Harric shrugged.
Iras dealt again, and Harric played that hand to lose. Iras won it, so neither Harric nor Bettis won the girl’s service, and though the token never reappeared, the girl remained at Bettis’ side.
Iras proceeded to lose a string of small pots, but when one pot grew very large, Harric perceived a shift in Iras’ focus. The lord’s eyes traveled to his girl with a new regularity. When Harric saw her force a mirthless and unnatural smile in return, he recognized what was happening: Iras was using her to signal cards.
The realization took Harric by surprise. Few would suspect a lord of Iras’ blood rank to hustle cards, but he was as much a trickster as Harric.
Watching the pair work, Harric recognized their system. It was one Harric’s mother had taught him, a combination of smiles, long blinks, and timed counts. Part of him wanted to believe the girl was a willing accomplice and brilliant actress, but the swelling under her eye suggested she was forced, as did the falseness of her smile, which had tipped Harric off in the first place.
She could easily sabotage Iras’ games. She could cause him to lose by passing bad signals, or expose him as a cheat and get him lynched. The fact that she didn’t told Harric there was more at work than met the eye. Many slave lords threatened harm to a slave’s family if they didn’t cooperate. He guessed Iras had told her that if she caused trouble, loved ones would suffer.
The pot grew to staggering heights, and Harric dropped out. Players at other tables stopped their games to watch as Iras and Bettis kept drawing and raising the bet. Several bulky knights pushed up behind Bettis, amber arm bands marking them as her retainers. Harric counted six. Arms crossed, they stared coolly across the game at Iras’ four guards.
When the lady’s purse went dry, she called the game and triumphantly displayed her cards on the table. “Tens and a seven.”
Iras nodded. He laid out his hand. “Princes and a nine.”
Bettis blinked. Groans and laughter from the crowd.
Iras’ bull-necked guards shifted on their feet, hands on hilts, eyes on Bettis’ men.
The lady’s gaze traveled between the two sets of cards, and back again. To her credit, her mouth hung open for only a moment. Then her jaw snapped shut, her eyes hardened, and her lips pressed in a thin, tight line. Slowly, she rose and left the table.
“No Iberg motto for us, lady?” Iras swept the pot to his side.
Bettis stiffened. Over her shoulder she said, “Sola verto infudis qato ban”—only law protects you from my blade. Her acid tone left no doubt she meant it.
Before the lord’s good humor could wane, Harric acted. “Lord Iras, I propose you play me for your slave girl.”
From the corner of his eye, Harric saw Bettis turn.
Iras glanced up from sorting coins. “I do not wish to lose her.”
“Double or nothing, then. If I win, she’s mine. If I lose, I join her as your slave.”
A murmur of surprise rippled through the nearest onlookers.
Curiosity and suspicion flickered in Iras’ eyes. “Why would I want you as a slave?”
“Surely I must be good for something.” Harric feigned the bleary look of the slightly drunk.
Iras leaned back, clearly amused, but perplexed. He examined Harric as he chewed on a roll of unlit ragleaf and jingled a handful of coins. His gaze shifted to the spectators’ faces, and back to Harric. A fox sniffing a trap.
Abruptly, he chuckled, and returned to stacking coins. There was greed in those eyes, but caution proved stronger. “I cannot accept. I sense fine breeding in you, and high blood mustn’t stoop.”
Harric groaned inwardly. He couldn’t buy her, and Iras wouldn’t play for her. He had only one other gambit. Harric slid his chair back and stood, tugging his gray shirt against his belly to expose his bastard belt. His mother’s rank of emerald green—a higher rank than any yellow rank—flashed in a band below a band of bastard black. “Would this change your thinking?”
Whispers rippled outward through the card hall as lords and retainers craned to see.
For the second time that day, Iras’ smile froze in place.
His guards turned livid. “Whoreson bastard!” spat the largest. “Toss him out!”
“A bastard’s free in these parts!” someone retorted.
The hall stirred, anticipating violence.
Iras raised a hand, and his guard fell back. “What foolishness is this?”
“No foolishness,” said Harric.
“Your freedom is blood heresy.”
Harric gave an apologetic shrug. “Not here. Here, I am outside the game of blood rank and purity. The only way you can put me in my proper place is if you win me as your slave.”
The big guard lunged for Harric across the table, scattering cups and nearly toppling the candelabrum. “I’ll take his whoreson tongue!”
Harric retreated. Chairs throughout the hall scraped across the floor as men stood from their tables. To Harric’s relief, Bettis’ retainers stepped up beside him. “This is the East Isle,” one told Iras, “and if you don’t like our free bastards, you can go back where you came from.”
A chorus of agreement followed.
Iras raised his hands in sign of peace. “No need for that.” His genteel smile returned, but his eyes remained flint. He scooped up his cards and rose as if to leave, but one of his guards stooped to whisper in his ear. Iras’ eyes flashed to Harric, and as the man spoke, new amusement flickered in his gaze.
“I see,” said Iras, as the guard resumed his place. “You’re the bastard they say is cursed to die on the morrow.” He laughed. “How clever you must think yourself to stake your freedom in a game, when you have only a day left in your miserable life! Had you hoped to cheat me in this way, so that even if you lost, I would lose more?”
Harric bowed. “I am discovered.”
Iras leaned across the table, eyes burning. “You miscalculate, bastard. I can buy another girl. But you could not buy your freedom once I owned you. And do you think because you have only a day that I couldn’t make it seem an eternity?”
Harric clasped his hands to steady them. “I intend to win. If all you have are words, be gone or be silent. Otherwise, sit and prove them with cards.”
Iras froze, eyes locked with Harric’s. After a moment of stillness, he straightened, and smiled. The tension drained from his shoulders. “Then let us play!” He laughed. “I accept the bastard’s proposal! Bring parchment so we may draw up the deed to his life.”
Excited confusion rippled through the crowd.
“Don’t do it.” Bettis laid a strong hand on Harric’s arm. “I do not believe you can win.”
“I am resolved,” Harric said. “I’ll write the deed myself.”
Someone laid out parchment and quill, and Harric wrote. It amused him that he could ink such a vile document without the smallest pulse of dread. On the contrary, he felt detached and calm. If anything could win the gods’ attention, surely this would do it.
Word of the wager spread. More and more people squeezed into the card hall, and by the time he finished the deed, the space was stuffed with perspiring bodies. Stable boys swarmed the rafters. House girls stood on tables.
Two of Iras’ guards loomed behind Harric and stationed themselves behind his chair to make sure he didn’t cheat. Bettis and her guards stationed themselves behind Iras. As if in response to the guards’ scrutiny, one of the cards in Harric’s sleeve slipped out of its band—the Jack of Souls, he realized, by its location among the high cards. It must have been knocked loose in his retreat from the lunging guard.
Cursing inwardly, Harric dropped his wrist against the edge of the table and pinned the card there before it emerged.
He held it there as four witnesses signed the deed, and he kept it there as he laid the deed alongside the girl’s in the middle of the table.
Iras picked up a deck and gazed across to Harric. The hall fell silent.
“Tarot poker,” Harric said. “Two-draw minimum before call.”
The lord shuffled and dealt. At Iras’ side, the girl sat motionless, a figure of saffron marble. Her eyes locked on Harric. Was it dread he saw there? Fear of a new master? Her expression seemed to ask, Why? And he had no easy answer. Because he hated Iras and his kind? Because he hated his mother for cursing him? Because he saw a chance to pluck meaning from the void and maybe seize the attention of a god?
All of it, surely.
Bettis and her knights hovered behind Iras.
Harric kept his wrist immobile against the table until Iras finished dealing, then feigned to scratch his wrist so he could nudge the card back in place.
Both Iras’ guards leaned in at once. “What’s wrong with your arm?” said one.
Harric looked up. “Can’t a man scratch?”
“You’re a bastard, not a man. Keep your hands apart.”
Harric shrugged and picked up his cards with his free hand. He could pin the Jack of Souls against the table until he needed it. But his palms perspired at the thought of removing it or any card under such fierce scrutiny. To have any access to it, he’d need to create a distraction.
His initial hand was terrible, but since the two-draw minimum insured he’d have at least two draws, he discarded the entire hand and drew again. Iras smiled and without dropping his gaze from Harric, followed suit, discarding his entire hand to draw again.
When Harric peeked at his cards, his breath caught in his throat. He’d drawn all four queens.
His insides froze.
Iras had won.
He scanned his hand again and verified that he had the Queen of Souls, the Queen of Cups, the Queen of Fires, and the Queen of Blades.
MARICELA UGARTE Peña
Iras had somehow swapped in a stacked deck, and not even Bettis and her companions had seen it. There was no other explanation. The sheer improbability of four queens in the first draw made it evident. At the same time, Harric knew exactly what Iras’ hand must be: all four kings, the only natural hand to beat the queens. Since no one could prove the trick, it was an act of supreme contempt for the house, and a political snub to the rule of a woman.
“Are you well, Bastard?” A tiny smile curved Iras’ lips.
Sweat slid down the back of Harric’s neck. The only card he could slip from his sleeve to beat four kings would be the Jack of Souls—the only wild card—to make five queens. But if Iras had the Jack as well—and why wouldn’t he, if he went as far as all four kings?—then the appearance of a duplicate Jack in Harric’s hand would expose one of them as a cheat, and it wouldn’t take much to show that it was Harric who held the false Jack. He didn’t dare try it.
The pressure of the Jack against his wrist mocked him, dared him.
Harric discarded his fifth card—a six—and drew the Prince of Fires. Of course. The highest remaining card after kings and queens, so he now held the second-highest possible hand. If there had been any doubt Iras was playing him, it died now.
A roar began in Harric’s ears.
He had to breathe. To think. He’d been out-cheated before and still won. The trick to winning in such cases was always to think around the game—to find the game outside the game, and win that.
When the Jack slipped and nearly peeked from his cuff, he knew what he must do.
He laid his cards face down on the table and called the game.
Iras’ eyebrows rose. “So soon? We’ve had only two draws.”
“Show your cards.” Harric sat back. Since his cards were now on the table and beyond tampering, Iras’ guards made no protest when he dropped his hands beneath the table.
All eyes went to Iras.
The girl watched, her face a mask of intensity.
Iras spread his cards. All four kings and the Jack of Souls.
Harric stared as if shocked. Out of view, his hands dipped in and out of his sleeves.
Iras turned Harric’s cards over to reveal the queens and prince.
A general groan from the spectators.
Iras laid a hand on the deeds, and locked eyes with Harric. “Queens,” he said, softly. “That shall be your slave name.”
Harric lunged over the table and clapped a hand on the back of Iras’. “Wait.”
Iras did not struggle. “Cold feet, Queens? There are witnesses here. I am now your master.”
“You cheated. The game is forfeit.”
A snarl formed on Iras’ lips. “For such a grave accusation you’d better have proof. The mere coincidence of the two highest hands is not proof.”
Harric’s other hand flipped Iras’ discard pile, revealing a duplicate King of Fires and a second Jack of Souls.
Iras stared in shock. The girl’s jaw dropped. Anger rippled through the spectators.
“Last I heard,” said Harric, “there are only four kings in a fair deck, and only one Jack of Souls. How is it you had more?”
Iras closed his mouth, then opened it, but nothing came out. Eyes wild, he dove for his discard pile, but Harric slammed his hand upon the cards.
“Don’t let him take the evidence!” someone shouted.
“Those aren’t my cards!” Iras said. “Check them!”
From behind Iras, Bettis reached around and pressed a wickedly delicate blade to Iras’ throat. The lord froze. His eyes flicked to the sides for bodyguards who did not come. Bettis’ retainers were wrestling one to the floor; the others had similar knives to their necks.
The girl slid from her stool, a rabbit poised for flight.
“I suggest you lift your hand from the table,” said Bettis, in Iras’ ear.
“This is preposterous,” said Iras. “The Queen grants us protection. You cannot harm us.”
“Now you cling to our Queen’s skirts? Curious.” Bettis drew her knife a hair to the left, and Iras stiffened. A tiny bead of blood showed at his throat. When he finally lifted his hands from the table, Bettis eased the lord back in his seat.
“She didn’t promise protection to cheats,” said Harric. He lifted his hand from Iras’ discard pile to reveal the offending cards again. This time murmurs boiled into shouts.
“He had all the best cards extra!”
“How many others did he cheat that way?”
At a nod from Bettis, the biggest of her knights seized Iras’ lacey collar and dragged him over the back of his chair.
“House rules,” said Harric. “You cheat, you lose.”
The slave girl dove under the table.
Iras’ eyes bugged and he choked against his collar. “Those aren’t my cards! Flip them—”
Bettis clapped him on the side of the head with the butt of her knife, cutting his words short.
No one but Harric seemed to catch what Iras tried to say, or if they did, hatred made them deaf to his plea. If they’d examined the cards in better light, they’d note that the backs of the offending cards did not match the rest of the deck. And if anyone deduced that Harric had deposited the mismatched cards with the same hand that flipped the discard pile, no one felt moved to say it.
“I imagine you cheated me that way, too,” Bettis said, as one of her men hauled the dazed Iras to his feet.
“Time for Liar’s Leap!” cried a local.
“Liars Leap!” others chanted. “Liars Leap!”
In the growing commotion, a barmaid leaned in and swept the cards onto her tray along with the ash bowl, and disappeared in the crowd.
A dozen hands hoisted Iras from the floor to the shoulders of the crowd. The room roared in triumph as the mob swept him to a side door that opened onto the stable yard, and the cliff.
From under the table, the slave girl emerged beside Harric, eyes aflame with vengeful pas
sion. She snatched both deeds from the table and clutched them to her, poised to flee.
Of course. She doesn’t know my intentions. Harric nudged the candelabrum toward her and nodded to the flames. Her eyes widened. Warily, she dragged the candelabrum to her, and held her deed to a candle. Yellow flames fattened on the crackling parchment. When it became clear no one would stop her, a sound escaped her lips. Harric could not tell if it was a laugh or a sob. She dropped Harric’s deed to cover her mouth with one hand. Tears flooded her eyes.
A weight seemed to lift from Harric’s heart. He set fire to his own deed and held it before him, the flames dancing in his vision.
At the door, a shoving match broke out as a few of Iras’ sympathizers tried to prevent the crowd from carrying him out. The mob overpowered them. As Iras passed beneath the lintel, he screamed to his guards, “Avenge me!” and when his wild gaze locked with Harric’s, “I curse you! I curse you!”
Harric returned his gaze to the deeds. “How original.”
The hall cleared, leaving Harric and the girl with Bettis and her retainers. Bettis’ men held Iras’ guards as one of Bettis’ knights paced before them, sucking knuckles he’d bloodied in the scrum.
“We like our Queen,” the knight said. “We like our bastards. And we don’t like West Isle trash pissing on ’em, neither. Isn’t that right, bastard?”
Harric smiled. “I thank you.”
“You’ll pay for this!” Iras’ biggest guard spat. “The Old Ways live!” He and his comrades sputtered curses, but Harric barely heard them. To him it seemed they weren’t men, they were pawns, minor pieces in a game of blood rank and status from which he’d always been excluded. Like their master, their faith in rank had proved their downfall. Harric had moved in the only way he ever knew, outside the game, and won.
“Ride home,” said the pacing knight, as Iras’ men were hauled from the hall. “Tell your friends on the West Isle the New Ways live, too, and if they come here they shall go the way of your lord!”
Lady Bettis gave the knight a nod. The knight followed the captives out into the night, leaving her alone with Harric and the girl.
Writers of the Future 32 Science Fiction & Fantasy Anthology Page 10