We each set a pair of dice under a cup, took a second pair and rolled. I got low and paid a coin. Next the Colonel rolled low and paid two coins, followed by a second low. He paid three more coins until the pot took on a triangular shape and was soon stretching across the table.
The Colonel rolled a three and a one and shouted excitedly, “You see, I have rolled my Rogue.”
I rolled doubles. “Blocked.”
Grumbling, the Colonel rolled again. I rolled and paid the pot twelve coins.
“I will give your street game this, it quickens the blood. I think we need fare, or I will begin to fret.” The Colonel rang his bell and set it on the table.
We rolled again.
“Rogue.” This time the Colonel leaned forward to take the pot, but my dice hit the table.
“Lowly Rogue, the pot is mine. You see, Colonel, it could be your estate I’m winning, but anyhow, I’m leaving the pot. We continue at thirteen coins.”
“The pot thickens,” said the Colonel taking a deep draft from his lowball.
As we shook our dice again, Sary entered and curtsied at the table’s edge. The dice hit the table and I stared in disbelief. Eleven. My opponent rolled his Lowly Rogue with a pair of twos.
“I’m sorry to say, I do not share your generosity.” The Colonel swept the pot into his bag. “Now let’s talk about higher stakes, since I see that you are not the indomitable winner I’ve heard tell.” He turned to Sary. “We require food for celebration, smoked fish, fruit, bread, and cake. The best of what we have. Hurry now, I see a victory in the making.” She quickly departed.
“You’re confident,” I said.
“I’m experienced,” returned the Colonel.
“Then I no longer feel that I am taking advantage of you. I will bet the Billings Estate, but only if you bet your slaves.”
The Colonel raised both eyebrows. “That’s a high price, but less than an estate. I offer you a steady revenue instead. I would still be able to maintain a respectable livelihood, and your status would be similarly raised. In the end, you will make more. If you take my slaves I will have no way to make money or maintain my estates.”
“Yes, you would share my status, which seems no great loss to me.” I took the first sip of whiskey and nearly coughed it across the table. I wasn’t much of a drinker. “Your slaves are the only thing you have that has any value to me.” Time had changed me. Years of winning coin had begun to be a boredom. “Besides, Colonel, I don’t trust the future revenue of someone who gambles.”
The Colonel regarded me dubiously. Hadn’t I, the pot, called the kettle black? I was an exception, though. I shrugged, and we sat staring at each other like soldiers facing off across no man’s land.
I watched the conflict of emotions on his face until it was overcome by that certain look—the hard determination of a man who sees what he wants and believes that in a single moment he can gain it all. I imagined the dream that was so bright in his mind’s eye it overshone the shadows of his failure. Perhaps he’d coveted his neighbor’s track of land for years, or perhaps he had a family vendetta with the Billings. I didn’t know, but the hunger was written on his face clearly enough.
I almost opened my mouth to paint the picture of what the man’s life would be like if he didn’t win, but at that moment Sary returned and for the first time in years I cared whether I won or lost this game. It wasn’t property or money I was gambling for—no matter what the law said—I was gambling for lives. If I won, I could set this beautiful creature free and maybe see her spirit fly. I shook the dice with a challenging look in my eye.
“So be it.” The Colonel shook the dice and rolled.
We played and each time the Colonel paid the pot. I was beginning to worry; I wasn’t getting low, much less Rogue.
Sary set up a tray with food next to the game and returned to the kitchen. As soon as she was gone, I rolled doubles blocking the Colonel’s Rogue.
“Bugger!” said the Colonel snatching a piece of smoked fish and cramming it into his mouth.
We rolled again, and this time I got low. Things were back to normal, but my mind had worked out that something strange was going on. I was shaking the dice again when Sary entered carrying water with crushed ice from the ice house. All down the front of her dress was a long wet mark with beads forming on her hem.
“What happened to you?” I asked before I could stop myself. I’d been told it was improper to talk to another man’s slaves, but this was a point where my manners broke down: poverty and slavery were just different sides of the same coin, and my childhood had taught me compassion for both. People were people, altae or not.
With an annoyed glance, the Colonel raised a hand dismissively. “I’m sorry, Rob, Sary was born under a bad sign, it seems. She has very poor luck, always spilling and tripping. I would turn her out to the fields if I thought she wouldn’t take someone’s head off with a hoe. I’m afraid if you win this bet you won’t be getting much of a bargain with her. She’s a nice enough serving girl, though, and she tries.”
I chewed my lip. “Unlucky, you say?”
“Very.”
And suddenly, I had worked it out. I remembered my tutor snapping his chalk in frustration as he tried to teach me to subtract a negative number. Then again six months later when he wanted me to multiply two negative numbers. “What was the use?” I ranted. “Neither number exists, anything less than nothing is still not there.” I’d had to pay him double for that lesson and only then did I get it. My understanding was less than zero, and it must exist because it caused me to pay more for my lesson—and nothing couldn’t do that. When Sary was near me she was multiplying her bad luck with mine. I knew what I had to do.
“What do you say we change our game to five card?”
“I thought you only played Rogue.”
“It’s true, but I know I’m going to win. I always win, and frankly I’m bored of it. What am I going to do with my own estate and a bunch of slaves tripping over each other—spend my days doing accounting?”
“Yes, well, there’s a lot of that.”
“How monotonous.”
The Colonel laughed. “You are an eccentric, if you don’t mind me saying so.”
“I don’t.”
“Sary, bring us the deck of cards from the left drawer of the hutch.”
My pulse quickened and I almost bounced in my chair like a prepubescent boy. This is what gambling felt like! I rubbed my hands together and watched the slave girl cross the room.
When Monifa pulled out the drawer, it slid all the way and fell, but not before she caught it with her foot where it remained balanced. Since the Colonel’s back was to her, I alone witnessed this extraordinary occurrence, and I kept it to myself. I didn’t know if this sort of skill was common to an altae, but based on the Colonel’s description of Sary, I knew that for her it was not. Seeming confused, Sary returned with the cards, then retreated a few steps away.
“So there are no arguments about cheating or fairness, I propose that Sary deals,” I suggested, hoping to keep Sary at the table.
“Seems reasonable.”
After a little coaching, the cards were dealt with a shaking hand. I didn’t pick mine up, but the Colonel asked for three cards, and when he received them, his face turned a pure crimson. He seemed even more unnerved when he noticed the disregard I held for my own cards.
“You would bet your entire estate and not even seek to know what luck has given you, or engage to make it better? What trick is this?”
“There’s no trick, Colonel Brewer,” I lied, knowing that my trick was the unlucky charm sitting at the table between us. “How can I affect cards that I have neither touched nor seen?”
He nearly spat on the floor. “Well, let’s be on with it then; no use hiding from the inevitable. Do you own my slaves or don’t you?”
Monifa sucked in her breath before she could stop herself. She was being gambled like a lump of metal, a crafted bit of clay, or a pile of pelts. She
felt her rage rising again, and her hands trembled even more as she set the cards on the table and pushed on them to keep her hands still. The tremor was translated through the table as she saw the whiskey ripple in the glass. Gambling for lives!
Being owned was bad, but not as bad as it could be—she’d heard the stories. The Colonel, although a pompous man and therefore degrading to her in his way, was not overly cruel, even in his strictness. She had a roof over her head and food to eat. But this man whose eyes had followed her every move, and gambled for lordly sums without a care for winning or losing, what kind of a master would he be? Would his moods swing with his luck, one day celebrating, the next lashing out viciously when he lost? Would one day they feast and the next starve? She could not tell, though his face seemed kind enough.
She stood and took a step back from the table, pressing her hands firmly to her sides. Mr. Lyar was pushing back his sleeves and showing his naked arms with a touch of flair. She was not familiar with this action, but she was sure it was to show that he had no tricks or cards there. Slowly, he flipped the cards one by one. Their meaning was unreadable to her, but she could read the Colonel well enough. His eyes turned to slits, and his face went from crimson to purple.
“Royal flush! A royal flush! Impossible!” The Colonel threw his cards across the table. “You have the devil’s own luck, you do, because as sure as I’m alive I saw no trick, and to my dying day I know that I won’t find one.”
Mr. Lyar snatched the bell from the table before the Colonel could argue. Monifa looked at it in his hands with apprehension. Everything would change again. She bit her lip to keep from crying. Somewhere she’d spilt her luck, and it had run away through sand.
She heard her dreadful name being spoken. “Sary. I want you to take this to the blacksmith and ask him if you can borrow his hammer and anvil long enough to beat it flat. Then I want you to bring it to me at my estate in the morning, and we will discuss your freedom.”
“Freedom?” Again her mouth had moved before she could stop it. She put her head down and retreated another step. She did not speak to the humans by choice.
“Yes. I’m glad you understand me.”
She’d heard that altae could be put to death for walking free in the wrong places or captured and resold as slaves. But freedom! Why live without fulfilling what her heart most desired? What was more dangerous to the spirit than choosing safety and fear? But could he be serious; freedom? Was this a trick or joke?
The man handed her the bell, and she took it into her hand, gripping it hard until the cold metal nearly split her skin. He looked at her hands and she could see it, too—even feel it in her pulse—her hands were steady and firm.
“Yes, Sir. I do understand.”
The sun was barely pushing through the fog when Monifa strode out of the Billings’ orchard toward the steps to the solar where I was trying to wake up with a cup of tea in hand. How she knew exactly where to find me at that early ungrateful hour I don’t know. I took it as further evidence that those long ears could hear my thoughts.
I watched her sway like a willow as she walked, all of yesterday’s stiff meekness replaced by confidence. She’d simplified her clothes, allowing more skin to show—or as I understood it, to allow more sun to touch her skin. I was a worker of the fields once, and this manner of dress made me feel more at ease, until she got closer. It did little to clear my morning thoughts, and I was suddenly scared that she would hear them.
I was nervously filling the space with words even before she stopped in front of me.
“Do you know anything about physics?” I asked Monifa. Her face didn’t change. “Mathematics? English?”
Monifa looked worried, but her skin had changed to a deeper color of green since I’d last seen her, giving her a vibrant glow that radiated from the inside out. The change was made more obvious when she opened her mouth. “Perhaps I will have the freedom to learn.”
I smiled. “You will have the freedom, though you may not be interested. I’m not sure how to explain what I want to tell you. Let me try this; if I say ‘we are not nothing’ it means ‘we are something.’ Well, I almost lost this estate and your freedom yesterday because you are a not and I am nothing. I’ve always been a lot of nothing so I know how to work with it, but when you came along you turned my nothing into something by notting me. You’re not getting me, are you?”
Monifa appeared too puzzled to speak.
“It’s nothing,” I said trying to bring relief to the knot in her forehead, “but I noticed that I may have notted you, too. How often do you balance drawers on your foot?”
“Never,” she said thoughtfully.
“Not never. I saw it.”
“You think you are lucky for me?”
“No, I think you are unlucky, and I know I am unlucky, and together we make each other unlucky at being unlucky.”
“That is not nothing,” she said.
“Exactly,” I said, a smile forming on my lips. “It’s called a double negative.”
Eric J. Best
Eric J. Best is the youngest of seven (not thirteen) who often trips over his fiancee’s shoes and forgets that he is not left handed. He is usually found doing menial tasks involving a hammer or chainsaw with earbuds sprouting from his head to feed his audiobook addiction. When not line-cooking for his children, or stealing their library cards, he’s shoving the mundane aside to find blissful escape behind his keyboard. Other works by Eric J. Best, including The D Generation series, can be found at www.leftofpluto.com.
11. The 13th Spell
Michell Plested
Charlie closed the enormous spell book with a concussive snap, blowing the little dust that remained on the reading table into the air. He resisted the urge to sneeze and silently congratulated himself.
Twelve spells. Memorized, mastered and ready to use whenever he wanted. Granted, his head felt like it was stuffed with angry bees, but that was a small price to pay for power…and for making his life easier.
He turned his sight inward to admire the spells that appeared to float, golden in the aether that was his mind’s eye.
“What are you up to, boy?” The voice of his master, Caldonan, interrupted his thoughts and Charlie’s awareness snapped back to the here and now.
“Master! I didn’t hear you come in,” Charlie said. “I’ve done it! I learned a new spell.”
“And what does this one do, I wonder,” Caldonan mused aloud. “Perhaps it swats flies or boils water?”
Charlie felt a little hurt by Caldonan’s comments. Why would he waste the precious weeks it took to master a new spell to do something so very trivial. “No, Master. This spell will make us our breakfast every morning.”
Caldonan stared at Charlie for several heartbeats before he spoke again. “Breakfast. Your new spell will make us breakfast?”
“Yes, Master. Porridge and coffee and even an egg if we have any in the larder. Every morning. Without fail.”
“Let me see if I understand what I’m hearing. So far in your apprenticeship you have learned spells to chop wood, dust, wash the laundry and now you have learned one to cook us breakfast?”
“Don’t forget about the ones to feed and water the animals. Those were very tricky!” Charlie reminded Caldonan.
Caldonan sighed and went to sit in his padded arm chair. He motioned for Charlie to grab a nearby stool and sit down.
“Charlie, I left it up to you to decide what spells you would learn because every wizard has his own interests. If you are not true to yourself, you will never be successful. For some that means learning spells of war. Others, it means spells of healing.” Caldonan rubbed his eyes. “You chose spells to do your chores.”
“That’s important, too,” Charlie said, valiantly trying to defend himself. “If a wizard spends all of his waking hours doing chores, he will never have time to do what’s important.”
Caldonan leaned closer to Charlie. “And just what IS more important, Charlie? Hmm? What would you supp
ose a wizard would do with all his important free time?”
That question surprised Charlie. In fact, if he were to be completely honest with himself (and Caldonan) it would be fair to say he had never considered the question.
He shrugged. “I don’t know. Relax. Enjoy life, I suppose.”
“Ah.” Caldonan sat back in his chair, stroking his beard. “And how well would you relax on an empty stomach, Charlie?”
“What do you mean?”
“Where do you think the food we eat and drink comes from?”
“The pantry, of course,” Charlie said.
“And how does it get there?”
“I go down to the market and pick it up from the various vendors.”
“Very good. And what do you use to pay for it?”
Charlie was getting a little tired of this line of questions. The answer was obvious. “I pay for it with money that you give me.” He couldn’t help saying the last line with a little bit of exasperation.
“Ah ha!” Caldonan said, practically jumping in his chair. “And where do you suppose I get the money that I give you to go to the market with?”
“From the people who come here to get spells done by you, Master.”
Caldonan nodded his head and smiled at Charlie. “So you understand why only learning spells that do chores is a problem?”
“No.” Nothing about the conversation was making any sense to Charlie.
Caldonan took a deep breath. “Charlie, do you think the people who come here are asking me to use a spell to dust their home or chop their wood?”
“No,” Charlie said. “I’m sure they do those things themselves. Much cheaper than hiring someone else to do it for them.”
“Exactly right. So what do you suppose people ask me to do?” Caldonan’s eyes probed Charlie with an intensity he wasn’t used to.
Charlie wiped his brow with his forearm. “I guess, they come to ask you about crops and get spells against disease and other things.”
“Once again, exactly right, Charlie,” Caldonan said, nodding his head in approval. “And how, do you think, would I be able to provide them with the spells against disease and other things, as you call it?”
Lucky or Unlucky? 13 Stories of Fate Page 21