Maledicte (14 page)

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K
RITOS?”
G
ILLY REPEATED.
“Y
OU ARE
a gambler, then. Vornatti will be furious if you slight him again.”

“I am well aware that Vornatti will not support me in this. Of late, he counsels temperance. So it must be done quickly. You’ll have to raid the house box for me, Gilly.”

“I thought you meant to kill Kritos. Not game with him,” Gilly said.

“I want to beat him first.” A brief, ugly light flared and smoldered in Maledicte’s eyes; Gilly looked away, fed more of the wick into the lamp, chasing the clustering shadows from the desk, fearing more than simple temper in Maledicte’s eyes.

“Do you even know how to play?” Gilly asked.

“Well enough to win,” Maledicte said.

Gilly’s breath snagged in his chest, not only at the resurgence of the smothering rage in Maledicte’s eyes, but at his own realization that this was the moment he had been dreading, the moment when Ani’s compact would be sealed with blood, no matter that it came cloaked in ridiculous questions of card games. Gilly sought something to dissuade Maledicte. “You believe you can win at will?”

“Of course. It’s called card-sharping, Gilly; have you never heard of it? I assure you, it’s all the rage in some circles.” Maledicte smiled, sharp-toothed, as if he or Ani understood Gilly’s attempts at delay.

“Why am I not surprised?” Gilly sat back in the chair, tilted the seat for a less-shadowed view. “Are you good enough, Mal? This will be different than rooking sotted sailors at the pier, or wherever you gained your experience. Kritos belongs to the worst hells in the city. Where getting caught sharping will see far more than a reputation ruined.”

“Don’t fret, Gilly,” Maledicte said. “I do excellently well. Shall I prove it to you?”

“Go to Vornatti’s dinner, Mal.”

“No more delay,” Maledicte said.

Gilly clenched his hands. “Mal—”

“It will be done, with or without your aid,” Maledicte said. “Kritos has decided to deprive us of our prey. To kill Last for his own selfish desires. Did you expect me to grow bored of my enemies? My hatred? I am not Vornatti, content to nurture a grudge for years with no satiation in sight. Janus has returned. I could go to Lastrest this moment and slaughter Last; we could live like royalty until the Kingsguard or Echo’s Particulars managed to bring us down. Be thankful I’m content with Kritos tonight.”

“I’ll call for a hack,” Gilly said, his mouth dry.

Maledicte bowed and left, claiming he needed to change into something more suitable, with all the airy insouciance of a man going out for a night’s pleasure instead of a murder. Left alone, Gilly laid his head down on the desk, tangled his fingers in his hair, thinking. Short of drugging Maledicte, he saw no way to avert this. And Maledicte, though he trusted Gilly, would be unlikely to take food or drink from Gilly’s hand tonight. The solution was as distant as ever by the time the hack arrived, and Gilly found himself following Maledicte into it in a brooding silence of his own.

T
HEY PAID THE HACK TO
take them as far as it would, the driver loath to travel Jove Street at night.

“I do believe you, you know,” Gilly said, watching Maledicte palm another card with a demonstrative flourish, and wishing he’d never expressed his doubts. Maledicte had made him play and lose hand after hand in the swaying carriage, until his head pounded. Gilly focused and caught the cheat this time, tapped Maledicte’s wrist. “Be careful, Mal. Sleight of hand relies on vision driven by expectation. Some men see more clearly than you think. The Fiery Hell is no place to be caught cheating.”

“You’ll be at my back,” Maledicte said, smiling in a way that did nothing to soothe Gilly’s nerves.

The hack rattled to a stop, the horses blowing out steam in the foggy dark. The last of the twilight was making way for the darkness seeping down from the sky. On other streets, the young boys employed as lamplighters would be running from post to post with their long tapers, making small, defiant blazes against the invading night.

But on Jove Street, light was unwelcomed. Only a small torch affixed to the jamb gave enough of a glow to allow a visitor to decipher the address: Fire
3
Jove Street—known as the Fiery Hell to its regulars.

There were other gambling houses, more genteel in their façades, more tempting to the dallying aristocracy, where women and men, lords and ladies went to be gently daring, frivolous, and above all, seen. But the Fiery Hell took its games seriously, unleavened with court manners or excess speech. No waiters circled, offering sweetened wines or spirits. No music played, and no whores waited for a lucky gambler. There were only the tables and the players, including impoverished aristocrats so desperate to recoup fortunes they would risk a knife in the ribs. The Fiery Hell was Kritos’s best chance.

Gilly hefted the brass knocker in his hand, dropped it down on the face-plate. The sharp rapping left muffled cracks echoing down the cooling, darkening street.

The door opened; Gilly looked up, surprised at having to do so, but the man filled the doorframe as effectively as the oak door itself. Gilly nudged Maledicte. “Stormy Jack,” he whispered. “The boxer.”

Maledicte looked at Gilly blankly and shrugged. Gilly sighed. “Just don’t irritate him.”

Pausing in the foyer, Maledicte and Gilly studied the tables, while Jack latched the door behind them. The Fiery Hell had been stripped of any pretension of being a domicile. In every available space the tables dominated the house, each one surrounded by close-packed men, some muttering, some gray and silent.

Maledicte headed toward the darkest corner as if he could sense his quarry. Gilly went after him, seeing not the crowds, but the pistols in coat pockets, the knives and swords hung on chairs or slung onto tables as prizes. All around the walls lurked employees as big as the doorman.

Maledicte intended to cheat here? Gilly had known it was a foolish idea; now he found it a suicidal one.

In the corner of the room, at a small table, Kritos sat alone, his back to the wall and its peeling flocking. Maledicte slung himself into the chair opposite.

“What do you want?” Kritos asked, his good eye bleared with drink and bitterness. Maledicte touched the table before him, as if feeling the games that had gone before.

“To gamble with you, of course,” he said.

Gilly pressed in close behind Maledicte, listening, watching that slim, rigid spine.

“When Vornatti keeps you as short of coin as Last keeps me? I know who you are and I’ll not waste my time,” Kritos said, starting to rise. Maledicte shoved the table across the broken parquet and pushed Kritos back into his seat.

“You listen to too much gossip. That’s the mark of a fool,” Maledicte said.

“Watch your tongue,” Kritos said, but wearily, as if he lacked the energy to take offense. Gilly, watching his face, thought that Kritos intended to parlay his entrance fees into a night’s lodging.

“Surely you can come up with some small stake, or you wouldn’t be here,” Maledicte said, leaning across the table. “I’m not as particular as these gentlemen. I’ll wager for things other than coin.”

Kritos laughed, hoarse and unamused. “Why should I? What have I to win?”

Maledicte tipped a handful of coins out on the table. They gleamed with the moon’s cool frost in the dark room. “Not so poor as coppers,” Maledicte said. “Not so dangerous as sols. Lunas.”

Kritos licked his lips. “I’ve no coin.”

“When has that ever balked an aristocrat?” Maledicte asked.

Kritos hesitated a minute longer, looking at Maledicte. Gilly saw the moment when Kritos made his decision, saw the quick flash of scorn on Kritos’s face as he relegated Maledicte to fool and fop. “If you’re that eager to play…” He waved over one of the Hell’s attendants, one with a curved scar through his mouth. “A house stake for me, Smiles.”

“Your hide,” Smiles said, and dropped a roll of mixed coins to the table. “House takes thirty percent of your winnings, plus the stake back.” Kritos waved him off, though his lips tightened at the reminder.

Two hours later, Kritos was richer a tidy pile of coins, as well as the random miscellany Maledicte had allowed to represent coins when Kritos upped the stakes beyond his current coin: a palm-sized miniature meant for Aris, a sailor’s compass, the jadestone buttons from his vest, and the Itarusine-made lace from his cuffs. Two of the room’s guards, drawn by the scent of unusual play, prowled around the table.

Gilly thought Maledicte had let it run too long, had allowed Kritos to win too often and risked losing him from his net. As if in unity with his thoughts, Kritos made to rise.

Maledicte sighed. “One more?” He eyed the table with an inexplicable avarice until Gilly realized that his attention focused on the miniature, and who the subject must be. The newest member of the House of Last, Janus Ixion.

“I think not,” Kritos said, scooping the pile toward himself.

Wordlessly, Maledicte tipped the last contents of his purse out. Sols, this time, and Kritos halted where he stood.

“Very well,” Kritos said. “But I’ll want a new deck. Just to be sure, you understand.”

“Of course,” Maledicte said.

H
ANDS LATER,
Maledicte had lost sols to gain lunas and was frowning over his cards. Kritos smiled. “My game again, I think,” he said, laying out the elements. “Land, sea, sky, fire, all mine,” he said. “Kings all.”

Gilly peered into Maledicte’s hands and stifled a wince. While he had a representation of all the suits, Maledicte lacked high cards enough to beat Kritos, but it was close. He had three queens to trump three kings, but the last suit, that of air, had only a scattering of seven seabirds as his high card. Not enough.

Maledicte shifted in his seat, and the guards leaned closer, watching his hands; Kritos’s eye narrowed. Maledicte smiled at them all, and set the cards down. “Your fortune has waned. My hand.” He laid down the fire cards and queen, the earth cards and queen, sea and sea queen. He set out the air cards one by one: butterflies and clouds and starry nights. The suspicion in Kritos’s eye deepened. The seven-gulls card lingered in Maledicte’s hand last, and Gilly shivered, wondering if Maledicte was going to try to cheat now, under all these eyes, but Maledicte merely smiled and set it down.

The queen of air, Black-Winged Ani, Her dark feathers filling the card. Kritos lunged to his feet. “Impossible.”

Behind him, a pasteboard fluttered to the floor, unseen by the others—a dark card. The queen of air, palmed to prevent Maledicte’s win. But even as it fell, Gilly watched the color leach from it, the dark pinions traded for the sun-speckled backs of seven gulls.

Maledicte shoved the table again, harder, knocking Kritos back against the wall, winding him. “Are you calling me a cheat? I’m sure these gentlemen will tell you they saw no such thing.”

Rising unhurriedly, Maledicte swept the coins and trinkets into his purse, and handed it to Gilly. The miniature went into his own pocket. “Good night.”

“Another game,” Kritos demanded.

“No,” Maledicte said, heading for the door. Gilly stumbled after, still waiting for the protest to go up. His back burned with the heat of it. Looking back over his shoulder, he saw Kritos watching them, his face furious, even as the house guards closed in to reclaim their stake.

He hurried Maledicte outside, and started casting for a hack, looking down the dark streets, listening for approaching hoofbeats, but heard only Maledicte’s stuttering laughter.

“I thought you meant to kill him,” Gilly said, giving up the futile hunt.

“I do,” Maledicte said, “and I will, but Gilly, wasn’t it wonderful? Such a foolish thing to please me so, and yet the games went so well.”

“With Ani’s aid,” Gilly said. “Or dare you say that the transformation of the queen was a cheat learned in the Relicts?”

“Transformation?” Maledicte said. At the pure incomprehension in his tone, Gilly’s stomach clenched.

“Never mind,” he said. “Let’s go home.”

“Did you see his face, Gilly? Wasn’t it perfect?”

“Yes,” Gilly said, casting cautious glances back over his shoulder at the near-empty street, at the disreputable building they had just left. He
had
seen Kritos’s expression; fury and barely cloaked desperation. It made him leery of the distance they must travel afoot to find a hire carriage. This late, no carriage would appear on Jove Street, in the shadow world of narrow, winding alleys and blinded gas lamps, no matter how he wished it. No god listened to his will. “We need to be gone, before he manages to convince the Fiery Hell he can best regain their money by hunting you.”

Maledicte merely shrugged, his steps still slow.

Gilly turned his head again. Was that a man following in their wake, sidling along the dark walls? Was that the tap of booted heels trying for silence, or the drip of water condensing against stone walls and sliding to the street? Gilly was certain of one thing only: On this street, at this hour, no one they met would be a friend. He picked up his pace, hooking his arm through Maledicte’s. “Let’s not dally. We’re some ways yet from Sybarite Street, and there’ll be no carriages closer than that.”

“There’s an alley through the houses,” Maledicte said. “It’ll save us the entire walk up this street and then the walk back down to the carriage stand on Sybarite. Somewhere. Ah, here it is.”

Gilly pictured the streets of the city, spread out like a spiderweb, the long sweep of the seven main streets, and the nameless curling crossings that linked them all. Maledicte was right. But only the change of sound, the lack of reverberation, told Gilly that the shadow Maledicte faced was more than a recessed door. The darkness swallowed his words and fed nothing back.

“This should bring us out near Clara’s, and there are always hacks there, waiting for the men to stagger away. If you’re nervous of the night air, the dark…”

Maledicte turned; the quick flash of teeth told Gilly Maledicte was mocking his fears. “Not the night, the people in it.” Gilly peered into the alley, saw the wall curve away into velvety darkness, and yet, as he studied it, a lambent glow traveled back, carrying the flushed color and acrid scent of the additives used in Syb Street gas lamps. “Let me go first,” he said, and stepped into the alley.