There was still some of his bone beauty left, but he was wrinkled now, like old parchment left in the rain and put away wet. And there was something odd about the left side of his face. Stroke or wound. Maybe. Bad dye job on the hair. A dead black that left him looking older than god. “Traggan 2,” she said as he filled the glass again. “The Silver Circus. Forty some years ago. Remember?” She brushed at her sleeve, flickered her fingers through the pro-sign.
He set the glass down, pushed the stopper home. “They call me Hadluk here. Been some changes. How’d you know?”
“I’m Rose. Was blonde then. In black avrishum.” She nodded as she saw recognition flare in his eyes. Finally, she thought. “The coloring is camouflage.” She reached out, ran the tip of her forefinger over the tiny scar. “You don’t want folk to know you, you should get rid of that.”
He shrugged. “Here? Who cares. The wine’s twenty kuries a pop.”
She set a silver pera on the bar, watched him sweep it away, count out her change in the copper kuries. “Ah well, way it goes. Word is you run Vagnag here.”
“Not me.” He drew his thumb down the subtly distorted left side of his face. “Past it, Rose, long past it. Gray market ananiles. Bad batch. Burnt gaps in the old brain. Can’t do the calcs any more.”
“Too bad. I would have enjoyed another pass.” She didn’t mean it, but it was the polite thing to say. “Buy yourself a drink on me. Old times.” She pushed the coppers back at him to pay for her second drink and his, signed to him to keep the change and watched, amused, as he chose a different bottle to pour for himself.
He swallowed, shuddered. One eyelid drooping, he leaned against the wall cabinets, hip hitched on the flat top. “Heard you hit a slippery patch a while back.”
“Wheel turns, Hadluk. Just let me make the right connections and it’s all back again.
He nodded, but she could see pity and a flare of malice in his dark eyes. He’d lost his face, no wonder he quit, he must have started growing tells like weeds. “Need a stake?” he said; wariness replacing pity.
“No.” She didn’t elaborate and he asked no more questions.
Humming under his breath, he began playing finger games on the bar, short nails adding an edge to the thumping of his fingertips.
Rose tapped a counter rhythm. These were pleasant little sounds, innocuous, but by the time they broke off their game, they’d bargained out his commission for introducing her to a game, his percentage of the take, and set a time for her to show back here.
She took a swallow of the wine. “I don’t want to come on as a whore,” she said, “give me the local protocols.”
“Hmm. Long skirt, arms covered in the evening. That’s important. Bare arms after dark are an advert of intent.”
“I’ll dig something up.” She drank the last of the wine, pushed the glass away. “Before I show, see the others know I don’t play on my back, huh?”
“That hasn’t changed, huh?” He grinned at her, a tinge of red in the whites of his eyes; whatever he was drinking, it was powerful stuff. “Don’t worry, I’ll pass the word on.”
“Thanks.” She slid off the stool. “See you when.”
3
Autumn Rose hurried along the jagged semi-street, heading for the market. She needed to pick up something she could wear without binding herself into so much material she’d be hampered if she had to fight and something she wouldn’t be embarrassed to be seen in. And something that was neither so expensive it was a temptation, nor so cheap and flimsy she lost “face” with the players.
She plunged across a dark sideway, flinched as a group of Angatines came out of the shadows and began to wail at her. Cursing, she turned down the next opening, turned again and yet again, losing them finally, almost losing herself before she stopped her flight and began working her way back to the market, This was what… the tenth, eleventh time they’d ambushed her? They were getting to be more than a nuisance, jumping out at her everywhere with the same accusing plaint, she was a demon come to do harm to the people. No one seemed to pay much attention to them, but you could never tell what spark would set the locals off.
When she followed Hadluk into one of the back rooms, there were already half a dozen men seated at the Vagnag table.
She settled into the empty chair. “Rose,” she said, nodded at Hadluk. He went out.
The man at her right gathered up the eight-sided dice, handed them to her. He was an offworlder, probably a free-trader, big, burly, blue-black with a noble nose like a hawk’s beak jutting from the gray fur on his face. He wore a long robe, earth colors in a violent design. Heavy gold earrings dangled from long lobes, brushing against his massive neck. “Tayteknas,” he rumbled at her. “He tell you?”
She took the dice, remembering with pleasure the feel of the crisp points against her palm, the cool facets. She hefted them, judging the weight, the feel, the sound as they clicked together. Yes, she thought. “Yes,” she said aloud; she dropped the dice on the table and watched them dance then settle. She reached into one of the large pockets the skirt came equipped with, took out the sack and laid out three gold emas on the ledge in front of her. Next to these she lined up five piles of four silver peras each. She took one ema and flipped it into the Holse, the circle drawn in the center of the dark blue felt. “Who’s marker?”
Tayteknas tapped a blue black finger against the front of his robe. “Me.”
“What’s high so far?”
“Double eight plus three.”
“Hmp. Vakkar. All gone?”
“You’re the last.”
“I see.” She gathered the three dice, held them a moment warming in her hand, feeling for the rhythm-the beginnings of the rhythm. It wasn’t there yet, but it would come. The smell of the table came up around her, a subtle aroma rising from the felt, the paint on it, the coins, the blend of odors drifting from the men-a smell that brought memories rushing back. Some places, the game rules wouldn’t let you handle the dice, you had to use a cup to throw them and a scoop to pick them up; this wasn’t that big a game. Just as well.
She rattled the dice, rolled them out, watched them dance across the felt. There was tumult in her then, a vigor she’d lost for years, a joy she’d made herself forget. The yellow dice flickered over the dark blue felt, then slowed and rocked to rest. “Skotsker,” she said with satisfaction. Six and eight and five.
Tayteknas grunted. “Vakkar rules Skotsker,” he said. “Pulleet first. Rose second. Barangkaly third. Tayteknas fourth. Kahtik fifth. Uj sixth. Nikeldy seventh.” He broke the seal on a deck of Vagnag cards, peeled off the wrappings. “All entries in the Holse.” He reached down, brought the rake from where it was hanging on the table, cleared the seven gold coins from the painted circle to a painted half-circle nuzzling against the side of the table. “Entries in the Sump. Open, one pera. Raise limit, fifty ema.” He took a silver coin, tossed it into the Holse, set the deck on the felt, and used the rake to push it across to Pulleet.
Pulleet was a small dark man with pale splotches on his face, irregular pink, yellow, tan areas breaking up the chocolate brown over the rest of him, pigment deficit, the result of disease or birth defect. Offworlder, probably freetrader. He had small hands, the skin on them blotchy like his face. He handled the cards with a deftness and dedication she could appreciate and dealt them out in packets of three to each of the players in the order given, matching names to faces for Rose.
Nikeldy was another offworlder. Freetrader most likely. Quiet little man. Forgettable.
Kahtik wore a University ring, engineer’s compass laid into the jewel. Freetech, no Companies on this world. Some freetechs were erratic but brilliant, some were merely adequate. Kahtik looked middlish, reasonably prosperous, but not flying the highwire. Vagnag was a game of combinations and probabilities; as a University-trained engineer, he’d be high on math skills; if his game sense was as good, he’d be a formidable player.