Red Seas Under Red Skies: The Gentleman Bastard Sequence, Book Two (Gentleman Bastards 2)

Locke bit the inside of his cheek as a wave of applause rippled through the warm air of the room. The ladies had taken four of the five hands so far, and the crowd had barely deigned to notice Locke and Jean’s sole victory.

‘Well, damn,’ said Jean, in credible mock surprise.

Locke turned to the opponent on his right. Maracosa Durenna was a slender, dark-complexioned woman in her late thirties, with thick hair the colour of oil smoke and several visible scars on her neck and forearms. In her right hand she held a thin, black cigar wrapped with gold thread, and on her face she wore a tight smile of detached contentment. The game was clearly not demanding her utmost exertion.

The attendant flicked Locke and Jean’s little pile of lost wooden counters toward the ladies’ side of the table with a long-handled crop. He then used the same crop to sweep all the cards back into his hands; it was strictly forbidden for players to touch the cards after the attendant had called for the reveal.

‘Well, Madam Durenna,’ said Locke, ‘my congratulations on the increasingly robust state of your finances. Your purse would appear to be the only thing growing faster than my impending hangover.’ Locke knuckle-walked one of his markers over the fingers of his right hand. The little wooden disc was worth five solari, roughly eight months’ pay for a common labourer.

‘My condolences on a particularly unfortunate run of cards, Master Kosta.’ Madam Durenna took a long drag from her cigar, then slowly exhaled a stream of smoke so that it hung in the air between Locke and Jean, just far enough away to avoid direct insult. Locke had come to recognize that she used the cigar smoke as her strat pe’ti, her ‘little game’ - an ostensibly civilized mannerism actually cultivated to distract or annoy opponents at a gaming table and goad them into making mistakes. Jean had planned to use his own cigars for the same purpose, but Durenna’s aim was better.

‘No run of cards could be considered truly unfortunate in the presence of such a lovely pair of opponents,’ said Locke.

‘I could almost admire a man who can stay so charmingly dishonest while being bled of all his silver,’ said Durenna’s partner, who was seated on Durenna’s right, between her and the dealer.

Izmila Corvaleur was nearly of a size with Jean, wide and florid, prodigiously rounded in every place a woman could be round. She was undeniably attractive, but the intelligence that shone out of her eyes was sharp and contemptuous. In her, Locke recognized a contained pugnacity akin to that of a street brawler - a honed appetite for hard contests. Corvaleur nibbled constantly from a silver-gilded box of cherries coated in powdered chocolate, sucking her fingers loudly after each one. Her own strat pe’ti, of course.

She was purpose-built for Carousel Hazard, thought Locke. A mind for the cards and a frame capable of withstanding the game’s unique punishment for losing a hand.

‘Default,’ said the attendant. Within his podium, he tripped the mechanism that set the carousel spinning. This device, in the centre of the table, was a set of circular brass frames that held row upon row of tiny glass vials, each one capped with silver. It whirled under the soft lantern light of the gaming parlour until it became continuous streaks of silver within brass, and then - a clinking sound of mechanisms beneath the table, the rattle of many tiny vessels of thick glass colliding with one another and the carousel spat out two of its vials. They rolled toward Locke and Jean and clattered against the slightly upraised outer rim of the table.

Carousel Hazard was a game for two teams of two; an expensive game, for the clockwork carousel mechanism came very dear. At the end of each hand, the losing team was randomly dispensed two vials from the carousel’s great store of little bottles; these held liquor, mixed with sweet oils and fruit juice to disguise the potency of any given drink. The cards were only one aspect of the game. Players also had to maintain concentration under the increasing effects of the devilish little vials. The only way a game could end was for a player to become too drunk to keep playing.

Theoretically, the game could not be cheated. The Sinspire maintained the mechanism and prepared the vials; the little silver caps were fastened tight over wax seals. Players were not permitted to touch the carousel, or another player’s vials, on pain of immediate default. Even the chocolates and cigars being consumed by the players had to be provided by the house. Locke and Jean could have gone so far as to refuse to allow Madam Corvaleur the luxury of her sweets, but that would have been a bad idea for several reasons.

‘Well,’ said Jean as he cracked the seal on his tiny libation, ‘here’s to charming losers, I suppose.’

‘If only we knew where to find some,’ said Locke, and in unison they tossed back their drinks. Locke’s left a warm, plum-flavoured trail down his throat - it was one of the potent ones. He sighed and set the empty vial down before him. Four vials to one, and the way his concentration seemed to be unravelling at the edges meant that he was beginning to feel it.

As the attendant sorted and shuffled the cards for the next hand, Madam Durenna took another long, satisfied draw on her cigar and flicked the ashes into a solid-gold pot set on pedestal behind her right hand. She exhaled two lazy streams of smoke through her nose and stared at the carousel from behind a grey veil. Durenna was a natural ambush predator, Locke thought, always most comfortable behind some camouflage. His information said that she was only recently arrived in the life of a city-bound merchant speculator. Her previous profession had been the command of bounty-privateers, hunting and sinking the slaver ships of Jerem on the high seas. She hadn’t acquired those scars drinking tea in anyone’s parlour.

It would be very, very unfortunate if a woman like her were to realize that Locke and Jean were counting on what Locke liked to call ‘discreetly unorthodox methods’ to win the game - hell, it would be preferable to simply lose the old-fashioned way, or to be caught cheating by the Sinspire attendants. They, at least, would probably be quick and efficient executioners. They had a very busy establishment to run.

‘Hold the cards,’ said Madam Corvaleur to the attendant, interrupting Locke’s musings. ‘Mara, the gentlemen have indeed had several hands of unfortunate luck. Might we not allow them a recess?’

Locke concealed his instant excitement; the pair of Carousel Hazard partners who held the lead could offer their opponents a short break from the game, but the courtesy was rarely extended, for the obvious reason that it allowed the losers precious time to shake the effects of their liquor. Was Corvaleur trying to cover for some distress of her own?

‘The gentlemen have seen a great deal of strenuous effort on our behalf, counting all those markers and pushing them over to us again and again.’ Durenna drew smoke, expelled it. ‘You would honour us, gentlemen, if you would consent to a short pause to refresh and recover yourselves.’

Ah. Locke smiled and folded his hands on the table before him. So that was the game - play to the crowd and show off how little regard the ladies truly had for their opponents, how inevitable they considered their own victory. This was etiquette fencing, and Durenna had performed the equivalent of a lunge for the throat. Outright refusal would be terrible form; Locke and Jean’s parry would have to be delicate.

‘How could anything be more refreshing,’ said Jean, ‘than to continue our game against such an excellent partnership?’

‘You’re too kind, Master de Ferra,’ said Madam Durenna. ‘But would you have it said that we are heartless? You’ve refused us neither of our comforts.’ She used her cigar to gesture at Madam Corvaleur’s sweets. ‘Would you refuse us our desire to give a comfort in exchange?’

‘We would refuse you nothing, Madam, and yet we would beg leave to answer your greater desire, for which you’ve troubled yourselves to come here tonight - the desire to play.’

‘There are many hands yet before us,’ added Locke, ‘and it would wound Jerome and myself to inconvenience the ladies in any way.’ He made eye contact with the dealer as he spoke.

‘You have thus far presented no inconvenience,’ said Madam Corvaleur sweetly.

Locke was uncomfortably aware that the attention of the crowd was indeed hanging on this exchange. He and Jean had challenged the two women widely regarded as the best Carousel Hazard players in Tal Verrar, and a substantial audience had packed all the other tables on the fifth floor of the Sinspire. Those tables should have been hosting games of their own, but by some unspoken understanding between the house and its patrons, other action in the parlour had ceased for the duration of the slaughter.

‘Very well,’ said Durenna. ‘We’ve no objection to continuing, for our sakes. Perhaps your luck may even turn.’

Locke’s relief that she had abandoned her conversational ploy was faint; she did, after all, have every expectation of continuing to thrash money out of him and Jean, like a cook might beat weevils from a bag of flour.

‘Sixth hand,’ said the attendant. ‘Initial wager will be ten solari.’ As each player pushed forward two wooden coins, the attendant tossed three cards down in front of them.

Madam Corvaleur finished another chocolate-dusted cherry and sucked the sweet residue from her fingers. Before touching his cards, Jean slid the fingers of his left hand briefly under the lapel of his coat and moved them, as though scratching an itch. After a few seconds, Locke did the same. Locke caught Madam Durenna watching them, and saw her roll her eyes. Signals between players were perfectly acceptable, but a bit more subtlety was preferred.

Durenna, Locke and Jean peeked at their cards almost simultaneously; Corvaleur was a moment behind them, with her fingers still wet. She laughed quietly. Genuine good fortune or strat pe’ti? Durenna looked eminently satisfied, but Locke had no doubt she maintained that precise expression even in her sleep. Jean’s face revealed nothing, and Locke for his part tried on a thin smirk, although his three opening cards were pure rubbish.

Across the room, a curving set of brass-railed stairs, with a large attendant guarding their foot, led up toward the sixth floor, briefly expanding into a sort of gallery on the way. A flicker of movement from this gallery caught Locke’s attention: half-concealed in shadow was a slight, well-dressed figure. The warm golden light of the room’s lanterns was reflected in a pair of optics, and Locke felt a shivery thrill of excitement along his spine.

Could it be? Locke tried to keep one eye on the shadowy figure while pretending to fixate on his cards. The glare on those optics didn’t waver or shift - the man was staring at their table, all right.

At last, he and Jean had attracted (or stumbled into, and by the gods they’d take that bit of luck) the attention of the man who kept his offices on the ninth floor - Master of the Sinspire, clandestine ruler of all Tal Verrar’s thieves, a man with an iron grip on the worlds of larceny and luxury both. In Camorr they would have called him capa, but here he affected no title save his own name.

Requin.

Locke cleared his throat, turned his eyes back to the table and prepared to lose another hand with grace. Out on the dark water, the soft echo of ships’ bells could be heard, ringing the tenth hour of the evening.