Shadowkill sq-3, page 22
part #3 of Shadith's quest Series
Kikun shifted on the cushions. “What happened?”
“Huh?” Jolted out of her drowse, she turned her head to look toward the shadow in the chair.
“How did you get out of that?”
“Oh.” She pushed up, swung her legs over the edge and sat with her head in her hands. “It was Digby, he sent one of his Ops to make a deal. Hah!” She straightened up. “The Op would spring me if I either paid Digby’s fee or went to work for him. Digby I mean.” She pushed onto her feet, grabbed a robe off the foot of the bed. “I’m for a bath. If I’m going to get into a game at the Shimmery I can’t be so ripe no one will sit next me.”
2
The door was three massive planks with a dalbir jug carved in low relief head high in the center plank. She pushed the door open and stepped into a long room with bare roof beams and smoky lubrinjah-oil lanterns hanging from those beams. It was a warm and rosy room, the amber lamplight waking amber and crimson lights in the smoky oily wood and the crimson leather on the stools.
Funny, she thought, all the worlds I’ve been on, a bar is a bar is a bar…
There were groups of men sitting at tables, others on stools at a long solid counter by the inner wall. It was built atop a knee-high platform that was just wide enough for the scatter of stools. They must lose a lot of drunks on that, she thought, fall off and break their necks. Oh well, that’s their problem.
The low mutter of talk died away as she moved into the room, picked up again as she strolled to the bar, relaxed and easy. For the first time on this world she was in really familiar territory. She was the only woman here, but she’d met that before, it just meant she had to be quiet and quick to establish her credentials.
There was a brass grab rail under the counter’s edge. She ignored it, stepped up and settled herself on one of the ladder legged stools. The other patrons made their hostility felt. The weight of their stares tried to push her out of the place. She ignored that, knocked on the wood to summon the barman sitting on his own stool, leaning against the cabinets behind him.
He took his time about coming but he did come, and something in the way he moved tickled at Rose’s memory. She kept her face calm, tried to trace the tickle. Who…
He set his hands on the bar, played a small impatient tune with his thumbs.
There was a tiny white scar below his left thumbnail, three lobed, like a classic flurdelli. Yes. Well and well and well…
Abruptly she was back in an ivory and gilt room and he was seated across from her at the Vagnag table…
She blinked. “Something in a local wine. White and dry,” she said, “No gahwang in it, I hope. It’s a tasty herb, but rather overused, don’t you think?” She spoke in interlingue, not the local patter, the first step in settling what she was. “Rather too much of a good thing, yes?”
He nodded without speaking and went off, returning with a glass bottle stoppered with waxed leather rolled into a tight bundle. He showed it to her, removed the stopper with an odd misshapen gripping tool, poured a little in a glass, and passed the glass to her.
She checked the scar again. Yes. It’s him. She tasted the wine, concealed a grimace as it bit back. “It’ll do,” she said.
She wore a simple black dress back then, avrishum from Jaydugar, outrageously expensive, a gift from her last lover but one. He probably stole it but she wasn’t fussy about provenance those days and appreciated the thought, though she didn’t appreciate the occasion that induced the gift. A black dress doesn’t erase a black eye. He’d vanished one day. Killed, she thought, and moved on taking the dress with her, lost it that time she got in trouble on Tyurm, mourned the gift a lot more than the giver. That night her hair was braided and pomaded and set with jade and pearls, with a necklace of jade beads and pearls dipping into the deep vee of the dress. Three of the men in the game weren’t professionals or obsessive gamblers, they had eyes for more than their cards; she’d dressed for them. He was the fourth man, quiet, thin and almost too handsome. When he sat down and brushed at his sleeve, fingers signaling a pro, she was annoyed. She’d gone to a lot of trouble setting up this game and was irritated to find another of her guild intruding onto her pasture. She drew her right forefinger along her jawline, flicked it from under her chin. Sign for back off, these are mine.
He smiled and tapped thumb against thumb, the first time she’d seen the scar. Challenge. She didn’t hesitate, tugged at her left earlobe. Agreed.
They fought their war under the noses of the other players, stripping the marks almost as an afterthought; the last Chapter was between them, all for all. The dice and the cards had gone for her, and she was just enough cleverer in her play to clean Table, Pen, and Holse.
He bowed and walked off smiling, a flicker of his fingers congratulating her and acknowledging her victory. He had reason for the smile, he’d cleaned Table in at least half the Chapters and won Holse twice. The last Chapter had put a hole in those winnings, but he’d doubled his stake and that was enough to satisfy all but the pickiest. She left that night on a free trader going elsewhere at a leisurely pace and before she slept, she wriggled with a pleasure she hadn’t felt in years. It was a good hard fight and she’d enjoyed it enormously.
She sipped at the wine and watched the man move off to stow the bottle in the cabinet he’d got it from, driving the stopper in with the palm of his hand and laying the bottle flat. This was a long way down from that. She sighed. For both of them. In some ways.
He should have gotten that scar removed, why he’d kept it she hadn’t a clue unless it was a mascot of some kind. Ah well, ah well, that’s the way it goes. He was good, but he wasn’t first rank even at his peak and he’d been sliding from second the last time she’d seen him. Where was that? Cazarit? Lumilly? No, I can’t remember. Long time ago…
She sipped at the wine and thought pleasant thoughts. Those days she’d lived hard and fast, everything was sun-bright and coalblack, the ups were shining soaring joy and the downs were misery condensed. She’d lived a calmer life since she’d hired on with Digby; there were satisfactions in that, but sometimes, she yearned for the old times… She downed the last of the wine, knocked her knuckles on the wood and straightened her shoulders as he got the bottle out again and brought it to her.
There was still some of his bone beauty left, but he was wrinkled now, like old parchment left in the rain and put away wet. And there was something odd about the left side of his face. Stroke or wound. Maybe. Bad dye job on the hair. A dead black that left him looking older than god. “Traggan 2,” she said as he filled the glass again. “The Silver Circus. Forty some years ago. Remember?” She brushed at her sleeve, flickered her fingers through the pro-sign.
He set the glass down, pushed the stopper home. “They call me Hadluk here. Been some changes. How’d you know?”
“I’m Rose. Was blonde then. In black avrishum.” She nodded as she saw recognition flare in his eyes. Finally, she thought. “The coloring is camouflage.” She reached out, ran the tip of her forefinger over the tiny scar. “You don’t want folk to know you, you should get rid of that.”
He shrugged. “Here? Who cares. The wine’s twenty kuries a pop.”
She set a silver pera on the bar, watched him sweep it away, count out her change in the copper kuries. “Ah well, way it goes. Word is you run Vagnag here.”
“Not me.” He drew his thumb down the subtly distorted left side of his face. “Past it, Rose, long past it. Gray market ananiles. Bad batch. Burnt gaps in the old brain. Can’t do the calcs any more.”
“Too bad. I would have enjoyed another pass.” She didn’t mean it, but it was the polite thing to say. “Buy yourself a drink on me. Old times.” She pushed the coppers back at him to pay for her second drink and his, signed to him to keep the change and watched, amused, as he chose a different bottle to pour for himself.
He swallowed, shuddered. One eyelid drooping, he leaned against the wall cabinets, hip hitched on the flat top. “Heard you hit a slippery patch a while back.”
“Wheel turns, Hadluk. Just let me make the right connections and it’s all back again.
He nodded, but she could see pity and a flare of malice in his dark eyes. He’d lost his face, no wonder he quit, he must have started growing tells like weeds. “Need a stake?” he said; wariness replacing pity.
“No.” She didn’t elaborate and he asked no more questions.
Humming under his breath, he began playing finger games on the bar, short nails adding an edge to the thumping of his fingertips.
Rose tapped a counter rhythm. These were pleasant little sounds, innocuous, but by the time they broke off their game, they’d bargained out his commission for introducing her to a game, his percentage of the take, and set a time for her to show back here.
She took a swallow of the wine. “I don’t want to come on as a whore,” she said, “give me the local protocols.”
“Hmm. Long skirt, arms covered in the evening. That’s important. Bare arms after dark are an advert of intent.”
“I’ll dig something up.” She drank the last of the wine, pushed the glass away. “Before I show, see the others know I don’t play on my back, huh?”
“That hasn’t changed, huh?” He grinned at her, a tinge of red in the whites of his eyes; whatever he was drinking, it was powerful stuff. “Don’t worry, I’ll pass the word on.”
“Thanks.” She slid off the stool. “See you when.”
3
Autumn Rose hurried along the jagged semi-street, heading for the market. She needed to pick up something she could wear without binding herself into so much material she’d be hampered if she had to fight and something she wouldn’t be embarrassed to be seen in. And something that was neither so expensive it was a temptation, nor so cheap and flimsy she lost “face” with the players.
She plunged across a dark sideway, flinched as a group of Angatines came out of the shadows and began to wail at her. Cursing, she turned down the next opening, turned again and yet again, losing them finally, almost losing herself before she stopped her flight and began working her way back to the market, This was what… the tenth, eleventh time they’d ambushed her? They were getting to be more than a nuisance, jumping out at her everywhere with the same accusing plaint, she was a demon come to do harm to the people. No one seemed to pay much attention to them, but you could never tell what spark would set the locals off.
When she followed Hadluk into one of the back rooms, there were already half a dozen men seated at the Vagnag table.
She settled into the empty chair. “Rose,” she said, nodded at Hadluk. He went out.
The man at her right gathered up the eight-sided dice, handed them to her. He was an offworlder, probably a free-trader, big, burly, blue-black with a noble nose like a hawk’s beak jutting from the gray fur on his face. He wore a long robe, earth colors in a violent design. Heavy gold earrings dangled from long lobes, brushing against his massive neck. “Tayteknas,” he rumbled at her. “He tell you?”
She took the dice, remembering with pleasure the feel of the crisp points against her palm, the cool facets. She hefted them, judging the weight, the feel, the sound as they clicked together. Yes, she thought. “Yes,” she said aloud; she dropped the dice on the table and watched them dance then settle. She reached into one of the large pockets the skirt came equipped with, took out the sack and laid out three gold emas on the ledge in front of her. Next to these she lined up five piles of four silver peras each. She took one ema and flipped it into the Holse, the circle drawn in the center of the dark blue felt. “Who’s marker?”
Tayteknas tapped a blue black finger against the front of his robe. “Me.”
“What’s high so far?”
“Double eight plus three.”
“Hmp. Vakkar. All gone?”
“You’re the last.”
“I see.” She gathered the three dice, held them a moment warming in her hand, feeling for the rhythm-the beginnings of the rhythm. It wasn’t there yet, but it would come. The smell of the table came up around her, a subtle aroma rising from the felt, the paint on it, the coins, the blend of odors drifting from the men-a smell that brought memories rushing back. Some places, the game rules wouldn’t let you handle the dice, you had to use a cup to throw them and a scoop to pick them up; this wasn’t that big a game. Just as well.
She rattled the dice, rolled them out, watched them dance across the felt. There was tumult in her then, a vigor she’d lost for years, a joy she’d made herself forget. The yellow dice flickered over the dark blue felt, then slowed and rocked to rest. “Skotsker,” she said with satisfaction. Six and eight and five.
Tayteknas grunted. “Vakkar rules Skotsker,” he said. “Pulleet first. Rose second. Barangkaly third. Tayteknas fourth. Kahtik fifth. Uj sixth. Nikeldy seventh.” He broke the seal on a deck of Vagnag cards, peeled off the wrappings. “All entries in the Holse.” He reached down, brought the rake from where it was hanging on the table, cleared the seven gold coins from the painted circle to a painted half-circle nuzzling against the side of the table. “Entries in the Sump. Open, one pera. Raise limit, fifty ema.” He took a silver coin, tossed it into the Holse, set the deck on the felt, and used the rake to push it across to Pulleet.
Pulleet was a small dark man with pale splotches on his face, irregular pink, yellow, tan areas breaking up the chocolate brown over the rest of him, pigment deficit, the result of disease or birth defect. Offworlder, probably freetrader. He had small hands, the skin on them blotchy like his face. He handled the cards with a deftness and dedication she could appreciate and dealt them out in packets of three to each of the players in the order given, matching names to faces for Rose.
Nikeldy was another offworlder. Freetrader most likely. Quiet little man. Forgettable.
Kahtik wore a University ring, engineer’s compass laid into the jewel. Freetech, no Companies on this world. Some freetechs were erratic but brilliant, some were merely adequate. Kahtik looked middlish, reasonably prosperous, but not flying the highwire. Vagnag was a game of combinations and probabilities; as a University-trained engineer, he’d be high on math skills; if his game sense was as good, he’d be a formidable player.
Barangkaly was a Rummer, a local merchant, she’d seen him in the market; he had several booths selling cloth and herbs.
Uj was a local, too. The paint on his face said he was one of the Vaarmanta; whatever else he was was not immediately apparent, though she had her suspicions and wasn’t happy about them.
Second seat. She didn’t like being second. In the first seat she could influence the flow of play, in the last seat she’d have the advantage of seeing the styles of all the other players. Here she had neither advantage; she had to give before she got. She picked up her first set. Hanged man, Runner and four diamond. Two picture cards. Not bad. Not great either. She folded the set together and laid it down, waiting until the dealing was finished.
