'Shit.' Locke flicked out the next card from the top, the Sigil of the Sun. 'Aha -1 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 Sabres? 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 re-set the clasp. Suddenly, there was another deck of cards in his left hand.
'Let's see ... Seven of Sabres? Three of Spires? No, we already did that one ... Two of Chalices? Six of Chalices? Master of Sabres? 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 appear 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, lb 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 appeared to pluck a face-down card from underneath it.
'Your card,' he said, twirling it in the fingers of his left hand. 'Ten of Sabres.'
'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 beta paranella is?'
'A soporific. Expensive alchemy.'
'Yes. Colourless, 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?'
T can vouch for Corvaleur's habits, at least,' she whispered. 'It appears 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 drunk wouldn't have got 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 one another'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 of the backs of them, and the iron would continue to provide the sensation of a full boot to die 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 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, die 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 die 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 favourite game out of the kindness of his heart.'
'Hmmmph.'
'How often did Landreval lose before he met Jerome and me? 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 die player. Given information and preparation, diere'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 out everything in it from right 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 at 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. Kamekona, 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.
'To your health,' said Requin. 'It needs all the assistance it can get.'
Locke took a long sip of the warm wine and allowed himself a few seconds of contemplation. He marvelled at the way the taste of apricots transmuted to the sharper flavour of slightly tart apple in mid-swallow. That sip had been worth twenty volani, if his knowledge of the liquor market was still accurate. He gave a genuinely appreciative nod to Requin, who waved a hand nonchalantly.
'It cannot have escaped your attention, Master Kosta, that my vault is the most secure in Tal Verrar - the single most redundantly protected space in the entire city, in fact, not excepting the private chambers of the Archon himself.' Requin tugged at the skintight leather of his right glove with the fingers of his left hand. 'Or that it is encased within a structure of pristine Elderglass, and accessible only through several layers of metallurgical and clockwork artifice that are, if I may be permitted to stroke my own breechclout, peerless. Or that half the Priori councillors regard it so highly that they entrust much of their personal fortunes to it.'
'Of course,' said Locke. 'I congratulate you on a very flattering clientele. But your vault doors are guarded by gears, and gears are shaped by men. What one man locks another will sooner or later unlock.'
'I say again, impossible.'
'And I correct you again. Difficult. "Difficult" and "impossible" are cousins often mistaken for one another, with very little in common.'
'You have more chance of giving birth to a live hippopotamus,' said Requin, 'than the best thief alive has of making it past the cordon drawn around my vault. But this is silly - we could sit here all night contrasting cock-lengths. I say mine is five feet long, you say yours is six and shoots fire upon command. Let's hurry back to significant conversation. You admit that cheating the mechanisms of my games is out of the question. My vault is the most secure of all mechanisms; am / therefore the flesh and blood you were presuming to fool?'
'It's possible this conversation represents me giving up that hope.'
'What does cheating my guests have to do with plotting entry into my vault?'
'Originally,' said Locke, 'we gamed merely to blend in and cover our observance of your operations. Time passed and we made no progress.
The cheating was a lark to make the games more interesting.'
'My house bores you?'
'Jerome and I are thieves. We've been sharping cards and lifting goods east and west, from here to Camorr and back again, for years. Spinning carousels with the well-heeled is only amusing for so long, and we weren't getting far with our job, so we had to stay amused somehow.'
'Job. Yes, you said you were hired to come here. Elaborate.'
'My partner and I were sent here as the point men of something very elaborate. Someone out there wants your vault emptied. Not merely penetrated, but pillaged. Plucked and left behind like an empty honeycomb.'
'Someone?'
'Someone. I haven't the faintest notion who; Jerome and I are dealt with through fronts. All of our efforts to penetrate them have been in vain. Our employer is as anonymous to us now as he was two years ago.'
'Do you frequently work for anonymous employers, Master Kosta?'
'Only the ones that pay me large piles of good, cold metal. And I can assure you - this one has been paying us very well.'
