A Game of Three Hands

by Tim Stead

  “Ah,” he said.

  “Ah? It means something?” Hekman leaned forwards.

  “You noticed the hands?” Jud asked.

  “Of course,” Arla said. “Two of them.” But she knew by the way it spoke that she had missed something.

  “Yes, two of them.” Seer Jud help up his own hand. “How many fingers?” he asked.

  “Three,” Arla said. “Three and a thumb. We have four.”

  She hadn’t seen it, had just thought the three fingered hand a badly drawn sketch by an illiterate man, but perhaps Silman had been more careful than that.

  “It comes of being human,” the Shan said. “Men are not aware that they are men – and not something else. It is a luxury that we cannot afford. I see a Shannish hand and a man’s hand on this, and that changes everything.”

  “It does?”

  “Are you aware of the Shannish term ‘a question and an answer’?”

  They both shook their heads and Jud sighed. “It is so basic. A question and an answer are a poison and its antidote. It is a common… thing with us. There is another, related expression: a game of two hands.”

  “The first symbol is a three,” Arla said.

  “Yes,” the Shan seemed caustically condescending. “Well spotted. I’ll get to that in a moment. A game of two hands. It is a poison in two parts. One part is administered first, a rare substance, perhaps, and the second is usually more common. So if I gave you, let’s see, Oylcamp Essence, and then left you to it, you’d feel no ill effects, or not until you drank a glass of wine. Then you’d die quite suddenly, and it would be as if the wine had poisoned you, but you’d find no culprit in the wine. It’s the reaction between the Oylcamp and the acid in the wine. Do you see?”

  “So you could be poisoned days, or even weeks before, and not know it.”

  “Exactly so.”

  “And the… what was it? Oil Camp? Would persist for how long?” Arla was keen to understand.

  “Good question, Commander,” the Shan said. “Oylcamp will last a week or two – no more – but there are other precursors that might live a year in the system, but it’s rare for anything to be effective for so long.”

  The first two symbols, then, might actually have a meaning: a game of three hands. How it could be a game was beyond Arla, but the Shan were strange. She struggled with the concept of a race of expert poisoners. What would life be like? You could never trust anything, never accept a glass of wine or water, a piece of meat, a loaf of bread. It seemed like the worst kind of nightmare.

  “So why three hands?” Hekman asked.

  The Shan shook his head. “It is certainly beyond me,” he said. “I have some skill, but three hands would be the work of a master. There may be some clue in the other symbols, but as you can see there are four of them.”

  “I thought the crown might signify the intended victim,” Arla volunteered.

  “Possible, but why not the circle? The crown could represent a coin – a common tool for a skilled poisoner.”

  “But such an elaborate thing. It cannot be for some common man who could be killed in the street,” she protested.

  “It could simply be that the poisoner is rich and does not want to be caught,” the Shan said. “Even on Cabarissa such a crime would be almost impossible to detect.”

  Then what chance did they have in Samara? Summing up their knowledge in her own mind, and it was quite a lot they had learned since Silman’s death, Arla could see that they had established almost nothing. They didn’t know who the intended victim might be, nor the killer, nor, if truth be told, the method. They knew it would be poison, but not what poison, nor how it would be administered. If Seer Jud was right any sudden death could be the result of undetectable Shannish poisons.

  “Whatever the order, I think we can look at these two, the knife and the second hand, as part of the method,” Hekman said.

  “This is all wild guesswork,” Arla protested. “We don’t even know for sure that Silman went to Cabarissa.”

  Her outburst silenced the other two. Hekman looked at the symbols on the paper. That three fingered hand and a vague hint to a baker in a tavern were all the evidence they had that the Darnese captain had ever been near the Shan. He certainly hadn’t been killed by one.

  “She’s right,” the Shan said.

  Hekman scratched his thinning hair. “But we cannot do anything but act on our guesses. If there is a plot to poison the king and we do nothing we will have failed in our duty.”

  He was right of course. They had to act as though they knew what was happening, even if it was truly no more than supposition.

  11 The Princess

  Calaine Tarnell, Do-Regana of Samara, the queen-to-be, sat in her spartan rooms in the citadel and examined her face in the mirror. It was a pretty face. She had been told that so many times, but to her eyes it looked regular, even featured, but otherwise quite unremarkable. She wore no face paint and her fair hair was scraped back and tied behind her head, tamed. She liked her eyes. They were blue, bright summer blue, and clear. She thought them her best feature. They had been inherited, she was told, from her mother, whom she had never known. The woman had died when she was two, so she had no memory of her at all.

  Calaine had become a soldier because it was what her father needed. Her clothing had been no different from that of other soldiers, and she had wanted nothing different until she had been sent as a hostage to the Saine house.

  Hostage was the wrong word. It was the word her father had used, but from the moment she had stepped into their presence the Saine family had treated her as an honoured guest. They had fed her, pampered her, clothed her and welcomed her more as family that anything else. And they had challenged her view of the world.

  It had changed her life.

  She had learned how to dress, how to eat, and even more than that, how to think. Her narrow view of the world, gleaned from running and hiding from Ocean’s Gate guardsmen, from killing them when she could, had been blown apart.

  Ella Saine had become a close friend. The girl was a few years younger, but her mind was as sharp as a razor and yet she never used her cleverness to be hurtful. Ella was an example to them all.

  Then there was Corban, Ella’s older brother. She had learned something completely different from him.

  Despite it all, all the wonderful things she had learned, all the great events of the past few years, she was built upon a foundation of duty and obedience. She shared her father’s view of what was important, and understood her role in life.

  It would gather no political advantage if she married a trader’s son. She was to be given to King Bren Portina of Blaye, but remain a power in her own right, Queen of Samara when her father died, and Queen Consort of Blaye. Their children would rule both cities and the alliance would be cemented for ever, or so they hoped. So Calaine was satisfied that her misery was in a good cause.

  She went to the window and looked out over the sea. The Sword of Samara, which had brought her father back from Blaye this morning, was docked below the citadel, rising and falling with a gentle southerly swell. It was an elegant ship – slender and full of purpose, and she longed to sail with it some day, to see the city diminish as she left it, to be queen of only sea and sky, things that paid no heed to monarchs.

  Her father would come to her soon and tell her what had passed in Blaye.

  She liked Portina. He was a good man, a good King, and his people loved him. But he was not Corban Saine. It would be easier if one of them died, she thought, but dismissed the idea at once. Either loss would be a tragedy. Corban was clever, strong, wise in strange ways, and he made her laugh. Portina was just, honest, honourable, loyal, and perhaps a little dull. Both had courage.

  A knock sounded on the door, and she crossed the room and opened it. Her maid stood there.

  “The King wishes you to attend him,” she said.

  How quickly it changes, she thought. Until a year ago nobody had ever attended Simon Tarnell. C
ome quickly, he would have said, I want to see you now. The bluntness of the soldier had been replaced by… by what? Pomposity? She struggled to see her father that way. He was still as he had always been, but now his simple presence was clothed by advisors, by chamberlains and servants, and it was their language, their ways that built a distance between the king and his subjects.

  It was, she confessed, a necessary distance. Simon Tarnell was not a beloved monarch.

  She walked the stone corridors of the citadel, out through a solid doorway into the courtyard and thence to the great gates.

  He had been hated. The way he had conducted his hopeless campaign against Ocean’s Gate had been careless of the people’s welfare, brutal in its treatment of those who accommodated the Faer Karan, and after the monsters’ fall they had remembered. The city had been dragged to the brink of civil war.

  Those times now seemed as unreal as the war of pointless skirmishing that had preceded them. Samara was settled, happy, prosperous. Those who had been their enemies had slotted into an easy truce with her father’s men. Even Bren Portina had been an enemy once, a guard captain at Ocean’s Gate.

  She left the citadel and walked the short distance to the Great House unescorted. It wasn’t far, and there were few people around in this part of the old town. The Great House was the traditional home of the kings of Samara, and now largely restored to something like its former glory. Calaine chose not to live there because it seemed too different from what she was used to. The coloured windows, carpeted, quiet hallways, and deferential servants padding around within it made her uncomfortable – more so than a hard bed and basic food, which was what she had in the citadel. She would have to live in the palace sooner or later, but not just yet.

  The door was opened for her as she approached, and she nodded to the guards as she passed them. She knew all of her father’s trusted men. They had fought together and were bonded by that, though she could no longer call them friends as she once might have done.

  A servant waited for her inside and made as if to show her the way, but she strode past him. She knew the way to her father’s chambers and he was never to be found anywhere else. It was as though he, too, was uncomfortable in this great empty building and hid from it in rooms that mimicked his old life.

  She turned into the corridor and saw one of his father’s guards rap sharply on the door, which opened.

  “Calaine.” Her father was growing greyer with every passing year. Now he looked so much older than he had when their final victory had come to pass. It was as though he was built for war and peace was rusting him like a disused blade.

  “Father.” She should really have given him his title in front of the men, but today it seemed too formal.

  He stepped aside and she entered his outer room and the door was closed behind her.

  “How did things go in Blaye?” she asked.

  “Well,” he replied, and he smiled, which meant that he was happy with whatever deal he and Portina had struck.

  “Tell me.”

  In a way this was no different from what she had witnessed in the Saine house. This was the business of ruling. Assets were traded, advantages gained. As long as you got what you wanted and the cost was bearable it was a good deal. The secret, as Corban had explained to her, was to always trade plenty for plenty, to offer something that you had in abundance in exchange for something that was abundant elsewhere. Both sides profited.

  “The match is agreed,” the king said. “We have discussed the details, but Portina will not give his final assent until you have visited Blaye and he is certain that you are satisfied with the arrangement. He is most stubborn about it.”

  Yet again Bren Portina showed that he was a good man. He refused to marry an unwilling bride. He wanted her to be happy.

  “I will go as soon as it is convenient,” she said. “Is the Sword needed for anything else?”

  “You’ll have to speak to General Grand, but I doubt it. You can leave next week if you wish.”

  Calaine was surprised. She had never left Samara, and her father had been partly instrumental in that. He had always kept her close, especially after her brother had died. Now he breezily agreed that she should travel to Blaye, and it rang false.

  “I have business here,” she said. “There is a meeting of the council next week.”

  Her father waved it aside. “Our alliance with Blaye trumps all,” he said. “You must go as soon as you can, and stay a good while with the king. You must be sure of him, and of the place.”

  That, too, seemed unlike her father. He had shown little consideration for her feelings in the matter of her marriage up to this point, and she was led to suspect he had some other reason for getting her out of the city.

  “I will make arrangements,” she said. “Now will you tell me the details that you discussed?”

  The King shrugged. “It does not matter,” he said. “He insists that you agree to everything, though he did say that he wanted you to live in Blaye for part of the year until you assume the throne of Samara.” He smiled. “But that will be many years hence, I hope.”

  Calaine thought about that. Living in Blaye made sense. She would have to get to know the city and its people, but she had never thought that far ahead, and she found that although she wanted to see more of the world – she had always envied Corban in that respect – she did not want to abandon her home.

  But it seemed she had no choice.

  “I will not be a stranger to the people of Samara,” she said.

  “No, of course not. You will be their queen – one day.”

  There was a motive. Most of the council’s power derived from Calaine, who sat at its head. With her gone from the city her father would have more direct influence over their decisions. None of them, except possibly Ella, could stand up to him as Calaine did, and the council’s purpose was to curb his power. The Mage Lord had insisted that it be this way, otherwise the city could have erupted into civil war.

  “If I go you will give General Grand a permanent place on the council,” she said.

  “Your place?”

  “No. I will sit in council when I am here, but Grand will be there as long as he chooses.”

  The King sat back in his chair and poured himself a cup of wine. He seemed satisfied, easy with the proposal, which meant that Calaine had made a mistake. This wasn’t about power, unless her father had some knowledge of General Grand that she did not possess.

  “Very well,” he said. “I will have Grand’s name added to the permanent roll, but you know he is little more than a proxy for Serhan?”

  “He’s more independent than you think,” Calaine said. “The Mage Lord is his friend, but he does not live in Serhan’s pocket.”

  “We shall see.”

  “I still have things that I must do before I leave,” Calaine said. She wanted to get to the bottom of this before she quit Samara. “I’ll tell you when I decide to go,” she said. Theirs was an odd relationship for father and daughter, even odder for king and princess. In the troubles that followed the fall of the Faer Karan he had been forced by circumstance to cede most of his power to her. She had become the public face of the Tarnell line, a kinder face, and she was certain that he still resented that. But this was about something else.

  She left the Great House and headed back to the citadel. She went directly to General Grand’s quarters, but he wasn’t there. A soldier told her that he was on the Sword of Samara, so she went out of the citadel by the sea gate and made her way down to where the ship lay by the fortress’s private dock.

  She’d seen the ship a hundred times, but Calaine had never been aboard. She climbed the ramp that connected the ship to land and found it disturbingly mobile, moving gently up and down, side to side, as the ship rubbed against the dock. She stepped onto the deck, and one of the crew approached her at once.

  “Do-Regana, it’s an honour. Welcome aboard.”

  “Take me to General Grand,” she said.

  Th
e sailor executed a small bow and led her across the deck, which seemed to breathe beneath her. It was like crossing some great beast’s back. They came to a stairway and descended into the ship’s stern. Below decks the ship seemed small, but in a way it was grander than she had expected. The posts that supported the deck were intricately carved in abstract patterns and seemed alive in the lamplight. The ceilings were low, but the space seemed the broader for it.

  They came to a doorway and the sailor knocked. After a brief pause the door was yanked open and a face looked out at them. It was Captain Parl. She knew the man’s face and reputation, but they had met only once.

  “Do-Regana,” he said. He opened the door wide, revealing a spacious cabin beyond, dominated by a broad window at the stern. “How may I serve you?”

  “It is good that you are here,” she said. “We have things to discuss, but I was looking for General Grand.”

  “I am here.” She looked around the door jamb and saw that Grand was seated at a table laid with maps. “What can I do for you?” he asked.

  “I bring you news,” she said. “You are to have a permanent seat on the city council.”

  Grand inclined his head slightly, his eyes seeking out the ocean beyond the window. “I see,” he said. “Why?”

  She had not expected that. Men usually rejoiced when they were gifted greater power. She decided to be honest. “I will be travelling to Blaye. I will be staying there for some time. The council may need its spine stiffening in my absence.”

  Now the general smiled. “Of course,” he said. “I will be happy to oblige.”

  Calaine had never really understood General Grand. He had been the Mage Lord’s most trusted lieutenant, and he had abandoned him on the day of his victory to take a job in Samara – admittedly an important and prestigious job, but still it was beyond explaining. There had been no falling out. As far as she could tell Serhan and the general were still on the best of terms, and yet they had put this distance between themselves, or Grand had.

  “Does the Sword have any special duties?” she asked.