The Fire Cage

by Scott Hungerford

  “What’s the matter?” Davin said. “Not enough there to pay for your mistress tonight?”

  “Grown men don’t have mistresses,” the Banker snapped back. “They have whores.” He tossed a pile of chips haphazardly to the dealer. “Twelve nobles.”

  The princeling, swallowing hard, counted out twelve chips from his own dwindling stack. “Twelve nobles.”

  “Match,” Davin said, adding twelve of his own. “What’s the matter?” he asked the Banker. “Don’t you believe in love?”

  “I do by the hour,” the Banker retorted.

  “That’s a terribly lonely thing to say,” said Veronn, the noble-son. Shooting a glance over at Davin, he seemed as he were trying to make some measure of the strategy behind Davin’s line of conversation.

  “It’s a terribly grim world out there,” the Banker said to Veronn, “and you’d best realize it if you’re going to make something of yourself. If you spend all your time dallying about with girls before your naming day and you’ll be at a disadvantage in business for the rest of your life. How old are you? Fifteen? Sixteen?”

  “Seventeen, sir,” he responded. “And a half.”

  “And you?” the Banker asked Davin.

  “Seventeen, sir,” Davin said. “But I’ll be eighteen in just two more days by the mantle clock.”

  “Congratulations!” the Banker said, just as the dealer noted the tiny sand-clock had just run down to its last few grains, indicating the end of the betting round. Flipping it over, he set it down on its end with a flourish.

  “How many cards?” the dealer asked Davin. “By the die, four at the most, minimum of one.”

  “Two cards,” Davin said, even as he watched for flickers of apprehension in the Banker’s eyes. After discarding a Five of Merchants / Four of Merchants and a Three of Armies / Six of Cogs, Davin was inspired when he the dealer dealt him a Seven of Nobles/Five of Wealth and a Six of Wealth/Eight of Nobles, both of which matched up with his existing set of cards to make a pair of matched runs — an excellent hand.

  “Two cards,” the Banker demanded, casting off and taking the two new cards, hardly even looking at them.

  “And you, sir?” the dealer asked to Veronn.

  “Three cards,” Veronn said.

  Davin watched the young man carefully as he laid down a scattering of weak cards and took three new cards into his hand, including a potent Ten of Wealth, with an Eight of Armies on the face by default. While the younger man reorganized his hand and carefully took stock of his new cards, front and back, within the shield of his palms, Davin risked glancing down at the back of his wrist. After so many hours of play in the humid space, Davin was glad to see the mix of paint and glue was still holding. The little dab of goo so far neatly concealed the penny-sized blue cog tattoo on the back of his hand that marked him an Eighteener and ineligible to play or even set foot in the Fates. Having received the mark when he had starting working in Florin’s some seven years ago, it was a symbol of his low but acceptable station in society.

  The dealer rolled the die again. “Five. All bets must be in multiples of five.”

  The Banker dumped most of his remaining chips. “Twenty nobles.”

  “What do you think about love?” Davin asked Veronn, trying to trip him up. “Have you lain with a woman, yet?”

  “Yes,” Veronn said matter of fact, barely even looking up from his cards. “When I was fifteen.”

  “You mean a girl,” the Banker said around a mouthful of crushed ice and gin. “You slept with a girl. There’s a sizable difference.”

  “I beg to differ,” Veronn responded. “A noble matron gave me my first lessons in poetry and love.” He looked up with a smirk, and pushed a sizable stack of chips across the table. “Forty nobles.”

  Davin nodded, doing some quick arithmetic on his side. He had more than enough chips to force the two of them out, but Veronn’s Ten of Wealth worried him, especially if it was combined with one of the two trump Joker cards that duplicated any other face-up card on the table. Counting out his chips, he pushed forty nobles across the table himself, seeing if the old fart on his left would bite the hook. “To you, sir.”

  The Banker nodded, and then pushed all of his chips across the table, leaving himself high and dry. “Match.”

  “I beg to differ,” Davin said carefully. “You only have thirty-nine chips there. You’re at the end of your stake.”

  As the Banker’s face reddened. As he tossed back the last of his gin, the dealer counted the scattered chips and confirmed Davin’s claim. “You’ve made a forfeit, sir, and are short one noble. You have until the timer’s end to make good the noble, or I will rule you out of this hand, and your stake is lost.”

  “Count it again.”

  “I’m sure I’m correct.”

  “Count it again, or I’ll make sure you never work in this borough again.”

  Davin smiled; this was just about the Banker’s end. Even if Davin lost the hand against the other boy, he would still be up by hundreds of nobles, more than enough to eventually drive his dour opponent into the ground with careful play.

  “Thirty-nine, sir,” the dealer announced, a little more loudly than he had to, alerting the white-clad Knives standing guard by the doors that there may be a problem. “Thirty nine and not one noble more.”

  “I’ll loan you —” Veronn started to say, before Davin slammed his fist on the table, rattling the chips and the glasses of ice and spirits.

  “You will do no such thing!”

  “But it’s the honorable thing to do,” Veronn said, looking quite startled at Davin’s outburst.

  “You have him on the ropes. I’ve seen the canvas of your hand. Finish him off. If you let him live, you risk him turning on you and killing you in the end. Or, more importantly, killing me, and I have plans for this day’s wagers.”

  Veronn bit his lip, not sure what to do. The Banker, who looked mad enough to claw holes in the armrests of his chair, seemed to be on the edge of having a frothing fit. Looking first at Davin, and then back at the Banker, Veronn finally shook his head and assented to his opponent’s wisdom. “I decline.”

  Davin risked a quick glance at the dwindling sand clock, and then at the Banker, expecting the old porker to blow a gasket. But the old man wasn’t looking at him, but at someone standing behind him. Slowly turning in his chair, Davin looked up, straight up, and was barely able to keep his expression neutral when he realized he was looking at none other than the man responsible for his father’s death.

  “Lord Banker,” Rajon zan Cagliostri said in a haughty voice. “You’re looking unwell.” The master gambler, dressed from neck to foot in black silks, with fine leather shoes and an embroidered vest with silver buttons, was known throughout the Fates as ‘Gambler’s Death’. With cruel eyes and a pinched beak of a nose, and his long black hair swept back into a tightly knotted queue, he looked more like a vulture than a master gambler. Davin had seen him across the room when he’d first entered, and assumed that he would face him by the end of the high-stakes tournament. But not now, not so soon.

  “I seem to be at a disadvantage,” the Banker said, more than embarrassed.

  “A single chip?” Rajon asked, having already counted the table with a glance. “That is so much a trifle.”

  “I am already in your debt,” the Banker said, “and this would mean so much to me.”

  “Please, sir,” Davin said through gritted teeth. While he knew Rajon, he did not believe that Rajon knew him, as Davin had grown up in the streets of Height, and not in the noble quarter with the rest of the noble lads and captain’s sons. “I’d appreciate it if you didn’t interfere.”

  “Oh, really?” Rajon said. “A noble is but a trinket.”

  “I would find it an inconvenience,” Davin said, shrugging his shoulders.

  “He turns eighteen in just two days,” the Banker said. “He’s probably trying to buy his nobility with the Fates’ best prize.”

  “But he bears
no mark,” Rajon said, glancing down at the back of Davin’s hand. Davin swallowed — this could be the end right here. An end by the same man that drove his father to financial ruin and, ultimately, suicide. To the Banker, the noble was but a trifle, worth no more than a new pair of gentleman’s gloves. But to Davin, that same coin represented more than four months of savings from filing screws night and day on the factory floor.

  “Just the same, Rajon” the Banker hissed. “Come now. Lend me the chip and let me see about winning this hand.”

  “Seconds remain,” the dealer announced, keeping a wary eye on the sand clock.

  Mesmerized by the lack of response from Rajon, Davin watched as the vulture reached into his pocket and pulled out a single chip from his own winnings, and spun it through his fingertips, from finger to finger, with effortless speed and grace. Finally palming it, he walked past Davin to the Banker and held his closed hand out over the desperate old man’s cupped palms, then held it and watched him sweat.

  “Please,” the Banker begged. “I have no time.”

  “Offer me something in return,” Rajon said. “Make it worth my while to interfere. What do you have to offer me this time?”

  “I’ll take a percentage rate off your accounts at my firm, and I’ll add a percentage to the nobles I owe you from last season. My pride is at stake; I can’t lose to a scufferling like this.”

  “An interesting offer,” Rajon said, and opened his palm — only to let a single worthless penny fall into the old man’s hand. “But not enough.”

  “Time,” the dealer announced, as he swept the Banker’s chips into the pile at the heart of the table. “Play continues with Veronn.”

  “You bastard!” the Banker said, standing up out of his chair so quickly that it knocked over behind him. Already, the Knives were on the way to maintain order.

  “A penny for your thoughts?” Rajon said wickedly, even as the Banker took a wild, ineffectual swing at him with his clenched fist. Easily ducking under the clumsy man’s blow, Rajon swept the man’s feet out from beneath him with his heel, causing the Banker to smash his chair into flinders as he crashed helplessly to the floor.

  For a moment, Rajon’s back was to Davin and he knew that he had the advantage. The sharp-bladed machinist’s knife he’d concealed inside the vest pocket of his coat was but a motion away, and then the vulture would be dead and vengeance gained.

  Licking his lips, Davin juggled the odds, of success against defeat, on whether he could take an experienced fighter like Rajon from behind like some kind of common street thug. But if he did so, even if he succeeded, the Knives would have him, he would be kicked out of the Fates, denied the victor’s purse, and likely dragged off to the Judges and to prison. More importantly, his only chance to ascend to his father’s noble title and purchase whatever inheritance his father had to his name — at the price of the Fates’ exclusive thousand noble prize — would vanish as well. As the bastard son to a dead man, Davin had no future beyond what lay on these next few hands of cards, and Rajon’s death would not deliver him anything more than a hangman’s meal of mutton and moldy bread.

  So Davin did nothing and watched dully as the Banker was dragged out of the Fates. When the shouting old man had cleared the door, and a bustle of servants had swept away the broken rungs of the chair and cleaned up his spilled drink, the dealer turned back to Veronn and flipped the timer anew. Much to Davin’s dismay, Rajon looked like he wasn’t going anywhere.

  “Don’t you have a game of your own?” Davin asked the murderer, as he kept his hand carefully concealed.

  “I already won my table,” Rajon said with a dangerous twinkle in his eye. “Besides, this is so much more interesting.”

  “Thirty-five nobles,” Veronn announced, getting on with the betting play, pushing a sizable stack of chips to the center of the table.

  “Forty,” Davin replied, then counted and pushed out his own stack of chips in kind. His mother had always said he was a fast counter, just like his father had been before he died.

  “Forty-five,” Veronn raised.

  “Fifty,” Davin countered. Now there was no way that the younger man would be able to match. Davin knew that he had over a hundred chips left in his stock, and Veronn didn’t have enough to cover the next ascending bet. But when his opponent looked up and gave Rajon a queer look, Davin’s blood ran cold.

  “Fifty-five,” Veronn said, pushing in the last of his chips.

  “I beg to differ,” Davin said, setting the dealer the task to perform a quick count, trying his best to keep his voice from quavering.

  “You are correct, sir,” the dealer said after a few seconds. “Your opponent is short by twelve chips.”

  “Then let me handle it,” Rajon said. Going back to his table, he took a stack of his chips and brought them back to Veronn, the exact number required to cover the young man’s debt. Even as Davin tried to avoid swallowing his tongue, Veronn let out a sign of relief and thanked the gambler profusely. In Davin’s world, that handful of chips was a year of hard labor. Rajon had casually upended the last twenty hours Davin’s brilliant play for nothing other than his perverted pleasure.

  “Fine, then,” Davin said, pushing it all the way, hoping his luck would be enough. “Sixty. Maximum bet, twelve fives.”

  “Match him,” Rajon instructed, and then retrieved twelve five-noble chips from his table and stacked them on Veronn’s side of the table.

  “Sixty nobles, match,” Veronn stated proudly, now starting to grin with glee. Rajon was clearly setting his stake on another player — a valid strategy, but not one commonly seen in the Fates.

  “Final play,” the dealer announced, turning his timer for the Exhibition Round. Carefully, with shaking fingers, Davin organized his hand as best he could, into the strongest sets he could make, but he wasn’t confident that it was going to be enough. Setting the stack down on the table for the dealer to count, with his Seven of Nobles showing on top, Davin waited as his opponent nervously organized his own cards. Finally, just as the timer was about to run out, Veronn set the stack on the table, with the Ten of Armies showing.

  The dealer took both hands and spread them, showing that Veronn had a five-streak of Armies, which beat Davin’s two three-sets by a significant amount.

  “Hah!” Veronn said, and happily accepted the pile of chips the dealer pushed towards him. Counting out what he owed to Rajon and handling it to the vulture with a flourish, the boy couldn’t wait to start the next hand. Davin sat glumly and watched the dealer shuffle, knowing too well that the pattern of shuffling faces and suits couldn’t be tracked. But he watched it anyway, mostly to keep from glaring at meddling Rajon.

  “Well done,” Rajon told Veronn.

  “Thank you,” Veronn replied with a bob of the head. Davin gritted his teeth, stayed silent and waited for the next hand to start. Now he had a first-hand taste of what had driven his father to his financial and mortal end, and he didn’t like it at all.

  “Deal begins,” the dealer said. “Three nobles ante are required for third round.” Both players put their ante in and received six cards each for their hand. But when the dealer rolled a devil’s six on the die, Davin knew he was in trouble. They started at a common ground of four-sixes, matching initial bets of twenty-four nobles. But by the time that Davin had received three cards into his hand, he had a spread that wasn’t strong enough to guarantee a win but not weak enough to allow him to fold. With his two concurrent runs of three, mixed between strings of Wealth and Mercantile, Davin just hoped for the best. But when Veronn was dealt a Joker face up, Davin knew he was at his end. Playing to the final beat, he hoped for something, for a chance of fate to somehow let him have the upper hand. But the set of the noble-son’s matched Wealth cards crushed him, and the last of Davin’s chips went over to Veronn’s side.

  “Bravo,” Rajon told Veronn, as he gently clapped his congratulations. “Well played.”

  The knife in Davin’s pocket beckoned him, and he could fee
l the need to push the spike right up through the old vulture’s throat. With trembling hands, he put his palms face down on the table, trying to keep calm, trying to swallow the fact that this gentleman scoundrel just ruined his life just as much as he did his father’s.

  “Well played,” he managed to say to Veronn, without losing his composure.

  “Thank you,” Veronn replied, with courtesy appropriate for a winner and a gentle sportsman. He seemed like a person that Davin would like to meet, in other circumstances. But now with the loss, they were already worlds apart.

  “The table is yours,” the dealer told Veronn, and then made motion for Davin to leave his seat. Standing up from his chair, just like an honorable gentleman would, Davin bowed to the stronger player and turned to go back to the rest of his miserable life. That was when Rajon said one last, final thing, his voice just barely audible above the din of the game room.

  “You play better than your father.”

  Hot fury flashed up through Davin’s body. He turned and stepped right up to Rajon, nose to nose, fists clenched. “You don’t know anything about my father.”

  “I know you’re Vincent’s image,” Rajon said, stepping up even closer, answering the boy’s physical challenge. “The same looks, the same anger, the same tells. But he owed me his debts and took his own life rather than pay them. You strike me as a man who knows the value of a deal. You have raw skill, Davin, just like Veronn here, and I think you could be taught.”

  “Never!” Davin said loud enough to cause the dealer’s eyebrow to raise. The white-uniformed Knives began another trek to the table.

  “Suit yourself,” Rajon said. “But I owe your father no ill-will. If you’re more of a man than he was, you’ll learn to control the gambler’s talent, rather than letting it control you. In the end, his lack of control was his downfall. Not me.”

  One of the Knives apprehended Davin from behind, placing his strong hand on his shoulder with intent. “Is this man bothering you, lord?”

  As Davin fidgeted, Rajon looked down upon the young man, down over the bridge of his hawkish nose. “Would you enter my service, Davin?” Rajon offered. “There is so much I could show you.”