Authors: Craig Schaefer
“I doubt it. Remember, the Bargainers do what they do out of a sense of art and tradition. Rembrandt wouldn’t splatter paint on his masterpiece just because you waved a handful of cash at him. Still…I suppose it can’t hurt to ask. Wait here, I need to make a call.”
“Who are you calling?” I said.
“Emma. She can look up who holds Roth’s contract and where they are now. Hopefully not somewhere on the other side of the world.”
The answer, as it turned out, was a bit closer than that. It was half an hour north, in Reno.
It was tempting to think of Reno as a low-rent Vegas, the kind of place where washed-up croupiers went to die. The town had a flavor and a pulse of its own, though, and the San Francisco tourist crowd kept things jumping. We rolled past the cherry neon arch reading “Reno: The Biggest Little City in the World,” cruising for Fourth Street. The street itself—and the blues bar that bore the street’s name up on its red marquee.
All cozy and smoky and dark, 4th Street Scarlet was miles away from a tourist trap, all cozy and smoky and dark. The cool licks of a saxophone wafted from the stage as we made our way inside, wrapping around my heart and giving it a squeeze.
“His use-name is
Cth’pollosu
,” Caitlin had told me on the drive over, fresh from her call with Emma. “But these days he goes by Calypso. He’s a big deal, Daniel. One of the greats, a legend even, and he’s been around for a long, long time. Some say he walked with the Morning Star.”
“You sound like you’re about to meet George Clooney.”
“I won’t lie, he’s up there. Just watch yourself. He’s not stupid.”
“Not worried,” I said, taking her hand in mine. “I’ve got backup.”
Calypso wasn’t hard to find. He glowed in my second sight like a blood diamond, all hard edges and cold allure. He wore a tan linen suit that stood out against his skin. He was dark, dark like roasted coffee, and a wisp of white smoke curled up from the unfiltered cigarette held between his long, slender fingers.
“Hello, hello,” he said as we walked up to his table. His voice was like burnt honey. “If it isn’t the Wingtaker herself. Pleased to find myself in the presence of greatness.”
“The feeling’s mutual,” she said. “I admire your work.”
His easy gaze slid toward me. His eyes were unnaturally bright.
“And if this is Sitri’s honored hound, the man beside her must be Daniel Faust. You’ve been making waves, son. I’ve heard things.”
“Good things or bad?” I asked.
He chuckled, a low amused rasp. “Things. I’m a ramblin’ man, you see. I hear things all over. Why don’t you both take a load off? Join me for a spell.”
As we pulled out chairs and sat down at his small table, he lifted his half-empty glass and waved toward a passing waitress.
“Grace, baby? Another whiskey on the rocks. Bring a couple for my new friends, too.”
“We’re here about one of your clients,” Caitlin said. “Alton Roth.”
Calypso took a long, slow drag of his cigarette. He exhaled a plume of smoke that drifted up toward the rafters, swirling in time with the music.
“Mm, Alton. Alton’s a keeper. My most ambitious project in four hundred years. See, that boy’s bound for greater things than the Senate.”
“You know he’s looking to wriggle out of the deal?” I said.
“They always do,” he said with a lazy smile. “Oh, they always do. I understand Alton’s looking to live forever. Had a few clients try that game over the years. Not one’s ever pulled it off. Nah, immortality’s a losing proposition. Only fame lasts forever.”
“He might prove you wrong,” I said.
Caitlin rested her hands on the table.
“This is a matter of infernal security,” she said. “You’re a Bargainer, and the terms of the Cold Peace give me no authority over you or your order. I am
asking
you to release Alton Roth’s contract as a favor to me and to Prince Sitri. Your generosity will be repaid.”
Calypso ashed his cigarette and took a sip of whiskey, shaking his head.
“I appreciate the tone of respect,” he said, “and I appreciate the offer of recompense. But come on, Wingtaker. You aren’t one of those come-lately upstarts with no love for your elders, our traditions, and our ways. You
honor
your history. So you know, well as anyone, that I can’t let Roth off the hook. Every soul is a song, and I’m still writing his lyrics.”
“There’s no offer you’ll consider?” I said.
He let out a long, slow chuckle and took another sip of whiskey. “I do so enjoy a man named Faust asking me about a deal. Makes me feel at one with history. Shame we can’t talk business, son, but you’re already damned. Spoiled product.”
“He’s also mine,” Caitlin said with a hint of warning in her voice.
Calypso took a foil pack of smokes from his inside jacket pocket, some European brand I didn’t recognize, and shook out a single cigarette.
“Point is, I’ve got big plans for that man, and I just can’t go parting with him. Genuinely sorry if that steps on your toes.”
I thought fast. Roth’s contract was the one piece of leverage we had, the one wrench we could throw into Lauren’s machine, but only if I could figure out how to use it.
I got an idea. A sketchy one—my best ideas usually were.
“What’s your interest in Roth,” I said, “outside the scope of his contract?”
“All I have to do is deliver what I promised him,” Calypso said, “and all he has to do is die. In his proper hour, that is. I won’t brook you interfering with my work.”
“I wouldn’t do that,” Caitlin said.
“Oh, I know you wouldn’t. Your boy here, though, he’s on a hair trigger. You’d best school him before he does something foolish.”
I held up my hand. “Let me rephrase. We need Roth to lean in a certain direction. It shouldn’t interfere with whatever you’ve promised him. In fact, it might help. Is that a problem? If we just talk to the guy? Maybe play with his head a little bit?”
“Long as you mind your boundaries, I’m copacetic,” Calypso said.
The waitress brought over a round of drinks. They sat before us, untouched.
“Let’s talk a different kind of business, then,” I said. “What would you want in exchange for a copy of his contract? Not the original, nothing binding, just a copy.”
“Now you’ve got me curious,” Calypso said, “but such things aren’t for sale. Tell me something, sorcerer: are you a gambling man?”
“Now and then.”
I didn’t see where the cup came from. Calypso just waved his hand and there it was on the table, an old cup of battered and stitched leather. Beside it, five little dice carved from yellowed bone bathed in the smoky electric light.
“I can always spot a gambling man. No, I won’t sell you the copy,” Calypso said. “If you’re willing to put a little something on the table, though, let’s play for it instead.”
“A
bsolutely not.” Caitlin bristled. “I forbid it.”
Calypso looked pained. “Wingtaker, please. You’re charged with upholding the law, and you
know
the law. The mortal has every right to bargain with me. No one can interfere with that.”
“I can. He’s mine.”
He shook his head. “Not in the eyes of hell’s law. No mark, no brand, no tokens? You can’t speak for him.”
“What’s the game?” I said, wanting to get between them before things escalated.
“Liar’s dice,” Calypso said with a smile. “Individual-hand style. A simple little game of chance and skill.”
“And what do you want me to put on the table?”
Calypso took a drag from his cigarette, studying me through the haze. I felt like he was peeling me back, layer by layer, measuring how badly I wanted the contract and what he could get in return.
“One year of your life.”
I tried to look like the proposal didn’t faze me. In any contest of wits, steady nerves are half the battle. If you don’t have them, fake them.
“Front end or back end?” I asked.
“Back end. Memories aren’t worth a thing to me. Now and then, though, I get a client who wants to live just a little longer. Five years, ten years, enough time to appreciate what they’ve got. Those years have to come from someplace. Every man has his time to go, and your candle will burn out exactly one year sooner than its appointed date.”
“Daniel,” Caitlin said warningly.
“Could we have a second?” I said to Calypso.
He slowly rose from his chair. “Take your time,” he said. “Need to freshen up.”
I waited until he was out of earshot—I hoped—and leaned in.
“Cait, I have a plan, but we’re going to need that contract to swing Roth. It’s worth the risk.”
“A year of your life?”
“On the back end,” I said. “And if Lauren wins, I’m gonna lose
all
the years left in my life, along with everybody else on Earth. Look…if you really don’t want me to do this, I won’t. But I believe it’s worth taking a chance.”
She reached out and put her hand over mine. She looked me in the eye.
“All right,” she said, “here are the rules. He has to play fair, and so do you. That means following the
spirit
of the game. He can bluff, he can use wordplay, he can mislead within reason, but he can’t use loaded dice or cast a spell to swing the outcome. He likes games where you have to read people’s faces, because he’s been doing it for a very,
very
long time. You’ve never played against anybody this good.”
“Oh, I doubt that. You’ve never played Scrabble with Bentley. He has all the
X
,
Y,
and
Z
words in the dictionary memorized. Triple word score, every time.”
She squeezed my hand. “
Please
, Daniel. Take this seriously.”
I leaned in closer. I couldn’t resist a kiss at her earlobe as I whispered, “See? I’m nervous as hell, and I made myself look flippant. Trust me, I can take this guy.”
Calypso came back and slid into his chair, looking between us with an unspoken question on his lips.
“Let’s do this,” I said.
He smiled.
“Did your lady explain the rules?”
I nodded. “We play by the spirit of the game.”
Now there were two identical leather cups on the table and two sets of dice, as if they’d always been there.
“Then let’s play,” Calypso said.
Individual-hand liar’s dice is a stripped-down version of the real game. It’s a two-player showdown based on a little luck and a lot of bluffing. I scooped up the bones and spilled them into the cup, keeping my palm pressed over its mouth as I gave it a shake. All the while my eyes were fixed on Calypso’s face, roaming from his forehead to his lips, trying to get a read on his expressions.
They say that everybody has a tell. That’s not true. Everybody has
lots
of tells. There are over forty muscles in the human face, working in concert with thousands of possible ways to put your feelings on display to the world. Add in little twitches, shrugs of the shoulder, or the curl of a finger, and the number of tells—and the number of possible interpretations—is too many to count.
Show me a stone poker face when you’ve been expressive all night, and I know you’re hiding something. The right way to bluff isn’t to throw up a wall, because it can’t be done. What you want to do is mix your signals, throw up so many conflicting reads that your opponent can’t possibly get a fix on what you’re thinking. Baffle them with noise, not silence.
I slapped the cup onto the table mouth-down and listened to the dice rattle. We peeked under our cups at the same time, tilting the rims back. I had three twos, a one, and a five. Three of a kind, solid hand.
“Runt,” I said, calling the lowest hand. Calypso stared me down long enough to turn the silence into a weapon. His quiet patience grated at my nerves. I willed my shoulders to unclench and thought of a dirty joke Corman had told me a couple of days ago. The amused smile that rose to my lips was smooth and genuine, just not related to the game at hand.
“Pair,” he said.
Now I could call his bluff, raise my own bid, or roll my dice again. Sticking with my hand felt like the safest move. By the odds, he probably didn’t have a runt—a no-combination roll—so he most likely wasn’t bluffing.
“Two pair,” I said.
“Three of a kind,” he shot back, upping the bid without skipping a heartbeat. I blinked, rattled.
Now I was leaving safe harbor. If I upped the bid past the real hand under my cup and he called me on it, he won. Was he bluffing? It didn’t feel right. He was confident. Not the kind of bluster you see from someone overplaying their hand, but the quiet confidence that comes from a winning hand.
I didn’t like it. I needed to mix things up.
“Rolling again,” I said. “All five dice.”
The bones rattled in my cup and bounced on the table. I kept my face slack as I looked underneath. Now I had nothing but a lousy pair. I’d landed in the exact same boat I’d tried to jump out of, and it had just sprung a leak.
“Low straight,” I said, upping the bid.
Calypso smiled like a wolf.
“Liar.”
My stomach clenched. We both uncovered our dice at the same time. I sat there, exposed with my single pair. On his side of the table, a scattering of mismatched and worthless dice.
“You had a runt,” I said.
“What do you know? Looks like I did, looks like I did.”
Caitlin’s hands clenched on the edge of the table, knuckles turning white.
“What now?” I asked him.
Calypso reached out across the table, like a gentleman.
“We shake hands on a game well-played.”
I took his hand. He took my life.
It didn’t hurt, not like a punch or a burn or a shock, nothing on the level my flesh could understand. It hurt like racing to meet a lover at the airport, only to get caught up in traffic and miss her flight. It hurt like discovering you’ve forgotten your mother’s face, and you don’t have any photographs left. It hurt like realizing a decade just slipped out from under you, and you don’t have anything but missed opportunities and empty bottles to show for it.
He let go and gave me a firm nod.
“I appreciate a man who pays his debts,” he said. “Respect.”
“Again,” I said.
Caitlin’s eyes widened. “Daniel—”