Vespasien

Vespasien had had enough. Between the two Aulds that had threatened to kill him, the seer who had seen something unspeakable in his future, the entire Spyre’s casual use of veoh, and the fact that the last boy he’d tipped had mysteriously disappeared, Vespasien was ready to get the hell out of Bryda.

Unfortunately, he’d only gotten as far as the Dicing District before his grand plans of escape died in the dregs of a third-time-refilled stein of barley wine.

Even if Rhydderch hadn’t put a scrying spell on him—which he would have—the Auld’s hounds had shown themselves quite capable of tracking him down. Vespasien had seriously considered going into the Auld’s kennels and feeding them all poisoned beef, even going so far as to buy the beef, but that thought had died just as miserably as his plans of escape.

Even if Rhydderch, by some miracle of the gods, didn’t have a scrying spell on Ves, Auldin Laelia would. And she had told him not to leave the Spyre.

Vespasien pushed his stein aside and dropped his head into his hands, running his fingers through his stylish blonde locks in despair.

Both Laelia and Rhydderch expected him to go to Laelia’s bedroom tonight.

Vespasien was late.

Both Laelia and Rhydderch would come looking for him if he didn’t show up.

But the last thing he wanted to do was go back to Laelia and whisper Rhydderch’s lies into her ear. If Laelia found out, she would happily do unspeakable things to him—he knew that much just by the way the thought of her icy gaze left him with goosebumps.

His second option was to kill both the Aulds, then flee. Unfortunately, if either one died before the other, then the survivor discovered the death, Vespasien would never be given a chance to complete his task, and more likely than not, his own life would be forfeit.

His third option—and the one he had been giving the most serious thought—was tipping both the Aulds into dismissing him from their lives. Ves was pretty sure it work on Laelia, but Rhydderch had completely resisted four of his tips, now, the last being a suggestion for Rhydderch to tell Vespasien how the Auld had managed to counter Laelia’s geas.

Vespasien scowled at the age-worn countertop at the thought. There was something odd about the way Rhydderch had put him to sleep that afternoon. When Vespasien had woken, his entire body had felt sore, his shoulders and chest were developing deep bruises, and his scalp felt like someone had tried to rend it apart with a rake.

What kind of spell required beating an unconscious victim?

Further, when he had woken, there was a strange boy in the room with them, with the same build as Rhydderch, except his eyes were so brown they were near-black, and his hair looked like muddy privy sludge. The boy had given him a scowl that would have scorched iron, and when he drew close enough to poke a finger in his chest and say, “You get close to her again and I’ll gut you like a sturgeon,” the tiny hairs on Vespasien’s arms had risen like they always did whenever he grew too close to an Auld.

And who the hell was ‘her’?

When Vespasien asked, Rhydderch had glazed it over, as if the boy had never spoken. Yet hot, tangible anger remained smoldering in the boy’s dirt-brown eyes, and Vespasien could only think back to the whore that had shrieked in the ballroom.

None of which made any sense.

Vespasien had left that queer little meeting feeling like a tszieni was stalking him through the halls. Something was not right, and the last thing he wanted to do was go back and caper to the Aulds’ whims.

Still, he knew that hiding in a tavern would bring the Aulds down upon him just as quickly as running away. Reluctantly, he pushed himself away from the bar and stood.

As he did, a potbellied man sat down at a table across the room, hair hanging in greasy wisps from a balding pate, clothes swathed around his stout form in a style that Vespasien couldn’t place. Certainly not Brydian. It felt old.

The newcomer caught him looking at him and smiled. His face was missing several teeth in front, most likely where they had been knocked out. With a jovial Etroean accent, the man said, “You up for a game of chits there, young man?”

Vespasien took a moment to size the newcomer up. The man’s garments were utterly plain in color, and yet the stitching and the material were both sturdy and sound. The man wasn’t poor, whoever he was. He could obviously stand to lose a few chits. Maybe the odd little broach pinning his garments together at the shoulder, the rolling star that seemed to twist and catch the light like a sandstorm.

Vespasien frowned, looking at it. It seemed to jog a memory loose, and he was sure he had seen the broach’s design before, and it left him with a nagging discomfort, like his subconscious recognized it and didn’t like what it saw, but didn’t deign to inform the part of him that could do anything about it.

Vespasien licked his lips. The Auldin was waiting for him in her chambers.

“She won’t mind,” the man said, slapping a hand to his seat. “Sit down, son.”

Vespasien blinked, then glanced to either side and hurried to sit down. “You are from Etro?” he asked, suspecting the man was coming to relieve him, or to offer him a new assignment.

The man’s sweating, ruddy face grimaced. “No, I think not. That place draws the righteous like flies to a carcass. Boring as hell, is what it is. All bound up in rules and laws. Hell, even the pickpockets there are afraid to pickpocket.” Then he grinned at Vespasien. “But you would know that, wouldn’t you?”

Vespasien frowned. “Rhydderch sent you?”

“I sent myself. I’ve come to let you know you’re going to switch sides. Beginning today. No more tipping the poor Brydians. That Vethyle boy would have put up an excellent fight against the tszieni—until he hung himself because he started thinking about just how much he wanted to get his elegant and twisted aunt in bed with him.”

Vespasien stared at the man for what seemed like eternity, unable to form even the slightest of sounds. He had never told a soul about his ability, not even what he called it in his head.

Finally, he said, “You are a figment of my imagination. The stress has gotten to me.”

The potbellied man chuckled and ordered a beer.

The waitress brought it, gasped when the man pinched her rear, then slapped the back of his head once she’d lowered the stein to the table. Greasy wisps of hair fell into the man’s gray eyes, and he pushed them back with a hairy hand, grinning toothlessly at her. She flounced off, her aproned rear swaying to and fro in a huff.

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“So,” the man said, turning back to Vespasien with a disarming gap-toothed smile, “What were you saying?”

“My imagination has horrible taste in drink,” Vespasien said weakly, staring at the poor-man’s beer.

The potbellied stranger chuckled and drew a long sip through the heady foam on top. He set the mug down. “Tell you what, son. We play a game of chits, then you’ll do me a favor.”

“What kind of favor?” Vespasien asked, instantly suspicious. He had never lost a game of chits in his life, but he never promised open-ended favors to anyone, much less middle-aged strangers with missing teeth.

“The introduction kind,” the balding man said.

“Who?”

“Auld Rhydderch. Him and the Ganlin boy.”

The Ganlins are dead, Vespasien thought, but held his tongue. Instead, he said, “Which Ganlin boy?”

“The one that roughed you up in Rhydderch’s chambers, earlier today.”

Vespasien wanted to laugh, but found that he couldn’t. None of this was funny. In fact, this was so unfunny that he wanted to crawl back to his drink and bury himself in it.

“You aren’t an Auld, are you?” he said, miserable. Aulds were bad, but this—whatever it was—was worse.

The balding man laughed, drank the rest of his beer, and brought a chits set from the folds of cloth covering his enormous belly. He set out an ornamental stack of engraved rectangular plates that looked like they’d been carved from bone or ivory, then set beside it a wooden box that, when folded open, formed a chits grid. To the starting spaces, the stranger added two pieces that looked uncomfortably like a balding, potbellied boozer and a tall, lanky spy. “Play me a game, eh? I’ve heard you’re pretty good, son.”

Vespasien glanced at the chits board, got goosebumps, and cleared his throat. “What happens if I lose?”

“Your soul becomes forfeit,” the man said, “And it will forever be mine to amuse myself with.” Then, at Vespasien’s widening eyes, the man burst into laughter that shook dust from the timbers. Wiping tears from his eyes, the man said, “I dunno. Maybe in your humiliation you’ll buy me a drink. I’m not like Hyssawi—I don’t deal in souls.”

It took a moment for those words to register, but when they did, Vespasien lunged away from the table, heart stumbling in his chest. His eyes fell on the broach upon the man’s shoulder and recognition slammed into place like a hammer. Etroean lore tumbled in his head, choking his mind as he struggled to piece together a reasonable explanation. Then, hopefully, he said, “You’re one of Rale’s servants.”

The balding man chuckled. “Not a servant.”

“Rale…in the flesh?”

The man slapped his enormous stomach and seemed to revel in the way the folds of fat rippled outward. He grinned toothlessly up at Vespasien. “In the ample flesh, son. The ample flesh.”

Vespasien thought he was going to be sick. “This is Bryda,” he said weakly. “You have no power here.”

“Etro and all of its righteous flies annoyed me,” the man said. “Swarming on this place like a twelve-day-old corpse…I figured I might as well throw my lot in with the stubborn mountain goat. More fun this way.” His grin looked almost maniacal, and Vespasien felt his stomach churning. “Besides,” the man said, “Etro never liked me anyway. They love their tiny little lives ordered in perfect harmony. Did you know they don’t even allow my likeness in the capital? Imagine that. They allow that cold, tricky, malicious bastard Hyssawi free run of the place, but they quietly pretend I don’t exist.” He snorted. “They even blamed the Emperor’s daughter’s pregnancy on me, but I had nothing to do with it. The girl was just horny. If anyone, they should’ve blamed Bronin. That prissy little puss probably set her off, right in between screwing his manservants. She’s got a statue of him on her dresser, for goodness sake.”

All Vespasien could say was, “You’re a lying whoreson.”

The man laughed. “Well, you’re right, except for the lying part.”

In Etroean legend, Rale had been born of the coupling of a whore and a swarm of locusts…which had then gone on to create the Great Squall when the air of their wingbeats passed over the world, building into a hurricane whose eye was larger than the city of Etro.

Vespasien narrowed his eyes. This was one of the Aulds playing tricks on the poor delusional man from Etro. The Aulds and everyone else who lived in and around the Spyre only worshipped veoh. One of them was trying to humiliate him.

Vespasien turned to go.

A locust landed on his hand and peered up at him, its striped yellow-black legs twitching as it crawled up his arm.

Bryda didn’t have locusts. The mountains prevented their passage.

Vespasien let out a little giggle. Then he screamed and threw the thing off of him.

Every conversation in the tavern quieted, and the comely serving wench gave him a scowl that told him she was moments from getting the other patrons to throw him out.

The stranger slapped the bench across from him again. “Come on and sit down, son. No need to panic. Those things follow me everywhere. Try to leave ‘em outside, but one or two always make their way in.”

Numbly, under the other taverners’ stares, he sat back down across from the stranger. “What do you want from me?” he whispered. “I’m not a pious man.”

“I know,” the stranger said, grinning toothlessly. “That’s what I like about you. Cast your fate to the winds and don’t look back. My kind of man. As to what I want…” His gray eyes seemed to search Vespasien’s soul for a moment. “Play me a game of chits and hear me out.”

They played. Vespasien lost. Vespasien wasn’t surprised.

His pride, however, burned, regardless of who shared his table with him.

“You cheated,” he said, glaring.

“So did you,” the balding man smirked.

“Let’s try with my board, eh?”

The balding man’s eyes glittered with amusement. “Oh yes. I love a challenge.”

They played. Vespasien lost. This time, Vespasien was surprised.

He had packed the deck with extra cards, giving certain uncommon hands higher chances of success, while completely removing those cards that would have made the easiest sets.

Vespasien, scowling, re-counted his cards again, there were exactly the number there should have been, and precisely the number of each type as he had left in there.

“That’s a nice deck,” the man commented. “I never would have expected making that last set.” His gap-toothed smile just ached to meet Vespasien’s fist.

Vespasien scowled. They played. He lost again.

“Like hell!” he screeched, after four more losses. He’d used every trick in the book—bottom-dealing, card-switching, card-marking, stacking the deck, drawing double, moving his piece an extra space…and he still lost. Every time. Despite the spectacular hands Vespasien concocted for himself, the stranger’s was always the tiniest bit better. The odds were…

Astronomical.

“Fine,” Vespasien said, once the serving wench gave him another scowl. “What the hell do you want, Rale?”

“Oh,” the man chuckled. “So you believe me now.”

Vespasien flicked a locust off of the table in front of him. It landed on another patron, who grunted and squished it with the bottom of his beer mug. Then the patron and the other three men at the table proceeded to pick it apart, commenting on how they’d never seen a grasshopper that large in their lives.

“Yeah,” Vespasien said bitterly. “I believe you.”

“Good,” Rale said. “Then it will be a lot easier for both of us.”

“What will?”

Rale sighed and patted his potbelly as he leaned back against the wall behind the bench, apparently in thought. Then he said, “This place has just the right amount of quirky little oddities in it that, with the proper combination and a little bit of luck, a goat and a locust might beat out a swarm of flies.”

Vespasien paled. “How many flies?”

Rale grinned. “All of them.”

He suddenly didn’t feel too good. “Then what chance do we have?”

“Like I said,” Rale laughed, slapping his belly, “Not much. None, if you keep tipping those fools in the Spyre.”

Vespasien swallowed, hard. “I’m Etroean.”

“Not anymore. I’ve abandoned ship, son, and you’re coming with me.”

The finality of the words, paired with whose toothless mouth they came out of, was enough to make Vespasien want to sing the Brydian anthem in all of its frilly, overwrought glory. “What do you want from me?” he asked again, stronger this time.

Rale grunted. “First, I’d like you to introduce me to Auld Rhydderch. I doubt he’s the type who would appreciate it if I simply appeared in his chambers one eve, a game of chits in my hand and a grin on my face.”

“He doesn’t play chits,” Vespasien said automatically. “He plays chess.”

“He plays both,” Rale laughed. “And he’s beaten me at chits.”

Vespasien’s jaw dropped. “How…?”

Rale made a dismissive gesture with a hairy hand. “He came to Etro after the last war. I met him in a tavern, convinced him I was an Etroean general. Had quite a night of it, he and I. Got me to tell him all about Thibault and his tszieni. Salty dog thought he was being sly. Heh.”

“He beat you at chits?” Vespasien demanded, his pride suddenly pricked.

“There’s two ways to win at chits,” Rale told him. “There’s luck—which includes you and me and all the cheating we’d ever want to do—and then there’s brains. Doesn’t matter if you’ve got the best hand in the world if you don’t know how to organize it.”

Vespasien frowned at Rale. “Why do you want to speak to Rhydderch?”

Rale grinned. “The goat and I have picked our hand. Now we need him to organize it for us.”

Vespasien glared, the thought of Rhydderch getting such preferential treatment making him sick. “Perhaps Laelia would be a better pick,” he suggested. “She beats him at his own game.”

“Laelia doesn’t play chits. She plays chess. Chess is entirely strategy, no luck, and no imagination. What we’re going to be dealing with is going to require both.”

Worried, now, Vespasien said, “And just what is it we’re going to do?”

Rale grinned. “Swat some flies.”