Chapter 21 - Afterparty

I’d bet on Annalisa. I’d be a fool not to, with the precipice burning over her horns. Not with Kridick, who told me, if you can believe it, that it would be unethical. He kept a straight face, too. I doubt the pit-faced old drork had ever smiled in his life. No, I placed a bet very quietly with the Mayazians over in Hollowdown. They had offered great odds, with the number of people betting on their own fighter, and I had fourteen cunnings headed my way. A fortune, really. It would be an extra trip tomorrow to collect from the dockside district, but worth it to have a little coin that wouldn’t disappear into the coffers of the old bookie like most of what I earned fixing ringside. I wanted to replace a few of my cards, maybe even start inking a whole new Deck of Wills. But you couldn’t use just any ink, and enchanted ink dealers didn’t slum around in the lower city.

Annalisa, of course, got her winner’s prize. But the plane-touched girl had little interest in money, beyond what she needed to get herself plastered drunk to celebrate her win and making sure she had a roof over her head to recover for the next day. She was currently doing her best to drink the entire bar under the table. We went to the Mop n’ Bucket so that Annalisa could drink her winnings while the menders salved up her bruises and healed her cracked rib.

We split as soon as we hit the brothel. She went straight to the bar and I, feeling my luck to finally be on the up, swung by the gamblers in their corner.

“Room for one more?” I asked. There was more than one way to put silver in my pocket.

“Piss off, runt,” said the largest of them, an ugly bastard with a tall hat and voice that sounded like he was gargling granite.

Another, a woman in a vest and unbuttoned blouse, glared over her hand. “Manners, Jack,” she admonished. Then she looked at me. “You’re not ready for this game, kid. Find another table.” The other two, the one in the red jacket and a broad man with a mountain on his pendant necklace, gave me barely a glance.

I raised my hands “Alright, I meant no offense.”

I wasn’t sure if the quartet worked for Kridick or not. They were regulars at the mop, and when I asked the madam about them, she shrugged.

“They were here a’fore Kridick. But they always pay, and tip when there’s a row. With queer foreign coin, too.”

We weren’t the only ones at the brothel who had come from the fight, either. Plenty of folks in Barrowdown wanted to toast the lady of the hour, and Annalisa tackled each drink as though the bottom of the stein owed her a debt and she had to drink her way through the lager to collect it. By dawn I had to fortify her with the dragon buff just to let her walk to the privy without crashing through half the tables in the pub.

The madam, whose name I learned was Trundlia (Trundi, for short), clucked at her as she went. “That girl has a devil’s luck,” she said, moving off to fuss at one of the other patrons.

“Miss Trundi, you don’t know the half of it,” I slurred, flipping over another card for the red plane-touched, Mithra. Maybe I’d had a bit much, too. Doing true readings for three of the girls hadn’t helped my mental state. Though, at least Mithra started showing more interest in my cards than my coin as I did a reading for her. She’d stopped trying to solicit me to spend my winnings between her legs after learning I wasn’t as virginal as she assumed by about two years. When I first got to the Seeker’s Guild, before I’d made an enemy of Tanlith Guifoyle, being the new, mysterious boy from the lower city with something to do with the defeat of Margot Bethane had opened doors and dropped drawers. But, it didn’t last. Nothing does. Now, I was doing readings in a brothel.

Not everyone in the Mop was interested in a free reading, though. I mentioned one of the girls to Mithra, an elf, who refused to get near either me or the Wills. Ordinarily I wouldn’t care, but she had the Prince of Demons inverted in her crown. Which suggested she was a point of contention between multiple people plotting together. Jealous lovers, maybe? Who knew?

“Don’t mind Lenise,” said Mithra. Her tail rubbed my leg under the table. “She’s new to the life. Besides, it’s rude to talk about other women when you’re in the company of one.” She pointed down. “What’s that one mean?”

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I looked at the cards—card. Then blinked. Definitely only one. I got the cards to stay still, but the room started spinning instead. The four of peaks. I checked to make sure to send my will into the deck and realized it was already there. “Goals,” I said. I had trouble remembering what about them, exactly. “Are you meeting them?”

Mithra pursed her lips and rested her chin in her hand. “Well, it’s a work night. But my clothes are still on, and I’m sitting here with you. So, not presently. Are you really a Seeker?”

I flipped over another one. The three of demons. “Not goals, deals. Something you bargained for is coming full-circle.”

Mithra knocked the cards out of the array. The deck buzzed, feeling almost affronted.

“Hey!” I said. But the plane-touched just laughed. She leaned in.

“Boring! So… what is Annalisa, to you?” she asked.

The abrupt right turn confused me. “She’s a friend,” I said.

“Just a friend?” She cocked an eyebrow.

I scowled. “What else’d she be?”

A smirk crawled across Mithra’s face. “Well, she has been going on about you two being lovers.”

“She what?!” I demanded, and then remembered the lovers arcana. I couldn’t see it reflected in Mithra’s eyes. Somehow, I’d bound Annalisa to me. “It’s not like that,” I promised “She means something else.”

“What about the tail freak thing?”

“THATWASAMISUNDERSTANDING!” I nearly shouted, feeling my cheeks burn.

Mithra laughed. “Good, because that girl’s got a jealous streak a mile wide, and I heard what she did to that lamia. I’d hate to be on her shit list just for talking to you. And Damen was worried about getting on yours, as well.” She leaned in and batted her lashes at me. “Though, I know you’re really a softie,”

“Shush. Who’s Damen?” I asked.

Mithra jerked a thumb behind her, where some of the male talent reclined at the bar. One of them saw us looking and waved, nervously. He was an elf. Tall, muscular, handsome, fashionable. Reminded me a bit too much of Tanlith Guifoyle, for my liking. I scowled. “I never even met him!”

“Well,” said Mithra, “He’s taken a bit of a shine to Annalisa. Or rather, a shine to her shine, if you catch my meaning. He’s got a thing for short women with deep pockets.”

I glanced back at the elf, eyebrow raising. I sent my will into the deck again and drew a single card. The fool, inverted. Recklessness, unthinking, impulsivity. “He should reconsider the choices that brought him to this moment. May the gods vouchsafe his loins.”

Mithra cocked her head at me but gave her co-sexworker the thumbs up. “You’re an odd one, Darcent.”

Dimen pushed off the bar, and intercepted Anna on her way back in, still doing up the buttons on her breeches in the wrong order. She looked up at him and listened to what he had to say, eyes alert and mouth slightly open. He didn’t have to make much of a speech. Annalisa’s face turned a color somewhat closer to Mithra’s. She dug in her pocket and pulled out a handful of coins, stuffing it against the elf’s chest. She turned, and ran toward the stairs, pulling the unfortunate elf behind her by her tail wrapped around his wrist. She snagged a decanter of something on her way up. Hopefully something strong and numbing, for Damen’s sake.

“Huh,” said Mithra. “Not how I expected that to go.”

“Exactly, how I expected that to go,” I grumbled. I willed the cards through the air, forming them into a pair of chains, in my best attempt to imitate the swimming motion of the wane dragons. “Seeker,” I whispered. She rolled her eyes. I frowned, and shifted them into a spinning ring, and then a blooming flower. Mithra just cocked her eyebrow at me. I called the deck back and harrumphed. These telekinetic patterns were really just basic attunement exercises from the academy to help novices empathize with the Wills in their individual decks, but they usually got at least some response from non-Seekers.

A few moments later the oil lamps began to shake as though from repeated impacts, and I had to cover my cup as dust drifted down from the ceiling. Everyone in the common room turned their eyes up as the rafters continued to bounce. Even the card players put down their strange cards.

“I think that’d be my cue,” I said, pushing back from the table. I stood up, but the room swam. I looked around for the door and had to focus until the two I could see consolidated. Before I could put one foot in front of the other, Mithra’s tail hooked my collar.

“Hold on, mister seeker. You’re in no shape to walk home. Let’s get you into bed.”

“I’m not in no shape,” I said. I frowned. “I’m in any shape. Mm. What you said.”

Mithra turned me around and steered me away from the table. I swept up my cards along the way and stuffed them back into my robes. Her own room was on the second floor (which Annalisa currently seemed to be doing her damndest to collapse), but she steered me back behind the bar to a part of the brothel I’d never been in. There were smaller rooms here; little more than a cot and a couple of thread bare blankets in each. A few of them held snoring figures, though how they’d slept with the cacophony I couldn’t tell you.

“Kridick’s men use these between jobs. I don’t think he’ll mind.”

“Penny-pinching orc’ll probly charge me double,” I muttered. But I was helpless to prevent Mithra from sitting me down. I sighed and pulled my feet up. Mithra made a disgusted noise and started tugging my boots off.

“Why do men always try to sleep in their boots?” she demanded, freeing one, then the other.

“Emergencies,” I mumbled. I pulled the blanket half over me. “Thanks.” She patted me on the arm and then walked out, closing the door behind her. She was still on shift, after all.