Chapter 92 – Old Demons

“That buck-toothed elf git was back, wager,” said Miss Trundi, as I passed on my way to the stairs. I shook my head. “Not now, Miss Trundi.” I didn’t want to deal with Threadripper’s demands. The dragons were throwing a fit at handing over all that silver to the care of bankers and Mithra. They were so loud it physically hurt. I still had some of the headache cure the previous mender had left, and that’s where my thoughts headed.

The dwarf waved a handful of papers at chest-level, which got my attention as the old dwarf woman couldn’t read. I stopped and took them, and quickly recognized my own handwriting. Even in a foreign script.

“Where did you get these?” I asked, but a note scrawled in the margin of one of the pages answered that question clear enough.

He wants to meet. #4 Crown Ct. at dawn. Bring the books.

-TR

So much for Hawkley’s discretion. Ousting Kridick didn’t warrant a meeting with Daggertongue. Toppling the Teeth? Crickets. But copy ten pages from an elven book? Instant invite. I clenched my teeth. Dawn was only a few hours away, and now, despite the promises I’d made to Mithra, and the promises I made to myself, my resolve was going to be tested face-to-face with one of the deadliest puppeteers in Dragonmaw who’d been on the warpath ever since Kridick lost his daughter to the Mayazians.

And now I knew where she was. I could deliver Lenise on a silver platter and reap the rewards. How much was Daggertongue’s gratitude worth? More than a book to an old spinster, I can say that for safe. I stomped to my office and slammed the door behind me. after dropping the bolt in place, I put the heels of my hands to my forehead and groaned as the Wills rioted in my deck.

“Shut up, shut up, shut up!” I shouted. I pulled the cards from my pocket and dropped them on the desk before collapsing onto my bed. Let them squabble amongst themselves. So often I’d longed to hear them more clearly. Now I wished they’d give me a moment’s peace. I closed my eyes. I only opened them when I started to hear the soft patter of a summer storm on the large windows above the bed. I stared at the rain plinking off the glass for a time. The moon had tracked across the sky, and I’d lost several hours of wane light. Lightning arced across the sky, forking behind the wane dragons that swam through the clouds above the city.

Not yet time to head to the upper city to meet with Daggertongue, and not in a hurry to get soaked to the bone, I pushed myself off rat-bed and washed my face off from the pitcher I kept in the cupboard. I didn’t want to go up. But it was necessary—and it was something I had to do without Annalisa. Would I keep faith? Or betray her?

The Deck of Wills sat on my desk. I pursed my lips and held out my hand, about to call it. But something stopped me. Maybe it was the unusual quiet of the Mop, or maybe having lightning striking in the background just set the kind of mood I needed. I moved across the office and pried up the board concealing my important stash. The blood-soaked deck glared up at me from the cubby. They’d calmed since last I’d seen them. Perhaps the deck’s malevolence had settled, but it struck me more as biding.

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I reached in and pulled the deck out, unsealing the cards and fanning them out. Both they and I had been marked by the blood of the fel witch. But these were never her cards. The red stains on the cards had soaked into the portraits carved by Bethane’s lieutenant. You can tell a good deal about a seeker by the way they carve Wills. Her lieutenant had short, scratchy lines and shallow embellishments as though carving uncertainly. The faces were angular and pointed. The numbers were how they wrote them in the farmlands southeast of the city.

I shuffled through them as I carried them over to Kridick’s old desk. The gnarled wood was pitted from many points punctuated with the stab of a dagger or the slam of an axe head. I looked across at the other chair, trying to imagine myself sitting in it the first week I came to the downs. I was no longer that boy. I shuffled and cut the bloodstained deck.

I steeled myself for the backlash and sent my will into the cards. At first, they barely took notice. But then, like a rockslide, the Wills began to pour out of the deck and assail me from all sides. The deck bulged and warped, cards trying to force themselves out. I threw myself against them, willing them to answer my call. The stack buckled, cards flashing as they forced themselves from order. The entire ensemble threatened to collapse. The noise in my mind was like nothing I’d experienced. Sweat dripped down my face and my jaw ached from clenching my teeth.

Again, the deck buckled. My own will nearly fractured, and the cards spread out, nearly escaping my desk until I put out a hand and froze them in mid-air. They fought to escape, to scatter into blood-soaked chaos. The dragons raged with primeval fury. The knaves whispered of dark deeds to be visited. The towers simply feared. They tried to shut me out, build a wall to bar me from sensing them at all.

One mote of light in the dark swirl of the Wills caught my attention, and I nearly lost the whole stack as I focused on it. It grew brighter, surrounded by the swirling chaos of the deck—perfectly balanced and holding steady as a lighthouse guiding me to shore. I reached out in my mind, as well as with my hand, and felt a card slide into it.

Without hesitation, I evoked it. Suddenly, the chaos of the bloodstained deck revealed itself for a complex pattern, one that I could never have hoped to comprehend. But seeing the path of each individual Will spiraling through the ether, trying to force their way through the cards and away from the cards in equal measure, I could countermand it’s every attempt to subvert my wishes. And in doing so, I realized the true nature of its malevolence.

This deck had scared me for so long. I’d been terrified by its malice, by its danger. But now, I could see that this deck was, itself, terrified. It would kill me, if I let it, but it would do so out of cowardice. The kind of fear that drives a man to spring with a dagger in hand or build a castle and raise an army to stand between him and his assassin. Not the confident malevolence of a once-in-a-generation witch talent, but the sniveling sycophant that shadowed her footsteps and huddled in her long shadow. I understood.

Through the blood of Margot Bethane that bound me to these foreign cards, I poured out my own callous disregard, my own will to stand unopposed. I was no fel witch, but I wasn’t a cowering schoolboy anymore, either. I met my enemies head on (at least, when I couldn’t avoid it). I didn’t need to dominate this deck. I needed to offer it a new shadow in which to hide. These furtive carvings sought, before all else, strength. The chaos stilled, and the cards slowly slid back into the stack—all except the one in my hand.

The three of storms.

I could hear its whispers, it’s desire to rearrange and understand the motion and flow of things. It had let me see the pattern behind the chaos. And it was mine, now.

I slid the card back into the deck and made to do a reading. But the bonding had fatigued me, and this time the bloodstained deck flew apart. My lame attempt to reassert order barely slowed it. I sighed and began to sweep the cards together. It was still progress.