Tonia thrust her head through the open door at the front of the wagon, just behind the seat, and showed him the deck of cards, faceup upon her hand. “The cards of fortune, Chernon. Haven’t you seen them before?”
“I’ll tell you about them,” said Kostia, peering over Tonia’s shoulder. “There are four sets in the deck, one for each season. Each set has a King and a Queen and one other as the Royal Triad.” She handed Septemius a wine bottle and four cups, watching carefully to assure an equitable distribution. There was another bottle behind her. She and Tonia had decided to get Chernon slightly drunk.
“In the spring set,” Tonia said, “the King bears a flowered scepter and the Queen is heavy with child, while the Spring Magician looks both forward to fruitfulness and warmth and back toward the cold.”
“In the summer the King drives a pair of oxen,” Kostia continued, handing Chernon a filled cup. She pointed to a card. “That’s what these are, oxen. A kind of cattle. We don’t have them anymore. The Queen carries a harvest cornucopia full of grain and vegetables and fruit. The Summer Priestess is naked within her thin robes. She wears a wreath of ivy and carries an incense burner before her. The smoke hides her face.”
Tonia took up the story. “The Autumn King has a gray beard and carries an oaken staff with red leaves upon it; the Queen holds out her hands and rain falls from them upon the fields. The Autumn Warrior leans upon his sword.”
“Finally,” Kostia concluded, “in winter you see the King being drawn in his sled by reindeer. We don’t have them anymore, either….”
“I know about reindeer,” mumbled Chernon, half draining his wine cup.
“The King has a white beard and a blood-red robe. Then there’s the Queen with her dark cloak spread before the stars, and the Winter Princess, clad all in furs, with eyes of fire which can freeze or burn, as she chooses. She has a knife in one hand and a sheaf of grain in the other, to feed the animals. The signet of spring is the fruit blossom, of summer the headed grain, of autumn the red oak leaf, and of winter the holly leaf. There are ten numbered cards in each set.” She refilled Chernon’s cup.
Chernon handed the reins to Septemius and took the cards the girl offered him, leafing through them. They were beautifully hand painted and varnished, with only the edges slightly worn. He turned two of them out on the wagon seat. The five of holly, the one of grain. Kostia sighed.
“That was a heavy sigh,” Chernon jibed at her. “Did I pick unlucky cards?”
“The one of grain is a card of destruction,” she answered.
“Why?” It showed a man with a sickle at his belt, holding a single sheaf of grain. The man’s head was back so one could not see his eyes, but his mouth was open and the cords of his neck stood out as though he had just shouted or screamed. “It looks like a harvest to me.”
“He has cut all the grain, but he has replanted none,” Tonia said. “The five of holly shows a five-branched tree weighted with snow against a gray sky. It is midway in the set, not early, not late. It has no people on it. It is a waiting card. A card betokening the passage of time.”
“You cannot stop with two cards,” Kostia intervened. “You must lay out at least one more.”
“Why?” he asked again, stubbornly.
“Three, five, seven, eleven, or thirteen,” Kostia said. “Numbers which cannot be separated into even parts,”
“Odd and prime,” Septemius offered. “Numbers divisible only by themselves. Evidently they have always been considered to have occult significance.”
“Oh, all right,” Chernon said, laughing to show he did not believe or care. He pulled out another card and set it next to the two already on the seat. Kostia drew in her breath between her teeth and took the cards from him. “Well, you have chosen the Winter Princess, Chernon.”
“And what does that mean?” He drained his cup again and took the reins back from Septemius. “Something dreadful, no doubt.”
“No,” she said. “Only that she is a woman and can be either loving or angry.”
“Crap,” he said rudely. “This sort of thing. Of course time will pass, destruction will happen, and all women are either loving or angry, sometimes both. You have told me only simple truths and inevitabilities.”
Kostia gave him an offended look and shut the door between them, silently, leaving the bottle on the wagon seat.
Chernon laughed as he poured his cup full again. So much for fortune-tellers. He gave Septemius a sidelong look, surprising a troubled expression on his face. “You don’t believe in this stuff, do you, Magician? You, particularly? You make your living fooling people, don’t you?” Chernon had long since decided that he need not worry about what Septemius might think or say or do. No one would give any credence to a traveling showman, and when the warriors took over, the old man and his girls would do what they were told.
“Oh yes,” the old man admitted. “I do. Making people think they see what they do not see. Making people believe I have done what I have not done. I know all the lies people tell themselves. I help them lie to themselves; it is my craft. And I, Septemius Bird, say to you, Chernon, that when Kostia and Tonia lay out the cards, they often tell more of the truth than I care to know.”
“Lucky for me, then, that I laid them out
