Royal Airs

by Sharon Shinn

  “I have money,” she said instantly.

  “No, you don’t.”

  She stared at him mutinously for a moment, then dropped her gaze. “I’ll pay you back.”

  “You certainly will.” He started to move away, then stepped back. “I’ll be right over there if you need me. As soon as I’ve finished the game, I’ll come and sit with you until your sister—or whoever—shows up. Everything will be all right.”

  “I hope so,” she said in a low voice. He nodded and turned away again, but her voice drew him back. “Rafe!”

  He was surprised she remembered his name. But then, she was full of surprises. “Yes?”

  “Thank you.”

  “I haven’t done very much.”

  “Yes, you have.” She hesitated a moment, then said, “I’m Cora.”

  Sure you are, he thought. “It’s been interesting to meet you, Cora.”

  Her expressive face showed a faint hint of laughter. “It’s going to get more interesting, I’m afraid.”

  He lifted his eyebrows. Now that was an intriguing thing to say. “I can’t wait.”

  TWO

  Rafe had resigned himself to the notion that Cora’s dramatic introduction into his life would ruin his concentration enough to make him lose the next three hands, but, in fact, luck ran fairly evenly among the four players. By the time they were all ready to quit, even the jacked-up sweela woman admitting to exhaustion, Rafe was neither as far ahead as he’d have liked or as far behind as he’d feared. Could have been worse ways to end this night.

  “A pleasure playing with you,” Rafe told the others as he pocketed his cards and his coins. “I’m here most nights if you ever want to try your luck again.”

  Sad Boy shrugged and the Loser looked disdainful, but Sweela Woman said, “I just might be back later this nineday.”

  “Be glad to see you,” he answered.

  He was even gladder to see them all gone, ducking out through the door into the gray light of very early morning. He left a few coppers on the table for the serving boys, stood up and stretched, and shook his head to clear it. Normally this was the time he’d head upstairs for a few hours of sleep. But today, of course, he had a runaway with an assumed name to look after until help arrived. He grinned, shook his head again, and made his way through the mostly empty bar to the booth where Cora waited.

  She was sitting sideways on the bench, her head against the wall, her legs stretched out before her, and she was fast asleep. From the plates arrayed before her, he could see she’d made short work of a hearty meal. He also guessed she’d secured another knife for herself, because he didn’t see one on the table. He grinned. Heiress of the Five Families or not, this one had no doubt been a holy terror from the day she came squalling into the world. This might not have been the first time she’d run away. Probably wouldn’t be the last.

  He caught the attention of a passing servant who was taking advantage of the thin crowd to wipe down tables and sweep up debris. “Could you bring me one of those meat pies and a glass of beer?” he asked. “Thanks. And bring it to me quietly.”

  That last admonition had been in vain because as soon as he slid into the booth, Cora woke up. It only took her a moment to blink her eyes and remember where she was, and then she sat upright and dropped her feet to the floor. He saw her wince with pain when she jarred her ankle.

  “Unless your sister brings a conveyance of some sort with her, you won’t be leaving this bar today,” Rafe commented. “Can’t imagine you could walk more than five feet on that sprain.”

  Her lips tightened. “I’ve been thinking the same thing.”

  He shrugged. “My offer is still open. You can have my room.” When she instantly looked suspicious, he added, “I’m not going to ravish you. I’ve never been interested in the very young and very unwilling.”

  “Glad to hear it,” she said tartly. “You’d be surprised at the number of men who are.”

  “Not surprised,” he said. “I’m just not one of them.”

  “I think I’d rather sit here,” she said. “At least until J— At least until my sister comes.”

  On the words, his food arrived, smelling delicious. Samson had a questionable moral code, but he was an excellent cook. “Still hungry?” Rafe asked the girl. “Want anything else to drink?”

  “Just water, if I could. Thank you.”

  Silence fell between them while Rafe dug into the meat pie. He was hungrier than he’d thought. Or it had been a longer night than he’d anticipated. Or both.

  Cora was the one to speak first. “So I’ve been wondering what kind of man you are,” she said idly. “Coru? Maybe sweela. Definitely not hunti.”

  “Somebody else recognized me as coru tonight,” he said.

  “So what are your blessings?”

  He was too tired to lie, so he gave her the truth. “I don’t have any.”

  “What? Why not? Everybody has blessings.”

  “I don’t.”

  She narrowed her eyes and thought that over. “Well, even if your parents didn’t pick blessings for you like they should have, nothing’s stopping you from pulling your own blessings now,” she said. “How old are you?”

  He laughed. “Twenty-seven. How old are you?”

  “Seventeen,” she said impatiently. Older than he’d thought, but still ungodly young. She didn’t waste time getting to her main point. “This would be an excellent year for you to pull your blessings. Twenty-seven is a very propitious number, because it’s nine threes! It might have been better when you were sixteen or twenty-four, because eights are even better than threes. Maybe you could wait till you’re thirty-two.”

  Rafe had grown up in the country, where people had a healthy respect for all the superstitions of Welchin life—the elemental affiliations, the random blessings, the powerful numbers of three and five and eight. But they weren’t as fanatical about the traditions as the people in Chialto were. They did believe that newborns should receive their own random blessings within five hours of birth, but out on the farms it was sometimes hard to find the three requisite strangers and a nearby temple. They often made do with friends and whatever collection of coins they could scrape up amongst themselves.

  He found it amusing that—with all the other topics that should be weighing on her mind—Cora was worried about Rafe and his lack of blessings. So he was laughing at her when he replied, “Maybe I’ll do that.”

  “Of course, you shouldn’t pull them yourself,” she said. “Ask strangers. Or ask me. I’d go with you right now, if there was a temple nearby. And if I could walk.”

  He toyed with his empty glass of beer, feeling strangely sober all of a sudden. “I did that, actually. A couple of times. Can’t remember how old I was, so maybe it wasn’t one of the propitious years, but I went to a temple and had strangers pull coins for me.”

  “See? You do have blessings. What were they?”

  He lifted his eyes to meet her interested gaze. “Ghost coins. All of them.”

  She sank back against the bench, surveying him with narrowed eyes. “That almost seems impossible,” she said.

  “Seems like a stupid thing to lie about.”

  “You said you did it a couple of times.”

  He nodded. “Same thing happened. Ghost coins. Every one.”

  There were dozens of temples all around Welce, some big, some small, some full of incense and rich woven rugs, others austere and chilly. What they had in common were five benches—one for each of the elemental traits—where visitors could sit to meditate themselves back into balance; a tithe box where they could drop donations to pay for the privilege of entering; and a big barrel of metal coins, each stamped with one of the blessing glyphs. There were forty-three specific blessings, so all the barrels held multiples of each, and they were constantly being replenished as visitors kept the coins they
were particularly happy to receive.

  But some of those disks stayed in the barrels for years, for decades, picked up and dropped back in again, worn smooth by many hands and constant churning. You couldn’t tell what blessing they were supposed to confer, unless it was the questionable one of mystery. It was supposed to be bad luck to draw one for a newborn. Bad luck, maybe, to draw one for anybody.

  “Well, that is a little strange,” Cora allowed. “But I bet I’d pull something different for you. I bet my sister would.”

  He was amused again. “Somehow, I don’t think we’ll be making a trip to a temple together anytime soon.” She looked like she was going to say something else, so he jumped in with a question of his own. “What are your blessings?”

  She held out her right hand and spread her fingers to show off three rings, one in copper, one in silver, one in gold. Instead of being stamped with glyphs, each ring had the blessings carved out of them, to reveal the smooth skin beneath. “Imagination, courage, and intelligence,” she said.

  He wasn’t qualified to judge on the first attribute, but he’d bet she had the other two in abundance. “Sweela and hunti,” he said. “I would have said you were all sweela.”

  She grinned. “My mother’s sweela and my father is hunti, so it’s not really surprising that I have both kinds of blessings.” She twisted the gold ring on her finger and added, “Although my sister has three elay traits, and she is completely elay in personality, but her mother is hunti and her father was sweela. So you never know.”

  The sister was sounding more and more like a madwoman. The elay folks were all odd, in Rafe’s experience—melodramatically soulful or weirdly empathetic or giggly and ridiculous. He couldn’t remember meeting a single one that he’d actually liked. And this one, who lived in the southern slums and was very likely a harlot, would probably prove to be the craziest one yet.

  Then he registered what Cora had just said. “Wait a minute. If your mother is sweela and your father is hunti—and it’s reversed for your sister—you aren’t really related.”

  For a moment, she looked alarmed, as if afraid she’d betrayed something, then she relaxed again. “We’re stepsisters.”

  “Is your mother married to her father, or is it the other way around?”

  Now she was laughing. “It’s actually more complicated than that.”

  “So you don’t really have a sister at all.”

  “Oh, I have plenty of sisters. I’m just not related to most of them by blood.”

  He settled back more comfortably against the booth and gave her a crooked smile. “You know, I don’t care who you are, why you’re here, or what you’re lying about. But, damn. You’ve got me pretty curious about how exactly your family is connected.”

  “I’m sure your family is just as interesting.”

  “Hardly. My mother’s dead, my stepfather and I aren’t close, and I only see my brother a couple of times a quintile. I don’t really have much of a family.”

  Cora rested her chin in her hand. “Sometimes I think that would be easier. There are days I’d like to see all of them swept away in the Marisi River.”

  “Is that why you ran away? Family problems?”

  Her delicate face, which had grown animated and open, now closed into a scowl again. “In a way. But it’s complicated.”

  You keep saying that, he started to reply, but he never got a chance to say the words. The door opened, and spring stepped inside.

  Of course, that wasn’t what really happened. A fair woman in a plain white tunic came through the door and stood there a moment, looking around. Unlike Cora, who had entered as unobtrusively as possible, this newcomer didn’t seem to notice that she drew all eyes her way, didn’t seem to care. It was hard to say what exactly made her so hard to look away from, though maybe it was simply the light. She hadn’t closed the door behind her, so the early morning sunshine had followed her inside and pooled around her white clothes, her ashy-blond hair. Maybe it was the swirl of fresh wind that danced in behind her, chasing out the stale odors of smoke and fried meat. Maybe it was the sheer incongruity of her presence, because Rafe had never seen anyone who looked less like she belonged in a southside tavern after a very long night.

  If he’d had a roll of gold coins, he’d have laid them on the table at this moment and gambled them all. “I’m betting that’s your sister,” he said.

  Cora turned in her seat and started waving wildly. “Jo—Josie! Here I am! Here I am!”

  Josie—or whatever her name really was—instantly crossed the room, her eyes focused on her sister. Rafe found himself impelled to come to his feet in some wasted gesture of civility, but the blond woman had eyes only for Cora.

  “What happened? Are you all right? I came as quickly as I could,” she said, sliding onto the bench next to Cora and giving her a brief hug. But she pulled back almost at once and began to give the other girl a critical inspection. “You look like you’ve been in a brawl. Are you all right? What happened?” She glanced briefly in Rafe’s direction. “Did he sell you any red gemstones?”

  The complete non sequitur made Rafe frown and Cora grin, though it seemed to take her some effort. “No,” she said. “Nothing like that.”

  Maybe it was a code phrase; he admired them for putting one in place. He said, “Let me excuse myself while you two talk.”

  Josie settled her gaze on him to appraise him more fully. Her face wasn’t quite as delicate as Cora’s, or her expression as lively; she looked grave and thoughtful and just a little sad. No, this wasn’t the prostitute or the drug dealer Rafe had been envisioning. But she was certainly all elay. No doubt about that.

  “Who exactly are you?” she asked in a courteous voice.

  “He’s the man who helped me,” Cora interjected. “When this—this—criminal came over and tried to frighten me.”

  Josie was still watching Rafe. “Yes, that happens sometimes in the slums,” she said. “That’s why you shouldn’t be here. What’s your name?”

  “Rafe Adova. I play cards.”

  “And you rescued my sister.”

  “Hardly that dramatic,” he said.

  “Oh, it probably was,” she said, showing the faintest hint of a smile. “Things tend to get—exciting—when Corene is present.”

  “Josie,” hissed Cora. Corene. Now that was a name he ought to recognize. Damn his slow thought processes after such a long night.

  “It’s the sweela gift,” he said.

  “At any rate, you know half the story, so you may as well know the rest of it. So what happened?”

  Rafe slowly dropped to his bench again. Corene licked her lips and thought a moment, clearly editing out details. “There was a party at Rhan’s last night. At the last minute, my mother decided not to go, so he and I were alone in the elaymotive together. There wasn’t even a driver.”

  Josie nodded. Clearly she knew who he was.

  “At first I wasn’t paying much attention, but then I realized we’d been on the Cinque too long, we were way past Rhan’s house,” Cora went on. “When I demanded to know where we were going, he said there was a different party, he thought I’d like it, we were almost there. But I just thought—he seemed so odd—I decided I should get out of the car if I got a chance.”

  “A moving elaymotive?” Josie said faintly.

  “Well, we’d come to a stop in bad traffic,” Cora explained. “So I jumped out and ran as fast as I could. I thought I was going toward the river,” she added. “Because I figured, if I could get to the Marisi, Zoe would be able to find me. But it was dark, and I got lost, and then somehow I ended up here on the southside. So then I figured I’d go looking for you instead. But I fell down, and I twisted my ankle, and I just came inside the first place I could find that looked halfway respectable.”

  Josie glanced around the bar again, showing no distaste for the sordid surr
oundings. “You made a good choice,” she said. “There aren’t a lot of places in this part of town where you would have been half so safe.”

  Corene looked over at Rafe. “Well, this one wasn’t safe the whole time. These men came over and acted like they wanted to kidnap me or something, but that’s when Rafe told them to get out.”

  Josie transferred her attention to him as well. “You did my sister a great kindness.”

  He shrugged. “It was easy enough to do.”

  “Since then, we’ve just been sitting here waiting for you,” Corene finished up. “And now—now I just want to go home.”

  “Foley’s already on his way to your father,” Josie said. “He came here with me, but I sent him on with a message. Foley is my personal guard,” she explained to Rafe.

  “If you live southside and you only have one guard, I’m surprised you’ve survived longer than a nineday,” he said.

  That faint smile was back. “I don’t live here all the time. And Foley is fairly formidable.”

  “But Zoe and my father aren’t in the Chialto house right now,” Corene objected. “They’re staying with—someone else—on the other side of the canal.”

  “I know,” Josie said. “It will take him at least a day to make it back. And if you sprained your ankle— Can you walk?”

  “I don’t think so. Not very far.”

  “Not sure you want to sit here in the bar for a whole day,” Rafe said. “I offered your sister the use of my room upstairs. She seemed to suspect my motives at the time, but it was an entirely honest offer and it’s still open.”

  “Thank you. This time we’ll accept,” Josie said. “We’ll pay you, of course.”

  He smiled at her. He was tempted, so tempted, to say, Play you for the privilege. Whoever won five hands at penta would determine the cost of the accommodations for the night. But an elay opponent was always tricky, and this one would be harder to read than most. He could lose everything to her on a single turn of the cards.