Authors: John Joseph Adams
Quentin winced at the word. He hated thinking of it like that. But Hiram always named
it so.
Quentin ran his fingers along the edge of his Deck. He could rustle up something to
help track the killer, but it would use up a Card. He’d dealt out half of them while
pursuing revenge against his uncle—payback for the death of his father. He’d hoped
to honor his father by doing something better with the Cards afterward. And he would,
once he’d finished schooling Hiram.
He could ask Hiram to make a Play. The boy would put up a fuss, but in the end he’d
probably do it. But that idea left a bad taste behind it.
That was the thing about the Cards. As wondrous as they were, they made one a miser.
Like an old man clinging to a dwindling fortune.
“I don’t like this,” Quentin said. “Whoever killed her didn’t seem to take much. Most
of the weapons are still where they belong. Save for those that got knocked over.”
“And it weren’t no gunfight,” Hiram said. “Not with that smell in the air. If it weren’t
her Cards, then maybe someone else made the Play?”
Could that be it?
Quentin thought.
She had said she’d made enemies. Did one come back to kill her?
“Let’s go upstairs and see if we can find anything.”
They moved through Gunsmith’s rooms, pulling open drawers and pawing through chests
and bureaus.
“What are we looking for, exactly?” Hiram said.
“I don’t know,” Quentin replied. “Something to give us direction.”
In the end, they found nothing beyond what a woman of Gunsmith’s age might have in
her house—clothing, some toiletries, and linens—plus an assortment of tools in an
old chest. But nothing about the Cards. No notebooks or diaries, either.
“Let’s get out of here,” Quentin said.
“Okay,” Hiram said. “Just give me a minute. I want to check on something.”
Quentin descended the stairs… and froze when he saw a woman standing in the room beside
Gunsmith’s body. She was young, blonde, with piercing blue eyes; she wore traveling
clothes and held a deck of cards (he had to assume they were Cards) in her hand.
Suddenly, she noticed him. “Who the hell are you?” she said. She stepped back.
Quentin’s eyes flicked to her Deck. “Now hold on,” he said.
The woman’s eyes narrowed. “D’you kill her?”
“What? Me?” Quentin said. “No, I—”
She pulled a Card from the top of her deck, though Quentin could only see the red
back of it. He raised his own Card. But something held him back.
“Let’s not be hasty,” he said, moving slowly forward. “This could all be a misunderstanding.”
“What isn’t a misunderstanding,” she said, “is that my mother’s dead. Murdered. And
I find you robbing her house. No, there ain’t no misunderstanding.”
“Wait, your mother?” Quentin said. “She never said she had a kid.”
“Oh, and you knew her so well, did you?” She still held the Card out in her shaking
hand. All it would take was some concentration and she could rain fire down on him.
Or something else. He could try to counter, but there was no knowing what card she
held. Quentin would either have to Play one of his highest or risk going down.
Hiram’s arrival broke the moment down into pieces. The woman’s eyes jumped to him.
Quentin moved. He pumped his legs, closing the gap, and tackled the woman to the ground.
He placed one hand across the woman’s eyes, hoping it would momentarily break her
concentration. Then he hissed in her ear, “We didn’t kill your ma.”
“How do I know you’re telling the truth? Why should I believe you?”
“We came here to meet with her. She was going to talk to us. About the Cards.”
“What about them?”
“We’re… we’re new to this. We thought she could teach us something.”
The woman looked from Quentin to Hiram. She narrowed her eyes. “That does sound like
her.”
Quentin let go of the woman and got to his feet, offering his hand to her. “I’m awful
sorry about your mother. If there’s anything we can do to help, we’ll try.”
Her face softened, then she took his hand and he helped her to her feet. She turned
back to where her mother still lay and took a moment to compose herself. “When did
you get your Deck?” she asked, brushing off her skirt.
“His father gave it to me.” Quentin indicated Hiram. “As a favor.”
“That’s some favor.”
“Well, it wasn’t all kindness. He asked me to train this one.”
“Hey!” Hiram said.
“My ma gave me mine,” the woman said. She extended her hand. “I’m Clarice.”
“Quentin.” He shook her hand. She had a good grip. “This here is Hiram.”
Hiram tipped his bowler hat. “Ma’am.”
“Do you know who might have wanted to hurt your ma?” Quentin asked.
“I know she’d made enemies,” Clarice said. “I’d heard tell that someone was gunning
for her. One of her friends down in Abilene got word to me. I just… got here too late.”
All of them turned when they heard the loud voices outside the front door. Quentin
peeked through the curtained windows. “The Law,” he said and grabbed Hiram’s arm.
“We have to go. Looks like someone heard something. Clarice, if you need us, you can
find us at the Sovereign Hotel.”
“No,” Clarice said. “I’m going with you.”
“Why?”
“The sheriff’s not going to believe my ma was killed by a deck of playing cards. And
I can’t waste time here with those dullwits while her killer is still out there. I’ll
go with you now and deal with the law later.”
Quentin nodded. “Okay. If that’s how you want to play it. Let’s go.”
They slipped out the back and made their way to the hotel. Quentin had to stop himself
from barraging Clarice with questions. He’d thought his hopes for more knowledge about
the Cards had died with Gunsmith. But now he’d found someone else. Only there were
more important things to focus on now. But once they were done…
He pushed the thoughts away. They entered the hotel, and Quentin turned to Clarice.
“Why don’t you stay down here, maybe get a drink, and we’ll head up to our room for
a minute, then we’ll come back down and join you.”
“I’ll come with you,” she said.
“But—” Quentin said, exchanging a glance with Hiram. Surely she would be concerned
about propriety.
“My ma just died,” she said. “I need to do something.”
He shrugged and the three of them walked up the stairs to the room the two men shared.
Clarice sat on the bed, and Hiram, without being asked, poured her some whisky from
the bottle they kept in the room. Clarice took a long draught. Quentin took off his
hat, poured some water into the basin, and threw it over his face and neck. Dust and
grit colored the water.
“How many do you have left?” Hiram said behind him.
“Not enough,” Clarice said, and left it at that. Curiosity burned brightly in Quentin’s
mind. Was that part of the etiquette? Don’t let others know what you have? It certainly
would be safer.
“Did your mother have any Cards left?” Quentin said, toweling off his face.
“I… I don’t know,” she said. “She did last time I saw her, but…” She shrugged.
“I guess she either’d run out or she used what she had left trying to fight off her
killer. If we’re lucky, that means he will have used a few Cards of his own.”
“There could have been more than one of them,” Hiram said. “If I wanted to take down
a veteran Card Sharp, I’d have sent a few men after her.”
“We don’t know enough,” Quentin said. “If the killer just came here to kill Gunsmith,
he might already be on his way out of town.”
“Then we should be checking and maybe asking around to see who might be new in town,”
Hiram said.
“I’ll do that,” Quentin said. “I don’t want to chance you running into your friends
from the Gold Star Saloon.”
“What should I do then?” Hiram said.
“You and Clarice see what you can turn up. Maybe ask around here? It might even make
sense to talk to the sheriff.”
Hiram grimaced, but Clarice nodded.
Quentin gave Hiram a pat on the back, a pat that the younger man seemed to find uncomfortable,
then he left.
The bright light of Stillwell’s main road brought second thoughts.
What are you doing, Quentin? Risking your life and maybe your Cards for something
that doesn’t concern you?
But he had wanted to do good with the Cards. Wasn’t stopping a killer doing good?
Wasn’t righting injustice worth the risk?
He stopped first at the other side of Stillwell at the Alder Hotel where the stagecoach
departed from. The next stage wasn’t for at least an hour, and no one was there waiting.
Next, he stopped by the town stables and asked around if anyone had left in a hurry.
No one seemed to have done so. Quentin hung around the stables for a spell nevertheless,
until he felt stupid watching for someone who might never come.
On his way back to the Sovereign, he detoured past Gunsmith’s place. Outside of it,
he pulled his Deck from his waistcoat pocket and flipped through it. Hiram had wanted
a special case for his—the cigarette case—but Quentin liked to have his pressing up
against him, easily accessible.
Of all the Cards in his deck, he had more Diamonds than anything else. Cards from
the other three suits had been burned up in his vendetta against his uncle.
He found he suddenly wished for a pistol like the one Hiram had picked up. Perhaps
the boy had it right. Maybe it was a way to hold on to the Cards a little longer.
No wonder Gunsmith survived for as long as she did. Finding a way to make the Cards
last was a miracle. Once they were gone, they were gone. It was the one absolute truth
he knew about them.
The lawmen had left Gunsmith’s house some time ago by the looks of it, probably to
cart off the body to the undertaker. He wondered what they would think of her death;
there were no real wounds on the body—whatever had killed her had been from the Card
Sharp’s Play.
Quentin reached for his Diamonds. He hadn’t been intending to use a Card for this—it
wasn’t even his business, any of this. But finding out what happened to Gunsmith felt
right. And Clarice might be more willing to exchange information if he helped find
her mother’s killer.
Making a Play was tricky and never a guaranteed thing. If you tried for something
beyond the value of the Card, it wouldn’t work. And you would waste the Card nonetheless.
So he thought carefully.
He needed to sharpen his senses. He flipped to the Five of Diamonds. It seemed right—five
senses, after all. But before he drew it, he flipped ahead to the Six and pulled that
out. Five normal senses, sure, but there was that elusive sixth. And Diamonds was
the suit of vision and also of earth, of buried secrets.
He entered the house through the open back door and sat down where they’d found Gunsmith’s
body. Then he focused on the Six of Diamonds, shaping his desire, feeling the power
gather as it always did, and he willed the Card to life. It flared in his hand, burning
away to nothing.
He gasped as his vision swam and the room around him seemed to thicken, as if he were
underwater. A shape, like dark smoke, coalesced before him. As he stepped back, it
sharpened into Gunsmith. Or at least an approximation of her. Her features were muddied,
unclear. But he knew it was her.
The vision went beyond sight, though. He could feel her boots upon the wooden floor.
Could smell the scent of her—oil and leather and something herbaceous.
She was bending down, lining up some pistols in a glass case. The door opened. She
rose and reached for the Spades pistol. The figure in the doorway was black smoke.
Quentin caught the momentary image of a Card in the figure’s hand. Then a charge ran
through the room and the glass case in front of Gunsmith shattered, throwing glass
around like sparks from a fire. Gunsmith rose, firing—once, twice, then the pistol
went flying from her grasp.
She reached down to a holster beneath her apron, coming up with a Card.
The vision blurred as intense energies filled the room. Though he was removed by the
veil of time, Quentin thought he could feel Gunsmith’s attack raise the hairs on his
arms.
Gunsmith reached for another Card, but maybe she was injured, or just too slow. Whatever
the reason, she never used it. An unseen force gripped her, arching her back and contorting
her face, and then she toppled to the ground, still in the same awkward position.
The attacker moved into the room. And as she neared, as the room saw her, felt her,
her features resolved so that Quentin could see who it was. His skin went cold.
Clarice.
As he watched, she bent down over the dead form of Gunsmith and removed the Card from
the still-clutching hand, then retrieved the rest from the holster at the dead woman’s
side. It was a thin stack, but she took them, and put them in her own coat pocket.
I’ve been a damned fool
, Quentin thought.
He ran upstairs, back into the bedroom. He remembered a photograph from before, in
a tarnished silver frame. He picked it up. There was a younger Gunsmith and Clarice,
no more than a girl. Why would she kill her own mother?
He was just leaving the bedroom when a gunshot rang out downstairs.
Quentin ran down the stairs and barreled into the shop. Clarice stood over a limp,
dark figure on the ground, holding a still-smoking pistol. Gunsmith’s Spades pistol.
Quentin recognized Hiram’s bowler hat rolling away on the floor. Clarice held Hiram’s
Deck of Cards in her free hand.
Clarice turned and leveled the pistol at him. Quentin’s Cards were still in his pocket.
“Why?” Quentin gasped, reeling as he spoke the words.
I’m sorry, old man—I failed you. I let your son die.
“For these,” she said, holding up the Deck.
Quentin shook his head. “But you can’t use another man’s Cards!”
Clarice grinned with one side of her mouth. “Are you certain of that fact?” she said.
Quentin began to move, but she cocked back the hammer of the pistol. “Uh-uh.”
“Do you really think you can make them work?”