And then she slumped forward, settling her head onto her large pile of wooden markers on the tabletop. Her cards fluttered down, face-up, and she slapped at them, without coordination, trying to cover them up.
'Izmila,' said Madam Durenna, a note of urgency in her voice.
'Izmila!' She reached over and shook her partner by her heavy shoulders.
"Zmila,' Madam Corvaleur agreed in a sleepy, blubbering voice. Her mouth lolled open and she drooled remnants of chocolate and cherry onto her five-solari chits. 'Mmmrnmmilllaaaaaaaaa. Verrry ... odd ... oddest...'
'Play sits with Madam Corvaleur.' The dealer couldn't keep his surprise out of his voice. 'Madam Corvaleur must state a preference.'
'Izmila! Concentrate!' Madam Durenna spoke in an urgent whisper.
'There are ... cards ...' mumbled Corvaleur. 'Look out, Mara ... soooo ... many... cards. On table.'
She followed that up with, 'Blemble ... na ... fla ... gah.'
And then she was out cold.
'Final default,' said the dealer after a few seconds. With his crop, he swept all of Madam Durenna's markers away from her, counting rapidly. Locke and Jean would take everything on the table. The looming threat of a thousand-solari loss had just become a gain of equal magnitude, and Locke sighed with relief.
The dealer considered the spectacle of Madam Corvaleur using her wooden markers as a pillow, and he coughed into his hand.
'Gentlemen,' he said, 'the house will, ah, provide new chits of the appropriate value in place of... those still in use.'
'Of course,' said Jean, gently patting the little mountain of Durenna's markers suddenly piled up before him. In the crowd behind them, Locke could hear noises of bewilderment, consternation and surprise. A light ripple of applause was eventually coaxed into existence by some of the more generous observers, but it died quickly. They were faintly embarrassed, rather than exhilarated, to see a notable like Madam Corvaleur inebriated by a mere six drinks.
'Hmmmph,' said Madam Durenna, stubbing out her cigar in the gold pot and rising to her feet. She made a show of straightening her jacket - black brocaded velvet decorated with platinum buttons and cloth-of-silver, worth a good fraction of everything she'd bet that night. 'Master Kosta, Master de Ferra ... it appears we must admit to being outmatched.'
'But certainly not outplayed,' said Locke, summoning up a snake-charming smile along with the pulverized remnants of his wits. 'You very nearly had us ... um, sewn up.'
'And the whole world is wobbling around me,' said Jean, whose
hands were as steady as a jeweller's, and had been throughout die entire game.
'Gentlemen, I have appreciated your stimulating company,' said Madam Durenna in a tone of voice that indicated she hadn't. 'Another game later this week, perhaps? Surely you must allow us a chance at revenge, for honour's sake.'
'Nothing would please us more,' said Jean, to which Locke nodded enthusiastically, making the contents of his skull ache. At that, Madam Durenna coldly held out her hand and consented for the two of them to kiss the air above it. When they had done so, as though making obeisance to a particularly irritable snake, four of Requin's attendants appeared to help move the snoring Madam Corvaleur somewhere more decorous.
'Gods, it must be tedious, watching us try to drink one another under the table night after night,' said Jean. He nipped the dealer a five-solari chit; it was customary to leave a small gratuity for the attendant.
'I don't believe so, sir. How would you like your change?'
'What change?'Jean smiled. 'Keep the whole thing.'
The attendant betrayed human emotions for the second time that night; relatively well-off as he was, one little wooden chit was half again his annual salary. He stifled a gasp when Locke threw him another dozen.
'Fortune is a lady who likes to be passed around,' said Locke. 'Buy a house, maybe. I'm having a little trouble counting at the moment.'
'Sweet gods - many thanks, gendemen!' The attendant took a quick glance around and then spoke under his breath. 'Those two ladies don't lose very often, you know. In fact, this is the first time I can remember.'
'Victory has its price,' said Locke. 'I suspect my head will be paying it when I wake up tomorrow.'
Madam Corvaleur was hauled carefully down the stairs, with Madam Durenna following to keep a close eye on the men carrying her card-partner. The crowd dispersed; those observers who remained at their tables called for attendants, food, new decks of cards for games of their own.
Locke and Jean gathered their markers (fresh ones, sans slobber, were swiftly provided by the attendant to replace Madam Corvaleur's) in the customary velvet-lined wooden boxes and made their way to the stairs.
'Congratulations, gentlemen,' said the attendant guarding the way
I
up to the sixth floor. The tinkle of glass on glass and the murmur of conversation could be heard filtering down from above.
'Thank you,' said Locke. Tm afraid that something in Madam Corv-aleur gave way just a hand or two before I might have done the same.'
He and Jean slowly made their way down the stairs that curved all the way around the inside of the Sinspire's exterior wall. They were dressed as men of credit and consequence in the current height of Verrari summer fashion. Locke (whose hair had been alchemically shifted to a sunny shade of blond) wore a caramel-brown coat with a cinched waist and flaring knee-length tails; his huge triple-layered cuffs were panelled in orange and black and decorated with gold buttons. He wore no waistcoat, just a sweat-soaked tunic of the finest silk under a loose black neck-cloth. Jean was dressed similarly, though his coat was the greyish-blue of a sea under clouds, and his belly was cinched up with a wide black sash, the same colour as the short, curly hairs of his beard.
Down past floors of notables they went ... past queens of Verrari commerce with their decorative young companions of both sexes on their arms like pets. Past men and women with purchased Lashani titles, staring across cards and wine decanters at lesser dons and donas from Camorr; past Vadran shipmasters in tight black coats, with sea-tans like masks over their sharp, pale features. Locke recognized at least two members of the Priori, the collection of merchant councils that theoretically ruled Tal Verrar. Deep pockets appeared to be the primary qualification for membership.
Dice fell and glasses clinked; celebrants laughed and coughed and cursed and sighed. Currents of smoke moved languidly in the warm air, carrying scents of perfume and wine, sweat and roast meats, and here and there the resiny hint of alchemical drugs.
Locke had seen genuine palaces and mansions before; the Sinspire, opulent as it was, was not so very much more handsome than the homes many of these people would be returning to when they finally ran out of night to play in. The real magic of the Sinspire was woven from its capricious exclusivity; deny something to enough people and sooner or later it will grow a mystique as thick as fog.
Nearly hidden at the rear of the first floor was a heavy wooden booth manned by several unusually large attendants. Luckily, there was no line. Locke set his box down on the counter-top beneath the booth's only window, a bit too forcefully.
'All to my account.'
'My pleasure, Master Kosta,' said the chief attendant as he took the box. Leocanto Kosta, merchant-speculator of Talisham, was well known in this kingdom of wine fumes and wagers. The attendant swiftly changed Locke's pile of wooden chits into a few marks on a ledger. In beating Durenna and Corvaleur, even minus his tip to the dealer, Locke's cut of the winnings came to nearly five hundred solari.
'I understand that congratulations are in order to both of you, Master de Ferra,' said the attendant as Locke stepped back to let Jean approach the counter with his own box. Jerome de Ferra, also of Talisham, was Leocanto's boon companion. They were a pair of fictional peas in a pod.
Suddenly, Locke felt a hand fall onto his left shoulder. He turned warily and found himself facing a woman with curly dark hair, richly dressed in the same colours as the Sinspire attendants. One side of her face was sublimely beautiful; the other side was a leathery brown half-mask, wrinkled as though it had been badly burned. When she smiled, the damaged side of her lips failed to move. It looked to Locke as though a living woman was somehow struggling to emerge from within a rough clay sculpture.
Selendri, Requin's major-domo.
The hand that she had placed on his shoulder (her left, on the burned side) wasn't real. It was a solid brass simulacrum, and it gleamed dully in the lantern light as she withdrew it.
'The house congratulates you,' she said in her eerie, lisping voice, 'for good manners as well as considerable fortitude, and wishes you and Master de Ferra to know that you would both be welcome on the sixth floor, should you choose to exercise the privilege.'
Locke's smile was quite genuine. 'Many thanks, on behalf of myself and my partner,' he said with tipsy glibness. 'The kind regard of the house is, of course, extremely flattering.'
She nodded non-committally, then slipped away into the crowd as quickly as she'd come. Eyebrows went up appreciatively here and there - few of Requin's guests, to Locke's knowledge, were appraised of their increasing social status by Selendri herself.
'We're a commodity in demand, my dear Jerome,' he said as they made their way through the crowd toward the front doors.
'For the time being,' said Jean.
'Master de Ferra.' The head doorman beamed as they approached. 'And Master Kosta. May I call for a carriage?'
'No need, thanks,' said Locke. 'I'll fall over sideways if I don't flush my head with some night air. We'll walk.'
'Very good then, sir.'
With military precision, four attendants held the doors open for Locke and Jean to pass. The two thieves stepped carefully down a wide set of stone steps covered with a red velvet carpet. That carpet, as the whole city knew, was thrown out and replaced each night. As a result, in Tal Verrar alone could one find armies of beggars routinely sleeping on piles of red velvet scraps.
The view was breathtaking; to their right, the whole crescent sweep of the island was visible beyond the silhouettes of other chance-houses. There was relative darkness in the north, in contrast to the aura-like glow of the Golden Steps. Beyond the city, to the south, west and north, the Sea of Brass gleamed phosphorescent silver, lit by three moons in a cloudless sky. Here and there the sails of distant ships reached up from the quicksilver tableau, ghostly pale.
Locke could gaze downward to his left and see across the staggered rooftops of the island's five lower tiers, a vertigo-inducing view despite the solidity of the stones beneath his feet. All around him was the murmur of human pleasure and the clatter of horse-drawn carriages on cobbles; there were at least a dozen moving or waiting along the straight avenue atop the sixth tier. Above, the Sinspire reared up into the opalescent darkness, its alchemical lanterns bright, like a candle meant to draw the attentions of the gods.
'And now, my dear professional pessimist,' said Locke as they stepped away from the Sinspire and acquired relative privacy, 'my worry-merchant, my tireless font of doubt and derision ... what do you have to say to that?
'Oh, very little, to be sure, Master Kosta. It's so hard to think, overawed as I am with the sublime genius of your plan.'
'That bears some vague resemblance to sarcasm.'
'Gods forfend,' said Jean. 'You wound me! Your inexpressible criminal virtues have triumphed again, as inevitably as the tides come and go. I cast myself at your feet and beg for absolution. Yours is the genius that nourishes the heart of the world.'
'And now you're?
I
I
'If only there was a leper handy,' interrupted Jean, 'so you could lay your hands on him and magically heal him?
'Oh, you're just farting out of your mouth because you're jealous.'
'It's possible,' said Jean. 'Actually, we are substantially enriched, not caught, not dead, more famous and welcome on the next floor up. I must admit that I was wrong to call it a silly scheme.'
'Really? Huh.' Locke reached under his coat lapel as he spoke. 'Because I have to admit, it was a silly scheme. Damned irresponsible. One drink more and I would have been finished. I'm actually pretty bloody surprised we pulled it off.'
He fumbled beneath his lapel for a second or two, then withdrew a little pad of wool about as wide and long as his thumb. A puff of dust was shaken from the wool when Locke slipped it into one of his outer pockets, and he wiped his hands vigorously on his sleeves as they walked along.
'"Nearly lost" is just another way to say "finally won",' said Jean.
'Nonetheless, the liquor almost did me in. Next time I'm that optimistic about my own capacity, correct me with a hatchet to the skull.'
'I'll be glad to correct you with two.'
It was Madam Izmila Corvaleur who'd made the scheme possible. Madam Corvaleur, who'd first crossed paths with 'Leocanto Kosta' at a gaming table a few weeks earlier, who had the reliable habit of eating with her fingers to annoy her opponents while she played cards.
Carousel Hazard really couldn V be cheated by any traditional means. None of Requin's attendants would stack a deck, not once in a hundred years, not even in exchange for a dukedom. Nor could any player alter the carousel, select one vial in favour of another or serve a vial to anyone else. With all the usual means of introducing a foreign substance to another player guarded against, the only remaining possibility was for a player to do herself in by slowly, willingly taking in something subtle and unorthodox. Something delivered by a means beyond the ken of even a healthy paranoia.
Like a narcotic powder, dusted on the playing cards in minute quantities by Locke and Jean, then gradually passed around the table to a woman continually licking her fingers as she played.
