by Laura Powell
“You don’t mean that! We’re part of a noble tradition. An immortal contest! Think of all those who have walked the Arcanum before us: poets, soldiers, madmen, geniuses.…”
“Madmen sounds about right,” Cat retorted. Toby’s starstruck tone annoyed her. “What is it with you people? The Knight of Swords was the same. Wittering on about the Game’s wonder and glory.”
“Knight? What knight?”
“Oh. Yeah. The thing is … I went into the Arcanum yesterday.”
“You went without me?” He sat there gawping at her, all shocked and wounded-looking. “But I thought we—”
“Look, I just wanted to see it for myself, OK? No big deal.”
“What happened?” he asked breathlessly. “What was it like? What did you do? What was the card in play?”
“The woman I met, Swords, had been given the Six of Cups.”
“No way! Isn’t that the one to do with good times and old memories and stuff? Did you …?”
Cat had no intention of sharing what had happened with Toby. All she wanted from him was information: how to play the Game, how to get back into the Six of Cups, and how to navigate what she found there. She struggled to sound offhand. “It was a trip down memory lane, all right. Like being a little kid again. Tell you the truth, it’s a bit of a blur.”
Toby’s face glowed. “Sounds amazing. I can’t wait for my first go.”
“What do you mean, ‘go’?”
“My first trip into the Arcanum, of course.”
Cat thought she had misheard. Or misunderstood. “But you’ve been doing this for ages.”
“I’ve been in and out of Temple House, yeah, but I haven’t tried my luck in the Arcanum proper.”
She still didn’t believe it. “But—but—you must have. You know how everything works, what to do …”
Toby smiled modestly. “Theoretically, yes, I like to think I’ve worked things out. You can pick up a lot from hanging around the Lotteries, and I’ve spent ages looking for clues and stuff. I’ve even raised a coin at a threshold, though I haven’t gone as far as actually throwing it—the time’s never been quite right. But now there’s two of us, we can go in together, help each other.” He looked at her solemnly. “It was lucky you had such a nice card on your first visit. You could have got into real trouble.”
It was all she could to do to stop herself from hitting him. Instead, she got to her feet, her face taut with anger. “What’s the matter?” Toby asked, sounding genuinely shocked. “Don’t be mad. Look, I’m sorry if you got the wrong idea—”
“Only because you gave it to me. I thought you had answers. Experience. I thought you were a person I could trust.”
“But you can! We’re in this together, Cat.”
“No we’re not.” The surreal city on the wall, the fantasy books, the toy armies of knights and goblins … Never mind his elaborate explanations: the Arcanum was just a game to him. An adventurous daydream. “You have no idea,” she hissed, “no idea what it’s like in there.”
But Toby didn’t rise to the bait. Instead, he was looking at her curiously. “The Six of Cups … it must have uncovered something. Something buried in your past that you don’t understand. And you want to go back into the Arcanum to make sense of it. Am I right?”
“What I may or may not have seen has nothing to do with you.”
“Even though you came to me for help?”
“That was only because you’d conned me into thinking you were some kind of Game Guru.”
“I can still help, Cat.”
“Can you? Can you look me in the eye and say that the little how-to guides you’ve given me are anything but guesswork?”
“Er, no, but it’s a very educated guess—”
“Can you tell me how to find a threshold that’s vanished? How to get into the Six of Cups again? What to do when I get there?”
“Um, not exact—”
“Then no. You can’t help me.”
“At least I’ve done some kind of research,” he replied, getting heated. “I know enough not to go blundering into the first threshold I find, without any kind of preparation or backup.”
Cat just stared at him stonily. But when she moved toward the door, he stood to block her path.
“OK. Wait. What if I could find you someone who really is an expert? Who might even know how to get back into your card?” Cat paused and he carried on hurriedly. “Because there’s this girl I know from Temple House. She’s the only other chancer I’ve come across—except for you, obviously.”
“So?”
“Well, from something she said, I reckon she’s been in the Game for years, even though she’s no older than us.”
“Then why aren’t the two of you a team? I would’ve thought you’d be wearing matching T-shirts by now.”
“Because she’s even more stroppy than you are! Seriously, I have tried, but she doesn’t want to know me. Maybe if you tell her your story, though, and ask for help, she’ll change her mind. Female solidarity.”
Cat gave an exasperated snort, but she moved away from the door. “All right.” She thought for few minutes, while Toby watched her anxiously. “All right. It’s better than nothing … I suppose. D’you know where to find her?”
“As a matter of fact,” he said, “I do. How do you fancy going to church?”
Toby was confident that he’d come up with a winning plan. The girl in question, Flora, attended Mass at a Catholic church in West London every Sunday at five o’clock, and according to Toby, making contact would be a simple matter of intercepting her as she came out later that day. When Cat asked him how he knew to find her there, he looked a bit shifty and confessed that he “might have” followed her “on a couple of occasions.”
“You stalked her, you mean.”
“No! There’s nothing sleazy about it. It was just … research.”
Cat sighed. She was still angry, but part of her recognized that she was being unfair. The fact remained that Toby did seem to know a great deal about the cards and how they were played, even if his knowledge was mostly hypothetical. She wondered what this churchgoing chancer would be like. If she’d been casually flitting in and out of the Arcanum for years, she was bound to be odd.
But on the way back home from Toby’s, Cat was confronted by just how difficult it was to keep a distance from the Game, even if she had wanted to.
It was lunchtime, and the North London streets were almost as quiet as the ones around Seven Dials that morning. As her double-decker bus wheezed to a halt at the traffic lights at the beginning of a long gray road to Holborn, Cat found that she could look right into the second floor of an office. It was part of an ugly modern building whose front was mostly made up of panels of tinted glass. On a Sunday afternoon, the place should have been deserted. But there were two people in there. A pale blonde and an older black man.
With a trembling hand, Cat pressed the request-stop button. She was able to get off the bus only a little way down from the office; a few minutes later, she was standing outside the main entrance, peering up at the second floor. Could she have been mistaken? But no, the woman had moved nearer to the window and was looking out over the street. She was wearing dark glasses and a white suit. It was unquestionably Odile.
The Queen of Cups tilted her head so that she was staring directly down at Cat. Then she turned back to speak to her companion, brushing something—a speck of dust, perhaps—off her sleeve as she did so. The gesture struck Cat as deliberately contemptuous.
Something snapped. At once, all the fear and confusion of the last few days came crashing down. She began to repeatedly jab the bell. After a while she began to hammer at the door. Then there was a click, and somebody buzzed her in.
This was the last thing she expected. Her assault on the door was an act of protest; it hadn’t occurred to her that she might actually be admitted. And now here she was, once again hovering on a doorstep she was half afraid to cross. But the thought of those other ent
rances, the treachery of their thresholds, only made her more defiant. She marched through the reception area and up to the second floor.
It was a big open-plan office, furnished in shades of beige, its rows of desks heaped with papers, mugs and Post-it notes waiting forlornly for Monday morning. In the center of the room, the Queen of Cups and the King of Wands were observing one of the computer screens. “I think she would be unwise to make a break for it,” Odile was saying. “The Chariot hasn’t even reached the river.”
It was like hearing someone commentate on a sporting event. Not with the excitable outpourings of a fan, but the measured tones of the professional.
Cat saw that all the screens in the office were filled with images of indistinct shapes moving through fuzz and crackle. From the tingling of her palm, she sensed that a threshold was near.
She thought of the grainy TV in the room above the pub, and the larger screen in the ballroom at Temple House. The Game Masters must be using them to view moves in the Game, like the modern-day equivalent of a crystal ball. It seemed even Arcanum technology could move with the times.
“I hope the knight is putting on a good show for you,” Cat said, as boldly as she could manage.
Leisurely, they turned to look at her. The black king and the white queen. Like two pieces on a chessboard—and just as inscrutable.
“So far, this move has been predictable,” Ahab replied, heavy and hard as granite. “But things could change. It appears that another of your kind has arrived on the scene.”
Cat glanced at the nearest monitor, where the formerly impenetrable static cleared enough for her to see a figure walking in some kind of rocky landscape. A male figure. Another of your kind … did that mean another chancer? Did that mean Toby? Perhaps after she’d left, he’d gone out and—but no, this person looked taller than Toby, and moved differently. A long-legged, slouching sort of walk, which nevertheless had a sense of purpose about it.
“Ah yes,” said Odile in her light, precise voice. “I remember. He claims to be in search of one of your knights, Ahab.”
“It appears he is persistent, if nothing else.”
Cat’s bravado was beginning to seep away. Still, she was determined not to let it show. “Gripping stuff. Tell me, how’s the State of Play shaping up these days?”
“As of this round, the advantage lies with Swords, though Pentacles are only two triumphs behind,” Odile replied coolly. “Cups gained one triumph but lost another. Wands follow in fourth place.”
“And what happens when Swords collect all the triumphs?”
“Naturally, the King of Swords would be the one and only Game Master, and single ruler of the Arcanum.”
Odile didn’t seem much concerned by the prospect, however. Her next words explained why.
“The scenario is purely speculative,” she said. “Should one court show signs of being overdominant, the other three unite against it.”
“See, this is what I don’t understand,” said Cat, struggling to keep her voice steady. “If that’s true, your little competition doesn’t count for squat. None of it matters—not to you, anyhow. You’re not the poor saps risking life and sanity out there. It’s just point scoring for you lot. One-upmanship. What’s the point of a game that can’t be won?”
“Oh, the Game can be won,” Ahab replied seriously. “It is the founding principle of the Arcanum.”
“But she just said that whenever one of you starts to get close, the other three gang up to stop them!”
“Indeed. But there is another means of winning. A prize that bestows dominion over all other cards and players—even Fortune herself.”
Cat tried to look unimpressed. “Yeah, I heard about the Eternity card. The triumph that’s gone AWOL.”
He smiled austerely. “Eternity is a prize above all others, and so only a king or queen, a player above all players, may win it. It is true it has been lost in the Arcanum for a long, long time. Who can say, though, what the next turn of the Wheel may bring?
“I am not the first King of Wands, nor, perhaps, the last. Yet I believe the time will come when one Game Master surpasses all others. And once he or she has reclaimed Eternity, a new Game will begin, under that Master’s sole rule.”
Ahab’s manner hadn’t got any less intimidating, but it struck Cat that in one respect, at least, the kings and queens weren’t all that different from the gamblers at the Luxe. They too were hooked on the lure of the big win that was always just around the corner. “I see. You four reckon that if you stay in the Game long enough, the odds’ll change.”
Odile pushed her glasses to the back of her head. It was the first time Cat had seen her without them; the eyes revealed were a milky blue so light they were almost colorless. Set in the perfect pallor of her face, the effect was uncanny.
“The odds are of little account. Even if none of us are to have the final victory, our place in the contest is reward enough. For when the players have gone from a move, taking its threshold with them, we wander through the cards at will. We walk the Arcanum’s checkerboard, we command its creatures, and we play our games. That is a prize above any triumph.” She moistened her lips delicately. “Though I imagine you might feel differently.…”
And suddenly all the monitors were showing her, Cat, standing before the door to the garden in the Six of Cups. This time the image was in color and crystal clear. The expression on her face as she moved across the lawn and toward the house—her glow of hopeful happiness—was somehow shameful in its intensity.
The picture moved to a brown and cream swirly carpet. A pink birthday cake. Her mother’s face, smiling, as she held out her arms. A hand raising a gun.
Cat let out an animal whimper. She reached out, futilely, to touch the screen. And as she did so, the blur of static returned with an earsplitting crackle.
“You bastards,” she choked.
Ahab regarded her levelly. “We may umpire the Game, but the Arcanum works according to its own mysteries. What you find there is your affair.”
Odile put her hand up to her mouth, making a small smothered sound. Laughter. They were toying with her, that was all. Cat had achieved nothing by being let in here; in fact, she’d only succeeded in giving them yet more power over her, as they reeled her in with their ghostly screens and their enigmatic comments. And now they were watching, waiting, for her to crumble.
It was at that point that Cat made a resolution.
Enough.
No more tears, no more dramatics. She wouldn’t give them the satisfaction. Not now, not ever. She was going to leave these people with her head high and her step steady. Grief and rage would be replaced by cold hard calm. Only then would she be able to do what she had to do.
Whatever it takes and whatever it costs, I will get my answers, Cat told herself as she walked out of the building. Starting with the girl at the church.
CAT WAS GETTING THE HANG of navigating London, but on her way to St. Bernadine’s she got off at the wrong Tube stop and arrived at the church nearly fifteen minutes later than she and Toby had agreed.
She found him hovering by the railings, his tweed jacket accessorized with a skull-and-crossbones baseball cap and an immense purple-striped scarf. “I was beginning to think you weren’t coming,” he said plaintively. “And that maybe it was a mistake not to get here early and actually go to the service.”
“Please. There’s a limit to the number of creepy ancient cults I can cope with in the space of one weekend.”
Somewhat to her surprise, he laughed. “You know, when you’re not being uptight, you’re quite funny.”
She thought that was pretty rich, coming from someone as twitchy as Toby, but she let it pass. And in the next minute, the doors to the church were opened and people started straggling out into the courtyard.
St. Bernadine’s was in a smart residential district and built in the elaborate Gothic style beloved by cookie tins and Christmas cards. Its congregation was mainly elderly, all were well-heeled, and Cat w
as uncomfortably aware of how out of place she and Toby looked. It didn’t help that Toby had edged behind a nearby mailbox and was combining chewing his nails with peering around in a furtive manner.
“That’s her,” he whispered excitedly, nudging Cat as an elegant middle-aged couple and a blond girl came out of the door. But now that the moment had come, Cat found herself overwhelmed by the sheer embarrassment of the situation. Staking out a church! What was she supposed to do now? Rush up to this stranger and start babbling about the Wondrous World of Tarot?
Making contact, however, was easier than she’d expected. It was only six days before Christmas, and people were lingering over their season’s greetings and farewells. While their target’s parents stayed to talk to the priest, the girl went ahead to wait by the railings. Cat seized her chance.
“ ’Scuse me,” she said. “Are you Flora?”
The girl turned and gave a cautious smile. “Do I know you?” She was blandly pretty: blue-eyed, blond, with a small heart-shaped face, and was wearing a long wool coat with a fur collar. Cat thought the fur was probably real. She looked the type.
Toby cleared his throat. “Uh, hello there. I—uh—you remember me, right? Toby? And this is Cat.”
“Toby,” repeated the girl vaguely. “Oh yes … I thought you looked familiar.” There was an awkward pause. She glanced over at her parents but they were still deep in conversation. The pause lengthened.
“Sorry to interrupt,” said Cat, “and I know we haven’t got much time, but I was wondering if … well, it’s about the Game.”
“And what game is that?” asked Flora, knitting her brows in polite bewilderment.
Cat’s eyes flicked to her right hand. Flora was wearing gloves. She tried again, more brusquely this time. “Look, I know you don’t know me and there’s no reason why you should help, but Toby here says you know a lot about the Arcanum and I was wondering—”
“I’m frightfully sorry,” said Flora, with what sounded like sincerity, “but there seems to be some mistake.”
“I don’t think so. We all know what I’m talking about.”
