The main entryway to the gondola was a ramp at the rear of the hundred-foot room. It lowered with a creak of wicker and wood. A chariot stood there, the horses sweating and rolling their eyes as they shifted from hoof to hoof with a clatter of iron against brick. Around it waited mounted guards, riding with saddles and stirrups of Islander pattern, rifles in scabbards at their right knees.
"The King awaits the Seg Kallui," their officer said, dismounting and saluting, then going to one knee.
Kathryn nodded. "The queen hears the words of the King," she said.
"So, bet you I can make five pat hands from half a deck," Private Hook said, shuffling easily.
They might be under attack at any minute; that was no reason not to pick up a little extra cash. The best time for it, in fact, with people nervous and wrought-up. The cards poured from side to side temptingly on the gray blanket of the hospital bunk, but there wasn't time to start a poker game.
"Twenty-five cards, no more."
"By the Horned Man, I think you can do it too-with your deck," someone said sardonically.
"No, no," Hook said smoothly. "With your deck, and you get to shuffle."
"Aw, and you'll fly to the moon by flapping your arms," a Marine said.
Several who'd been recruited from the Earth Folk hissed at the blasphemy, which the scoffer answered with a jerk of his middle finger. Hook frowned carefully.
"Well, if you're not afraid of bad luck after dissing Moon Woman like that, why not put some money on it?" he asked. "Say, five dollars at five-to-one in your favor."
"I'll do that," the other man said brashly. "If you don't need beer and girls when we get back to Hattusas, I do."
"And you'll never get laid without paying a local for it, Haudicar," a female voice said.
The challenger scowled and pulled a Pacific Bank five-dollar note out of his pocket; that took a little work, with his right arm in a cast. Then he went over to his haversack and fished out a pack of cards. Hook waited patiently while the mark shuffled; the Fiernan woman who'd spoken caught his eye and winked behind the victim's back, moving her fingers and lips silently in the Counting Chant.
"Put up your twenty-five, Hook. Better than three weeks' pay, a gift from the Gods."
A belligerent blue-eyed stare from Haudicar, as innocent of mathematics as he was of molecular biology. Hook took the greasy, limp pack and set it on the gray blanket that covered the foot of his bunk, then split it evenly. A fair selection who were mobile enough gathered around; not many went two months in the pungent gloom of a troopship's hold outbound from Nantucket Town without learning poker.
"Which one?" he said, and the mark tapped the pile of cards on his left.
"Here we go-
Haudicar stared as the five pat hands flowed out beneath Hook's nimble features. The onlookers yelped and hooted laughter, and a slow flush went up from the collar of his T-shirt to prominent pink ears.
"Care to try again, double or nothing?" Hook said casually, scooping up the five-dollar bill. He winked back at the Fiernan girl; he usually didn't need to pay a local when he wanted a tumble-stupid to pay, when charm could get you better sex for free-but even in the Corps it never hurt to set the mood with some beer and fancy eats on the civilian economy. With two men for every woman in most units, the competition could get a little fierce at times. Besides that, he was saving for the end of his hitch. Haudicar swore and pulled out another five-dollar bill.
"Anyone else want to go with the odds?" Hook said brightly.
A few bystanders did, but one insisted on using her pack, and dealing out twenty-five cards at random. Hook grinned like a shark as he arranged another five hands, ignoring the curses and stacking the bills and coins.
"Now, who'll match this pile one last time?" he said.
It looked as if Haudicar would, until he looked around and saw that all the Fiernan-born in the room were standing back, most of them grinning. Then he made the sign of the horns.
"Magic!" he spat.
The girl who'd winked at Hook laughed aloud. "Arithmetic, you dumb swan-eating sheep-shagger," she said. "The odds were fifty to one in his favor!"
The roar of laughter that followed that was cut short when a corporal looked through the door.
"You lot are pretty healthy, then," he said. A working party behind him carried in rifles, bandoliers, and a thousand-round ammunition box. Several entrenching tools were piled rattling atop it. "Get busy-knock some more loopholes in the wall there, it's only mud brick two stacks thick."
Those not too ill to work got to work, except for Hook. "Nobody want one last bet?" he asked, riffling the cards.
"At a time like this?" someone said, digging at the wall with the pick-spike on the back of the blade of the entrenching tool.
"Why not? No loss if we lose, we'll all be dead… oh, all right then," Hook grumbled, and picked up a rifle, wincing a bit at the pull of his lanced boil as he went to the slit window. "Holy shit!"
"So," Kashtiliash said, shaking back the sleeve of his robe and holding out his cup. A servant slid forward silently and poured, each movement as graceful as a reed. "You will not plead your brother's case?"
"Nope," Kathryn Hollard said, reaching for a date. "He can do that himself. You're the King here, Kash, and he's the commander of allied forces. It'd be a good idea to hear him out, but you decide, and I'll back you up whatever your decision is. It's going on for God-damned November; it'll be the Year 11 before we get to Walker, if we keep dicking around with this stuff."
The Kassite's thick-muscled shoulders relaxed slightly as he sipped.
Kathryn gave him a slow smile, and went on: "Actually, I had a different sort of discussion in mind for this evening."
Her eyes traveled to the arched doorway that led into the bedchamber. Kashtiliash grinned back at her.
They were dining in one of the smaller chambers in the King's private rooms-or as private as anything could be, in this ant farm of a palace. One wall was carved cedar screen-work, giving out onto a section of flat roof that in turn overlooked a courtyard planted with palms and flowers. It was still warm but not uncomfortable, especially with the overhead fan that swept back and forth above, to the pull of a cord in the hand of someone sitting in the corridor outside-she'd gotten the idea from rereading a book of Kipling's short stories. A punkah, they'd called it in the days of the Raj.
She and the King reclined on couches of carved boxwood, cushioned in something remarkably like Moroccan leather, and ate from a low table set between them with lion's-paw feet done in ivory, its oval Egyptian-ebony top inlaid with lapis, ivory, and semiprecious stones. The platters bore the remains of roast chicken, a dish of beef and lentils with apricots, skewers of grilled lamb, salads, breads, pastries, spiced steamed vegetables. The palace artisans had learned to produce creditable bronze-and-gold imitations of the plain metal fork in a Marine field kit, too, which made eating a lot less messy.
"Makes a nice change from tents and dog biscuit," she said, stretching and nibbling on the fruit.
They had been down to hardtack for a while, when the supply lines up from the navigable Euphrates got shaky. Not to mention the grit and dirt; nothing like a couple of weeks in the field in the deserts of Mitanni-northern Syria, in the twentieth-to really work up an appreciation for a good bath and a soft linen robe. Gentle music tweetled from a corner, vivid tapestries billowed slightly along the walls, curious beasts and flowers and scenes from myths she hadn't had time to learn; the ceiling was smooth plaster set with rosettes of burnished copper. The Islander kerosene lamps made the room brighter than it would have been a year ago, but the yellow light suited the room, turning it into a fantasy of soft color amid the scents of cedarwood and incense.