Kikun shifted on the cushions. “What happened?”
“Huh?” Jolted out of her drowse, she turned her head to look toward the shadow in the chair.
“How did you get out of that?”
“Oh.” She pushed up, swung her legs over the edge and sat with her head in her hands. “It was Digby, he sent one of his Ops to make a deal. Hah!” She straightened up. “The Op would spring me if I either paid Digby’s fee or went to work for him. Digby I mean.” She pushed onto her feet, grabbed a robe off the foot of the bed. “I’m for a bath. If I’m going to get into a game at the Shimmery I can’t be so ripe no one will sit next me.”
2
The door was three massive planks with a dalbir jug carved in low relief head high in the center plank. She pushed the door open and stepped into a long room with bare roof beams and smoky lubrinjah-oil lanterns hanging from those beams. It was a warm and rosy room, the amber lamplight waking amber and crimson lights in the smoky oily wood and the crimson leather on the stools.
Funny, she thought, all the worlds I’ve been on, a bar is a bar is a bar…
There were groups of men sitting at tables, others on stools at a long solid counter by the inner wall. It was built atop a knee-high platform that was just wide enough for the scatter of stools. They must lose a lot of drunks on that, she thought, fall off and break their necks. Oh well, that’s their problem.
The low mutter of talk died away as she moved into the room, picked up again as she strolled to the bar, relaxed and easy. For the first time on this world she was in really familiar territory. She was the only woman here, but she’d met that before, it just meant she had to be quiet and quick to establish her credentials.
There was a brass grab rail under the counter’s edge. She ignored it, stepped up and settled herself on one of the ladder legged stools. The other patrons made their hostility felt. The weight of their stares tried to push her out of the place. She ignored that, knocked on the wood to summon the barman sitting on his own stool, leaning against the cabinets behind him.
He took his time about coming but he did come, and something in the way he moved tickled at Rose’s memory. She kept her face calm, tried to trace the tickle. Who…
He set his hands on the bar, played a small impatient tune with his thumbs.
There was a tiny white scar below his left thumbnail, three lobed, like a classic flurdelli. Yes. Well and well and well…
Abruptly she was back in an ivory and gilt room and he was seated across from her at the Vagnag table…
She blinked. “Something in a local wine. White and dry,” she said, “No gahwang in it, I hope. It’s a tasty herb, but rather overused, don’t you think?” She spoke in interlingue, not the local patter, the first step in settling what she was. “Rather too much of a good thing, yes?”
He nodded without speaking and went off, returning with a glass bottle stoppered with waxed leather rolled into a tight bundle. He showed it to her, removed the stopper with an odd misshapen gripping tool, poured a little in a glass, and passed the glass to her.
She checked the scar again. Yes. It’s him. She tasted the wine, concealed a grimace as it bit back. “It’ll do,” she said.
She wore a simple black dress back then, avrishum from Jaydugar, outrageously expensive, a gift from her last lover but one. He probably stole it but she wasn’t fussy about provenance those days and appreciated the thought, though she didn’t appreciate the occasion that induced the gift. A black dress doesn’t erase a black eye. He’d vanished one day. Killed, she thought, and moved on taking the dress with her, lost it that time she got in trouble on Tyurm, mourned the gift a lot more than the giver. That night her hair was braided and pomaded and set with jade and pearls, with a necklace of jade beads and pearls dipping into the deep vee of the dress. Three of the men in the game weren’t professionals or obsessive gamblers, they had eyes for more than their cards; she’d dressed for them. He was the fourth man, quiet, thin and almost too handsome. When he sat down and brushed at his sleeve, fingers signaling a pro, she was annoyed. She’d gone to a lot of trouble setting up this game and was irritated to find another of her guild intruding onto her pasture. She drew her right forefinger along her jawline, flicked it from under her chin. Sign for back off, these are mine.
He smiled and tapped thumb against thumb, the first time she’d seen the scar. Challenge. She didn’t hesitate, tugged at her left earlobe. Agreed.
They fought their war under the noses of the other players, stripping the marks almost as an afterthought; the last Chapter was between them, all for all. The dice and the cards had gone for her, and she was just enough cleverer in her play to clean Table, Pen, and Holse.
He bowed and walked off smiling, a flicker of his fingers congratulating her and acknowledging her victory. He had reason for the smile, he’d cleaned Table in at least half the Chapters and won Holse twice. The last Chapter had put a hole in those winnings, but he’d doubled his stake and that was enough to satisfy all but the pickiest. She left that night on a free trader going elsewhere at a leisurely pace and before she slept, she wriggled with a pleasure she hadn’t felt in years. It was a good hard fight and she’d enjoyed it enormously.
She sipped at the wine and watched the man move off to stow the bottle in the cabinet he’d got it from, driving the stopper in with the palm of his hand and laying the bottle flat. This was a long way down from that. She sighed. For both of them. In some ways.
He should have gotten that scar removed, why he’d kept it she hadn’t a clue unless it was a mascot of some kind. Ah well, ah well, that’s the way it goes. He was good, but he wasn’t first rank even at his peak and he’d been sliding from second the last time she’d seen him. Where was that? Cazarit? Lumilly? No, I can’t remember. Long time ago…
She sipped at the wine and thought pleasant thoughts. Those days she’d lived hard and fast, everything was sun-bright and coalblack, the ups were shining soaring joy and the downs were misery condensed. She’d lived a calmer life since she’d hired on with Digby; there were satisfactions in that, but sometimes, she yearned for the old times… She downed the last of the wine, knocked her knuckles on the wood and straightened her shoulders as he got the bottle out again and brought it to her.