by Levi Stack
Chapter XVI
THE FORTUNE-TELLER
Viktor forgot his pain and staggered out the tent flap with Romulus, winding back the way they'd come. Around a tent corner, they saw Arseni was dismounted, his horse in the hands of the enemy. Under blooming Chinese flowers, guards had swords pointed at his neck, and others picked through his belongings; their leader questioned him with the bottle of Fatata brandy in hand.
"What've I done?" Viktor asked the colorful sky.
"It's not your fault. Arseni rode his horse too hard. The guards would've caught him regardless of your stunt."
"They'll know he was sneaking us in. He'll be punished," Viktor whispered.
Romulus couldn't deny the statement. He waited out of sight while the fireworks ended. Then he stole another glance. "Viktor—they're gone!"
"And I'm back," said a voice.
They looked up. Arseni had come around the backside of the tent with his horse.
"What? They let you go?" gasped Romulus.
"Yep. And it's a good thing Viktor's a bad rider."
"I'm not a bad rider."
Arseni chuckled. "Tell that to a Ruska Roma! Equestrian arts flow in our blood—there's not a sober one among us who'd get caught in your position—but that's why I was able to convince them you were a cousin of mine who'd had about ten drinks too many. I said Romulus and I were chasing you."
Viktor gawked.
"That was quick thinking," Romulus said.
Arseni led his horse back to the stable as he explained the story. "The funny thing is, it was their idea. They saw my bottle and guessed at it, and thankfully Fatata brandy is Gypsy made, so they never guessed we came from Aryk. 'Course, they confiscated the bottle ... So now I'm down a fire-breathing routine ... Perhaps I'll juggle Orange Splits yet."
After Arseni got a stable hand to care for the weary horses, the three boys set off on foot through the web of tents.
"Can you tell us who we're meeting now?" Romulus asked.
"Oh, right. Lady Nutrix—a fortune-teller."
"But that's against the church," said Viktor.
"We Ruska Roma don't think so," Arseni said. "We're Eastern Orthodox, and it's always been a part of our culture. Our people invented using cards to tell fortunes."
Viktor shook his head. "No Russian will agree with fortune-telling."
"You'd be surprised. Many men travel to Kasta Way from afar on holidays to get their cards read. Of course, they were all denied entrance tonight ... which might've been for the best. It can be a grave thing to know one's fortune."
"Well, I'm not getting my fortune read—not that I believe it to be true," growled Viktor.
"Lady Nutrix isn't going to lull herself into talking about the cards!" Arseni snapped. "She's a seer, not a sap. We need a reason to visit her."
Romulus shrugged. "I'll have my fortune read."
"Good. It's settled."
Arseni continued past different shelters until he came to a bizarre purple tent whose shape resembled a giant spider. It looked eerie in the moonlight—especially with the faint sounds of wailing in the night air.
"Is someone crying? Where are we, Arseni?" Viktor asked.
"A nursery. This is where fortunes are read."
"By newborns or plants?" Romulus joked.
They entered the flaps of the tent to find a long narrow room of cribs. Gypsy women were busy at work, coddling and fussing over babies who needed attention. Arseni went and spoke Romani to an older lady with a child wrapped in her arms.
"It's not enough to have illegal cards," Viktor whispered. "These Gypsies have to add a superstitious aspect to the mix and use newborns as a front."
Romulus grinned. "And I thought my upbringing was strange."
Arseni bid them to follow him down a black, fabric-coated passage. At the end hung hundreds of strands of beads, serving as a door. Arseni shook the beads and said something in Romani. When a woman's voice responded, he parted the strands and led them into a room layered in purple drapery and smelling of flowers and candle wax.
Viktor had expected the fortune-teller to be old, but Lady Nutrix barely looked thirty-five. She wore dark robes and had black hair fixed up in long curls. Her eyes and lips were beautiful, though dark with makeup. As if she already knew her guests weren't all Gypsies, she addressed them in Russian: "Please, take a seat."
The boys claimed three of the four chairs around a round wooden table.
"Tea?"
"No, thank you," said Viktor. I'll pass on poison.
"Nonsense." She kicked cushions out of her way and set a metal tray on the table, pouring teacups full of steaming brew for her guests. "So who're your friends, Arseni?"
"This is Viktor and Romulus. They're from Aryk."
She nearly broke a glass. "Pardon me, but oh, moons have waxed and waned since I've seen the likes of you."
"Excuse me?" said Viktor.
"Yes, I haven't seen anyone from Aryk for ages. After the House of Cards fell, they came here less and less and then not at all."
Viktor had heard the term before. "What do you mean—the House of Cards?"
A disheartened look passed over her face and faded away. "No, this is good. This is very good."
"What is?" said Romulus.
"Why, us meeting, of course. It is fate, curious fate. Please, excuse Arseni. His Crossbones Clan is not so good with introductions."
Arseni spilt scalding tea on his shirt but was too accustomed to burns to leap up.
"Yes, Arseni, I know all about your gang and its mischief, even your origin ... but I digress. I am Saga Nutrix. Call me Lady Nutrix."
Or fraud, Viktor thought.
Lady Nutrix clapped her hands together, interlocking her jade and moonstone rings. "Now I am merely a reader of fortunes. Fate and luck make their own decisions—as do you."
At least she admits the fortunes mean nothing, Viktor reasoned.
"Our people have advanced the art of fortune-telling more than any other, but we borrow the Marseilles gambling deck from the French. The deck goes ace to king, with clubs corresponding to will, diamonds to wealth, hearts to love, and spades to reason. Also, there are an additional twenty-two cards, which the French call 'Arcanes Majeures.' Every card has its own meaning, which I shall help interpret. Now you first, Master Romulus, is there a question you'd like insight on?"
"What's the fate of the search I'm on?"
"Hmm ... an intriguing topic, Master Romulus, one that requires examination of the past, present, and future." Lady Nutrix dealt him ten facedown cards. "It's ironic, isn't it?"
"What is?" Romulus asked.
She studied him like a volatile experiment. "That I should use cards to read your fortune, when your fate already depends on them."
Romulus flinched. "Why would you say that?"
Viktor was speechless. What did she know?
"This first card represents your present situation." Lady Nutrix ignored the boys and overturned a card with a picture of a colorful circle. "Ah, you have the Wheel of Fortune card, the cycle of fate. Yet the card lies upside down, suggesting that confusion blots out opportunity."
Completely ignoring the question that Romulus restated, Lady Nutrix continued with his reading, first stating the topic of the card's position and next flipping it to reveal the card's identity, and thus its meaning. For the position of an immediate challenge, she said Romulus' seven of clubs meant his search would test courage; for the distant past, she declared his king of spades meant a history of aggression and combat; and for the recent past, she flipped a three of spades and shuddered, claiming the card a telltale sign of heartache and a lack of communication.
Lady Nutrix was too entranced by Romulus' cards to appreciate his growing anger. Viktor, too, was dismayed. How could he question her about the cards if she continued to ignore them?
"Dear Mercury, the boy has the Magician!" she whispered. "His search must feed off desire and creativity—but will it end in trickery? No, here I sense ancient
magic. The Magician has cup, coin, staff, and sword—so could the boy rise up and control the four suits? He has footsteps to follow—"
Romulus banged his fist on the table. "This is my fortune! Now what are you talking about? Whose footsteps?"
Lady Nutrix's gaze snapped upward and her cheeks flushed. "I apologize, Master Romulus. It's just this most unusual reading makes my thoughts stray."
It's Maksim's footsteps, thought Viktor, knowing Romulus was thinking the same.
Yet again, though, she avoided the question. Arseni looked equally baffled by her behavior.
"This card gives us a glimpse of the immediate future, Master Romulus," she said, tapping a lacquer-coated, silver fingernail on the table.
She overturned an upside-down knight of clubs. Viktor glanced at the card, but as he turned away, he felt a subliminal alarm go off in his head; something about the card had caught his eye! He looked back down at it, unable to shake the feeling that some detail eluded him.
While Lady Nutrix warned Romulus he would meet a smooth-talking snake, Viktor was busy scrutinizing the knight of clubs. The picture wasn't familiar and neither were the patterns or design of the card, but still ... He tilted his head, and suddenly he saw it—along the very bottom of the picture's border, in slim but unmistakable lettering, was the name R.E. Kamdrac!
Viktor's heart beat like a war drum in his chest. Romulus' attention was centered on Lady Nutrix, who was now talking about an inheritance gone wrong over a flipped four of diamonds. Viktor had to get information out of her, but how? What if she refused to talk?
"Sorry, but I've never heard of that last card," Viktor cut in.
"A four of diamonds?" asked Lady Nutrix.
"No, the knight of clubs."
"Ah, because the knight is not a part of the Russian deck. It's the equivalent of a knave or jack. It is from the French deck."
"The Marseilles?"
"That's the one."
"But what ranks above the knight?" Viktor said, his questions picking up speed.
"The queen."
"And below it?"
"The page."
Viktor pointed at R.E. Kamdrac's name. "Why does it have that marking there?"
"Because long ago, King Louis XIII decreed that card-makers should place their name on the knight of clubs," Lady Nutrix said. "It was a means of controlling and taxing them."
"So you know Kamdrac because he made this deck and you bought it from him?" Viktor said hastily, leading the question.
"Yes, he and I were acquainted through old friends."
"He must live close by."
"He fled Aryk for his workshop atop an old hill in Birstov." Lady Nutrix slapped a hand over her mouth right after the words slipped out.
Triumph rushed through Viktor.
"Well ... thanks," Romulus said, getting up from his chair.
"This reading isn't over!" said Lady Nutrix.
Viktor snorted. "Go con someone else."
"I know about your king of spades." Lady Nutrix let the words sink into the three frozen boys. "Arseni, I know your serf friends are searching for the secret of the cards, the secret that haunts their town. But, boys, yours is a doomed search—your fortunes will prove it. Stay and listen to them, or I shall give you away to the guards combing Kasta Way as we speak."
Arseni looked pale, apparently regretting the way he'd dragged the blood brothers into this.
"You're no match for us," Romulus said.
"And all of the nurses saw your faces." Lady Nutrix then spoke and swore to keep their identity clandestine, but from the way Romulus was seething, he wasn't looking forward to seeing her flip his last three cards.
"Reversed king of hearts," she said, "an enemy whose poisoned heart rejects love. It sounds like the Leopard, does it not?"
Silence.
"On hopes and fears—the Hermit. You're greatest fear is to be alone."
Romulus glared at the lone figure holding a star-filled lantern. In anger, he flipped the last card himself. It had the Roman numeral XIII, but even in French, it had no label—only a picture: A skeleton with a scythe.
"What it is?" he demanded.
"Death—it is Death!" Lady Nutrix wailed, black teardrops running from her shadowed eyes to her silver handkerchief. "See your folly!"
Viktor stood. "These cards are devilish."
"The same deal goes for you. Heed your fortune or be given away."
"No she-devil will read my fortune!" Viktor spat, but already the fortune-teller had dealt out six more cards and turned the first.
"Le Pape—the Pope symbolizes alliances. The heart of your reading centers on a particular friendship."
An image flashed in Viktor's mind of Romulus and him shaking bloodstained hands in the forest over the carcass of a massive bear.
"As for your problem—you have Le Pendu—the Hanged Man. It predicts self-sacrifice for your alliance."
Viktor's hand went to his temple. The skeleton-like man who haunted his dreams stared at him, and then fell, his neck snapping with a crack of lighting.
"For the source of your problem, the three of clubs—a dream that went awry, and for the unchangeable future, ten of hearts reversed. It foretells loss of family, home, or both!"
Viktor tried to block out the idea of losing his family, of Masqueraiders rampaging through his home. This was too much, but Lady Nutrix wouldn't stop.
"Lady Justice reversed—your judgment is clouded when it comes to your friendship! And finally, La Lune—the Moon! In relation to friendship, it predicts deception and ultimately ... betrayal!"
Old dreams flashed in Viktor's mind: Romulus in the gray brick alleyway under the moonlight, with the gray-white wolf pacing back and forth.
"Here's what I think of that!" Romulus shouted. He kicked out his seat, yanked out a knife, and stabbed the Moon card through its middle, pinning it to the table.
Again, déjà vu swept over Viktor. Instead of seeing Romulus stride out the doorway and yank down strands of beads, he saw Captain Ulfrik stab a playing card against the side of the gallows and march forward to pull a lever.
Suddenly a hand shook Viktor away from his nightmares—it was Lady Nutrix, clenching his wrist. "Please! Sway that boy's thinking—he is the road to death!"
"We've no faith in cards, Gypsy!"
"All your faith is in cards!" she shouted hysterically. "You think discovering the secret of the cards will help you, but it will only tear your life apart and drive you mad!"
"No, you're mad!" Viktor pried her fingers off his arm and crashed through the beaded doorway and out the tent after Arseni.
Romulus stood in the center of Kasta Way's New Year's celebration, his chest rising and falling furiously. "Kamdrac—we've got to visit him—and soon."
Arseni nodded with Viktor and pounded a fist on his chest. "If you're going to Birstov, you'll find no better guide than me."
Nearly one week later, Viktor rode with Romulus and Arseni through the snowy northern forest during the dead hours of the night. Making plans to visit Birstov had been tricky, and Viktor's plan was risky: Sneak out of the house Thursday night, reach Birstov by morning, talk with Kamdrac, and return to Aryk by evening. If all went well, his parents would assume he'd left early for school Friday, and the blood brothers would have finally talked with the man who'd crafted the most illegal card deck in Aryk.
Yet the trip was not without formal dangers. Ever since the boxing match, security in Aryk had doubled: Packs of soldiers roamed the streets, guards searched citizens at will, and the men and women in the mines and textile mills were being watched with renewed vigor. Even the checkpoints on the roads leading out of Aryk had been fortified—which was precisely why the boys had taken to the forest.
For now, Romulus led them deep into black trees, but once they skirted the checkpoints, Arseni would take the lead. He'd traveled across many of the northern towns while fire-juggling; he knew the roads well. Until then, Viktor would have to put up with the shadows of the forest
, where invisible beasts rustled bushes and bark froze so cold that it snapped, creating cracks like gunshots. Lady Nutrix's words didn't help. Losing his family, Romulus betraying him, their search leading to the death of Romulus: These predictions would always linger in the far corner of Viktor's mind, like an itch he couldn't reach, even if he didn't believe them to be true.
"Arseni, try to keep the horses calm," said Romulus. "We're about to pass Earth's Edge."
The olive-skinned Gypsy began whispering Romani words to the horses, whose tails swished happily at the sound of his voice. This behavior never ceased to amaze Viktor. He swore Arseni could change their direction, speed, or even make them jump with just a few secret syllables.
As the trio exited a twisting passage of trees onto a frozen sandbar, Viktor understood why this spot was marked on Romulus' old map. Across a beautiful cove tucked into the mountainside, water from Aryk's river cascaded off a sheer drop. Where the waterfall plummeted into the pool, vapor rose up in clouds, drifting across the cove to make chilled mist.
"Drink it in," said Romulus over the roar. "This is the only flowing water you'll see for months."
Arseni nodded. "It's a bit hard for water to freeze off a hundred-foot cliff, eh?"
By the time the sun rose, Viktor's bones ached from riding. They had avoided patrolling soldiers and journeyed past raw forests and, later, rolling hills where serfs farmed. Because it was an agricultural village, Arseni explained that Birstov was much more spread out than a mining center like Aryk, though not nearly as populated.
"Just make sure not to tell anyone where you're from," Arseni added at end of his speech.
Viktor exchanged a confused glance with Romulus. "Why?"
"Because nobody trusts people from Aryk. Obviously."
"Do explain," said Romulus.
Arseni stopped his horse. "I thought Yanko and Zindelo made it pretty clear at the Parlor—nobody wants anything to do with your town. Most Ruska Roma won't even set foot in Aryk. Blast it, even the towns around you refuse to buy coal coming from your mines; Molotov sells only a fraction of it—and that heads out on caravans going far away in the East."
"So he really is using the coal," Viktor murmured.
Romulus nudged his horse forward. "Arseni, why is everyone afraid of Aryk?"
"Well, they think it's haunted, don't they," he replied. "And it makes sense after hearing the Legend of the Leopard. Think about it—all those landlords dying—symbols all over your town—the marked man we saw fight. Who wouldn't be afraid of that?"
The blood brothers quieted, pondering their own exiled nature. To the rest of the world, Viktor was an outsider; that made Romulus an outsider twice removed.
Once in Birstov, finding word of Kamdrac was surprisingly easy. No one knew his name, but all Romulus had to do was mention a house on a hill and the young children began spilling their horror stories about the town's old recluse. While Arseni was left to care for the horses, Viktor and Romulus jogged off alone to the hill outside of town. It was time to face the mechanical house of legend, the hermit who kept machines whirring and clanking to fulfill his evil deeds.
The snowy hill looked exactly as had been described: It was covered in trees gnarled from the wind and broken contraptions that had been thrown down the slope; a ramshackle cabin sat at its crest, emitting puffs of black smoke against the gray winter sky.
"I never thought I'd see a house worse than my neighbor's," Viktor said. "But he's making Miss Blok look sane."
Romulus' jaw tightened. "I think we'll have to be direct with him. But if he's as much of a hermit as everyone is letting on, we won't have to worry about him talking to the Leopard or anyone else in Aryk."
They set off past the broken gate and overgrown pathway, crunching over weeds and scrap metal buried under the snow. At the doorway, Romulus slammed the iron knocker and waited. Three more times he had to knock.
"Who goes there?" rumbled a throaty voice.
