.

        He watched her play for a couple of rounds, the bets she lost. Her hair was long and black. I really wanted to see her eyes. She noticed we were there, but ignored us until Balder spoke to her. She continued to lose, cursing under her breath.

        Then Balder approached her, suddenly charismatic. ‘Bet on 24, black,’ he said.

        She glanced up at him, then placed her bet: 13, red. She lost. The ball, made of some kind of blue crystal, landed on 24, black. She looked at him again.

       ‘Bet on 17, black’ he told her.

        The next round she bet on 17, black. The croupier spun the wheel, let loose the ball. Her chips stood. ‘How did you do that?’ she asked him. Everything in her stance and her body language conveyed anger. Annoyance.

        Balder smiled his wry smile. ‘Luck,’ he said.

        She shook her head, serious. ‘No.’

       ‘Karma, then. An excess of credit.’

       ‘What do you want?’

        ‘Lend me a chip.’

        She smiled. ‘Any particular denomination?’