Spellslinger 6: Crownbreaker

by Sebastien de Castell

  Even with that warning, I stood there like a stump until I felt Rosie haul me back to where she and Durral had taken refuge from the ugly black smoke emanating from the pipe. Enna took in a long, slow drag – cautious, like she was creeping up on a rattlesnake. Her cheeks bulged out, but she held the smoke there as she carefully set the pipe down and took out a second instrument that tamped down the flame. Then she looked back at me, her eyes wet with tears. I couldn’t tell whether the smoke was to blame or her fear for her daughter’s life.

  She reached over and pinched Ferius’s nostrils closed with the thumb and forefinger of her left hand. With her right, she gently tugged at Ferius’s chin to open her mouth. With aching slowness, Enna breathed out a thin trail of the black smoke, her lips working the whole time, like she was using whisper magic. The smoke entered her daughter’s mouth only to sit there, swirling, as if trapped inside a glass bowl.

  ‘Come on, girl,’ Durral said behind me. ‘Your momma’s callin’ you. For once in your life, listen.’

  A sudden wracking cough emerged from Ferius, though instead of expelling the smoke, it seemed to suck it deep into her lungs.

  ‘That’s it, my darling,’ Durral said. The old man’s voice cracked. ‘No damned curse is gonna keep my girl down.’

  More coughing, thick, rasping, hacking. Blood oozed from the corner of Ferius’s mouth, a thread of black slithering inside it like oil in water. Her hands came up, trying to block the smoke, but Enna held her down and kept up that slow exhalation until every bit of it had entered Ferius’s lungs.

  She settled after a while, and her eyes blinked open. ‘Momma?’ she asked.

  Enna smiled. ‘Who else?’

  ‘Wasn’t sure I’d ever see you again.’

  ‘One last time,’ her mother said. ‘Told you we’d meet one last time.’

  ‘But never again?’

  ‘Can’t rightly see the paths ahead. Never could. But I think this time’s our last, baby girl.’

  The notion of anyone referring to Ferius Parfax as ‘baby girl’ seemed absurd. But Ferius wiped a tear away with the back of her hand. Her head turned then, and her eyes sought me out. ‘That you, kid?’ she asked.

  I came close and knelt beside her. ‘I figured you were dead,’ I said, taking her hand, trying not to bawl like a lost child.

  ‘Thought about it,’ she said. She reached clumsily for my hand. I clasped hers between mine. ‘Then I remembered you were way too stubborn to let me die.’

  ‘She’s going to need rest,’ her mother said, pulling jars and bottles from her leather case and laying them out carefully. ‘Leave her with me a few hours so I can give her what medicines I can to lend her strength.’

  ‘Only one medicine can cure what’s ailin’ me right now,’ Ferius said. ‘And I can’t imagine anyone had the courtesy to bring some.’

  ‘Oh, really?’ Enna asked, raising one eyebrow.

  Ferius’s eyes went wide. ‘Momma, you didn’t …’

  Enna reached into the inside pocket of her coat and removed something long, thin and instantly recognisable to me.

  ‘You brought me a smoking reed!’ Ferius said, the enthusiasm in her tone at odds with the weary paleness of her features. ‘But you and poppa hate smoking.’

  Durral came over and put a hand on his daughter’s shoulder. ‘It’s a foul habit, girl. Gonna kill you one of these days. But your momma carries ’em with her everywhere. Just in case.’

  I got up and stepped back, removing myself from what felt like a moment for family.

  ‘You did well,’ Rosie said to me.

  I couldn’t tell if she was serious or just being nice. Then I remembered that Rosie’s never nice. ‘Thanks,’ I said.

  ‘Come with me now,’ she said, first going over to close the curtain and provide Ferius and her parents with privacy, and then walking towards a set of stone stairs carved into the long side of the cavern that led up to a gallery looking down on the chamber. ‘The others will be coming down momentarily.’

  ‘The other who?’

  She tilted her head as if she were trying to ascertain if I was just playing dumb or was actually dumb. Then she nodded as if I’d provided the answer. ‘The other Argosi. They’ve been awaiting us.’

  ‘Awaiting us for what?’

  Rosie’s version of a smile came to her face – a kind of pressing of the lips together in a not entirely unpleasant way but which nonetheless sent a chill down my spine. ‘To play cards, of course.’

  42

  The Card Game

  During my travels with Ferius Parfax I’d learned a hundred different card games. Simple ones based largely on chance, like Farmer’s Harvest, in which each player started with two long rows of cards face down and could call out either the suit or a number and get points based on how close they got. Complex ones like Wayward Stars, that required tremendous amounts of strategy – not to mention memorisation (Ferius could remember the position of every card in the deck once they’d been fanned out for her). She’d even taught me bizarre games like Forgetful Troubadour, in which each player began with a single card from which they spun a tale to which the other player added with one of their cards. With each pass – or ‘verse’ as it was called – the story became more and more elaborate, and a set of narrative rules evolved to which the players had to fit the cards in their hands. In the end, winning became as much a matter of applying these unsteady rules to tell the best story as it was of having the right cards.

  So, yeah. I knew a lot of card games.

  ‘What the hells are they doing?’ I asked, standing with Rosie atop the gallery.

  Below us, nearly fifty men and women, each looking as different from one other as they did from the Berabesq in the city above, had arranged themselves around tables lit by beaten brass lanterns where they sat in perfect silence as they played cards. I’d once seen Ferius and Rosie do this, so I understood the general principle: pairs of Argosi would lay out patterns of cards using their respective decks – the ones they’d each painted to represent the various cultures of the continent as they saw them – to show each other what they’d learned about the state of the world. Then they’d each begin moving the other’s cards, as if to say, ‘Maybe you got it wrong – perhaps it’s more like this?’ and the first player might agree, or reverse the change, or alter the pattern in an entirely new way, sometimes using the other player’s painted cards.

  ‘The Path of the Wild Daisy never taught you the game, did she?’ Rosie asked.

  I wasn’t surprised by the question so much as the lack of either disdain, disbelief or general disappointment in her voice. ‘No, she didn’t.’

  Rosie nodded, apparently satisfied with my response.

  I wasn’t though. ‘Why did Ferius never teach me the Argosi ways properly?’ I asked, a treasonously plaintive note insinuating itself into my voice. ‘It was always dancing instead of defence, music instead of eloquence. Why did every single one of her lessons have to be so …’

  ‘Gods-damned unfathomable?’

  The light-hearted response was so at odds with the hardened woman I knew that I laughed despite myself.

  Rosie looked towards the far end of the cavern, and the closed curtain behind which Ferius rested under the watchful eyes of her parents. ‘My sister is unlike any of the rest of us.’ Her gaze swept across the mismatched tribe of misfits playing cards below us. She sighed. ‘Which, I suppose, makes her exactly the same as all of us.’

  That raised a question I’d been wondering about for a long time – one I knew Ferius would never give a straight answer to. ‘Why are the Argosi so different from one another? So … disorganised. With the talents you all have, you could be …’

  ‘An army?’ Rosie suggested.

  ‘I suppose so.’

  ‘An army of card-playing wandering gamblers,’ she said, almost wistfully. ‘We would surely be the terror of the continent.’ She turned to me, leaning her back against the wooden railing embedded into the stone walls of
the gallery. She held up one hand, the fingers wiggling. ‘What do you see?’

  ‘Your hand.’

  She shook her head even as she closed her hand into a fist aimed at my chest. ‘An army. Efficient. Cohesive. Perfectly formed to its purpose.’

  ‘War?’

  ‘Perhaps war. Perhaps simply control.’ She brought her fist closer to me. ‘Can you resist the control of my army?’

  I formed my own fist, but then uncurled my fingers and used both hands to wrap around hers.

  Another small smile. ‘You have captured my army.’ The smile disappeared. ‘Unless …’

  I hadn’t even noticed her other hand move, but now I found the short, sharp point of her fingernail at the corner of my eye. ‘Argosi.’

  ‘Cool,’ Reichis said quietly from the railing. I hadn’t even noticed him there. ‘I think she’s going to pop your eyeball right out, Kellen. Can I have it?’

  I let go of Rosie’s fist and she pulled her finger away from my eye. ‘Is this the Way of the Argosi then?’ I asked. ‘To become a kind of warrior meant to evade, outwit and defeat armies?’

  She turned back around to lean her hands against the railing and watch the players below. ‘It is my way. My path has always been that of roses and thorns. To seek out that which is beautiful in the world, that which is gentle, and defend it without hesitation. Without mercy.’

  ‘Ferius isn’t like that,’ I snapped, resentful at what sounded to my ears like criticism of my mentor.

  Rosie ignored my outburst. ‘Nor are most of the others. Each of us follows our own path, never certain if it is the right one, always hoping that somewhere out there another Argosi has found the path we all seek.’

  ‘Which path is that?’

  Without turning back to look at me, she raised her fist in the air again. ‘The one which will keep the armies of this world from destroying themselves and everything they are meant to protect.’

  I joined her at the railing then, and watched the dozens of card games unfolding below us. Each deck was hand-painted by its owner, reflecting not only their personal artistic style but their individual insights – their unique perspectives on the civilisations of this continent. And yet, no matter how different the cards appeared or what arrangement the players placed them in, when I looked at the spreads, the same pattern emerged over and over.

  ‘What do you see?’ Rosie asked me. I hadn’t noticed her turning to look at me.

  ‘It’s … It’s as if no matter how they move the cards, the result always looks like armies about to clash.’

  ‘And why is that, do you suppose?’

  I knew the answer – or at least it was rattling around in my brain – but I couldn’t seem to put it into words. ‘It’s something to do with the cards themselves,’ I began. ‘But why? Why can they only ever form one—’

  A sharp pain in my left eye took my breath away. The skin around my shadowblack markings pinched as the lines twisted and turned like the dials of a lock. First one, then the second, and finally the third.

  The enigmatism was coming over me more often now, blindsiding me out of nowhere. This time as my vision blurred it seemed to fill the entire cavern in a green-black mist. The cards on the tables floated up into the air, arraying themselves before me. Every suit came to life – shields for the Daroman empire, chalices for the Berabesq theocracy, spells for the Jan’Tep, contraptions for the Gitabrians, wheels for the Zhuban, and others representing cultures I’d never visited in the furthest northern and southern reaches of the continent.

  The frames around the cards shattered like glass, freeing the images within. The seven of chalices became a cleric leading his flock in prayer. The two of shields spread apart to reveal a pair of young warriors training with wooden swords. Upon the spinning six of wheels a group of Zhuban artisans wove straps of leather into sturdy yet flexible armour. Each card, each facet of life within a culture, went about its business. The lives they depicted seemed perfectly natural, noble even, yet brought together like this, those lives all led towards …

  ‘Kellen?’ Rosie asked.

  ‘The suits,’ I whispered. ‘It’s in the suits themselves.’

  Saying the answer out loud caused the vision to unwind itself. The people and places scattered across the cavern froze, encased once again by the borders of the cards. They drifted back down to the tables from which, in truth, they’d never left. The shadowblack markings around my left eye turned back, locking closed once again.

  ‘Are you ill?’ Rosie asked.

  Already the insight the enigmatism had offered me was beginning to fade, so I spoke quickly, forcing out the words while I still could. ‘The game is rigged. The suits, the cultures they represent … When you see them all together, every card from every suit can only fit together in such a way that no matter how you choose to play them, the result is war.’

  Rosie was watching me silently.

  ‘Is that what all human civilisation leads to?’ I asked. ‘Are we destined for nothing more than endless wars and bloodshed?’

  ‘The Argosi do not believe in fate,’ she replied, steel in her voice, but then her shoulders sagged and a sigh escaped her lips. ‘And yet, here on this continent, all paths appear to lead to the same end. We travel to every nation, visit every culture, always seeking to better understand their people and refine our decks to more perfectly represent them. But when we lay out the cards, always they tell the same tale of a long, steady march to war.’

  I understood then why the Argosi were the way they were. Why Ferius was so different from Rosie, and she different from all the others. They weren’t simply gamblers; they were the gamble itself. The unpredictable shuffle of the cards that sought to produce the one hand that could prevent war from overtaking the continent. And yet, no matter how many times they shuffled the deck, the result was the same.

  ‘It’s the game,’ I said again. ‘The game itself is rigged.’

  Rosie opened her mouth to speak, but I didn’t hear what she said. A different voice had appeared in my head.

  Will you come play a game with me now, Kellen?

  The voice of a young boy.

  The voice of God.

  43

  The Deck

  ‘The Berabesq god wants you to go kill him?’ asked the Path of Mountain Storms. He was the tall man in the frontier hat who’d been sitting by himself in the cavern when Rosie and I had first brought Ferius to the saloon.

  ‘I’m not sure,’ I replied. ‘His exact phrasing was, Will you come play a game with me now, Kellen?’

  A short, compact woman with the blackest hair I’d ever seen, who’d introduced herself as the Path of Emerald Steps, tilted her head as though she were trying to hear something hidden in my words. ‘Such an overture might signal that he seeks to test you,’ she suggested.

  ‘A test?’ The Zhubanese girl a couple of years my junior who stood next to Emerald snorted. ‘More likely the little bastard wants to lure the spellslinger to his temple so as to kill him. I say we take the artefacts – this “scourge” and these ridiculous “dice” or whatever they are – and turn the tables on this so-called “God”.’

  The Zhuban have even less respect for religion – and gambling – than my people do.

  ‘Always you see things too bluntly, my teysan,’ Emerald sighed.

  ‘Perhaps I just see them plainly, maetri,’ the girl countered.

  Several of the other Argosi piped in with their own thoughts, some uttering poetic aphorisms like how one must never mistake the players for the game pieces, while others suggested such nuanced solutions as, ‘Let’s just blow the temple doors and kill him.’

  Reichis was so enthused with that last one that I thought maybe he was going to sign up to be the guy’s teysan, but then he raised his muzzle in the air and sniffed. ‘Somethin’ stinks,’ he said.

  ‘Like what?’ I asked.

  Without giving me an answer he scampered out of the cavern and up the stairs that led to the common room above,
leaving me to deal with the fifty or so Argosi who were currently debating my future.

  Ferius’s mother Enna once told me that to be Argosi is to choose your own unique path in life, and while that path might sometimes cross with that of another, each one is meant to be walked alone. Listening to all of them argue with no end in sight, I realised she’d missed the point. The real problem was that anytime you get more than two Argosi in a room, they can’t so much as agree on the time of day, never mind what to do about a possibly homicidal god.

  ‘Well now,’ boomed a voice over the rest, bringing everyone to a stunned silence.

  Ferius, leaning shakily on a wooden cane, shuffled awkwardly towards me as the others stepped aside to make room for her. Durral, her father, kept his arm hovering about her shoulder, ready to grab hold of her if she collapsed.

  She laughed at the assembly of Argosi. ‘Guess we all know why all our maetri taught us to play cards with our mouths shut.’

  ‘A strange observation, sister,’ Rosie noted drily, ‘coming from one who has barely allowed a moment’s silence during our own games.’

  Ferius grinned at her, a faint ray of light trying to push through a thick blanket of grey clouds.

  She looks so … old, I thought helplessly.

  ‘Quit givin’ me them puppy-dog eyes, kid,’ she said, limping her way over to me. ‘Haven’t I told you before there ain’t no use in you takin’ a fancy to me? I mean, you’re pretty and all, but my tastes lean in a slightly different direction.’

  Some of the others laughed at that, the tension momentarily leaking out of the room. In the periphery of my vision I noticed a barely perceptible movement at the corner of Rosie’s mouth. A smile, this one different from the others she’d guardedly revealed in the past, and meant only for Ferius.

  Ancestors, I thought. Were the two of them a couple at some point?

  Every time they’d been within striking distance of each other back in the Seven Sands they’d looked like they were about to duel – or ‘wrastle’ as Ferius called it.