ARC: The Corpse-Rat King (16 page)

“Yes,” Marius nodded, grinning into his coins. “Let’s.”

Marius started slowly. Playing two-handed was a whole new card game: many more variables than five-handed, many more burnt cards, much more left to chance. It took a lot of patience, or a willingness to be reckless to the point of suicide, to make significant gains against a single opponent. He pecked away at his bets: a coin here; two there; slowly building up small pots and backing away if he was unsure of a win. Sangk splashed coins about like a reformed scrooge, making massive over-bets, chipping away at Marius’ stack until he held a lead of almost two to one. Marius didn’t mind. He was watching the cards, stringing together sequences, letting Sangk’s outrageous play disguise Marius’ manoeuvring. The dealer was dealing low-heavy hands: a lot of peasants and soldiers were surviving the burns. After a dozen hands, Marius had the read of the deck, and made his move.

The next hand, Marius opened with a bishop. A weak card, but a good start, one he could build on in a number of ways. Marius threw three coins into the pot. Sangk raised an eyebrow and matched his bet without glancing at his first card. Two peasants followed, and Marius bet the minimum each time. Sangk matched him, then, when Marius drew a queen on his fourth card and bet twelve coins, raised him another dozen. Marius stared at the Tallian under the edge of his hood. Sangk sat back and smiled. Marius switched his gaze to the fat man’s stack, and his own, then at the backs of the cards in Sangk’s grip. The third card along had a tiny, imperceptible split at the upper right corner. Marius kept his expression still. He’d picked out that mark two opponents ago. The wastrel. Nothing Sangk did would matter. With the wastrel in his hand he could not possibly win. Every card, every combination was invalidated. Marius rubbed his jaw as if confused.

“You have a big hand?” he asked, as if trying to elicit some response that might give him a clue.

“Oh, a big one,” Sangk replied, leaning back and rechecking his cards, as if reassuring himself of his decks value.

“Why such a big bet?” Marius mused, almost to himself. “Four cards in. What have you got? King queen? Two princesses?” He riffled a small pillar of coins. “So many cards left.”

“Confused?”

“Ahhhh.” Marius rubbed his face. I should get an award for this, he thought. The Queen of Muses herself should place a laurel around my ears. “Why so big? You could still lose so many cards.”

Sangk said nothing, simply crossed his hands and waited. Marius shook his head.

“Okay,” he said, voice full of uncertainty. “I call.”

Four more cards passed, each bet growing in size, until Marius had Sangk right where he wanted the fat man to think he had Marius – pot committed, with so many coins in the pot that when the second to last card was drawn he had no option but to throw the rest into the centre for fear of folding the hand and being crippled. Sure enough, as soon as he pulled the card from his deck, Sangk reached down and pushed his stack over, spilling his coins across the table.

“Everything,” Sangk said. “All of it.”

Marius laid his cards face down, placed his hands on top of it to signify that he was merely considering, not folding. He made a great show of examining the fallen money and comparing it against his own. To call Sangk’s bet would cost him everything. Exactly what he wanted. Once he won this hand he would have his opponent out-coined by a factor of more than eleven to one. After that, it was only a matter of time – a very short time – before he had them all.

“Call,” he said, and turned over his cards. “Two princesses.” He stood up, and reached over for the coins.

Sangk smiled, and slowly fanned his hand on to the table.

“One queen, one bishop,” he said, and laughed. “No wastrel.”

“But… how…?”

“Did you mean this?” Sangk casually flipped over the peasant card next to the bishop, revealing the tiny split at the top corner.

“What…?”

“Please,” Sangk sat back and held his arms wide open, appealing to the room around them. “Do you take me for a fool? Do you think I don’t know the make-up of my own deck? Each little mark, each little signifier?” He clapped his hands together, and leaned forward, picking up a card at random and holding it in front of Marius. “Do you think I didn’t learn to do this at my father’s elbow when I was a child?” he asked, stroking the card with his thumb, opening a split almost identical to the one on the bishop. Marius stared at the fresh mark as the fat man rubbed it against the face of a second card, muddying the edges until they were almost indistinguishable from either the wastrel or the peasant.

“No.”

“Oh, yes, I’m afraid so.”

“No.” Marius shook his head. “You can’t do that.”

“In my own house? I think I can.” Sangk leaned over and began scooping coins towards himself. “I win, don Hellespont. Whatever your little game was, you’re busted. It’s time for you to get out.”

“How the hell…?

“What?” he asked, laughing. “Did you think I didn’t recognize you? The way you walk, or hold yourself? The way you always lead with a small bet and never commit yourself until the third card, time after time after time?” He rose from the table, and began to scoop the money towards him. “Did you really think covering yourself up and putting on a funny voice would hide you from me? You’re as big a fool as your father, don Hellespont, if you think you can deceive me like that.”

“It’s Helles. I go by Helles.” Marius scraped his chair back and stood.

“Like I care,” Sangk nodded to the burly doorkeeper. “Escort this bankrupt out of my house.”

The giant came over and grabbed Marius by each arm. Marius struggled, and gave up almost immediately. He may as well be trying to squirm through wood. Sangk stood before him, and grabbed the edge of his hood.

“Next time,” he said, and flipped the hood back, “try a better…. Oh, Gods!”

He stumbled backwards, arms rising to cover his face. Marius turned his head to look at his captor. The doorkeeper let him loose, and stepped back, fear and disgust written across his previously impassive features. Marius smiled, and the doorkeeper broke, and ran for the nearby staircase.

“Oh, Gods,” Sangk was crying, over and over. “He’s dead. He’s dead. Oh, Gods.” Players at other tables were looking at them. Marius stared back. As he turned to each startled patron they leaped from their chairs and join the crush at the stairs.

“They’re coming back,” Sangk cried. “They told me when I bought it, they told me. Oh, Gods…” He began to pray in his native Tallian, a long stream of syllables punctuated only by a rising ululation. Marius stepped forward and grabbed his collar, drawing him up.

“What are you talking about?” he said, shaking the heavier man. “What?”

“The duke,” Sangk babbled. “The men he killed. They’re buried down here, in the walls, in the back cave…” He began praying again. Marius let him go and he fell to the floor, pressing his head against the cold stone, begging forgiveness from whatever Gods he could rally to his cause. Marius turned away. The room was empty. Only he and the babbling man at his feet remained. He bent over the table, scooping the coins towards himself and counting them out. Eighty riner. He gathered them up, made his way to the next table and the next, gathering the abandoned winnings together. When he had finished he counted one hundred and fifty riner.

“Not a bad haul,” he said to his terrified host. “I should come here dead more often.” He separated out a hundred riner and placed it in various pockets, then picked up the first of the remaining coins and waved it at Sangk.

“Never steal what you can’t swallow,” he said. “First rule.” He placed the coin in his mouth, and gulped it backwards. It stuck in the top of his throat. Marius gulped again, pushed and pulled at it with the base of his tongue until it jumped into his mouth. He tried again, with the same result.

“Shit.”

There was no spit in his mouth, and, dead as he was, he could not summon any. He pondered the coin for a moment. Then he tilted his head back, opened his mouth as wide as he could, and dropped it back in. Gulping, and jerking his head back and forth like a baby bird, he managed to get it down.

“Like a lizard swallowing a mouse,” he told the wailing Sangk. “I’ve spent a lot of time sleeping under bushes.” One by one he gulped the remaining coins down his gullet, until the table was empty. He looked over at Sangk for one, last, smug comment, and stopped.

Deep within the unused rear of the cave, where a small corridor lead to a tiny antechamber, something stood. Had he been alive, Marius would not have seen it. But his dead eyes, able to distinguish shades of dark from each other with much keener facility, saw the shape, and the one behind it, and vaguely, the impression of several more.

“They’re coming back,” he whispered, as the features of a long-dead man became clearer, dressed in peasant garb, the remains of an earth-moving basket hanging from his skeletal hand. The corpse leaned forward to get a better look at Marius. He opened his jaw, and a fine trail of sand dribbled out.

“Kinnnggg…” he hissed.

Marius stepped backwards involuntarily.

“I… I’m on my way,” he said, and ran for the stairs.

THIRTEEN

Dusk was falling as Marius strode along the wharf and up the gangway onto the deck of the
Minerva
. The lines of navvies had departed, and the remaining activity was by way of making the ship ready to sail. Marius skirted the main activity and headed for the captain’s cabin. Halfway along the deck, the giant form of Mister Spone emerged from the crowd and waved at him.

“Hola, Mister Helles! Got yourself packed then?”

Marius waved back and hurried on. He knocked sharply on the captain’s door and entered without waiting for permission.

The cabin had changed immeasurably since Marius had left. No paintings hung on the walls. The tables of knick-knacks were gone. The velvet drapes had been packed away, replaced by two sheets of oiled canvas that looked older than the ship by some measure. The throne upon which Bomthe sat had been superseded by a simple wooden chair. The captain himself had changed – the frippery with which he was clothed upon their first meeting was no longer apparent, and a simpler, more functional uniform now adorned his sparse frame. The charts over which he pored, however, were the same. He glanced up as Marius entered, and a frown of annoyance flashed over his countenance.

“Mister…. Holes, isn’t it?”

“Helles.” Marius withdrew a heavy pouch from his jerkin and threw it onto the table. It landed with a dull
thunk
. “Ninety-five riner.”

The captain gathered up the bag without removing his gaze from Marius. He tipped it over, and counted out the coins within. When he was finished he gazed down at the neat piles he had built, tapping his teeth with one stiff finger. Marius waited in silence, head bowed, hands tucked into his sleeves like a meditating monk.

“Well,” the captain said at length. “That presents me with something of a problem, Mister Hailes. I’m afraid our preparations have left us with very little available space. We simply do not have a cabin to spare on a single passenger, paying or otherwise. The best I can offer…”

Marius barely seemed to move, but suddenly he was beside the table and sweeping the coins back into the bag. The captain curled an arm around them protectively, and held his other hand up to stop Marius’ movement.

“I can offer you a private space, although it is not so big as a cabin. If it is not to your liking…” His shrug finished his argument. The docks were only a few feet down the gangway. Marius could leave any time he chose to do so. Marius straightened, and regained his monk-like pose.

“We sail without a second mate this trip. His room is on the top deck, behind and to the side of my own cabin. We’re using it as a storeroom for blankets and sundry items of clothing. It’s rather full, I’m afraid. No room for a cot. Still,” He smiled, and the curtains were no longer the oiliest things in the room. “I’m sure you could make yourself comfortable, if the need was great enough.”

Marius stared at the pile of money, contemplating, for a moment, the possibility of recovering it, making his way off the crowded ship unharmed, and finding some alternative form of escape without Keth’s assistance. Then, slowly, he nodded.

“Show me.”

The captain deposited his payment in a drawer within his desk. He leaned back into his chair.

“Figgis!”

The boy emerged from the cabin’s rear door, and stood a few feet from the two men, sketching a short bow towards his master. “Yes, sir?”

“Show our guest to his quarters, will you?”

“Yes, sir.” The young lad moved to the door, and looked back at Marius. “This way, sir.”

Marius turned to follow him, noting as he did so that Figgis had not been told where his quarters were located. No need to wonder how long ago the captain had decided on his berth – it had been his intention since the start. He followed Figgis’ out onto the deck, turned to the starboard side, and shuffled sternward along the thin space between the captain’s window and the railing. Marius glanced through the glass as he passed. Bomthe was staring straight back, tracking his progress along the deck.

At the rear of the deck, thin enough that Marius would have mistaken it for a simple panel if not for the small semi-circular hole cut into it at waist height, stood the door to the second mate’s room. Figgis indicated it with a short wave of his hand, then scurried past Marius and back up towards Bomthe’s cabin. Marius tugged the door open. It was small enough that he had to turn sideways to fit through. He did so, and slipped into the tiny space beyond.

To call it a room was to sell a mule as a horse. Marius had seen larger closets in the boudoirs of Endtown brothels. It was a good thing he didn’t need to sleep, he thought as he searched for footing amongst the waist-high piles of blankets. He had never like sleeping on his side, and the room was not wide enough that he could have done so on his back. Whoever the second mate had been, he had undoubtedly left Bomthe’s service in order to undergo puberty – a grown man, surely, could not have fit within the room for any length of time. Finally happy that he had attained sure footing, he reached behind him and closed the door, plunging the room into darkness. Marius waited for a moment or two to let his eyes adjust, then slowly sunk to his knees and crawled further into the space. A small window sat halfway along the rear wall, covered by a blanket indistinguishable from those on the floor. Marius pulled it down and let moonlight into the room. Bomthe hadn’t lied. It was a cabin, it was private, and it was above decks. As to anything else, well, the dead were beyond discomfort. Or, at least, they made do with it. With nothing else to do before the ship set sail, he started to fold blankets into neat squares and pile them up in the farthest corner.