Chapter 17 – A Fight to Remember

“And then I smashed him!” said Annalisa, thrusting her fist into the air.

“I know, Anna, I was there,” I reminded her. We walked through the alleys of Dragonmaw, both exhausted. Half-dead and half-drunk on borrowed time, were we two fools. I felt like I’d been through the dragon’s maw, chewed up, and blasted out the back end. Annalisa had been through worse(physically, at least), but seemed to not feel it. But her body was on the edge of giving up, despite her unending reserves of willpower.

“Right. It’s just, this was my first win. I want to make sure I remember it. So, you’re going to help me again?”

“Help you cheat?” I asked. “You’re ok with that? Winning by cheating?”

She laughed, and then coughed, winced, and put a hand to her chest where the elf blade had kissed her. “Darcent, this is Dragonmaw. Everyone is cheating! I wanted to beat the fighters and their pocket mages, just to prove I could.” She twirled her tail. “But... having you in my corner is good too. Really, it just makes it even.”

I huffed. “And it doesn’t bother you? That I bet against you?”

“The greater the odds, the greater the glory,” she said, pounding one fist into her opposite palm. “Even your cards said I would lose. But I showed them, and everyone else too!”

By the skin of her teeth (and mine).

But it was time to broach an even more uncomfortable subject.

“Annalisa,” I began. “Do you... see something on my face? Something that shouldn’t be there?”

Her eyes went wide, which gave me another glimpse of the card burning on my own forehead. “I thought it was so weird how no one else was talking about it!” she said. “It’s how I knew you were special, though... maybe a bit of a freak, too.”

I stopped in the alley, and she turned to face me. It was time to tell her my secret. “I see them for everyone. I saw one for Jeedle, I saw one for Kridick, and Storm-laden, and most people I meet.”

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“Is that normal for Soul Searchers?”

“Soul Seekers, and no. As far as I know, only I can do it. And I see one for you.”

“Me, too?” she asked. She rubbed at her forehead, but of course her fingers went right through the precipice arcana. “What does it say?”

Up until earlier that evening, it had portended disaster and misfortune of the worst kind. Until I’d somehow changed it. And in doing so, manifested my third suit. Towers. But now, it said something very different. “It says you’re going to do amazing things.”

She nodded, as though that was the most obvious answer in the world.

Hold on a minute. “Wait. Why did the card make you think I was some sort of freak?” I asked carefully.

“Aside from, I don’t know, being a flaming card stuck to your forehead?” she asked. She bit her index finger, as if unsure how to proceed. The tip of her tail traced up and down her trouser leg in a nervous gesture. Annalisa experiencing nerves struck me as one of the oddest things I’d seen that night. “Well, it’s got two people on it, and they’re um... Doing the... uh...”

My own breath caught. There were only two cards with multiple figures on them. One was the court of knaves. But that had four people reveling. The only other one, the one that might make a plane-touched blush was...

“The lovers,” I said. It made an unfortunate sort of sense after the past few days.

Annalisa glanced to the side and back, biting her lip. “Does that mean...” she made a hole with her thumb and forefinger and moved the tip of her tail towards it. “... that we’re going to...?”

“No!” I shouted, suddenly, and louder than I meant to. Dragons above. If Annalisa approached sex the way she threw herself at everything else in her life, I doubted I would survive the encounter. “It means... Partnership, power shared, and joined strength.”

I looked up at the wane dragons, swimming their ghostly laps through the air above Dragonmaw. “It means that whatever my fortunes in this city, Annalisa, they’re tied to you.”

“Oh, thank the gods,” she said, relieved. When she saw my expression, she held up her palms, waving in defense. “I mean, don’t get me wrong, you’re not awful, even if you are a bit of a pervert. But I don’t see you that way. I’ve got my fighting career to think of, and I’m your bodyguard, so it would be unprofessional. And plus,” she lowered her voice and leaned in. “I think your bed might be made of rats.”

I chuckled. “I think you might be right.”

Annalisa stretched her arms up above her horns, and several joined cracked rather alarmingly. “Partners, huh? Joined strength? I like it. I don’t have many friends in this city.”

“Me either,” I said. Despite her over-enthusiasm, I was coming around to Annalisa’s headlong approach to, well, everything. And she did have a mean hook, when she could stop bouncing around in a manic panic long enough to hit someone with it. I started walking again. “But at least I’ve got one.”

Anna grinned, grinding her bruised knuckles against her palm. “Dragonmaw won’t know what hit it!”

End of Arc 1

What marks the difference between a seeker and a soul seeker? Perhaps it does not lie in the ability to borrow power, as the guild believes. But in the ability to negotiate an exchange.

-Lancaster’s Manual of Wills.