by Rose Lerner
The Liar’s Dice is a novella in the award-winning Lotus Palace Mystery series. The supporting characters appearing in The Liar’s Dice are featured in the first two books: The Lotus Palace and The Jade Temptress. Turn the page for more information about my other books and series.
More Books by Jeannie
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The Lotus Palace Mystery Series
The Lotus Palace (* * *1)
The Jade Temptress (* * *2)
The Liar’s Dice (* * *2.5)
Tang Dynasty Historical Romances
Butterfly Swords
The Dragon and the Pearl
My Fair Concubine
The Sword Dancer
A Dance with Danger
Swords, Silk and Surrender (novella collection)
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The Lotus Palace
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It is a time of celebration in the Pingkang Li, where imperial scholars and bureaucrats mingle with beautiful courtesans. At the center is the Lotus Palace, home of the most exquisite courtesans in China...
Maidservant Yue-ying is not one of those beauties. Street-smart and practical, she's content to live in the shadow of her infamous mistress-until she meets the aristocratic playboy Bai Huang.
Bai Huang lives in a privileged world Yue-ying can barely imagine, yet alone share, but as they are thrown together in an attempt to solve a deadly mystery, they both start to dream of a different life. Yet Bai Huang's position means that all she could ever be to him is his concubine-will she sacrifice her pride to follow her heart?
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Raising the Stakes
Isabel Cooper
Ever since the drought and dust storms hit her family’s farm, Sam's taken to the road, gambling and running a con or two to stay afloat and send a little money to the folks back home. One night, she wins some much-needed cash and an antique flute its owner claims is magic.
Sam doesn’t believe in magic. But when she plays a few notes, a handsome warrior from another world appears, bound by an ancient bargain to destroy the enemies of anyone who possesses the flute.
Talathan soon wants to help resilient, beautiful Sam for reasons far deeper than his old debt, but magical warfare would attract too much attention in a world of Tommy guns and talkies. So the gambler and the elf come up with another plan, one which matches both their skills against a corrupt preacher.
For so long, Sam's looked forward to nothing but the next dollar and the next deal of the cards, but as she and Talathan work together, she finds herself wanting to win more than money and play much more than one hand...
Dedication
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To my sister, Emily Gell, and my soon-to-be nephew.
Acknowledgments
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I’d like to gratefully acknowledge my co-authors, as well as Simone Seguin, who copy-edited this story.
Part 1: Jack of Spades
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Duke Ellington broke up in the wind. The sounds of the band in their far-away concert hall wavered and stuttered into static, blending with the howling outside.
The man closest to the radio thumped it, not too hard, with the flat of his hand. Getting no result, he shook his head and turned the dial slowly. Voices wavered in and out: ghosts on the air. This was a pretty nice joint, with carpet on the floor and pictures on the walls, but nice couldn’t keep the signal when the weather decided otherwise.
Devil winds, they called them here in California. Santa Ana, hot and dry off the desert. People went crazy when they blew. Or people said people went crazy.
“...And I tell you, my brothers and sisters, that the end is coming. As it was in the time of Noah, man has turned his back on the Lord. He has descended into evil and—”
That signal came in clearly enough. The man had a rhythm, voice lifting and falling like waves, every syllable distinct. Evil. Darkness shrieked beyond the windows.
“Get rid of that shit,” said a second man, looking up from his cards with a scowl.
“I can’t get anything else,” said the man who’d hit the radio.
“Then don’t.”
“You’d rather listen to the wind?” asked a third: older, with gray hair and glasses.
“Than Richards? You bet I would.”
The first man shrugged and switched the radio off. He was on the wrong side of thirty, pretty well-dressed, a little doughy around the jowls. Probably a lawyer, an accountant, maybe a salesman. Almost definitely stalling.
“I didn’t know that was Richards,” he said. “I saw signs for his church, I think, up near Ventura.”
“You want to waste a Lincoln, have a look sometime. You want to waste ten, ask him to fix that back of yours.”
Sam thought the second man—Billy, skinny, owned the bar they were playing in or at least poured the drinks—was stalling too. Why not? He was showing a pair of tens, a seven, and a five: not good enough to be good, not that much worse than what everyone else had in front of them. His hidden cards might add up to a better hand. It was doubtful.
For one thing, Sam had three aces. Only the ace of spades was up. Her other upcards weren’t bad, weren’t great—jack and trey of diamonds, eight of hearts—but there was no obvious hand there. She saw one of the kings in front of the gent with the specs, another with the guy who’d turned on the radio. He’d gotten himself a queen, too, but he wasn’t betting high enough for a flush and he wouldn’t be stalling if he was bluffing. He wasn’t that good.
“My back is fine,” said the gray-haired man.
“Lizzie says different.”
“It’s fine.” He glanced over at Sam. “And we’re boring the lady.”
“Not hardly,” said Sam, who knew her cue. Smile—placed perfectly between ingénue and vamp—wave a hand so the paste rings caught the light, shake her curls and lean back. Gee, fellas, I could do this all night. Don’t even look at the cards. “I can’t say much, though. My back’s hitting on all fours, and it’s been a long time since I went to church.”
Words were easy. They sat on her lightly, like clothes. Inside she thought odds and tells. She made a first plan and then a backup, keeping them loose; you never knew what way the cards would fall.
“All the same,” said the older man. “Mr. Green, would you deal the last card?”
The maybe-lawyer, maybe-salesman, who probably wasn’t named Mr. Green, sent the cards around the table with a gesture that spoke of a decent bit of practice. He wasn’t a pro, though. None of the men were: working Joes on the upper end of the scale, playing a little harder than a friendly game, but none of them either real flash or real oily.
It was why Sam was playing honest.
She flipped up the card and saw the jack of spades grinning at her. She smiled back, just a bit—blank face was almost as bad as showing everything—thought about her funds, and finally pulled out a crumpled five. “Raise.”
Green folded. Billy folded. The gray-haired man, O’Brien, tapped the side of his cheek, looked from his own cards to the pot in the center of the table, and then asked, “Cash or equivalent?”
“Depends on the equivalent,” said Sam.
He unsnapped a briefcase and then set a box on the table. It was a smallish rectangle, enameled Chinese-style in green and blue. That alone would bring fifty cents, maybe a dollar. Inside, when Sam snapped it open, a wooden flute rested in green velvet. It was polished smooth, and looked very old.
“An aunt left this to me a month ago. I’ve been carrying it around for a while, uncertain what to do with it.”
“It’s nice work,” said Sam. She blinked a couple times and wished she hadn’t finished her whiskey, or that she’d been willing to risk another glass. “I played a little, when I was a kid. School concerts.”
O’Brien smiled. “Is that a yes?”
“Sure. It’s worth five.” She fl
ipped over her cards: aces of spades, hearts, and clubs, jacks of diamonds and spades. “Or you can beat a full boat.”
He winced. “No such luck, I fear.” Flush: five through nine, diamonds. He pushed the box into the middle of the table with the pile of bills. “You play a good game, young lady.”
“Thanks,” said Sam.
The click of her purse unsnapping was lesser kin to the briefcase clasps. It spoke authoritatively: of definitions and conclusions, nothing uncertain and everything under control.
As if enraged by the voice of its opposite, the wind moaned again.
Sam didn’t openly count money. For one thing, it made her look like she was gloating. People didn’t like that, she’d learned. Men particularly didn’t like it. For another, it was bad luck. She just tidied the bills and straightened them into a manageable pile, while the men talked over and around her.
Green was off to San Diego the next morning, visiting his brother. O’Brien had been there once. It wasn’t a bad trip, if the roads were clear, but he wouldn’t want to make it at his age. Green was taking the train, he said, not driving. Still, sitting for that long was hard on a man, in Billy’s opinion.
Bills folded neatly into the purse. Coins went in after, in neat stacks even though they wouldn’t remain that way.
The talk died down. Green made his goodbyes and drifted off. Billy and O’Brien stood at the bar, talking quietly: old friends. Sam put on her hat, picked up the box, and stood chewing on her lip while the clock chimed half past eleven.
Her shoes didn’t make much noise on the floor. At first, the men didn’t know she was there.
“I didn’t know you felt so strongly about the preacher,” O’Brien was saying. “You must’ve had a sermon or two in your life.”
Billy dipped a glass into hot water. “I like carnivals,” he said. “They’re straight about fooling you, and they don’t try and make you feel guilty when you don’t buy it. My cousin—” Before he could go on, he saw Sam. “Everything all right, sister?”
“Just fine, thanks. Only—can I bend your ear for a second, Mr. O’Brien?”
“Of course,” he said, and walked off with her a little distance from the bar itself. The floor was thick with sawdust, the chairs turned over on the tops of the tables, save for the one they’d sat at, and that would happen soon enough. Bars at night always looked skeletal to Sam.
She held out the box. It felt weightier now. “Look, an extra five isn’t gonna kill me or save me. The raise was to win the pot. I don’t need to be taking people’s heirlooms in the bargain. You can have it back, no strings.”
Behind O’Brien’s glasses, his eyes were brown and mild. He blinked them, startled, and then shook his head. “It’s a kind offer, but no. You did play a good game, and I would’ve folded before I bet anything I really felt sentimental about. You won it fairly. Besides, I’m not musical, and neither is my wife.”
“Sure, but—” Sam stopped. Even if her motives were kind, the question that came next wouldn’t be.
“And no, I don’t,” O’Brien said, anticipating it anyhow. He pushed his glasses up on his nose. “We had a daughter. She had the ’flu. Spanish. She was sixteen. But she wasn’t very musical either.”
Grief dried out. Given time, it went pale and flat, like pressed flowers. “My brother went that way,” said Sam. This conversation would cling to her. Still, she didn’t turn away. “He’d just gotten back from the war, too. We all thought we were real lucky. I’m sorry.”
“Well,” he said. He lifted his hands and let them fall back to his sides. “Well.”
“I should go. Have a good night, Mr. O’Brien.”
“There was kind of a legend in my family,” he said, lifting his head to look at her suddenly. “Play it on a beach, between midnight and dawn, and make a wish. One per generation.”
Superstition, she thought, but she was staring at him. “And you—”
He shook his head. “If I believed, I still wouldn’t dare. Good night, Miss Smith.”
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She should have been tired, but she wasn’t. Sam never was after a win. Adrenalin or just plain nerves kept her going for a couple hours. If she’d gone back to her hotel, she’d have stayed awake anyhow, reading magazines with the back pages torn out and trying not to spot the roaches.
So she went out.
The pier was never entirely deserted, even coming up to midnight. The people who stayed generally weren’t in great shape. Most of them were passed out. Sam marked the ones who might not be and then didn’t worry about it. She kept good hold of her purse and could run fast when she had to. Besides, while her gown was secondhand and her jewelry practically came in a Cracker Jack box, the revolver in her purse was real—and loaded.
Walking on sand in heels was hard. She stopped halfway down the beach, when she couldn’t see anyone conscious nearby, took off her shoes, and then carefully rolled her stockings down and off, tucking them finally into her purse. The cool sand was satisfyingly rough under her feet.
Now on steadier footing, Sam headed down to the water. The moon was full overhead and the stars glittered above, as much above diamonds as diamonds outdid her rings and earrings. When she stopped at the water’s edge, the froth from the waves lapped against her toes. Out here, the wind was quieter. She could hear the water hit the shore: a series of shallow, soothing beats. Salt air filled her lungs.
Every cloud had a silver lining or two.
A glance over her shoulder showed her the remaining lights of the town—not many, and what were left were mostly neon, heavy on shades of red—but nobody watching. Sam put down her shoes and opened the box she’d won.
Old things wore away. The flute was no exception. Sam barely laid her fingers on it and didn’t dare breathe too hard, scared she’d feel it crumble under her touch. One faint note almost blended with the waves and didn’t break anything. With more confidence, she tried a scale.
The flute and memory were both stronger than she’d expected. Her fingers limbered up and remembered that they’d once done more honest work than holding—and occasionally cutting—cards.
She played the first song she could remember, one of those the band had brought out for just about every game and Fourth of July for her whole girlhood. After the first couple bars, she started singing the lyrics in her head:
Glory in the combat
For the purple and the white.
Wishing was harder. Nobody had written words for that. Sam tried to wrap her own around what she wanted, thinking about monkey’s paws, Greek kings, and that one joke about the tiny piano player all the time: if this worked, it wasn’t a thing to get wrong. All she got were pictures and feelings. She knew those well. Words still didn’t come.
Just above the ocean, the air shimmered.
Her eyes were going. It was late, and the men had all been smoking. Smart little girls would already be in bed; even she had better shake a leg soon. When the eyes started letting you down, the rest wasn’t long in following. She’d finish the fight song and then turn in. This wish-and-whistle business had been worth a shot, but there wasn’t any point being dumb about superstition.
With that resolve, she blinked once, hard, and hoped her eyes would hold up a little longer once she opened them again.
Results were mixed. The blur above the water was gone. Where it had been, a huge dark shape was spreading its wings and flying toward her.
Sam managed to clamp her lips shut over the scream that was her first impulse. Yelling down here wouldn’t get anything she wanted. Anyhow, once she got a look at it, it was just an owl, if an almighty big one, probably out hunting bats. Weird that it was down by the water, maybe, but she wasn’t Audubon. Maybe owls out in California ate fish. It wouldn’t be so odd, considering, and it was going to fly right over her head if she was lucky.
She ducked. The owl veered upward at the last second, flew past her head, and then landed on the sand directly in front of her. Its eyes shone flatly in the moonlight.
Fish or no fish, they’d definitely left normal behavior for owls far behind. Before Sam could even start accounting for that, though, the owl was changing. It grew taller and thinner; the wings turned to arms; the legs and body went man-shaped; hair fell down its back in a braid, growing from a head suddenly human.
It—he—looked at Sam, and she revised that last word. Sure, she wouldn’t have been sold on human anyhow, given what she’d just seen, but even if he hadn’t been an owl three seconds ago, nobody would mistake this guy for the boy next door.
His face was all angles: pointed chin, straight nose, high cheekbones, thin lips. The chassis, as far as a funny Robin Hood kind of outfit showed, was tall and slim, the kind that the magazines might call athletic or lordly, depending on the picture. He didn’t wear those qualities like regular men, though; he looked more refined, or maybe distilled was the word, like everything about him had been filtered and poured down to its strongest essence.
Also, if people were wearing their ears in points these days, she’d missed the article.
The sand buckled under Sam’s feet. Earthquake was her first thought, but she knew better. Nobody back in town was yelling, the pier was as steady as ever, and earthquakes didn’t make the edges of your vision turn black. This quake was purely between her ears.
