chapter FOUR
After the game broke up, we players just left our chips on the table. Since cheating was allowed, that seemed reckless. But since everybody else was doing it, I went with the flow.
Leticia smiled and started toward me, and I wouldn’t have minded chatting. She was playing against me, but she’d also helped save my life. And did I mention she was gorgeous?
But Timon reached me at the same time she did. Fumbling, he grabbed my arm and snapped, “I need to talk to you.” I gave Leticia a sorry-but-what-can-you-do smile as he dragged me off into the corner.
“What in the name of the Two Rivers is wrong with you?” he asked. His voice was soft, but it still had anger quivering inside it.
I shook my head. “I guess we’re skipping over the part where you say, ‘Nice job.’”
“Because it wasn’t. If the others hadn’t decided to lie for you, I’d be a commoner right now.”
“Well, gee. When you put it that way.” I yawned, and suddenly felt how tired I was. “You’re sure they lied? Meaning, they knew?”
“The Pharaoh and Leticia, certainly. The other two, probably. But at that moment, they decided they’d rather see Wotan frustrated than you eliminated.”
“I guess that makes sense.” In a we-don’t-think-like-humans kind of way. Since the Pharaoh had been messing with me only a moment before, it meant his attitude had turned on a dime. “If Wotan had gotten my chips”—I yawned again—“he would have had a huge stack to push everybody else around. And maybe the others still don’t take the lowly human seriously.”
“Possibly not. Now, I had a servant tell me what was happening in the game. We should talk about some of the hands. There was one where you limped with jack-ten, and the flop came—”
“Are you serious?” I said.
He cocked his head. “What?”
“Look at… sorry. I forgot. But that’s the point. I’m too tired to think straight. I don’t need coaching. I need sleep.”
He grunted. “Sometimes I forget how weak humans are. You’ll be better off when that part of you withers away. But never mind that now. I’ll have someone show you to a room.”
“Where, across from Wotan’s? I’m not too tired to drive home.”
He scowled. “You just said you are. And I promise, you’re safer here than you would be there. The others, even Wotan, are constrained by traditions of hospitality that don’t apply beyond these walls. And I also have my guards.”
“Then why did you go outside and give the brownwings—you know what? Skip it. I don’t need to know. Just get me to a bed.”
He waved over a guy in a tux and told him to take care of it. Unfortunately, the elevators weren’t working, so I had to follow the servant and the glow of his candle up dark flights of stairs. Exhaustion ground me down with every step.
I had a hunch that, rough as they’d been, the shocks and pressures of the night were only partly to blame. Using as much magic as I had, I’d been like a first-timer overdoing it at the gym. I’d managed to heave a lot of weight around, but now I was paying the price.
Still, trudging, my eyes stinging, my head fuzzy, and my body aching, I made it all the way up to the right floor before remembering the T-bird. When my escort promised it would be safe where it was, I just about hugged him.
My room had the same old-but-perfect feel as the Grand Ballroom, or the lobby before Wotan smashed the hell out of it. Not that I looked at it closely. I locked the door, stumbled to the bed, emptied my pockets onto the nightstand, pulled off my shoes, and crawled in still wearing the rest of my clothes. I fell asleep as soon as my head hit the pillow.
And woke to the brush of the blankets slipping down my body. Despite the closed curtains and the grimy windowpane on the other side of them, enough sunlight muscled its way into the room to show me the girl with the backward legs uncovering me.
With weirdness screaming for my attention on every side, I hadn’t paid a lot of attention to her during the game. But she was making a bigger impression now, partly because she was naked.
She had a pretty pixie face with a button nose and pointed chin. The eyes were bright as silver, with slit pupils. Her mop of black curls didn’t quite hide the stubby little horns or the points on the tops of her ears. She was small and slim but curvy, and had tattoos on both shoulders. Her legs were hairy. Really hairy. They got spindly as they tapered down from the backward-bending knees to the hooves.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
“Lord Timon told me to serve you as well as I would him,” she said. “And after a good session at the table… ”
“I get it.”
And call me a pervert, but it wasn’t the worst offer I’d ever had. The parts of her that mattered most were human, and cute.
But even though her being part goat wasn’t a turn-off, the master-slave vibe was. I was also pretty sure that a smart guy wouldn’t start humping the hobbits and trolls until he knew a whole lot more about them.
“It’s a nice offer,” I continued, “and who knows, maybe later. But for now, you can get dressed.”
“Yes, sir.” She turned, showing me the fluffy little tail at the base of her spine, and headed for the chair where she’d left her neatly hung and folded tux.
There was a room-service cart loaded with covered dishes parked beside it, and when I spotted that, I suddenly realized I was starving. My mouth watered, and my stomach gurgled. I jumped up and just about ran in that direction.
The girl heard me coming. She gave a soft cry and spun around. Her bright eyes were wide, and she covered herself with the starched white shirt in her hands.
I stopped short. “It’s all right! I promise. I just wanted to grab some breakfast.”
“I’m sorry!” she said. “I just thought… ” She trailed off like she was afraid that explaining would make me angry.
I sighed. “I get it. When you came in, you were ready to do what you thought you had to. But when I let you off the hook, it was a big relief. Then you heard me coming up fast behind you, and you thought I was going to make you go through with it after all. Maybe you even thought I like it rough.”
She nodded.
“I’m not like that.” I pulled the cart toward an antique version of the writing-table-and-chair setup you see in most hotel rooms.
“I should wait on you,” she said.
“You did. You brought the food to the room. I can take it from here.”
It turned out that, among other dishes, I had steak and eggs, eggs Benedict, a Denver omelet, and blueberry pancakes. I attacked the spread like the favorite in a competitive eating contest.
But by the time the horned girl finished dressing, I’d taken the edge off my hunger, and then I felt embarrassed. I wouldn’t blame her if she thought that, while she was part goat, I was mostly pig.
I wiped my mouth on a lacy napkin. “Do you want some of this? I can’t eat it all.”
“That’s kind of you, sir, but it wouldn’t be proper.”
“I won’t tell if you won’t. Come on. It would make me feel better about scaring you before.”
As she hauled another chair up to the table, I realized we didn’t have an extra fork. But I hadn’t gotten the spoon dirty, and she dug into the omelet and pancakes with that.
“I’m Billy,” I said.
“I know, sir. Everybody knows.”
“And you are… ?”
“A’marie.”
“Well, it’s nice to meet you, A’marie. And what are your people called? Your clan or whatever?”
Her face hardened. “Thank you for the food, but I have to get back to work. Please, when you’re finished, just put the cart in the hall.” She pushed back from the table.
“Please, wait. I’m sorry if that question was rude. Apparently I’m related to you ‘Old People,’ but I never knew until last night. I don’t know what’s good manners and what isn’t.”
She hesitated. “Really? You weren’t making fun of me?”
“Really.” I gave her the Cliff’s Notes version of how I’d gotten involved with Timon.
When I finished, she said, “It was fate, the two of you finding one another.”
“I don’t believe in fate. Luck, maybe. But anyway, should I not ask anybody about his race? Is that a big taboo?”
She hesitated. “No. It shows you’re a newcomer, and that might make people try to take advantage of you, but it’s not taboo. It’s just… when a satyr and a nymph have a boy baby, he’s supposed to be a satyr. When they have a girl baby, she’s supposed to be a nymph. And you see how I came out.”
“Seriously? Everybody’s fine with weird, ugly creatures like the Pharaoh, Gimble, and Murk the Talking Squid, but the way you look is a problem?”
“It was for my ‘clan,’ as you called them. I had to leave Tarpon Springs.” Tarpon Springs is a town in Tampa Bay with a big Greek-American population. Apparently it had a big Greek-mythology population, too. “But then I had other issues.” She forced a smile. “But it could be worse. At least I didn’t inherit the little billy-goat beard.”
“For what it’s worth,” I said, “I think you look good.”
A bit of the sadness went out of her smile. “You’re nice.”
“I don’t know about that, but I meant what I said.”
She hesitated. Then: “Do you want some advice?”
“All I can get.”
“Now that you’ve shown you can play, one of the others will probably offer you a bribe to throw the game. Take it. You’ll have the money you need, and once you bust out, nobody will have a reason to hurt you.”
I tried to read what was going on behind those silvery eyes of hers. “Are you telling me this because you’re worried about me, or because all you vassals and whatever want Timon gone?”
She hesitated again. “Both.”
“Is he really that bad?”
“If you’d been rough with me that would have been bad. But you could only have done what you’re really able to do. Anything can happen in a dream.”
“I guess I understand that. But are you guys sure another lord wouldn’t be even worse?”
“We’re willing to gamble. We think that if you go out, there’s a good chance Wotan will win. He owns so many dominions that he doesn’t spend a lot of time in any one of them. And people say that when he does show up, it’s mostly to hunt. So it’s not all that hard on his servants.”
I remembered Timon telling me that the majority of his kind didn’t literally eat people. “Who is it hard on? What does he hunt?”
“You have to understand, it’s not evil when one of his kind does it. It’s just a part of Nature.”
“I don’t think you really believe that, or that you want something like that going on where you live.”
“Maybe not, but I have to look after myself. It’s a hard world.”
“I guess so. And I’m sorry, but I’m not going to make it any softer for you. I’m not going in the tank.”
“Not even to save your life?”
“Timon says I’m safe in the hotel.”
“Timon will say whatever he needs to say to get what he wants.”
“I can believe that. Still, I won’t just sell him out.”
A’marie sighed. “I understand. Why would you care about us? You don’t even know us.”
“It’s not—”
“You care about winning, like any lord or champion. But thank you for being kind. Please be kind one more time, and don’t tell Timon what I said.”
“Sure.”
“Thank you. I really should go now.” She stood up.
After the door closed, I just looked at it for a second or two. Then I muttered, “Damn.”
Because I didn’t like the way the conversation had ended. I felt like I’d made a friend, then let her down and lost her, all in the space of a few minutes. But I didn’t feel bad enough to change my mind, and A’marie wasn’t there to hear about it if I did.
So I tried to forget about her and showered. When my various bandages got damp, they started peeling off, so I got rid of them. I’ve never liked leaving a Band-Aid on any longer than necessary anyway.
Afterward, on a hunch, I checked the dresser and closet and found fresh clothes. Someone had done a good job of guessing my sizes. Or maybe leprechauns had measured me in my sleep. Who knew?
I filled my pockets, found a room key on the little table by the door, and headed downstairs. I supposed a good champion would go looking for his patron right away. But I wasn’t in the mood for Timon yet. I figured I could at least let my breakfast settle before I started breathing his funk.
The Tuxedo Team had cleaned up after Wotan’s tantrum. And though they were still manning their posts, the lobby was quiet. And still candlelit. Unlike in my room, not a ray of sunlight penetrated the black windows. Maybe some of the Old People couldn’t tolerate it.
“Good afternoon,” said a scratchy voice.
Startled, I jerked around and saw Gimble in a shadowy corner. He was standing completely still, like a creepy statue outside a carnival spook house. That was why I hadn’t noticed him before.
“Hi,” I said.
“I guess you want to make sure no one mistakes you for the Pharaoh.”
“Excuse me?”
“You got rid of your bandages.”
“Oh. Right.” I know: So far, I wasn’t exactly coming across like a rocket scientist. Chalk it up to being rattled. You might think I would have gotten used to Gimble last night. But while we were playing poker, I understood how to relate to him, no matter how strange he looked. It was different now.
He waved at a conversation pit made up of chairs and a couch Wotan had missed, or else replacements for ones he hadn’t. “Shall we sit? Get to know one another?”
“Okay.” I figured the more I learned about Gimble and, well, everything, the better off I’d be. As I flopped down, and he sat with a smooth, slow motion that reminded me of a cherry picker lowering a worker to the ground, I said, “The little squirrel guys. They’re not anything like you.”
“No,” he said. Now that he’d moved around a little, his head had started nodding and probably wouldn’t stop for quite a while. “I won them and their lands in 1936. Before that, I’d never set foot in Pittsburgh. Of course, even if I’d come into existence there, it might not reflect in my appearance. I’m unique. That’s what nice about being a higher mechanical. No offense.”
“None taken.”
“So, how are you taking to our society? Our world?”
I considered trying to bullshit him and decided it probably wasn’t worth the effort. “Is it that obvious I’m a newbie?”
“Surprisingly, no. Not from your demeanor. But given your talent for cards, I assume you would already have made a name for yourself if Timon hadn’t just brought you up from the human world.”
“I get it.”
“But you didn’t answer my question. How are you holding up?”
“Well, I don’t keep wondering if I’ve gone crazy, or keep pinching myself to make sure I’m not dreaming. If there are people who really act like that, I guess I’m not one of them.”
No point adding that, while I had no doubt the lords and their world were real, that wasn’t the same as feeling like I belonged there, or not being scared shitless from time to time. Admitting that would show weakness, and even though we were making nice, I hadn’t forgotten Gimble was my opponent.
“But I’ve got to say,” I continued, “if anything was going to freak me out, it might be you. You call yourself a ‘mechanical.’ So somebody really did build you like a toaster or a car?” I smiled. “No offense.”
If I had offended him, I couldn’t tell it. Which was no surprise, since his painted face didn’t change, no matter what. “Essentially,” he said. “Although it required crafts and knowledge most humans couldn’t understand.”
“I’m a little surprised anybody would feel the need to build a lord. It seems like if there was an opening, you could always find a guy like Wotan or the Pharaoh eager to fill it.”
He laughed, which made him seem even more like a creepy decoration on a midway. “You’re right, but I was built to be a toy. I had to murder my maker and run to get my first taste of freedom.”
“But once you got out of his home fief, you were safe?”
“Not entirely. His family sent hunters after me. And in theory, anyone in authority could have arrested me. Fortunately, most of them didn’t know about my crime, and those who found out rarely cared what had happened in some faraway part of the world.”
“Still, it can’t have been easy to climb the ladder from killer on the run to lord.”
“You’re right, it wasn’t. The struggle for mastery is bitter and never-ending. And I hate to see a young man who tried to protect me tossed into the thick of it.”
As Victoria used to point out when she was urging me to find a career, or at least a real job, I was almost thirty. But that probably did look young to a guy who’d won the deed to Pittsburgh during the Depression.
I smiled. “For me, it’s just a poker game. At least as long as I stay in the hotel.”
“I think you’re shrewd enough to realize it’s more complicated than that.”
“Well, maybe. I have figured out that you people admire cheating if it’s done with style.”
“Have you also noticed we’re good at holding grudges? Have you thought about what will happen to you when the game is over?”
I shrugged. “I’ll take the cash Timon’s paying me, go back to the human world, and never see any of you guys again.” I didn’t know if that was true, or even if I wanted it to be. But so what? I just wanted to keep Gimble talking, not spill my guts to him.
“I imagine,” he said, “that any of us could find you if he really wanted to. Wotan certainly could. He’s many things—none of them pleasant—but a hunter most of all.”
Gimble was trying to scare me. I knew because it was working. I took a breath. “Timon said there are ways of protecting me.” Although he hadn’t. Except for me getting paid, we hadn’t talked about what would happen after the game much at all.
“Timon won’t care anything about you after his eyes grow back. He feels no loyalty or obligation to anyone. That’s why his vassals hate him.”
“But you,” I said, “you’re different.”
“I am,” he said. “And I swear that if you help me win, I’ll make you the steward of Timon’s holdings. You’ll run this place—this city—whenever I’m not here. If you throw in with me but I don’t win, I’ll still make you one of my deputies. I’ll protect you, provide for you, and train you to use your gifts.”
“That sounds pretty good. What do you want me to do, throw off all my chips to you?”
“No. Or rather, not until you and I are heads up. I want you to help me eliminate the others.”
“How?” I asked. Even though I had a good idea.
He took a cautious look around. It made his head bob more than it had been before. “You’ve picked up on the fact that all our opponents practice the shadow sciences in one form or another.”
“If by ‘shadow sciences’ you mean magic, then sure. It would be hard to miss.”
“It’s how they cheat. And how they expect others to cheat. So if we do it differently—”
“We can fly under their radar? Isn’t that what you were trying to do with the gadget inside your arm? It didn’t seem like it worked all that well.”
“No,” he said, “it didn’t. But there are other ways.”
“Like signaling,” I said. In other words, telling your partner what cards you hold. Which helps the cheaters in several different ways.
“Do I take it that you already know how?”
I shrugged. “There are lots of ways. One of the easiest is putting chips on the backs of your cards. Where you put them shows what you’ve got. Or, you can brush the spot with your finger. Your partner just has to make sure he doesn’t blink and miss it.”
“Excellent! If I don’t even have to teach you, so much the better. We just need to compare notes and make sure we’re both using precisely the same system.”
I shook my head. “Sorry.”
He hesitated. “I beg your pardon?”
“I said I know it when I see it.” Maybe this kind of shit was cutting-edge in Fantasyland, but back on my turf, every serious poker player had to learn to spot it. “I didn’t say I’d ever used it, and I’m not going to start by teaming up with you.”
“Even though I’ve warned you what Timon is.”
“Even though I halfway believe you. I made a deal with him, and, well, that’s that. But I appreciate you letting me know you’re into signaling. I’ll watch for it, and if I spot it, I’ll say so. And if Wotan gets pissed off again, don’t expect me to hold him back.”
Gimble stared at me long enough that I started to wonder if he was going to take a swing at me, and “traditions of hospitality” be damned. Then he made a long, soft sound that I didn’t recognize at first. Eventually I realized it was how a thing that didn’t need to breathe had taught himself to sigh.
“You really won’t survive without a stronger patron than Timon,” he said. “He’s on his way down, and you’re too human. It shows in everything you say and every choice you make.”
“You never know. It might make me harder to read.”
“For me, perhaps. But you have opponents who started out as human, or nearly so. They’ll know exactly how to use it.”
“Well, I’m still going to stick with Timon.”
“I see that.” He stood up, so I did, too. “So I suppose there’s nothing left to say except thank you for coming between Wotan and me.”
He held out his hand, and I gave him mine. I felt a sting in the meaty part of my palm.
I said, “Ow!” Gimble let go. I looked at my hand and saw a little bead of blood.
Gimble saw it, too, then looked around. “Clarence!” he bellowed. “Clarence!”
Clarence came running. Or scurrying. He was one of the little squirrel guys, about three feet tall if you didn’t count the tail, skin black and leathery where the gray fur didn’t cover it. “Yes, Lord!” he chattered. “Here, Lord!”
Gimble stuck out his hand. “You made this,” he said.
Clarence hesitated. “Yes, Lord. I mean, my crew did.”
“Look at it closely. See if you can find a sharp edge.”
Clarence hesitated, and then, working partly by squinting at close range and partly by touch, obeyed. “There is a tiny little rough spot,” he said at last. “But it will only take a second to smooth it out.”
Using that same hand, Gimble grabbed him by the throat and jerked him off the ground. Clarence made choking noises, kicked, and pawed at the tin man’s wrist.
“Then you should have taken the second when you had it,” Gimble said. “Now it’s too late. You’ve embarrassed me and injured Lord Timon’s proxy.”
“For God’s sake,” I said, “it was just a pinprick!”
Gimble kept on strangling the little guy.
“Look,” I said, “you said I helped you. Put him down, and we’re even.”
Gimble dropped him. Clarence thumped down on the marble and lay there gasping and shaking.
“Thanks,” I said. Not because I really felt like thanking Gimble—right then, I wouldn’t have minded taking a sledgehammer to him—but because it seemed like the smart thing to do.
Head bob-bob-bobbing, Gimble kept looking down at Clarence. “The champion forgave you,” he said. “He saved your life. Thank him.”
“Thank you, sir!” Clarence wheezed.
“It’s okay,” I said.
“But I don’t forgive you,” Gimble said. “Not yet.” He made a fist and backhanded Clarence across the side of the head. It knocked the little guy cold and stretched him out on the floor. Blood flowed from the gash in his forehead—if squirrels have foreheads.
As I knelt down beside him to make sure he was breathing, I said, “And you’re the guy who takes good care of your assistants.”
“Yes,” said Gimble, “but this is only a serf. I’ll see you at the table.” He turned and walked away.