Slumrat Rising

Vol. 4 Chap. 26 An Ant Shaking An Oak

Truth let himself vanish from the guard’s perception, then found himself a nice spot on a wall across the street to sit on. The wall was four meters tall and covered with broken glass jutting from the cement, but at this point that wasn’t any sort of issue. A quick pass with his hand smoothed everything flat, and he had a nice spot to watch the show.

The key lesson of terrorism, he had learned, was that it wasn’t about the atrocity itself. It was about the reaction. That’s where the real damage was. Someone did something utterly outrageous, so you necessarily had to react powerfully. Very sensible. Very normal. Very convenient for your enemies.

A single murder might see a city spending hundreds of thousands or millions of wen to chase you down. Diverting the time and efforts of its police away from routine public security. Spending money on anti-terror operations instead of fixing roads or funding schools. Weakening itself in the name of strength.

The really awful thing was that it worked even if you knew the score. The number one thing people wanted from governments was security. Physical “Am I going to die right this minute” security always sat on the top of that list.

Clans were no different there- they promised financial security and the protection that comes with it. Lots of high level seniors to make sure no one could bully their juniors. Lots and lots and lots of juniors able to run those little errands that would unnecessarily distract their seniors from cultivation. Like running realestate empires. Or controlling the shrimping fleet. Owning the top four manufacturers of commercial plastic filaments for use in maritime applications.

Invisible industries worth astonishing sums. Long term plays made by people investing for generations unborn. Making sure those descendants were born on top, and stayed there. No room for new rats on this ledge. All the food was being eaten already.

So how would the Sung Clan react? Call the police? Summon their own private forces? Storm out in a fury? Or remain silent and unmoving as a mountain? Truth could be unmoving for a little while. The broken-glass emotions from the factory would cut him up if he jostled them around.

Time trickled past. In just over an hour, a black carriage pulled up to the gate, was checked, and waved through. Truth could just about see from his perch a middle aged woman, handsome and professionally dressed, exit the carriage as the driver opened the door for her. She was carrying a small leather bag, bigger than a purse, smaller than a duffle. A luxury edition tool roll is what it looked like to Truth.

Her eyes flicked over the building and the courtyard with seeming casualness. Truth grinned and gave her a little wave. She didn’t see him. Still, he was playing a fool, not an idiot. He dropped into a light meditative trance. Just gently unspooling himself, letting the horrors of the day drift away for the moment. Not forgetting them, just calmly watching them float past.

He was a rat on a wall. Invisible in the big cities. In fact, given how nice this neighborhood was, he wasn’t there at all. There were no rats here. No strange men carving pictures on stones. Murdering regrettable juniors and deniable servants. If things weren’t as they should be, well, that was just the way of the world. Nothing to do with him.

There wasn’t even a him for things to have nothing to do with.

The patch of nothing watched the world go by, without judgements, with little or no thoughts. Watching the carriages pass. Watching streamers of magic, like heat shimmers or cellophane noodles in water, rise out of the Sung mansion and go snaking through the air. Twisting back and forth. Looking for something.

Looking for him.

They pounced on some rubble near the gate, swirled around for a few minutes, then scattered into the city.

The sun was starting to set when the middle aged woman got back in the car and left. Truth slowly returned to self awareness. The domestic staff were leaving for the night too. Maids, groundskeepers, people whose jobs he couldn’t really guess, all walked out the gate and down the road. Presumably there was a bus stop not too far from here.

No change in the patrol routes of the guards, he noticed. Nor were subtle, powerful wards activated. The nearby buildings didn’t seem to be preparing swarms of summons from hidden formations either.

He almost fell off the wall when the gate was just left open and the guard very blatantly turned his back to it and started smoking.

The guard started coughing, choking on the smoke and glaring at his cigarette. Truth buried his face in his hands for a moment, then hopped off the wall.

The mansion was, to his mild surprise, actually more low-key than he was used to seeing. He knew old money didn’t tend to flaunt it, but it was usually visible in their houses. Some things, even if you didn’t know how much they cost, just screamed money. A bench that was clearly custom, perhaps, or a stone floor made out of a single sheet of faintly glowing marble threaded with gold.

The floors in the Sung mansion were stone tiles, a faint blue glaze on them. They looked classy as could be, in a quiet sort of way. The walls were painted a neutral color that would have been bland in most circumstances. It formed a perfect palate for the portraits and landscapes of distant places. Some of which, Truth quietly suspected, were of places that didn’t even exist on this world.

He let his hands run over the curtains. A gray, coarse fabric. They added remarkable texture to the smooth walls, and felt like money woven into linen flowing through his hands. He walked through a living room that cost more than most houses, and nosed around until he found a study.

There was an older man in there, short beard, hair close cropped and long since gone white. Casual slacks, a pale blue, short sleeved button down shirt, a ring on his pinky finger with a matte black stone mounted flush with the worn gold band. Leather loafers, no socks, on his feet.

There were two armchairs on either side of a little table, facing each other. The old man sat in one chair, reading. Truth didn’t recognize the name of the book. There was a whiskey decanter on the table, an ice bucket and two glasses. A sliding glass door to the garden had been left open too. Just in case.

The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

Truth sat in the armchair opposite the old man. The old man, to Truth’s quiet admiration, really was reading. He could watch his eyeballs track along the page.

“I don’t think I know that book.”

The old man jolted, but controlled himself quickly.

“I can’t be the first person to tell you that’s uncanny.”

“Oh, usually I’m a lot more gradual about returning to people’s awareness. I’ve just been in a pissy mood lately.”

“Oh? How long is lately?” Truth had to smile at that.

“That is the second best question I have been asked in a while. I really don’t know. Three months? Twenty something years? Hard to say.”

That got a snort from the old man.

“And the best question?”

“What is a human being?”

That got a longer pause. Then another.

“Really?”

“Yep. You wouldn’t believe the people I have asked that question. It seems like nobody knows. Myself included.”

“Was that why you sent the stick figure?”

“Real talk? It was going to be a rat. But then I realized I don’t know how to recognizably draw a rat, and my options were limited.”

That got the old man coughing and spluttering. “A rat?”

“Long story. I more or less understand rats. I don’t always like them, but I understand them. Humans are still kind of a mystery.”

That made the old man chuckle quietly. Half under his breath, the old man muttered “I wish they were to me.”

“Oh, I have met an expert on humans?”

“Mmm. Well. It is my job, you see.”

“And what job is that, Mr. Sung?”

“Literally people management. My job title is… I think these days it’s Talent Development Coordinator, but really, it’s HR. Finding a place for everyone, making sure they can grow in that role, or at least do no harm, that kind of thing.”

Neatly leading them to the point of his visit. Truth let the moment pool and spread. The old man sat comfortably in his chair. His face was relaxed, but attentive. Truth could hear his heart beating. Steady. Not too fast or too slow. Truth might have even categorized the look in the old man’s eyes as ‘friendly-ish” except that the longer he looked at them, the more he realized that he couldn’t see anything past them.

The old man didn’t have a poker face. He was the poker face. It was enough to make Truth half smile. Didn’t he do more or less the same with Incisive?

“That was quite a threat you made earlier.” The old man’s voice was mild.

“Impractical too, I regretted it almost as soon as I had said it.”

“Oh? Can’t say I expected that.”

“Yes, the Sung family clearly does not all live together. It would be a pain to run around the city, find you all, find a place to warehouse everyone, collect everyone in the warehouse (probably one or two at a time), then ship everyone back here, then nail everyone to the floor then set the house on fire in such a way that fire control spells can’t activate in time. Doable, sure, but annoying.”

Truth shook his head. “You should never make a threat you aren’t willing to make good on. I really boxed myself in there.”

“You… really don’t see any problems with that plan, other than logistical inconvenience?”

“No.”

It really was more the hassle than anything else. He truly didn’t think they could deploy anything strong enough to stop him. If the Clan had a hidden Level Eight, he would be shocked. A couple of Level Sevens, maybe as many as three, would be enough to ensure their place high in the hierarchy of power.

They might take him in a straight up fight, but when has he ever offered that to anyone?

“We didn’t get to our current power by being soft, you know?” The old man sounded genuinely curious.

“I know.”

“So what’s the basis for your confidence?”

“What’s the basis for yours? I sat on your front step all afternoon, and your diviner couldn’t spot me. You could fill every centimeter, and I mean this literally, every cubic centimeter of hallway with demons, and I would still walk out of here untouched. I would be gone in the space of a blink.”

Truth shrugged. “Is this really the direction you want the conversation to go?”

The old man smiled slightly. “I suppose not. You called this meeting. How do you want this meeting to go?”

“Well, originally I was going to interrogate you on how, exactly, one of your companies finds itself using child labor, working those children to death, then turning the dead children into emergency rations you feed to yet more starving children and, of course, their families.”

That got a raised eyebrow.

“Then I realized I knew the answer, and nothing useful would come of the conversation.”

“Oh? I’m not sure I know the answer, and believe me, it is being investigated as we speak. Hard.”

“You deliberately set an incompetent manager in charge of those companies, and put under her people who were competent, but were mostly concerned about not making the emotionally unstable nepo-hire unhappy. The results, given the overall circumstances, were as predictable as a head falling from a neck. I would investigate your other holdings. See where else the pattern is being repeated. Because it is being repeated.”

There was another sizable pause, as Truth got another, more detailed look from the old man.

“Not an expert on humans?”

“Just rats.”

The old man nodded. “Drink?”

“I don’t, thanks.”

“Mind if I do?” he reached for a cup and the decanter.

“Not at all. Managing drunk old men in armchairs is a core competency of mine. I got a certification for it and everything.”

The old man put the cup down with a thunk. “Well that ruins my nightcap.”

“Meh. I have found an alternative you might enjoy better.”

“Somehow I doubt it’s drugs.”

“Debatable. Some would say it’s the best high of all. Power, Mr. Sung. How would you like to become more powerful?”