Frey dealt four more cards to the middle, two for each player in the game. Two face up, two face down. The face-up cards were the Lady of Wings and the Priest of Skulls.
His heart jumped. If he could get that Priest, he’d have an almost unbeatable hand. But Gremble, to the left of the dealer, got to pick his card first from the four in the middle.
‘What’s a disgrace?’ he asked, trying to keep the conversation up. He wanted Gremble distracted.
‘About Hengar and that Sammie bitch.’
Frey gave him a blank look.
‘You don’t know? You been living in a cave or something?’
‘Close,’ said Frey.
‘It’s not been in the broadsheets,’ said Foxmuth. ‘They don’t dare print it. But everyone knows. It’s been all over this past week.’
‘I’ve been away,’ he said. ‘Yortland.’
‘Chilly up there,’ Gremble commented, taking the Lady of Wings as he did so. Frey thrilled at the sight.
‘Yeah,’ Frey agreed. The Priest was his. He made a show of deliberating whether to take one of the two face-down mystery cards or not. ‘So what’s the story with Hengar?’
Hengar, Earl of Thesk and the only child of the Archduke. Heir to the Nine Duchies of Vardia. It sounded like something Frey should be paying attention to, but he was concentrating on depriving this poor sap of all his coins. He picked up the Priest. Four Priests in his hand. If he played this right, the game would be his.
‘So there were all these rumours, right?’ Foxmuth said eagerly. ‘About Hengar and this Sammie princess or something.’
‘She wasn’t a princess, she was some other thing,’ Gremble interrupted, frowning as he looked at his hand.
‘Yeah, well, anyway,’ Foxmuth continued. ‘Hengar was having secret meetings with her.’
‘Political meetings?’
‘The other kind,’ Gremble muttered. ‘They was lovers. The heir to the Nine Duchies and a bloody Sammie! The family wanted it stopped, but he wouldn’t listen, so they was covering it all up. But this past week, well . . . All I can say is someone must’ve shot their mouth off.’
‘What’s so wrong with him seeing a Sammie?’ Frey asked.
‘Did you miss the wars or something?’ Gremble cried.
‘I wasn’t on the front line,’ said Frey. ‘First one, I was working as a cargo hauler. Never saw action. Second one, I was working for the Navy, supply drops and so on.’ He shut up before he said any more. He didn’t want to revisit those times. Rabby’s final scream as the cargo ramp closed still haunted him at night. He could never forget the awful, endless, slicing agony of a Dakkadian bayonet plunging into his belly. Just the thought made him sick with fury at the people who had sent him there to die. The Coalition Navy.
Gremble humphed, making it clear what he thought of Frey’s contribution. ‘I was infantry, both wars. I saw stuff you can’t imagine. And there are a lot of people out there like me. Curdles my guts to think of our Earl Hengar snuggling up to some pampered Sammie slut.’
‘So how did the news get out?’
