Gambling Heart

by Thom Lane

  I might have begged for a whipping, if the alternative was to be taken to market and sold. He only laughed, though, and kissed my hair and said, “No. I’m not going to whip you, not this time. It’s far too much effort. I might take a switch to bed with me, mind”— along with you, he meant, and my heart lifted—“but that would be for my pleasure, not your punishment. A good boy pulls his master out of the water if he’s drowning, even if he’s been told to stay on the bank. You can always disobey me when my life’s at stake. My life or my sanity. Nothing else, mind. Nothing less. Are we clear?”

  His hand was in my hair now, pulling my head up so that I had to meet him eye to eye. I tried to nod, but that just hurt; free folk don’t like to be nodded at, they always want to hear our obedience. I said, “Yes, Master. But—what if I make a mistake, if I think something bad might happen to you, but it turns out that I’m wrong?”

  He grinned fiercely. “Well, now. That we would just have to sort out with the whip. I’m sure you’d learn fast, to make a better judgment.”

  “Yes, Master.”

  Then he kissed me, fierce still, all teeth and tongue; then he took a firm grip on my collar and turned me towards our lodging. And if that grip was more for his support than my control, no one would have known from looking. I was just glad that I could do that, that I could be there to prop him up through his dizzy time and never let the world see it happen.

  And then we were alone in his room with the door closed behind us, and he could sag onto the bed, all strength spent; being magicked that hard and both ways, in and out, had really exhausted him. But I was there, and now I could do everything for him and not worry about being watched. I pulled his boots off and his trousers too, lifted his legs up onto the bed and didn’t even stop to nuzzle at his cock. Not yet. First I had to slither out of my own tunic and discard that, then work his shirt off over his head and arms; he’d gone so floppy suddenly, it was like undressing a baby. An oversized baby, all lax muscle and long bone and adult male beauty, my fine master.

  Maybe I did nuzzle at him a little, as we went. But then I slipped away from his side, just for long enough to raise a grunt of protest and a reaching arm; when I slithered back to join him again, to feel that arm coiling around me like a man reclaiming what is his, I had his nasty leather switch in my hand, and I pressed it into his palm like a good boy.

  “Master said he might be wanting this.”

  He tried to laugh, I think, but it was too much effort; he was asleep before the sound escaped his mouth. The switch dropped out of his slack fingers, and I didn’t want it lying between us—I didn’t want anything between us—so I slipped it under his pillow with just the handle showing, where he could find it if he wanted when he woke.

  Then I settled myself happily beside him, drew a light coverlet over us both, rested my head on his shoulder and all the rest of me tight against his skin, and joined him in dreaming.

  Slaves can always sleep. A wise slave sleeps lightly, half waking every time their owner stirs, ready to be ready when they’re wanted. Ready for anything. You learn to stay alert even in your dreams, but still to hold on to your dreaming.

  If you’re wise, you learn to let go of your hopes. They happen anyway—hoping is like breathing; you can’t just stop—but it’s folly to expect hopes to melt into reality. In reality, they only melt away.

  Like that day, when I slept beside my master and hoped to wake up to find his cock stiff and his hands demanding, the prospect of an hour’s sweating in his arms, in his bed, before whatever might be coming next. It didn’t seem that much to ask. It seemed likely, even. He did love to fuck me, as much as I did love to be fucked.

  Instead, I woke abruptly to the sense of someone else in the room.

  I did say we learn to sleep light and wake fast. I don’t know what tipped me off: perhaps the softest imaginable sound from the door, despite his best efforts, or from his bare feet on the hard mud floor. Perhaps it was the shift of air as he slipped inside, the scent of somewhere else that he brought with him. Or else it was something deeper, inside me, the sudden knowledge that I was being watched.

  Not by my master, I knew that. I knew two things, the moment I awoke: that Master Jensen was still heavily asleep at my side, warm against me; and that someone else was standing by the bed, looking down at me.

  On my side, choosing the slave rather than the free man: which was a clue or more than that, almost a certainty. I was almost smiling already as I turned my head to find him. If he’d been an enemy, it would have been my master who had drawn him here; what enemies did I, could I have?

  And if not an enemy—well. We had few friends here, either of us. Slaves learn to treasure those they find, the friendships they’re allowed.

  “Tam.” My voice was less than a whisper, that breath of talk that we develop, not to risk our owners’ waking.

  “Jay, will you come?” Meaning will you wake him? and will he come? because of course it would never be my choice. But also meaning my master is here in the camp, and sends for him, which meant there was really no choice for Master Jensen either. Tam’s master was a powerful mage; of course mine would come when summoned.

  I could have said Now? just to see Tam’s nod, but there was no need. Of course now; no mage was ever known for his patience, even in dealings with other free folk. So I just nodded myself, of course he’ll come, and turned over to nuzzle at my master’s ear, the best possible way to wake him.

  He grunted, lifting a hand to bat me away, promising retribution more severe later on, when he was awake. I caught his hand in mine and nestled it against my cheek, nibbling at his earlobe, murmuring, “Master Luke has sent his boy, he wants you…”

  Another grunt, a different meaning; he was at least halfway to waking and would manage the rest himself. I glanced back at Tam and murmured, “Do we have time to wash?”

  “No need. Master Luke’s waiting in the bathhouse.”

  Rough clothes for my master, then, shirt and trousers, just to keep him decent as we padded down the street under public gaze. Nothing for me, because who cares about a slave’s decency? Tam was just as bare, just as unbothered about it.

  To call the place a bathhouse was mere flattery. It was hardly more than a tent, board walls and a canvas roof, leaking steam at every joint and seam. But steam makes a veil for secret meetings, even where a space is open to all. I could strip my master and settle him down next to another towel-swathed figure, fetch him cool water and hot, strong kaff, kneel at his feet and watch one way while Tam watched the other, and know that our free men could talk as much as they needed to and never be overheard except by us.

  Except by magic, perhaps—but I thought maybe I’d feel something, if anyone tried to spy on us from afar, and I was sure that Master Luke would know. I didn’t think either of us expected trouble, though. They’d have to know he was here, and I was sure he’d been careful, slipping in. He was being careful yet, lying back with a towel over his head; someone would have to look at a lean, dark anonymous body and see a master mage, look at two random men and their attendants and see a conspiracy. It really didn’t seem likely.

  Nothing about this was really likely, though. I might adore my master, but that didn’t stop me seeing him clearly; he was a wastrel on the surface and a gamer all through, and somehow he’d found himself teamed up with a master mage on a secret mission, a slave at his heel who had a long-hidden mage’s talent of his own. Tam might be the only one among us who was as simple as he seemed—and I doubted even that. I thought that boy had secrets of his own, depths to plumb. Even his master might not have reached them all.

  He caught my eye now and grinned at me, and sent me a silent message with just a twitch of his head: Don’t get too comfy, leaning on your master there. Stay alert.

  I nodded fractionally, and scowled into the steam.

  Above my head, “I couldn’t leave,” Master Jensen said softly. “I did try, when my boy brought me your word. They wouldn’t let me go. They ma
zed my mind, so that all I wanted to do was stay here and play longer and dream of big winnings.”

  “Big winnings that never happen,” Master Luke said.

  “No, but that’s true of any gambler, that you’re always hoping even when it never comes.”

  “To be sure. What’s different here is that the gaming houses aren’t making big money either, they’re not fleecing anybody. The tokens shift back and forth like tides, and no one gains significantly, and yet. Everybody stays.”

  “Yes. It’s not the gaming tents. I think the people who run them are as mazed as anyone else. It’s the banker and his cronies keep us here. That’s where the magic happens, not on the street itself. It was my boy who saved me, who drew me back into myself.” His hand scritched my ear idly, and I snuggled into him like a cat. “You don’t think that’ll do any harm, do you? They won’t have felt it, when I came back up?”

  “No, indeed. That won’t matter; I think they drown you and then they let you go. I think they’re that confident, they don’t try to keep hold on their victims. Why would they? If the magic wears off they’ll know it, because you’ll be straight back for your gold again, and they can just give you another dose. Even so: this is still not all of it, not the depths of what they do. They’re not spiriting the gold away; I’d know if it was leaving the camp. They’re just…sitting on it. Like dragons in legend, building a hoard and then keeping it. If they don’t spend it, then what’s the use? They’re not particularly trying to add more; you were a bonus, I think, which of course they were prompt to seize, but you weren’t really necessary to their plan. They were happy enough with what they had; whatever this is, it’s not really about accumulating. Not anymore.”

  “What can you do with gold, though, except spend it?” My extravagant master, bewildered to his sweet and heedless core. I could have counted off some other choices on my fingers, on his sweat-slick ribs, with a kiss for every one, but of course he wasn’t asking me.

  “Make pretty things, if you have the art of it—but they’re not doing that. They’re not doing anything, only stacking it up in chests and keeping a careful guard. I’m having to be careful myself, not to let my thoughts even drift in that direction. I can feel the wards they’ve set, against any magic trying to insinuate itself within that tent.”

  “They didn’t notice my boy, as far as I could tell.”

  “No—but he’s not trained, and his gift is raw: more of a smolder than a spark. And keeping it hidden is what he’s practiced most. I didn’t notice it myself until he actively tried to use it against me. That’s what makes him useful.”

  Master Jensen’s fingers closed lightly on the back of my neck, to say he could find more uses for me than that. I leaned my cheek against his knee, to say that I knew it. Tam went to tend the fire, to throw more water on the hot stones, to wrap the four of us in billows of searing steam; perhaps I should have helped him, but I didn’t move a muscle.

  I wasn’t really listening anymore either, just letting my mind drift while my body stayed rooted, stuck sweatily against my master’s leg. I might have dozed off altogether under the murmur of voices and the soft noise of fuel settling in the fire, if Master Luke hadn’t suddenly uttered a cold and blistering oath that made both of us shiver in the heat.

  “Would they…? No. Surely not. But nothing else makes sense…”

  “What, then?”

  “Gold,” Master Luke said in a new, hard voice like flaked flint, ruthless and intentional, “has a value in hell that is not monetary. It can be used to make a bridge from that world to this, to keep a gate open and allow demons easy access back and forth. It is…entirely forbidden, to make such a gateway. The penalties are absolute. No one has attempted it in my lifetime; I never thought that anyone would. But I can conceive no reason else, for so much gold held here.”

  “Why would anyone want to?” my master asked.

  “For power. Position. A new dispensation. A new throne, perhaps, a new imperial dynasty, due reward for making the empire a demon nest. There are people who would make that bargain. There might even be demons who would keep it.” He was quiet for a minute, and then he said, with simple resolution, “They cannot be allowed to.”

  Whether he meant the people or the demons was really not clear. It didn’t seem to matter. He would sweep them aside, either one or both together. Naked and sweating, alone in his power, he still utterly terrified me. If I’d been standing in his way I thought I might die of fright, just as a courtesy, to spare him the trouble of taking my life.

  Except that my life belonged to Master Jensen, of course; it was his to take or his to keep or his to give away. I did hope he wouldn’t set me in Master Lucan’s way, whatever else he did with me.

  Above me, I heard Master Jensen say, “How can we prevent them?”

  I wanted to bite him, for that we. There’s a reason why mages are mostly solitary figures. What did my master think he had to offer in assistance, in any battle of magic and demons?

  “I must go into hell,” Master Luke said grittily, “to see what they are working there. And who they are working with.”

  “Hell. Good. I’ve never been to hell.”

  Master Lucan lifted his head at that, blinking a little owlishly through the steam. “I said I must go. I’ve no use for you.”

  “Nevertheless. Of course I’m coming. I’ve seen one end of this, and I want to see the other. And you don’t know what help you might need that side, as you did this.”

  “You have no idea, boy, what you are asking.”

  “Of course I don’t, or I probably wouldn’t have the nerve to ask. I do know that. Nevertheless,” he said again. “You shan’t go alone.”

  Astonishingly, Master Luke laughed at that. Not in a kindly way, more the way a man laughs at the boldness of a puppy or the ferocity of a kitten, but still: it was a laugh. I hadn’t known him capable.

  “Very well, then,” he said. “I shall go to hell, and you shall come with me—but not I think from here. This is too close. They would feel it here, even if there are no guards on the side. Get dressed and come with me.”

  When a free man says I shall go, he does of course not mean that he’ll go naked and alone, sans bag and baggage. He will go dressed and ready, with his sword at his side and spells on his tongue, his horse beneath him if he has one—and his boy at his heel, if he has one.

  Actually, no one would take a horse into hell, even if the animal would go—but no one balks at a boy. Horses are costly, where boys are cheap.

  In point of fact, neither Tam nor I would have let our masters go without us if we had any way to prevent it, or to follow them; but of course we didn’t, and in fact they didn’t try. When I had dried and dressed mine, Tam fetched us again and led us back to his: who was dressed too now if you could call it dressing. He wore clothes so ragged they were almost rags, except for the hood that screened his face from the light. Unrecognizable as a master mage, he was almost unrecognizable as human, where he lingered bent and frail in the shadows.

  “Come,” he said, and his voice at least was strong. “Follow.”

  He had a staff in one hand, and he seemed to lean on it like a man far gone in sickness. His other hand closed on Tam’s elbow, to make an excuse for the boy, a second prop for his infirmity.

  They shuffled forward together, side by side. My master followed like a reluctant nephew, obedient at his failing uncle’s heels in hopes of an inheritance. I followed in my turn, of course, like a dutiful slave boy in hopes of avoiding a beating. Of the four of us, I might have been the only one not acting a part.

  No one hindered our departure; so far as I could tell, no one even noticed it. The road was as busy as the camp, and the only remarkable one among us kept his hood up and his head down. I was alert as I could be, and I felt not a touch of magic, not the least brush of anyone’s mind against my own. Maybe I just wasn’t sensitive enough, untrained and ignorant as I was—but I thought Master Lucan had slipped out as disregarded as he�
��d slipped in, with the rest of us just trailing insignificantly in his wake.

  I was last, least, most insignificant of all. There’s a comfort in that. It’s good sometimes, not to matter.

  Except that I did want to matter to Master Jensen, or at least to pretend that I did. When he glanced back and beckoned, I almost skipped forward to his side. He grinned and dropped his hand where I privately thought it belonged, on my neck just below my collar, where he could keep a good grip of me.

  “All right, Jay?” he murmured.

  “Of course, Master.” As long as you’re holding me, I’m fine.

  “Good lad. Not frightened, at going into hell with me?”

  “A little, Master.” Of course I was frightened, I was chilled to the bone; but I’d follow him anyway, I’d follow him anywhere. Even without the snap of his fingers to fetch me, even—maybe—against orders, if I thought he might need me, if he hadn’t chained me up.

  And he was scared himself, I knew, and couldn’t admit it, so he needed me to confess it for him, so that he could be brave and comforting and find the courage to go first.

  He glanced at me sideways, and I wondered how much of that he was reading on my face or on my skin, beneath his touch. Free folk aren’t always subtle, but they’re not exactly stupid.

  Still, he did what I was playing for, he brushed his lips across my cheek and breathed encouragement into my ear, and if he was playing too it didn’t matter. It worked, I thought, for both of us; we each felt bolder or at least stepped out bolder, because the other was watching.

  Master Lucan didn’t take us that far down the road. Not far enough, my nervous heart announced: not when the alternative was walking in the sunshine, beside my master, with nothing to carry and nothing to do but be there. Not when the future, the immediate next thing, was walking into hell at a mage’s heels.

  Sometimes it helps not to think. You get good at that when you’re slave, when your life’s hard or your owner’s cruel. You just live it, moment by moment, and not think, not hope, not dream. Sweat through it, survive it, wait for change. Something always changes in the end.