by S. G. Night
Racath felt his fists clench. Ember was smoldering in his chest, churning in the same way that Elias had described the fear. “That’s what I imagined it to be like.”
Elias watched the anger boiling in Racath’s face. “You’re a hard man to understand, Thanjel. You’re not how I would imagine a Majiski to be.”
“Oh?” Racath’s voice was flat and burning.
“You’d think you’d be desperate,” Elias said. “Fighting for your life, like the rest of your people. But…you’re different. Not desperate, something else….”
“Angry,” Racath supplied, the word fanning the ember in his chest. “You’re right. I don’t fight just for survival. I do it because of what happened to our people.”
“Our people?” Elias asked, raising an eyebrow.
“Ioans. Like I said, we’re different, Majiski and Humans. We’ve suffered differently, too. But we’re still brothers. Countrymen. Your pain is my pain.”
Elias chuckled to himself, looking down at his soup, rolling his spoon in it. “If you say so. You know, Thanjel, you’re not half the bastard you make yourself out to be,” he said musingly. “Deep down, you’re not that cold murderer you portray on the surface. You have a heart somewhere.”
Racath’s rage at the Demons abated slightly. He felt his fists unclench without being told too, and he frowned down at his food. “Thank you,” he said softly, the taste of authentic gratitude riding on the words.
Outside, the bells of the clock towers began to ring. Racath sighed.
“I need to go,” he murmured, getting to his feet. “Enjoy your food, Elias. Then get home to your family.”
Elias bobbed his head understandingly. “Always good talking to you, Thanjel.” Pause. “That came out more sarcastic than I meant. Really, it was good talking to you.”
Pulling up his hood, Racath sent Elias a warm grin. “You also. You’ve been a tremendous help. And I won’t forget my promise — if things work out, I’ll talk to my master about getting you back on retainer.”
Elias raised his mug in enthusiastic salute. “Hear hear! You do that, and maybe one day if you ever kick the Demons out, I’ll build you a house. If you’d ever care to settle down.”
Racath laughed to himself. “I might just take you up on that. One day.” He held up his first two fingers — an old Majiski gesture, a salute, returning Elias’s toast. “To victory then?”
“Aye!” Elias shouted over the din of the tavern’s lunchtime crowd. “To victory!” He drank deeply. When the Human lowered his mug again, Racath Thanjel was gone, the tavern door shutting behind him.
“Knock ‘em dead, Thanjel,” Elias whispered. His smile was hopeful.
TWELVE
The Kestrel
The night of the 13th arrived. Racath prepared a simple dinner from the Manji Tor’s pantry, then dressed in his dark tunic and trousers, Stinger gauntlets and leather boots. After slipping into his Shadow, he rearranged his arsenal, concealing his weapons within the confines of the cloak-coat. Once he’d found some spare meat for Sokol to occupy herself with, Racath left the safe house.
He reached the western end of the Bridge just as the sun was just beginning to sink behind the clouds. Back in the Burrows, he made his way to the downriver, toward the wharfs
. Like all of Io’s great cities, Milonok boasted high, sheer walls that ran alongside the river that bisected it. The length of the walls were periodically interspersed by canals, or river-level platforms that spidered outward into a tangle of wooden docks for riverboats. And it was on the Burrows’ side of the river that several of those docks were clumped together into a massive wharf. The streets around the wharfs were home to the darkest, seediest part of the slum.
It didn’t take Racath long to find a nondescript building on the riverside street; the whitewash lettering on the splintered sign above the door read was faded and peeling, but it clearly read THE RIVET.
Racath met Jax’s spy — an insipid man with deadpan eyes and a gaunt face — in the alley adjacent. After receiving his featureless sackcloth mask and some additional instructions, he returned to the door. He pulled the mask on over his head.
“Password?” the burly doorman asked when Racath stood in front of him.
“Bound to silver,” Racath answered without hesitation, handing over the entrance fee: one dyre.
The doorman grunted in acknowledgement and jerked his head toward the door. “Go on, then. You’re early, so you’ll be first to play. You know the rules, right?”
Racath frowned. “Refresh my memory.”
The doorman rolled his eyes and listed the rules off on his fingers: “Speak to none of your opponents. Hand gestures only — forfeit, stand, call, raise, etcetera. Five-dyre buy-in for every match. Three post-roll betting rounds per match, if you cannot stand your round then you will be forced to reveal your roll for the arbitrator’s viewing. Single elimination. You lose a match or run out of coin, you’re done.”
“Thanks,” Racath muttered and stepped past the man. The inside of the Rivet was a single barren room, lit only by the oily light of a rusty lantern hanging from the rafters. Two chairs sat opposite each other at a plain, driftwood table beneath the lantern. A ring of similar chairs enshrined the table like spectator stands, cast in half-shadow by the narrow halo of light.
Racath took the seat at the table facing the door. Settling in, he took the time to examine what he had to work with. A long bar of wood divided the table in half — the wall Jax had mentioned that prevented players from seeing each other’s roll or number of dice. A large divot was chiseled out of the center of the bar: the betting pot. On his side of the table, Racath found a set of ten-sided ebony dice and a cup. He weighed the dice in his hands, familiarizing himself with their balance and shape, memorizing the specific face that each number was carved into.
Double-checking that he was alone inside the Rivet, he practiced channeling energy out of his markara, using it to shift the dice beneath his cup. It was small magic, but his training had left a great deal to be desired. To make matters worse, the nature of this kind of cheating demanded that he kept the dice under his cup; trying to manipulate such small and slippery objects with magic was hard enough when he could see what he was looking at. It took some time, but eventually Racath grew slightly more comfortable in his ability.
By that time, a steady trickle of men wearing identical sackcloth masks had begun to filter in past the doorman. Racath placed his purse on the table. He had made change from Jax’s payment in the Manji Tor’s lockbox, breaking what was left of the gold pieces down into smaller coins. In total, he’d brought a mix of coins that added up to about fifteen whole. It could have fed a street’s worth of beggars for months, but he couldn’t afford to run out of money and get ejected from the game.
He dropped his buy-in, five dyre, into the pot and waited patiently for things to start moving. Outside, the bells rang eighth hour. The doorman slammed the door shut, plunging the Rivet into near total darkness, save for the lantern’s halo. The flickering flame encircled the game table in soft yellow light, but cast the ring of chairs in half-shadow. The other players, perhaps twenty in all, took their seats. One stepped up to sit across from Racath at the table.
The man gave Racath a passing glance and a perfunctory nod before placing his own buy-in in the pot. In that brief moment of eye contact, Racath searched the eye slits of his opponent’s mask. The man’s eyes were a common brown, unremarkable, and undamaged. He wasn’t Zayne.
Another man, this one wearing a washed-out blue mask, pulled a tall stool over to perch at the side of the table — the arbitrator, Racath assumed. His vantage point afforded him a view of both sides of the dividing bar.
“Begin,” the arbitrator boomed without any sort of preamble. “The pot opens at one solid. Opening rolls, gentlemen.”
Almost caught off guard by the sudden start, Racath picked a single die, sloshed it around in his cup and dropped it onto the table. Across the table, his opponent did t
he same, his selection of dice hidden by the bar. Racath tilted his cup back to view the carved number on the die: 6.
“Standings?” the arbitrator inquired.
Both Racath and the Human across the table gestured for an additional roll (gratefully, Jax had bothered to teach him the hand gestures used in a silent game). Racath picked two more dice, rolled, and checked his total. Another 6, and a 9. Twenty-one. He rapped his knuckles on the table, the sound muted on the brittle wood.
“Black stands,” the arbitrator announced. “White?”
Racath’s opponent gestured again for another roll.
“White continues. Black, place an opening bet.”
Fishing into his purse, Racath extracted three obul and a couple dyre. He tossed them into the pot.
“Black bets three solid and two. White, match the bet.”
The other player did so, not meeting Racath’s eye.
“The pot now stands at seven solid and four. White, you may proceed.”
After rattling some more dice around, Racath’s opponent nodded to himself and rapped his knuckles on the table.
“White stands,” the arbitrator declared. “Concluding bets begin with Black.”
Three rounds of wagers — raises, calls and the like — passed between Racath and the brown-eyed man until the pot began to resemble an overflowing kettle.
“The pot closes at one whole, three solid, and five. White, show for the count.”
The man carefully lifted four dice onto the bar for the arbitrator’s viewing, then sat back in his chair, arms crossed, pointedly ignoring Racath.
“A sum of twenty-two,” the arbitrator read.
Racath’s heart dropped in his chest. He was down by one. Thinking fast and trying hard not to panic, he stealthily placed his palm over his cup and pulsed invisible magic down into it. His markara flexed as he did so, and he was grateful for the leather gauntlet that covered his forearm. He felt the telekinetic fingers of energy brush against one of the dice under the cup. He hoped it was the 6.
“Black, show for the count.” The arbitrator’s voice was no louder than before, but it was like thunder in Racath’s ears. His magical grip on the die slipped. He could feel it shift to a painfully unknown number beneath his cup.
“Black?”
Holding his breath, heart slamming in his ears, Racath lifted his cup. Beneath, the three dice read 9, 6…and a second 9.
“A sum of twenty-four,” the arbitrator pronounced. “Black wins.”
Racath let his breath rush out of him in relief. Grinning beneath his mask, he scooped his winnings out of the pot as a scattering of hushed applause pattered from the audience. The brown-eyed man nodded politely to Racath, gathered up what was left of his money, and left the Rivet.
——
The next two hours were spent much the same way. After a second victory, Racath was allowed to sit out a few rounds. He chose a seat that gave him a decent view of both players, carefully examining their eyes beneath their masks. But none had the blinded eye that Jax had described.
Racath cycled in and out of the game table several times until he had lost count of his victories. By then his purse was growing thick and heavy — and so was his anxiety. He had been careful to diversify his winning combinations, (only occasionally resorting to clandestine magic, in order to avoid any suspicions), but his string of undefeated games had started to earn him some malevolent glares from the other competitors.
The two long, luckless hours without any sort of clue as to which player was Zayne wore on his nerves, too. Doubts pricked at his thoughts like nagging flies. What if Jax had been wrong about Zayne playing at the Rivet tonight? What if somehow Racath had missed him and he had already slipped out with the other defeated players? What if he failed?
Well, then Zayne would meet with his informant while Racath sat stupidly in a gaming den, scurry on over to Felsted’s house, find his superior dead, then run a few blocks over to Castle Milonok. The Genshwin would be compromised. Velik Tor would be raided. And the last of the Majiski would be massacred.
No pressure.
——
With only three players left in the Rivet, Racath was stiff from the building anticipation. The next contender sat down across the game table from him. This one didn’t look at Racath as the others had, but went straight to setting up his dice and coin.
Come on, come on, Racath thought. Show me your eyes….
The lantern light flickered. The Human’s left eye reflected a glossy sheen, and Racath caught sight of a scar that mangled the socket. A few strands of loose, red hair were visible at the tops of the eye slits, too. Zayne.
Triumph. Racath smirked.
The arbitrator began the game and both players rolled. Racath checked under his cup and his smirk broadened. Replacing his cup, he knocked his knuckles on the table, leaned back in his seat, crossed his ankles and put his hands behind his head. The very picture of a man with a right to be arrogant.
Zayne shot a half-blind glare at Racath through his mask. Racath did his best to grin back at Zayne with his eyes, his posture, his hands — every gloating aspect of his body language.
The malice in Zayne’s eyes did not flicker.
“Uhm…” the arbitrator stammered, the quiet tension storming between the two players palpable enough that even he could notice it. “Black stands. White?”
Zayne rapped sharply on the table.
“White stands. Concluding bets. White?”
Not taking his eye off Racath, Zayne placed an entire scion into the pot on top of the ten-dyre buy-ins. The single gold coin glittered in the lantern’s ruddy light. An audible murmur of surprise rustled through the spectators.
“The pot now stands at one whole, one solid. Black, match the one scion bet?”
Racath did not move. He did not shift in his seat. He did not adjust his sardonic pose. He let the pressing silence grow thick in the air, tangible, until you could have cut it with a knife. His gaze poured fire out across the table, scorching the acrid venom in Zayne’s death-stare. A quiet war between their eyes.
Slowly, deliberately, Racath picked up his purse, held it over the pot and tilted it slightly. A solitary golden coin clattered onto the pile.
“Black matches the bet” the arbitrator said assuredly. “The pot stands at—”
A second coin fell from Racath’s purse: an iron dot.
“Um…” the arbitrator fumbled, caught off guard. “Correction…? Black raises one-tenth. The pot—”
Racath overturned his purse. A cascade of coins tumbled onto the bar, spilling out of the pot and over the table in a waterfall of iron, copper, nickel, and silver, pockmarked by flares of gold. Every glint of light the coins reflected fueled the flame in Racath’s eyes.
“Um…the pot stands at…” the arbitrator counted as quickly as he could. “Thirty-nine whole, seven solid, five, four, and three tenths. White, can you match the bet?”
Zayne’s head shook slowly — Racath could almost hear the tense muscles grinding in the Human’s neck.
“Then show for the count.”
Still glaring, Zayne placed five dice on the bar: five nines. It broke twenty-four, but it was one of the combinations Jax had mentioned, a combination that beat out a simple sum. And it was one of the hardest winning combinations to beat, too. The Human cocked his head at Racath, as if daring him to try to win.
“Five knaves,” read the arbitrator. He hesitated. “…Black?”
The silence was deafening. A half-dozen hooded eyes turned to Racath. Across the table, Zayne watched him like a fox sitting outside a rabbit hole.
Smooth as falling mercury, Racath nonchalantly flicked over his dice cup. The ebon dice read 6, 7, 8, 9, 10.
“An end-straight!” the arbitrator exclaimed. “Black wins!”
True applause erupted in the Rivet. Zayne’s eye was poisonous, murderous, his fingers white-knuckled in a tight fist on the table.
Racath just smiled beneath his hood. There had b
een no magic in this roll. No cheating. It was a natural straight. Luck? Maybe. Or maybe God was on his side after all.
A snarl escaped Zayne and he flew to his feet. Cursing, he stormed out of the Rivet, slamming the door behind him. Racath was after him before the next player could take his seat. Quick as he could, he gathered his money back into his purse, tossing an obul to the arbitrator, and followed Zayne out the door.
The night was in full sway outside, and the bell towers were ringing half-past ten. Gentle mist fell like snowy ashes from the covered skies. Racath yanked off the itchy mask and dropped it in the broken cobbles, readjusting his hood. He scanned the street. Half-block away, a man was pulling off a sackcloth mask as he sulked along the edge of the river, revealing a head of bright orange hair.
Racath moved. Careful to maintain a good fifty feet between himself and Zayne, he followed him from the other side of the street. After nearly a quarter mile, Zayne rounded a sharp corner, descending a wooden ramp from the street down onto the wharfs. Racath darted across the road to the top of the ramp.
The wharfs, a twisted hodgepodge of rotting docks and tied-off fishing boats, sprawled out for a good hundred feet in every direction. The place was deserted, and Racath easily spotted Zayne’s bright hair bobbing along the empty platforms, as though he were out for an evening stroll. He must have been planning to meet his contact somewhere on the docks.