The dice clattered into the shallow wooden dice box with good speed, bouncing off the far wall and tumbling halfway back to my outstretched hand before landing up ones.

“A pig!” I cried out with excitement, reaching out to pick up coins out of the boat, everywhere but the single central tall mast of coins stacked vertically on the seven spot on the center of the boat. A chorus of groans sounded as Pasha Halil quickly reached for the dice to take his turn.

With a quick motion from hand to hand, he passed the dice from left to right to left again before closing his fist and flipping it over, thrusting it out over the box, the dice dropping nearly straight down. Double sixes—Pasha Halil nodded. “I have the king,” he said, quickly picking the dice back up before handing them off to the astrologer. As the vizier picked up the mast in two stacks, he chuckled. “Perhaps we can richen the stakes? If we play for gold, you can make back your stake in no time.”

The astrologer shook his head, leaning back on top of his cushion and reaching behind himself to snag a tiny cup of strong coffee from the tray of the servant walking unseen behind him. “Alas, that was the last in my purse,” he said, overtly glancing at my pile of silver. “I am afraid I can only watch now. But look, here are Bey Ishak and Bey Hasan—I know they will have gold, and they can more than take my place.”

“Too rich for my blood,” grunted the captain sitting next to me, standing up and shaking his head. “They can take my place as well. I should have left when Yusuf did—but I was so sure my luck would turn.”

“I could keep playing, but I have no gold,” I said, sheepishly. “Not with me,” I added, remembering Helena’s jewelry and that it belonged to me.

“Ah, let me change that for you—I would give you ten ducats for the pile in front of you,” Pasha Halil said. “It will be easier to carry in any event.”

Though we had gamed for two hours, I had not lost count—I knew well enough that I had three hundred and fifty-five akcheh in the round heap piled in front of me. Forty-to-one was a reasonable rate of exchange between Venetian ducats and Osman akcheh, which made the vizier’s offer either ill-estimated or generous. After a moment of involuntary hesitation (the coins were shiny and mine), I pushed the pile over to the vizier in exchange for a palmful of glittering gold, then stood to avail myself of several sticky nut-filled pastries while the astrologer and the vizier convinced the two beys to join a higher-stakes version of our game.

When I returned to the low table with its wooden boat, I found that the cushion I had sat in was occupied, with the beys having seated themselves to the vizier’s right; the astrologer got up to let me take the seat to the vizier’s left, where I would play in his wake. Pasha Halil opened by placing a ducat on the seven spot to start the boat’s mast and then rolled a seven, placing a second ducat on the mast—the game was on.

I placed my own ante on the mast and then laid down an eleven; the beys followed suit with a six and a five; then Pasha Halil scored the first coin by rolling a five to pick up the laden spot. It went around twice more, Pasha Halil picking up two more coins and Bey Ishak picking up one, before I rolled an early king and cleared the whole board, more than doubling my stake to twenty-three coins. I slid the coins into a small gleaming pile in front of me, shifting my legs under me in preparation to leave with my new hoard when the astrologer clapped his hand on my shoulder.

“What good fortune!” The astrologer beamed. “But surely you cannot mean to leave so quickly? The night is still young!”

Remembering that I had promised to pay back the astrologer the original stake he had granted me and half my profits, I hesitated. More good luck was in my future, perhaps—the astrologer’s forecast of a lucky night had seemed thus far accurate. I gamely picked up one of my coins, planting it on the mast as my ante, and picked up the dice, rolling double fives. My second coin therefore went on the ten spot, my newly grown hoard diminished to twenty-one ducats.

After two small cups of coffee and five more rolls, my hoard had diminished to eighteen ducats and we were rolling quickly and fiercely. When Pasha Halil rolled a king, I had his dice in my hand before he had finished his whoop of celebration. He glanced down at the empty rolling box with a look of consternation as he cleared the ducats out of the boat.

“The Vlach princeling is so eager to keep playing; he has the dice ready to start the next game,” laughed the astrologer. “The energy of youth!”

“Ah, but I won—it would be more generous of me if I started the game,” Pasha Halil said, smiling thinly. “The lad has but a thin purse of ducats—us old men should not rob him of it too quickly.”

“I feel lucky enough,” I said, planting a ducat down for the mast. I tossed the dice in the air, and they dropped solidly into the rolling box, showing double sixes. “A king for a first roll! I should have waited for the rest of you to have a turn to ante—it is good for you that I went first, Pasha Halil.” I shook my head, collecting back my ante coin and passing the dice to my left. “Bey Ishak?”

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The bey nodded, laying down his ante to start the game and dropping the dice into the box, just as I had done—showing, again, double sixes. The astrologer, Bey Hasan, and Pasha Halil all lunged for the dice at the same time, eager for different reasons; the astrologer was quickest.

The astrologer shook the dice in his hands with a clinking noise, rattling the bones for a long minute, then opened his palm, showing two sixes up. Then he dropped the dice into his coffee cup, swirling them about with a clinking noise—then lowered the cup, showing two sixes floating up in the dark liquid, bobbing gently. “A king in every roll,” the astrologer said. “These are not the dice I brought to the table.”

Sensing trouble, I quickly pocketed my winnings while the vizier sputtered out a denial. The gold was mine, and I felt protective of it; even if, a moment later, I recalled that I owed the astrologer my starting stake plus half of my added winnings—leaving me only eight ducats of my share of the winning.

The astrologer grabbed my arm, hissing in my ear. “Don’t go,” the astrologer whispered in my ear. “They may think you the source of the cheating dice if you sneak away.”

“But I didn’t do it!” I blurted out, weakness dropping my arms limp as my control of my magic slipped briefly by the smallest bit. “I don’t even own a pair of dice.”

For a moment, everyone turned to look at me. Bey Ishak spoke. “Be off on your way, boy; I know you to be a novice at dice. Your brother complained about your distaste of gambling often enough.”

I nodded, and the astrologer let go of my arm. It fell limp to my side like the other, and I quickly walked away, hoping nobody noticed the oddity of how my arms limply wobbled. I had back the motion of them by the time I reached the other end of the palace, the momentary weakness diffused in a matter of minutes, though I blamed my iron cuffs for the way I breathed heavily after climbing the stairs up to the lighthouse keeper’s chamber. The door was barred, and I knocked, calling out my name, and in time Helena came to open it.

“Where have you been?” She stood in the doorway, peering up at me with a sharp expression.

“Why do you care? You have been pushing me away—you could have just told me you were having your monthly courses rather than shoving me off without a word and hiding away,” I said.

“I was not having my monthly courses,” she retorted. “Stop dodging the question.”

“I’m in no mood to gad about out here,” I said, shoving my way in and closing the door behind myself as she staggered backwards, landing on her derriere and then scrabbling backwards away from me like a spider, a fearful body at the center of a set of awkwardly angled limbs.

“Please,” she whimpered.

“Sorry,” I said, putting the bar back in its place. “I did not mean to knock you over. It is a good night to bar the door—the evening was turning troublesome. Someone switched out the dice—or bespelled them, I am not sure which—and I wish to be well out of sight for the rest of the night.”

“But you have magic of your own. Can’t you sense magic?”

Helena sat up. I offered her my hand, and she hesitantly took it as I answered her question. “My focus is ever inward. I feel my magic inside of me, but outside—nothing. Maybe that part of my power has not awakened. Maybe there is some trick to it that my father had not taught me. Maybe it is just that I have been cuffed this whole time.”

“Did your father teach you much about his magic?” Helena asked. Absently, her hand rubbed her stomach, a motion that seemed odd given that she had just landed on her aft end. Surely it was her posterior that ought to be rubbed in such a circumstance.

“Enough to fill a book,” I boasted, cracking a smile. “If I have his magic, then I shall know how to use it as soon as I am out of these cuffs.”

“I see,” Helena said. “Who was the cheat?”

“The vizier,” I said. “Or at least, he was the one who won a pot with the loaded dice. I did not see them switched or notice them bespelled, but they floated sixes up when the astrologer put them in his cup.”

Helena frowned, considering. “I doubt the vizier is hurting for money. That seems strange. Was anyone else also making out well?”

“I was,” I said, suddenly feeling the small but solid weight of eighteen golden Venetian ducats at my side. “The astrologer seemed to think it would be a lucky night for me.”

“If you are not the one in trouble, then you are lucky,” Helena said. Her hand reached out to squeeze mine, then she looked down and pulled it away.

I reached out, running my fingers through her lovely brunette hair. She froze stiffly, and I sighed, stepping back and away from the implied rejection. “I will go now to sleep in the bed—the couch is too short for my legs. I miss your company.”

Having made my bed with my words, I felt myself obliged by young pride to go forth and lie in it, though the coffee I had drunk while playing at dice with the vizier still coursed through my veins. I lay awake in the darkened room, the blanket tucked at first neatly over myself but then less and less so as I tossed and turned, trying to find sleep. I screwed my eyes tightly shut in the vain hope that my desire to slip away from my state of consciousness and deep adolescent embarrassment could overcome the well-known powers of Nubia’s most widely traded produce. I breathed slowly in through my nose and out through my mouth, each breath slower than the last in an attempt to bank the inner coals of my wakeful self.

The door creaked softly open, the floorboards gently groaned under three soft steps, and then there was silence for a long moment.