–Even money.
Ashley gulped. His hand, prepared to reveal his hole card as soon as she stayed, trembled in midair.
It was the choice to throw away the blackjack payout. And the path to the minimum guaranteed winnings.
“You want to throw away a six-million-dollar payout? You know that’s a difference of four million dollars!”
Balot sat motionless.
The Doctor’s hands shook on the back of her chair.
Next to him, Bell Wing closed her eyes, then opened them again when the moment of silence had passed.
“I never thought you’d be able to throw away a chance of winning six million dollars. I miscalculated. I am utterly defeated. Now I’ve seen courage. I’ve seen humility. For the first time, I’ve seen somebody beat me completely.”
He slowly lowered his hovering hand to the table.
Suddenly, Balot’s vision clouded, and she could no longer see.
Tears filled her eyes. They wouldn’t stop. Their warmth flowed down her cheeks and, mixed with the thin layer of silver powder on her skin, fell to the table. As it all spilled, her only thought was, I did this. She had climbed the last step of the stairway to heaven and jumped into space. There she set foot on a new stairway—one entirely her own.
She was frightened. Her body shook. She summoned the courage to take one step forward.
Only later did she realize she had been crying endless tears. And from her trance, she spoke to her rival. How she had won. Why she had been able to win.
–I was trapped in a car when people came to save me. Like your brother, I too have died.
Ashley sighed.
“You’re like a mermaid.” He shrugged. “You remind me of the story of the fish who exchanged her voice for a pair of legs to walk on land. Even if she did end up dissolving into foam, she was a brave woman. Even though each step felt like a sword passing through her, she walked the land because she wanted to know the truth.”
He turned the hole card. Balot couldn’t see anything through her tears.
“I didn’t think this card would be defeated.”
–I can’t see it.
“It doesn’t matter. You won. A perfect victory.”
Two cards rose through the haze, symbolic of the man before her.
The ace and the jack of spades. The strongest blackjack—the one-eyed jack.
Chapter 11
CONNECTING ROD
01
Everyone waited patiently for Balot to finish wiping her face with the cloth.
Ashley didn’t even ask what she intended to do for the next game. Neither did he collect the cards in preparation for the shuffle. He just waited for her.
When Balot eventually finished wiping the tears from her face and looked up, there was Ashley, holding out the box. The box full of golden chips.
Those on the floor watched in stunned silence as Balot reached for the box and took a golden chip, one with the OctoberCorp emblem etched on its face. When Ashley said, And now please choose your other one, the whole crowd seemed about to faint. Balot checked for the last OctoberCorp emblem—the final piece of the puzzle—and once she’d located it, she gingerly took the chip into her care along with the other three.
“Perhaps you might be able to share with me—only if it suits you, that is—just what it is about these chips that you’re seeking?” Ashley said as he placed the box—now deprived of a third of its golden luster—back into place.
Balot casually slipped the chips into her glove—as if they were unimportant—and answered him.
–I made the trade too, I think. Like the mermaid with the sorceress. So that I would be able to walk, in a manner of speaking.
“So that’s what you’re aiming for, is it? To be able to walk properly?”
–I think so.
Ashley nodded, greatly impressed. Or so it seemed, but then he frowned.
It wasn’t Balot’s fault, though—indeed, his sudden change of demeanor was nothing to do with her and everything to do with the barrage of words that were now assaulting his ears through his earpiece. Balot knew immediately who was haranguing him so—not so much from the voice, but from the words themselves.
If the vicious words of recrimination were anything to go by, this was indeed a cursed man, the man whose life was full of the emptiness of his own creation.
Balot watched Ashley as he winced and then cringed under the vicious barrage of recriminations and insults. Somehow she found it funny.
–The owner of the casino, perhaps?
“As you say, miss—very perceptive of you. Looks like we’ve not just entered a minefield but also stepped right on top of a charged mine to boot. I am sorry about this—I would have liked to present a more professional face to you…” With the last words, Ashley’s glance flickered toward Bell Wing.
“It’s a bit too late for that, Ashley. You’ve long since fallen for this girl,” Bell Wing pointed out, bringing him back down to earth. Ashley grinned good-naturedly. Balot thought she’d seen this smile once before somewhere.
He turned back to Balot with the same expression and continued. “I have one round left to win everything back from you and finish you off, apparently. Otherwise it’s the flamethrower.”
–Flamethrower?
“Pink slip. His dismissal papers,” Bell Wing explained. Ashley bowed to confirm this—just so.
“Looks like this is how it’s going to end for me, then. One more round is nowhere near enough time for me to find a way to beat you. It might be a different story if we had another ten rounds or so, of course, but by then I’d probably be rooting for you anyway; I’m sure I’d want you to win by the end, which would kind of defeat the whole object, wouldn’t it? Hmm, what to do…”
–Please call the owner of the casino here. I want to return these chips to him in person.
Balot felt the information on the third chip being sucked out from within her glove as she spoke. Ashley was rarely lost for words, but he was now. He turned to look at Bell Wing.
In turn, Bell Wing was no less surprised. The two dealers looked at each other in silence for a while, trying to work out what was behind this sudden turn of events and what it could mean.
When the silence was eventually broken it was in the form of a roaring laugh from Ashley.
“Man, you really got us, didn’t you. Are you saying that it was never your intention to try and break the bank here?” Ashley’s fine-whiskered face was now creased in laughter, as if he’d just been subjected to a barrage of the most hilarious comedy known to mankind.
Balot nodded, and Ashley looked up to the heavens. “In other words, you’ve already found what you’ve come for. A target that we never even knew about and still don’t know the details of… Incredible. Well, you know what? I may be here as the yojimbo, but my job is to protect the casino—I’m not a bodyguard. The owner will just have to fend for himself. And if you’re after him, miss, I can’t say I rate his chances too highly.”
Bell Wing was nodding too—she had finally understood it all.
Ashley looked back at Balot, then placed his massive hand over his equally massive chest. “I’ll be praying for you, miss, that your magic spell lasts as long as possible.” His tone of voice was now dignified and polite, in such contrast to his raucous laughter of a minute ago that Balot wondered whether she had dreamed that laughter.