Royal Airs (6 page)

“And you can play more than one kind of game with these same cards?”

“Dozens. Hundreds.”

“Teach me one,” she said. “Something simple.”

He laughed. It was so unexpected that he should have expected it. This girl might be all elay, but she had a little of the coru element of surprise running through her veins. “All right. This is a game that even children can play. Trumps become their own suit, and the nine of trumps becomes the fourth wildcard. So all you have to do is match six of a kind . . .”

She was a quick study, mastering two easy games so rapidly that he taught her penta, since it had a subtlety that made it enjoyable whether the player was a novice or a professional. She even agreed to play for money—“as long as we keep it to quint-coppers and you don’t cheat”—and laughed in delight the first time she won a hand. By that time, of course, she’d already lost a whole pile of quint-coppers, though he doubted they amounted to much more than a quint-silver. Hardly enough to cover the price of the extra loaf of bread Samson had sent to his room.

“I see how this could become addictive,” she observed. “I keep thinking if I play just one more hand, I’ll finally get the right cards.”

“And that kind of attitude is exactly what keeps me employed,” he answered.

She folded her hands and studied him. “So how does one become a professional card player?” she asked. “What road do you start down that winds up here?”

She didn’t say it as if she pitied him or wanted to convince him of the error of his ways. Merely, she sounded curious. Elay women were creatures not only of air, but also of spirit. He had the sense she was trying to fix in her mind the precise pattern of his soul.

He gathered up the cards, since his hands felt empty without them, and began to idly shuffle and cut them, shuffle and cut. “My mother met an attractive man and found herself with a baby on her hands,” he said.

“A common enough occurrence,” Josie observed.

He nodded. “I get the feeling life wasn’t very easy for her until she met my stepfather when I was a few years old. He’d come to Chialto for the work, but he was a country man at heart. All torz. He missed the land. When his sister asked him back to help run the family farm, he was glad to go, and my mother was glad to go with him. A couple years later they had a son, my brother, Steff. A couple years after that, my mother died.”

He shrugged, a silent way of conveying what a time of pain and confusion that had been. All these years later, and he felt like he could still remember every day of that first awful year after his mother’s death. “I hadn’t liked farm life much to begin with, and pretty soon I couldn’t wait to get away,” he went on. “I wanted to get someplace where there was
life
and
chaos
and
music
. I wanted to go to the city. I left the first chance I could.”

“How old were you?”

“Seventeen. Came to Chialto, drifted around, took odd jobs. Headed down to the harbor to work on the docks. Didn’t like that, either. Came back to the city. Started playing cards to pass the time and ended up playing for money, when it turned out I was good at it. And here I am.”

“Do you ever go back to see your family?”

“Sure. Steff’s a good kid and I visit when I can. I think he’s pretty lonely. The farm life doesn’t suit him.”

“I take it he’s not torz.”

“No, he seems to be coru, though as far as I can tell, no one in his father’s family
ever
came from blood and water. So I guess it’s no wonder that he doesn’t fit in.”

“To some extent, it doesn’t matter who we are or where we came from—what kind of family brought us into this world,” Josie said softly. “We become who we were meant to be, and all those other influences fall away.”

He gave her a speculative look. “I suppose you’re talking from experience?”

“Certainly I have turned out to be a much different kind of person than I was raised to be.”

“I take it you spend time here in the slums doing some kind of reform work.”

“Something like that,” she said a little dryly. “A couple years ago, I bought an abandoned building and refurbished it. Turned it into a shelter with an infirmary, a kitchen, and a whole lot of beds. I provide a safe place for people to sleep if they’re desperate and have nowhere else to go.”

“Well, unless you have beds for a thousand people, I can’t imagine you can take care of every desperate soul who ends up southside on an average night.”

“Ah. Well. Some of the people
I
might consider desperate are perfectly happy with their lives. The ones who come to me are the ones who truly have no other options.”

He gestured to indicate her plain, inexpensive tunic. “You’re not dressed like it at the moment, but you look to me like someone who comes from money. I’m wondering how your family feels about this little project.”

She smiled. “My mother is horrified. My brother-in-law brings fairly constant pressure on me to give up the work. My sister—she’s proud of me, actually. She comes sometimes to help out.”

He glanced toward the sleeping Corene. “A different sister, I take it.”

“I have quite a few.”

“That’s what Corene said. She also said that the two of you aren’t actually related by blood.”

“We were raised as sisters until five years ago. The man we thought was our father turned out not to be. It’s complicated.”

“That’s also what Corene said.” He waited a beat, then added, “That’s what
you
called her.
She
told me her name was Cora.”

Now she was laughing openly. “She’s being very mysterious. The sweela folk love excitement and intrigue.”

“And I suppose your name isn’t really Josie.”

“Close enough. Josetta.”

That’s when it clicked in his head.
Corene. Zoe. Josetta.
“Slap me stupid,” he breathed. “You’re the princesses. The ones that weren’t really the king’s daughters.”

“That’s us,” she said cheerfully.

He had been watching her covertly ever since she arrived, but now he stared outright. Oh, it had been such a scandal, though overshadowed by a
surfeit
of scandals that had all piled up at once four or five years ago. First the people of Welce learned that King Vernon was dying. Then they learned that he had been impotent all these years, and his three daughters—by three different wives—had been fathered by loyal courtiers doing their part to give the king his heirs. Then they learned that Vernon’s fourth and youngest wife was carrying her second child and that
that
baby, miraculously, had been sired by the king.

A couple of quintiles later, the king had passed away, living barely long enough to hold his infant daughter in his arms. The five primes—the heads of the Five Families—had appointed a regent and an interim governing body that would rule Welce until the girl inherited her crown at the favorable age of twenty-four.

And while all of Welce waited for that child to grow up, what happened to the girls who had once been princesses? It had never occurred to Rafe to wonder before. He was at an uncharacteristic loss for words.

“I didn’t think you’d be so shocked,” Josetta said at last. “You don’t seem like the type to fawn over royalty.”

He pulled himself together. “I wouldn’t know. I’ve never had the chance to converse before with someone in line for the throne.”

“Anyway, I’m not really royalty. Surely you know the story? The bloodlines?”

He nodded. “But aren’t you—I don’t pay that much attention, but—aren’t you and Corene both still part of the succession?”

“We are, but we’re so much more removed from the crown now that Odelia’s been named the heir.”

“I wouldn’t think you’re so removed,” Rafe observed. “Babies die all the time. People get trampled by horses—run over by elaymotives. They drown. Now I’m even more shocked that anyone is letting you roam around the slums unprotected. I’d think they’d have you locked behind the palace doors with guards standing over you day and night.”

“I do have a guard with me day and night.”

Rafe looked ostentatiously around the room. “Not that I can see.”

She was trying to repress a smile. “He
was
with me. I sent him to fetch Corene’s father. And I assure you, he was reluctant to go. He takes his duties to me very seriously.”

“But one guard—in a place like this—it makes my blood run cold to think of what could happen to you.”

“Now you sound like Darien.”

“Darien,” he repeated. “Darien Serlast? The regent?”

Josetta nodded. “Corene’s father. My brother-in-law. And regent of the realm. He hates it that I spend so much time southside.”

“I would think he would do more than just hate it. I’d think he would
make
you stay someplace safe.”

“He doesn’t have the power to make me do anything.”

Rafe leaned back in his chair and surveyed her again. “Well, from what I hear, he does,” he said softly. “He’s a hunti man, right? He was practically running the whole kingdom in the days before anyone knew that Vernon was sick. He sounds to me like the kind of man who pretty much always gets what he wants.”

“Let me put it differently,” Josetta said. “For the first fifteen years of my life, I was afraid. I knew all eyes were watching me all the time. I knew I was expected to behave a certain way. I knew there were people who were eager to see me fail. I knew there were people who wanted me dead—people who tried to kill me, in fact, if you remember a certain regatta five years ago. My life was not my own and my life was not secure.

“Then Odelia was born, and the attention shifted. I decided I would no longer live to please other people. I would live up to my blessings. I would honor my elay heritage. And while this decision has not found favor with everyone, I have not changed my mind. It is very difficult to make an elay woman conform once she has decided she wants to be free.”

“I can certainly see that,” Rafe said, outwardly laughing, but inwardly feeling a touch of admiration. “I can almost pity poor hunti Darien, trying to contain a woman of air and spirit.”

Josetta’s smile was back. “Pity him even more for Corene, who is incorrigible, and for Zoe—his wife—who is the coru prime.
Nobody
controls Zoe. He is surrounded by women who won’t do his bidding.”

“He seems to have been a remarkably effective regent, even so. I suspect he is more powerful than you would like to admit.”

“Powerful,” she agreed, “and absolutely committed to the well-being of the realm. I like Darien very much. I just don’t always do what he says.”

The answer he was going to give was interrupted by a huge yawn. “Sorry,” he apologized. “A rude way to treat royalty.”

“I’m feeling exhausted myself,” she said. “I think I’m going to curl up alongside Corene and see if I can sleep for a few hours. If you can make yourself comfortable, you might try to do the same.”

A few minutes later, Rafe found himself in the distinctly odd position of trying to sleep in a room full of slumbering princesses. It was so unlikely as to be downright bizarre; he might wake up to find he had dreamed the entire evening. At least the room was set up to give the women a modicum of privacy, since the narrow bed sat in a curtained alcove and he had pulled the drapes shut once Josetta lay down. As for himself, he was making do with a blanket and a pillow on the floor in front of the fireplace. If he had been any less tired, he would have lain awake for hours, reviewing the events of the night, but as it was, he fell almost instantly asleep.

 • • • 

I
t was probably three hours later when Rafe woke up, stiff and uncomfortable. A wooden floor made for a hard mattress, no matter how weary you were. He stretched, stifled a groan, and forced himself to his feet. He’d slept long enough to clear his head, but not long enough to erase his sense of wonder at the fact that royalty was sleeping in his bed.

He cleaned himself up in the chamber down the hall, changing clothes and shaving while he was at it. When he went back to his room to drop off his soiled garments, he hesitated a moment, then crept up to the drawn curtains and cocked his head to listen. Yes, he could catch the faint sounds of two people breathing in slightly mismatched rhythms. He was tempted to peek inside, and he might have, if they’d just been two ordinary girls who had, in some extraordinary fashion, become entangled in his life. But princesses. It seemed wrong to spy on them. Offensive. Treasonous, even. He turned away.

A glance out his window showed him a cloudy mid-afternoon sky; not too early to go downstairs and start earning the day’s income. Josetta, he was certain, would instantly figure out where he had gone. She wasn’t the type to worry if she woke up to an empty apartment. He would bet that very little rocked that girl off-balance.

It would be interesting to get to know her better. Or it would have been, if she hadn’t been a princess. Which she was.

He gave his head a small shake and exited as quietly as he could. Downstairs, he found the place already starting to fill up with the afternoon regulars and the first vanguard of the evening crowd, the rich boys and the bored old men who thought an evening southside would get their blood racing or reverse their failing fortunes.

Rafe touched the deck of cards in his hip pocket, smiled impartially at the room, and made his way to his favorite corner table. Time to focus. Time to make new friends for the day.

The first set of players to join him consisted of a father and two sons—all of them torz, up from the country for the nineday, and still marveling at the sights the city had to offer. They were so wide-eyed and trusting that Rafe could have cheated them blind, but they were such a likable lot that he didn’t have the heart. He won, of course, but he didn’t beggar them in the process, unless they couldn’t afford to lose three quint-golds.

“You’ll find it’s difficult to win a game against a professional gambler,” he felt impelled to say as the youngest boy looked disheartened at losing the last hand. “It’s not my place to offer advice, but you might try other districts of Chialto for better entertainment. Have you been to the Plaza of Men? You’ll find some sport there. I’d get out of this part of town, if I were you.”