Red Seas Under Red Skies (10 page)

Within were dozens of sealed glass jars, each holding something dark and withered. Dead spiders? No, Locke corrected himself—human hands. Severed, dried, and stored as trophies, with rings still gleaming on many of their curled and desiccated fingers.

“Before we proceed to the inevitable, that's what we usually do,” Requin said in a lightly conversational tone. “Right hand, ta-ta. I've got it down to a pretty process. Used to have carpets in here, but the damn blood made for
such
a mess.”

“Very prudent of you.” Locke felt a single bead of sweat start its slow slide down his forehead. “I am as awed and chastised as you no doubt hoped. Might I have my hand back?”

“In its original condition? I doubt it. But answer some questions, and we'll see. Now, fast-fingers work, you say. But forgive me—my attendants are extremely adept at spotting cardsharps.”

“I'm sure your attendants mean well.” Locke knelt down before the desk, the most comfortable position possible, and smiled. “But I can finger-dance a live cat into a standard deck of fifty-six, and slip it back out at leisure. Other players might complain about the noise, but they'd never spot the source.”

“Set a live cat on my desk, then.”

“It was, ah, a colorful figure of speech. Live cats, unfortunately, aren't in fashion as evening accessories for gentlemen of Tal Verrar this season.”

“Pity. But hardly a surprise. I've had quite a few dead men kneeling where you are now, offering colorful figures of speech and little else.”

Locke sighed. “Your boys removed my coat and my shoes, and if they'd patted me down any more thoroughly they would have been fingering my liver. But what's this?”

He shook out his left sleeve, and held up his left hand to show that a deck of cards had somehow fallen into it.

Selendri shoved her blades toward Locke's throat, but Requin waved her back with a smile on his face. “He can hardly kill me with a pack of cards, darling. Not bad, Master Kosta.”

“Now,” said Locke, “let's see.” He held his arm straight out to the side, with the deck held firmly upright between his thumb and all four fingers. A twist of the wrist, a flick of his thumb, and the deck was cut. He began to flex and splay his fingers, steadily increasing his tempo until they moved like a spider taking fencing lessons. Cut and shuffle, cut and shuffle—he sliced the deck apart and slid it back together no fewer than a dozen times. Then, with one smooth flourish, he slapped it down on the desk and spread it in a long arc, displacing several of Requin's knickknacks.

“Pick one,” said Locke. “Any one you like. Look at it, but don't show it to me.”

Requin did as instructed. While he peeked at the card he'd drawn, Locke gathered the rest of the deck with a reverse slide across Requin's desktop; he shuffled and cut once more, then split the deck and left half on top of the desk. “Go ahead and place your chosen card atop that half of the deck. Remember it, now.”

When Requin returned the card, Locke slapped the other half of the deck down on top of it. Taking the full deck in his left hand, he did his one-handed cut-and-shuffle another five times. Then, he slid the top card from the deck—the four of Chalices—onto Requin's desk and smiled. “This, master of the Sinspire, is your card.”

“No,” said Requin with a smirk.

“Shit.” Locke flicked out the next card from the top, the Sigil of the Sun. “Aha—I knew it was around there, somewhere.”

“No,” said Requin.

“Damn me,” said Locke, and he rapidly went through the next half dozen from the top of the deck. “Eight of Spires? Three of Spires? Three of Chalices? Sigil of the Twelve Gods? Five of Sabers? Shit. Mistress of Flowers?” Requin shook his head for each one.

“Huh. Excuse me.” Locke set the deck of cards down on Requin's desk, then fumbled at the clasp of his right sleeve with his left hand. After a few seconds, he slid the sleeve back above his elbow and reset the clasp. Suddenly, there was another deck of cards in his left hand.

“Let's see…. Seven of Sabers? Three of Spires? No, we already did that one…. Two of Chalices? Six of Chalices? Master of Sabers? Three of Flowers? Damn, damn. That deck wasn't so good after all.”

Locke set the second deck down beside the first on Requin's desk, appeared to scratch an itch near the slender black sash above his breeches, and then held up a third deck of cards. He grinned at Requin and raised his eyebrows.

“This trick might work even better if I could have the use of my right hand.”

“Why, when you seem to be doing so well without it?”

Locke sighed and flicked the top card from the new deck onto the growing pile atop the desk. “Nine of Chalices! Look familiar?”

Requin laughed and shook his head. Locke set the third deck down beside the ones already on Requin's desk, stood up, and conjured another from somewhere in the vicinity of his breeches.

“But your attendants would of course know,” said Locke, “if I were loaded down with four concealed decks of cards, they being so
adept
at spotting something like that on a man with no jacket or shoes…wait, four? I may have miscounted….”

He produced a fifth deck from somewhere within his silk tunic, which joined the little tower of cards perched ever more precariously on the edge of the desk.

“Surely I couldn't have hidden
five
decks of cards from your guards, Master Requin. Five would be quite ridiculous. Yet there they are—though I'm afraid that's as good as it gets. To conjure more, I would have to begin producing them from somewhere disagreeable.

“And, I'm sorry to say, I don't seem to have the card you took. But wait…. I do know where it might be found….”

He reached across Requin's desk, nudged the wine bottle at its base, and seemed to pluck a facedown card from underneath it.

“Your card,” he said, twirling it in the fingers of his left hand. “Ten of Sabers.”

“Well,” laughed Requin, showing a wide arc of yellowing teeth below the fire-orange circles of his optics. “Very fine, very fine. And one-handed, too. But even if I grant that you could perform such tricks, continuously, in front of my attendants and my other guests…you and Master de Ferra have spent a great deal of time at games that are more rigorously controlled than the open card tables.”

“I can tell you how we beat those, too. Simply free me.”

“Why relinquish a clear advantage?”

“Then trade it to gain another. Free my right hand,” said Locke, mustering every last bit of passionate sincerity he could pour into his words, “and I shall tell you
exactly
why you must never again trust the security of your Sinspire as it stands.”

Requin stared down at him, laced his gloved fingers together, and finally nodded to Selendri. She withdrew her blades—though she kept them pointed at Locke—and pressed a switch behind the desk. Locke was suddenly free to stumble back to his feet, rubbing his right wrist.

“Most kind,” said Locke with a breeziness that was pure conjuring. “Now, yes, we have played at quite a bit more than the open tables. But which games have we scrupulously avoided? Reds-and-Blacks. Count to Twenty. Fair Maiden's Wish. All the games in which a guest plays against the Sinspire, rather than against another guest. Games mathematically contrived to give the house a substantial edge.”

“Hard to make a profit otherwise, Master Kosta.”

“Yes. And useless for the purposes of a cheat like myself; I need flesh and blood to fool. I don't care how much clockwork and how many attendants you throw in. In a game between guests, larceny
always
finds a way, sure as water pushes through a ship's seams.”

“More bold speech,” said Requin. “I admire glibness in the doomed, Master Kosta. But you and I both know that there is no way to cheat at, say, Carousel Hazard, barring four-way complicity between the participants, which would render the game absolutely pointless.”

“True. There is no way to cheat the carousel or the cards, at least not here in your spire. But when one cannot cheat the game, one must cheat the players. Do you know what
bela paranella
is?”

“A soporific. Expensive alchemy.”

“Yes. Colorless, tasteless, and doubly effective when taken with liquor. Jerome and I were dusting our fingers with it before we handled our cards during each hand last night. Madam Corvaleur has a well-known habit of eating and licking her fingers while playing. Sooner or later, she was bound to take in enough of the drug to pass out.”

“Well!” Requin looked genuinely taken aback. “Selendri, do you know anything about this?”

“I can vouch for Corvaleur's habits, at least,” she whispered. “It seemed to be her preferred method of irritating her opponents.”

“That it did,” said Locke. “It was quite a pleasure to see her do herself in.”

“I'll grant your story is remotely plausible,” said Requin. “I had been…curious about Izmila's strange incapacity.”

“Indeed. The woman's built like an Elderglass boathouse. Jerome and I had more empty vials than her side did; what she'd had wouldn't have gotten her eyelashes alone drunk, if not for the powder.”

“Perhaps. But let's discuss other games. What of Blind Alliances?”

A game of Blind Alliances was played at a circular table with tall, specially designed barriers before each player's hands so that everyone but the person directly across from them (their partner) could see at least some of their cards. Each silent participant set his or her right foot atop the left foot of the person on their right, all around the table, so no player could tap signals to a partner below the table. Partners therefore had to play by instinct and desperate inference, cut off from each other's sight, voice, and touch.

“A child's stratagem. Jerome and I had special boots constructed, with iron-shod toes beneath the leather. We could slide our feet carefully out the backs of them, and the iron would continue to provide the sensation of a full boot to the person beside us. We could tap entire books to one another with the code we've got. Have you ever known anyone to dominate that game as thoroughly as we did?”

“You can't be serious.”

“I can show you the boots.”

“Well. You did seem to have an extraordinary run of luck…. But what about billiards? You scored a rather famous victory against Lord Landreval. How could you have finessed that? My house provides all the balls, the sticks, and the handling.”

“Yes, so naturally those three things couldn't be fiddled. I paid Lord Landreval's consulting physiker ten solari for insight into his medical complaints. Turns out he's allergic to lemons. Jerome and I rubbed our necks, cheeks, and hands with sliced lemons each night before we played him, and used other oils to mostly cover up the scent. Half an hour in our presence and he'd be so puffed up he could barely see. I'm not sure he ever realized what the problem was.”

“You say you won a thousand solari with a few slices of
lemon
? Nonsense.”

“Of course you're right. I asked politely if he'd lend me a thousand solari, and he offered to let us publicly humiliate him at his favorite game out of the kindness of his heart.”

“Hmmmph.”

“How often did Landreval lose before he met Jerome and myself? Once in fifty games?”

“Lemons. I'll be damned.”

“Yes. When you can't cheat the game, you'd best find a means to cheat the player. Given information and preparation, there's not a player in your spire Jerome and I can't dance along like a finger-puppet. Hell, someone with my talents who knew enough about me could probably string me right along, too.”

“It's a good story, Master Kosta.” Requin reached across his desk and took a sip of his wine. “I suppose I can charitably believe at least some of what you claim. I suspected that you and your friend were no more merchant speculators than I am, but at my tower you may claim to be a duke or a three-headed dragon provided you have solid credit. You certainly did before you stepped into my office this evening. Which brings us only to the most important question of all—why the hell are you telling me this?”

“I needed your attention.”

“You already had it.”

“I needed more than that. I needed you to understand my skills and my inclinations.”

“And now you have that as well, inasmuch as I accept your story. What
exactly
do you think that gets you?”

“A chance that what I'm going to say next will actually sink in.”

“Oh?”

“I'm not really here to take your guests for a few thousand solari here and a few thousand solari there, Requin. It's been fun, but it's secondary to my actual goal.”

Locke spread his hands and smiled apologetically.

“I've been hired to break into your vault, just as soon as I find a way to haul everything in it from right out under your nose.”

3

REQUIN BLINKED
.

“Impossible!”

“Inevitable.”

“This isn't legerdemain or lemons we're talking about now, Master Kosta. Explain yourself.”

“My feet are beginning to hurt,” said Locke. “And my throat is somewhat dry.”

Requin stared at him, then shrugged. “Selendri. A chair for Master Kosta. And a glass.”

Frowning, Selendri turned and took a finely wrought dark wood chair with a thin leather cushion from its place on the wall. She placed it behind Locke, and he settled into it with a smile on his face. She then bustled about behind him for a few moments, and returned with a crystal goblet, which she passed to Requin. He picked up the wine bottle and poured a generous stream of red liquid into the goblet.
Red
liquid? Locke blinked—and then relaxed. Kameleona, the shifting wine, of course. One of the hundreds of Tal Verrar's famous alchemical vintages. Requin passed him the goblet, then sat down atop his desk with his arms folded.