"Yes, mostly only the young and poor, or those carrying out duty service. They’re issued a certain number of Tears each month, because of course the reigning Towers are always competing. We’re just spice, wild cards in their games." He paused, looking around. "Well, on the lower tiers I expect we’re mostly profit for the city coffers, or wherever all that money goes."
Rian wondered, watching a pair of Court members flying overhead. White wings. The Snow Tower valued a kind of spiritual asceticism, and the competitions of their reigns revolved around rather remote expressions of aesthetic balance. Did a requirement to gamble and pay forfeits excite or bore them?
"He’s heading back. I will be a few tables away. Good luck, dangerous cousin."
Rian nodded absently, and then – once she was certain Henri intended to return to the same table – chose a seat that would not be in his direct line of view.
Almost immediately after she sat down the table began to fill. Rian was faintly surprised, because there had not been so very many uncommitted players in the area, but then noticed the folded wings jutting over the head of the woman opposite. To much of this crowd, excluding the inveterate gamblers, the greatest excitement would be found in winning forfeit from one of the Court.
The slender, brown-skinned woman, perhaps six feet in height, had her wings tightly tucked together, but the red-gold feathers of a firebird mask suggested she belonged to the Tower of the Drum. Twelve Tears hung from her golden veil.
A convenient development, for the winged woman would draw attention from Rian.
When eight players were seated, the dealer began to explain the rules of the game. Nothing surprising. The standard French deck of a hundred, divided into ten suits of ten. Pay one Tear to be dealt a hand, and then choose to either fold or pay two, then five, ten, twenty, forty to play on. Among timid players, only those who had a good hand would ever do anything but fold. For the daring, the trick was to read the table, and, if you judged that no-one had a truly outstanding hand, pay the increasingly high cost of staying in play until the rest folded, or the fifth payment round was reached. The game was a long one, divided into five sets of five hands, with forfeits to be paid only after the final two sets.
Rian spent the first set establishing herself as mildly adventurous: staying in play for a round or two even when she had an indifferent hand, but then dropping out when the cost to stay in rose past five. On the fourth hand, she bluffed to a small victory when everyone else folded early.
Her attention was all for the pulse in the rivers of blood around her, sorting the lift of a near-certain win from the heady rush of a dangerous bluff. Occasional flashes of emotion added to her store. Henri, on a good winning hand, was lazily self-satisfied. The pair who sat on either side of Rian were eager, titillated by possibility, as was one of those opposite, and the man next to Henri. The Court member seemed relaxed, while the man who sat directly across from Rian, hidden by a fox’s mask and a green veil, discomforted Rian with a heavy hunger directed at herself.
In the past few weeks, since Rian had survived vampiric bonding, she’d more than once encountered that hunger. It was an interest that seemed to revolve around her apparent youth, which her mask and veil for some reason emphasised. When she truly had been seventeen she had not attracted such interest…or perhaps had simply not noticed it.
In any case, Rian doubted she would enjoy paying any kind of forfeit to this man, and was glad to remember the limits Étienne had described, and doubly glad at the end of the first five hands when everyone, as a matter of course, traded back as many of their own Tears as they were able. Thanks to her single win, Rian was only down two of her hundred. Now, with some idea of the invisible tells that should let her know bluff from true confidence, all she could do was pay attention and hope for an opening.
The dealer gave the opportunity for a break, but no-one took it. In the second set, Henri maintained his Tears, and Rian dropped to eighty with an incautious bluff. At the end of the third she was up over a hundred, with two small wins, and had eight of Henri’s. He was down to nine ten-Tears.
That was probably enough to gain the answer she needed. No great secret, surely, to ask what he had done with his borrowed mask. Frustrated that there would be no claiming of forfeits until the end of next set, Rian could only hope that she could maintain her small advantage for another five hands.
They took a brief break, and settled back at the table with a sense of heightened anticipation that was likely due to the fifty Tears that the Court member had lost. Especially now that they had reached the sets that counted, where forfeit could be claimed.
Rian folded immediately in the first hand, and then bluffed and lost nearly two whole ten-Tears to the woman on her left. All the players were taking greater risks now, and few dropped out immediately. Rian stayed in with a moderate hand on the third, but lost to a better one, and did not stay past deal for the fourth. She still had Henri’s eight Tears, but she would lose them in the end-of-set exchange if she did not regain her losses.
The last deal gave her reasonable cards, not brilliant. There was no spurt of pleasure from the other players to suggest any of them had had better luck, but Henri, down to seventy Tears, relaxed in his chair even as his pulse quickened. By now the combination was unmistakeable: he had watched their reactions to the deal, and decided to bluff.
Rian’s problem now became the rest of the table. Two folded in the first round, but Henri, the women on either side of Rian, the fox mask, and the Court member all offered up two Tears to continue.
At five, the woman on Rian’s right folded. Henri, with a wonderful air of indifference, took a Tear from his veil and tapped it so that it fell into ten. He flicked five of these into the centre of the table, and settled back. Both the man in the fox mask and the member of the Court also paid five Tears and the cat-masked woman on Rian’s left, after a moment’s hesitation, did the same.
So did Rian.
The Court member was a significant problem. Her pulse had not altered to any marked degree with the raising of stakes, and Rian’s ability to sense emotion had not triggered at all with her – a not uncommon difficulty with those who belonged to a power outside the Forest. Rian’s Sun-Moon-Stars hand was good, but there were a dozen combinations that bettered it. The fox and cat, like Henri, were bluffing.
At ten the cat dropped out.
The order of play now became particularly important, because Henri was first of those who remained: the best position for a bluff play. And he made a wonderful production of it, with a barely visible hesitation before he lifted a hand to the five ten-Tears still hanging from his veil and removed two of them. He paid them in with a slow flick of his thumb, and then sat back with a show of casual relaxation, even while his hands closed tightly on the table’s edge. Trying and failing to hide nerves. And yet, in some ineffable way, exuding complete confidence.
Only that racing pulse made Rian certain this was not a man with a brilliant hand pretending to bluff, but instead a man with a bad hand acting his socks off. Henri’s intense pleasure in the performance washed over Rian and left her feeling faintly soiled. This was what Henri played for. Money, yes, but more than that: a glory in his own brilliance.
Fox mask folded, which did not surprise Rian at all. The member of the Court played on.
Now came real risk. The woman was completely relaxed, watching Rian through the firebird mask as if there were no surprises in the world. The members of the Court had abilities linked to their Towers, but none that should give them an advantage at a game of cards. The Tower of the Drum had strength – such that the younger members were able to venture outside the low gravity of the Towers – and the Gilded could mesmerise. The Snow Tower controlled temperature and the Sky Tower could manipulate light. And all of the members of the Court could create certain objects, like the Tears.