[Gentlemen Bastards 02] Red Seas Under Read Skies by Scott Lynch Page B

without it?”
    Locke sighed and flicked the top card from the new deck onto the growing pile atop the desk. “Nine of Chalices! Look familiar?”
    Requin laughed and shook his head. Locke set the third deck down beside the ones already on Requin’s desk, stood up, and conjured another from somewhere in the vicinity of his breeches.
    “But your attendants would of course know,” said Locke, “if I were loaded down with four concealed decks of cards, they being so adept at spotting something like that on a man with no jacket or shoes…wait, four? I may have miscounted….”
    He produced a fifth deck from somewhere within his silk tunic, which joined the little tower of cards perched ever more precariously on the edge of the desk.
    “Surely I couldn’t have hidden five decks of cards from your guards, Master Requin. Five would be quite ridiculous. Yet there they are—though I’m afraid that’s as good as it gets. To conjure more, I would have to begin producing them from somewhere disagreeable.
    “And, I’m sorry to say, I don’t seem to have the card you took. But wait…. I do know where it might be found….”
    He reached across Requin’s desk, nudged the wine bottle at its base, and seemed to pluck a facedown card from underneath it.
    “Your card,” he said, twirling it in the fingers of his left hand. “Ten of Sabers.”
    “Well,” laughed Requin, showing a wide arc of yellowing teeth below the fire-orange circles of his optics. “Very fine, very fine. And one-handed, too. But even if I grant that you could perform such tricks, continuously, in front of my attendants and my other guests…you and Master de Ferra have spent a great deal of time at games that are more rigorously controlled than the open card tables.”
    “I can tell you how we beat those, too. Simply free me.”
    “Why relinquish a clear advantage?”
    “Then trade it to gain another. Free my right hand,” said Locke, mustering every last bit of passionate sincerity he could pour into his words, “and I shall tell you exactly why you must never again trust the security of your Sinspire as it stands.”
    Requin stared down at him, laced his gloved fingers together, and finally nodded to Selendri. She withdrew her blades—though she kept them pointed at Locke—and pressed a switch behind the desk. Locke was suddenly free to stumble back to his feet, rubbing his right wrist.
    “Most kind,” said Locke with a breeziness that was pure conjuring. “Now, yes, we have played at quite a bit more than the open tables. But which games have we scrupulously avoided? Reds-and-Blacks. Count to Twenty. Fair Maiden’s Wish. All the games in which a guest plays against the Sinspire, rather than against another guest. Games mathematically contrived to give the house a substantial edge.”
    “Hard to make a profit otherwise, Master Kosta.”
    “Yes. And useless for the purposes of a cheat like myself; I need flesh and blood to fool. I don’t care how much clockwork and how many attendants you throw in. In a game between guests, larceny always finds a way, sure as water pushes through a ship’s seams.”
    “More bold speech,” said Requin. “I admire glibness in the doomed, Master Kosta. But you and I both know that there is no way to cheat at, say, Carousel Hazard, barring four-way complicity between the participants, which would render the game absolutely pointless.”
    “True. There is no way to cheat the carousel or the cards, at least not here in your spire. But when one cannot cheat the game, one must cheat the players. Do you know what bela paranella is?”
    “A soporific. Expensive alchemy.”
    “Yes. Colorless, tasteless, and doubly effective when taken with liquor. Jerome and I were dusting our fingers with it before we handled our cards during each hand last night. Madam Corvaleur has a well-known habit of eating and licking her fingers while playing. Sooner or later, she was bound to take in enough of the drug to pass