by Andrew Post
“Calm,” she said, voice soft, to her underlings. They heeded at once, putting their weapons away.
She stepped toward Ernest in bare feet. A face of small, soft features. Wise eyes, a smattering of freckles, a narrow neck. Thirty, if a day.
She, too, wore a red robe. More illustrious than those of her followers.
She wasn’t unaccompanied. Moving in her shadow, keeping time with her steps, a swirling gray plodded behind like an obedient dog. Ernest knew his own work well enough to know what—or who—the second shadow really was.
“I brought your ship,” Ernest said. He had no fear of this woman.
Pale blue eyes traced the architecture of his face. He was old now, having dropped some of his years into the Magic Carpet to ensure it’d make it across the Margin, to here, Eastern Embaclawe. “Thank you, Ernest. Have some time for tea and cards?”
“I’ve always got time for a game.”
“Good,” Nimbelle said. She looked over a shoulder. “Zoya, dear? You’re in charge.”
A girl with brown curls—robed as the rest—nodded. When she turned to bark orders at the idle Sign of the Wyrm followers, Ernest noticed the girl’s ears were packed with red-stained cotton balls. She met Ernest’s gaze a moment, apparently feeling him looking. Despite her beautiful face, a trace of something sinister bled from her steely gaze. A shame, another spoiled talent courtesy of Nimbelle Winter.
“Shall we?” Nimbelle asked, hooking her arm in his.
Together Ernest and Nimbelle wound their way down the cliff to the shore. Upon approaching the Magic Carpet, Nimbelle’s smile bloomed. She ran a hand down the flank of the starship lovingly.
Inside, caressing every counter and every inch of bulkhead as they moved into the crew quarters, she paused at a doorway. Upon the jamb, there were some notches starting two feet up off the floor. Her name next to each and her age. With a fingertip, she traced her father’s handiwork with the knife from long ago.
When the kettle screeched, Ernest got up to take it off the burner, filling two cups. The smell of cardamom filled the air. He listened to her hands gracefully shuffling the cards, a rapid flicking sound as she scattered them into organized chaos again and again. Ernest set the cups down for her and himself and had a seat again. She began dealing, able to speak and count at the same time—something Ernest, even at his age, couldn’t often successfully do.
“I’ve missed this rust bucket,” she said, savoring the old smells. Sapping some years from it had undone some of the Odium’s graffiti and wear and tear but not all. She didn’t seem to mind what lingered.
“Glad to return it to ya. Rightful owner, after all.” He picked up his cards once she’d tossed down ten to him and arranged them by suit. The game was Usurp, as always. “I hear y’all are already moving on to Adeshka,” he said over his cards. “Quarantine got called about an hour back, I heard on the way over.”
“Why postpone something if you’re ready today?” she said mildly.
“You know the Skirmish is long over.”
“Yes.” She sounded amused. “Who’s to say when a war truly ends? When the battlefield falls quiet or when all affected are dead and forgotten?” She smiled at her cards. “I’m still around. I still remember. To me, it’s still going—echoing around and around and around.”
Ernest didn’t feel much like philosophizing. “Ya get David Joplin?”
“No, the Pyne boy beat me to it.” She repositioned a card within her hand, fingers graceful. Something just below the collar of her blouse shifted, swelling the material. She patted it, soothing its quaking. Her eyes returned to Ernest over her close-held cards. “But Chidester remains.”
“Fancy yerself some kinda do-gooder, huh? Settler of scores? Ha. Then what’re y’all doin’ decoratin’ the school with dead bodies? What about their families, their kids?” Some of the hanging corpses were children—a good number of them. “Their parents?”
Nimbelle eyed him coldly, same as the entity hovering just over her shoulder.
Ernest sighed. “Fine. We gonna play this game or what?”
“Go. I dealt.”
He showed his cards. The mage, two princes, and a princess.
Nimbelle Winter snapped down hers. The queen, a prince, and a maiden knight.
Total stalemate.
The shade—darker than its surrounding shadow—shifted behind her, slate-gray eyes always watching, a second head. Breathing in slow rasps, it never contributed to the exchange, only watched—ambivalent, or simply not feeling that this was its place to say anything?
The thing in her blouse throbbed under the crimson fabric, illustrating its owner’s excitement like an exterior heart. Her tell? Or evidence of a thrill in a game well won—or was it well cheated?
Ernest sat back. “Be honest now. Did ya stack this
here deck?”
Nimbelle Winter grinned. “I don’t know, Ernest. Did you?”
Andrew Post was born in Erie, Pennsylvania, in 1984. He spent the countless study halls of his formative years filling notebooks with science fiction and horror stories. Andrew lives in the Twin Cities area of Minnesota with his wife, who is also an author, and their two dogs. His blog can be found at
www.andrewpost.blogspot.com.
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