Still, I had to admit, the too-interested eyes that had strayed towards us were moving away, a smug, knowing look crossing the faces of the other gamblers at his table. Now they thought they understood what I was and who owned me. Sam knew what he was doing.
‘You’re going to need a lot more than luck tonight, my foreign friend,’ a man with a dark green sheema draped loosely around his neck said with a laugh. ‘With cards like those.’
‘You looked at my cards?’ Sam slapped a hand dramatically to his chest in feigned shock, like he’d just been shot through the heart. ‘You curs, you cheaters, you—’ I didn’t have time for this.
‘Sam,’ I interrupted his mock tirade. ‘Buy me a drink.’ When he looked about to protest, I toyed pointedly with the sleeve of the arm slung around my shoulder. I could feel the cards tucked inside his shirt pressing against me. ‘Now, before I say something that might get you shot.’ He took my meaning as I got to my feet, freeing myself of the indignity of his lap.
‘Gentlemen,’ he said dramatically as he rose, kicking his chair back out of the way, ‘your infidelity leaves me no choice but to fold this hand. But I will return when I’ve had some luck rub off on me.’ He winked widely, pulling me tight against him by the waist. Thumbscrews. The way I murdered him was going to include thumbscrews.
‘So here’s what I’m thinking,’ Sam said. He drew me towards a table in a dark corner and gestured to the barman with two fingers. ‘Your timing is perfect to help me cheat my way to victory.’ The barman set down two glasses of amber liquid in front of us, sliding mine to me with a careful once-over. I met his gaze steadily in return. ‘All we need to do is work out some sort of code between us,’ Sam went on blithely, clearly not caring who overheard.
‘Selling Shazad’s jewellery wasn’t enough? Are you just getting greedy now?’ I ran a finger along the rim of the glass of liquor that had just been put down in front of me.
‘Oh, don’t be like that.’ He jostled me, like it was all some big joke. ‘My friend over there is charging an arm and a leg to get smuggled out of here.’ He nodded towards a man at the bar who was still looking at us. ‘And the only people who can get away with missing their limbs and still being as dashing as I am are pirates. I have no interest in spending the rest of my life eating fish with my hook hand.’
‘Why would anyone replace their hand with a hook?’ Sam didn’t used to give me this much of a headache.
He opened his mouth like he was going to explain to me some foreign concept that had gone far over my head, like he used to in our meetings at the palace, but then seemed to change his mind and took a sip of his drink instead. ‘The point is,’ Sam ploughed on, a nervous energy seeming to animate him, ‘that if I want to get out of this city and keep all my appendages, I’ve got to find something else to offer him.’
I glanced over at the man leaning on the bar. If he actually had a way out of this city, then I was the Queen of Albis.
‘So, tell me, what exactly is your plan here?’ I shifted my chair so that I had him in my sights. ‘Even if you can get out of Miraji, you’re a deserter, Sam.’ I didn’t bother softening the blow. ‘I don’t know what they do in Albis, but here if you turn your coat on the army, they take your head off your shoulders.’
‘In Albis, they let you keep your neck and use it to hang you from a tall tree.’ He didn’t sound all that bothered by it. ‘An oak, if there’s one immediately available, but ash or yew will do at a pinch. And since it’d be criminal to rob the world of me, I’m not going back to Albis. I hear the Ionian Peninsula has beautiful women and good food and the sun lets up every once in a blue moon, unlike here.’
‘So you got shot once and now you’re running scared?’ We’d all got ourselves shot once or twice in this war. I’d dug a bullet out of Jin’s shoulder before I even knew his name. I had a scar across my stomach from a wound that had nearly killed me. Sam lost a little bit of blood and suddenly he was deserting all over again.
But Sam didn’t look as cowed as I’d hoped he would. ‘Yes,’ he said, like I was the one being unreasonable. ‘Anyone who isn’t afraid of dying is stupid or lying.’ He tipped his drink at me like a bow. ‘And I’m a better liar than that.’
I tapped my glass, thinking of what Tamid had told me about the likelihood of me burning alive when I released Fereshteh’s energy from the machine. ‘We’re all going to die some day, Sam. What else are you going to do? Keep running from one country to another until you get a knife between the ribs because you walked through the wrong wall in the next city? Or from poison in your glass because you charmed the wrong woman in the one after that? Or do you think it might be worth standing still for once?’ I asked. ‘Here with us.’
A wry smile crossed his face. ‘They talked a lot about making a stand when I joined the army, too. Turns out what that means for boys who were born farmers’ sons is that they wanted us to stand in front of enemies’ cannons so the rich men’s sons behind us could go home with the glory.’
‘I don’t care about glory,’ I challenged. ‘I care about getting our people home. People I know you care about, too.’
Sam leaned his head back against the wall, like he was truly considering it. Out of the corner of my eye, I realised that the man at the bar was looking at us again. His eyes darted away, like he’d been caught. There was something unsettling about him.
‘Sam,’ I said carefully, keeping my tone neutral, ‘did that friend of yours happen to say how it was he’s able to sail out of Izman now when no one else has managed it in weeks?’
‘Mmm?’ Sam scratched his eyebrow with a thumb evasively. ‘I don’t recall.’
That sounded as good as a no to me. The man’s foot was tapping out a frantic timpani against the edge of the bar. Almost like he was nervous. Or waiting for something.
‘How about a price?’ I asked. ‘Was there a number mentioned before you turned up here with your money, or did you get here to find out that whatever amount you brought wasn’t enough?’
‘Well …’ Sam looked thoughtful. The drinks were dulling him. ‘That’s how business works. When a service is so in demand … it would be stupid to set his going rate too low …’ Now even he sounded sceptical.
‘You don’t think it’s strange –’ my hand strayed to my pistol even as I kept my voice steady – ‘that this is all happening now, right when the Sultan is especially desperate to be get his daughter back. And that you just happened not to have the right amount of money so that you’d have to stick around, gambling for a shot at getting out.’
It finally dawned on Sam what I was saying. He cursed in Albish, looking more annoyed than anything else. ‘It’s a trap.’
Chapter 8