by a factor of more than eleven to one. After that, it was only a matter of time – a very short time – before he had them all.
“Call,” he said, and turned over his cards. “Two princesses.” He stood up, and reached over for the coins.
Sangk smiled, and slowly fanned his hand on to the table.
“One queen, one bishop,” he said, and laughed. “No wastrel.”
“But… how…?”
“Did you mean this?” Sangk casually flipped over the peasant card next to the bishop, revealing the tiny split at the top corner.
“What…?”
“Please,” Sangk sat back and held his arms wide open, appealing to the room around them. “Do you take me for a fool? Do you think I don’t know the make-up of my own deck? Each little mark, each little signifier?” He clapped his hands together, and leaned forward, picking up a card at random and holding it in front of Marius. “Do you think I didn’t learn to do this at my father’s elbow when I was a child?” he asked, stroking the card with his thumb, opening a split almost identical to the one on the bishop. Marius stared at the fresh mark as the fat man rubbed it against the face of a second card, muddying the edges until they were almost indistinguishable from either the wastrel or the peasant.
“No.”
“Oh, yes, I’m afraid so.”
“No.” Marius shook his head. “You can’t do that.”
“In my own house? I think I can.” Sangk leaned over and began scooping coins towards himself. “I win, don Hellespont. Whatever your little game was, you’re busted. It’s time for you to get out.”
“How the hell…?
“What?” he asked, laughing. “Did you think I didn’t recognize you? The way you walk, or hold yourself? The way you always lead with a small bet and never commit yourself until the third card, time after time after time?” He rose from the table, and began to scoop the money towards him. “Did you really think covering yourself up and putting on a funny voice would hide you from me? You’re as big a fool as your father, don Hellespont, if you think you can deceive me like that.”
“It’s Helles. I go by Helles.” Marius scraped his chair back and stood.
“Like I care,” Sangk nodded to the burly doorkeeper. “Escort this bankrupt out of my house.”
The giant came over and grabbed Marius by each arm. Marius struggled, and gave up almost immediately. He may as well be trying to squirm through wood. Sangk stood before him, and grabbed the edge of his hood.
“Next time,” he said, and flipped the hood back, “try a better…. Oh, Gods!”
He stumbled backwards, arms rising to cover his face. Marius turned his head to look at his captor. The doorkeeper let him loose, and stepped back, fear and disgust written across his previously impassive features. Marius smiled, and the doorkeeper broke, and ran for the nearby staircase.
“Oh, Gods,” Sangk was crying, over and over. “He’s dead. He’s dead. Oh, Gods.” Players at other tables were looking at them. Marius stared back. As he turned to each startled patron they leaped from their chairs and join the crush at the stairs.
“They’re coming back,” Sangk cried. “They told me when I bought it, they told me. Oh, Gods…” He began to pray in his native Tallian, a long stream of syllables punctuated only by a rising ululation. Marius stepped forward and grabbed his collar, drawing him up.
“What are you talking about?” he said, shaking the heavier man. “What?”
“The duke,” Sangk babbled. “The men he killed. They’re buried down here, in the walls, in the back cave…” He began praying again. Marius let him go and he fell to the floor, pressing his head against the cold stone, begging forgiveness from whatever Gods he could rally to his cause. Marius turned away. The room was empty. Only he and the babbling man at his feet remained. He bent over the table, scooping the coins towards himself and counting them out. Eighty riner. He gathered them up, made his way to the next table and the next, gathering the abandoned winnings together. When he had finished he counted one hundred and fifty riner.
“Not a bad haul,” he said to his terrified host. “I should come here dead more often.” He separated out a hundred riner and placed it in various pockets, then picked up the first of the remaining coins and waved it at Sangk.
“Never steal what you can’t swallow,” he said. “First rule.” He placed the coin in his mouth, and gulped it backwards. It stuck in the top of his throat. Marius gulped again, pushed and pulled at it with the base of his tongue until it jumped into his mouth. He tried again, with the same result.
“Shit.”
There was no spit in his mouth, and, dead as he was, he could not summon any. He pondered the coin for a moment. Then he tilted his head back, opened his mouth as wide as he could, and dropped it back in. Gulping, and jerking his head back and forth like a baby bird, he managed to get it down.
“Like a lizard swallowing a mouse,” he told the wailing Sangk. “I’ve spent a lot of time sleeping under bushes.” One by one he gulped the remaining coins down his gullet, until the table was empty. He looked over at Sangk for one, last, smug comment, and stopped.
Deep within the unused rear of the cave, where a small corridor lead to a tiny antechamber, something stood. Had he been alive, Marius would not have seen it. But his dead eyes, able to distinguish shades of dark from each other with much keener facility, saw the shape, and the one behind it, and vaguely, the impression of several more.
“They’re coming back,” he whispered, as the features of a long-dead man became clearer, dressed in peasant garb, the remains of an earth-moving basket hanging from his skeletal hand. The corpse leaned forward to get a better look at Marius. He opened his jaw, and a fine trail of sand dribbled out.
“Kinnnggg…” he hissed.
Marius stepped backwards involuntarily.
“I… I’m on my way,” he said, and ran for the stairs.
THIRTEEN
Dusk was falling as Marius strode along the wharf and up the gangway onto the deck of the
“Hola, Mister Helles! Got yourself packed then?”
Marius waved back and hurried on. He knocked sharply on the captain’s door and entered without waiting for permission.
The cabin had changed immeasurably since Marius had left. No paintings hung on the walls. The tables of knick-knacks were gone. The velvet drapes had been packed away, replaced by two sheets of oiled canvas that looked older than the ship by some measure. The throne upon which Bomthe sat had been superseded by a simple wooden chair. The captain himself had changed – the frippery with which he was clothed upon their first meeting was no longer apparent, and a simpler, more functional uniform now adorned his sparse frame. The charts over which he pored, however, were the same. He glanced up as Marius entered, and a frown of annoyance flashed over his countenance.
“Mister…. Holes, isn’t it?”
“Helles.” Marius withdrew a heavy pouch from his jerkin and threw it onto the table. It landed with a dull
The captain gathered up the bag without removing his gaze from Marius. He tipped it over, and counted out the coins within. When he was finished he gazed down at the neat piles he had built, tapping his teeth with one stiff finger. Marius waited in silence, head bowed, hands tucked into his sleeves like a meditating monk.
“Well,” the captain said at length. “That presents me with something of a problem, Mister Hailes. I’m afraid our preparations have left us with very little available space. We simply do not have a cabin to spare on a single passenger, paying or otherwise. The best I can offer…”
