It was the second time I’d been asked that question. Normally that would’ve been cause for reflection on my part, but I was getting tired of being poked and prodded throughout a litany of grievances I’d heard a dozen times before. Despite my earlier determination not to aggravate my situation, I did something then that no sane person would ever do: I grabbed Lieutenant Torian Libri, perhaps the most feared marshal in the entire service, by the lapels of her long leather coat and shoved her away from me.
Now, when it comes to reflexes and fighting techniques, there’s no one I’ve ever met more dangerous than my mentor, Ferius Parfax. But Torian comes awfully close. She had my arm twisted behind my back and my face mashed between the bars of one of the cells before I could even screech like a lost little boy. That came shortly after.
‘Did you seriously just try to lay hands on me, card player?’
Her lips were almost touching my earlobe, warm breath teasing the tiny hairs on my neck. There is no more awkward feeling in this life than being simultaneously terrified and aroused. Still, while my arta forteize is only so-so, I have excellent arta valar, or as Ferius calls it, ‘swagger’.
‘You’ll want to clean that cut,’ I said, my voice calm as still water despite the pain in my wrist where her grip was squeezing the bones together. ‘Wouldn’t want your poking finger to get infected.’
‘What are you talking abou—’ She pulled away suddenly, letting out a surprised gasp.
With my free hand I pushed myself away from the bars and turned. She was staring at the blood on her index finger with a bewildered expression. I flicked her throwing knife in the air and caught it neatly between my own thumb and forefinger. The delicate point glistened red. ‘Nice balance,’ I said, then flipped the short blade over again before offering her the blunt end. ‘You should hang on to these.’
She didn’t take it right away. You could tell she was working through what had just happened. ‘You lifted the knife from my coat when you pushed me. Palmed it so that once my hand was locked around your wrist all it took was a twitch of your fingers to cut me.’
I nodded.
‘Pretty smooth for someone who trips over his own feet whenever anyone asks him to dance.’
One time. One time.
‘Now you know,’ I said.
She tilted her head. ‘Now I know what?’
I chose my next words carefully. For all the mistrust between us, I’d never doubted Torian’s loyalty to the queen. A while back, with a different ill-tempered marshal, I’d failed to comprehend just how dangerous such devotion can be. My oversight had nearly destroyed all our lives. ‘You asked what would happen to the queen once I ran out of tricks.’
She held up a bleeding finger. ‘And a paper cut is your answer?’
‘My answer is that I always have one more trick.’ I took the risk of moving closer to her. ‘You have my word, Lieutenant Libri, when I use that last trick up, when I finally run out of ways to outwit my enemies and those of the queen? I’ll come to you. I’ll tell you it’s time and then I’ll leave her service for good. I’ll walk right out the city gates and I’ll keep on walking till I’m long gone from your country.’
I held out a hand so we could shake on the bargain.
Those impossibly blue eyes of her went first to my outstretched hand and then back to me. For once, there was no taunting or scolding in her gaze, just a kind of sadness that caught me off-guard. ‘I wish things could work that way, Kellen.’
Torian hardly ever calls me by my proper name. It’s always ‘card player’ or ‘swindler’ or occasionally ‘squirrel cat boy’. The Argosi talent for eloquence – what we call arta loquit – teaches that every utterance of a person’s name is meaningful, each unique inflection filled with signs waiting to be interpreted. Her use of my name just then told me that something was very, very wrong.
I looked down at my chest, through the little hole in my shirt where she’d poked me with her fingernail. Blood from the tiny, almost insignificant wound had already begun to coagulate, the sharp, burning sensation replaced by a tingling numbness. I tore open the shirt – clumsily, because my fingers were also becoming numb. There, just beneath the skin surrounding the red dot of dried blood, was a slowly blooming patch of the second-most beautiful azure I’d ever seen.
My vision began to blur. My eyes sought out Torian, but she wouldn’t meet my gaze.
‘You …’
I couldn’t get the words out to ask why she’d gone to all the trouble of poisoning me just to lock me in a cell for the night when she knew perfectly well I’d put up with this token incarceration a dozen times before.
She’s not putting me in a cell, I realised far too late. This was all a ruse.
My balance fled all at once. My legs crumpled beneath me. I’d’ve fallen to the hard stone floor had Torian not caught me and propped me up. The familiar echo of marshals’ boot heels came down the passageway towards us. My head settled awkwardly against Torian’s shoulder. ‘This is the problem with tricks, Kellen,’ she murmured. ‘You’re not the only one who uses them.’
4
Arta Forteize
Four men carried me on their shoulders, reminding me of the four deuces the old man had dealt me back in the saloon. Daroman card players call that particular hand an eight-legged horse: the beast upon whose back gamblers are borne to the underworld at the moment of their death.
Our path twisted and turned along unfamiliar passageways, heading deeper and deeper beneath the palace. We passed through one locked door after another until finally descending a set of stairs I hadn’t known existed, which was troubling considering how carefully Reichis and I had cased this place.
‘Where …?’
No point in even trying. My tongue was a bloated sponge I couldn’t spit out.
A hand I could barely feel touched my cheek. ‘Don’t speak,’ Torian said, her voice little more than a distant echo. ‘Don’t do anything, okay? Just … Trust me.’
A phlegmy cough erupted from my throat, which I guess was me trying to laugh. I suppose if I were a lying, manipulative poisoner, I too would tell my victim, ‘Don’t worry, it only seems like I’m burying you alive. Really I’m secretly saving you, so just trust me, okay?’
Never hurts to give the poor sap a shred of optimism to carry with them into the afterlife.
Despite the fog filling my senses, I couldn’t help but admire Torian’s ploy. Had she sent me some seemingly innocuous invitation or made a show of seducing me, I’d’ve been on my guard. Instead she’d had me arrested, same as always. Escorted me down to the palace cells, as always. Offered the usual insults, made the same veiled threats. Repetition. Ritual.
That’s why I’d let Reichis run off. In a few hours, he’d sneak down to the cells expecting to pick the lock and break me out like he always did. Had I suspected anything different, I would’ve signalled him to trail us instead. The moment I’d begun to succumb to the poison, he’d’ve ripped Torian’s face off – ‘purdy eyes’ and all.
But the marshal had suckered me like a pro, and now I was screwed.