by Laura Powell
Cat snorted.
“Look, I’m sorry I didn’t tell you. I’m used to going it alone in the Arcanum, and that’s how I prefer it, to be honest. But as soon as I realized the key, and the crypt, involved all three—four—of us, I knew I’d been wrong not to share it. I didn’t want to tell you that I’d started out on my own because I wanted you to trust me. And I am worth trusting. I swear.” Flora widened her eyes in appeal.
“OK, fine.” Cat kept her voice level. “But if I’m going to try and find our AWOL chancer, and if we’re going to take this … thing … any further, we need to be straight with each other.”
“You’re right, and I’m sorry,” said Flora penitently.
“We’re a team now,” put in Toby. “Team Arcanum!”
“Exactly.”
Cat caught her own eye in the splintered mirror above the mantelpiece. She had already seen where the remains of a broken tumbler had been stuffed into the wastepaper basket, already remembered the crashes and shouts they’d heard from Flora’s perfect white bedroom. What prize was Flora playing for, and was it only superstition that prevented her from discussing it? Was Toby, even, as open about his motives as he seemed?
Perhaps Cat wasn’t the only chancer with hopes too painful to share.
CAT TOOK A BUS back from Flora’s, getting out at Oxford Street. It was nearly nine o’clock, but Thursday was late-night shopping night and progress was slow. London crowds no longer alarmed her, at least; she had recovered her knack for losing herself in them without getting lost.
Every inch of pavement was seething with people, their bodies muffled in winter layers, their elbows, bags and feet all jostling for position. Every inch of shop front glittered with fake stars and cotton snow. Their promises were imitation, too: Magic! Romance! The Perfect Present! A Better Future! Set in lights above Regent Street, characters from the latest Disney film gamboled in the air. A roast-nut stand wafted a stale syrup smell through the traffic fumes, along with blasts of fried onions from a hot-dog vendor. “Sinners spend but Jesus saves!” admonished an evangelist with a loudspeaker. “If you shop till you drop, who will catch you when you fall?”
“It seems the End is nigh,” came a voice in Cat’s ear. It was Alastor, the King of Swords, wearing a long black coat with the collar turned up, and lounging beneath a slew of sale signs.
Cat started, but managed to reply steadily enough. “Doing a spot of bargain hunting?”
“As a matter of fact, I was hoping you’d spare the time for a little talk.” He nodded toward an unmarked black car that had just pulled up in the bus lane.
“There’s no way I’m going anywhere with you. I’m not stupid.” She began to back away.
“Oh, don’t worry—you’ll be quite safe. I’m as anxious to avoid any rule breaking as you are. Please,” he said gently, “I’d be very grateful if you’d get in.”
At this, although she wasn’t quite sure how or why, Cat found herself climbing into the backseat. The interior smelled of expensive leather, and the driver was shut off from his passengers by a sliding panel of tinted glass. The next moment, the car had moved off into the stream of traffic.
“God, what a slum this place is getting to be,” Alastor remarked, settling more comfortably beside her. He winked at her with lazy charm. “So much nicer on the other side of town, don’t you think?”
Cat looked out of the window. They had just turned down Regent Street, but the crowds and fumes and garish Disney characters had disappeared. The Christmas lights strung between the buildings were now a cascade of hearts, clubs, diamonds and spades, flashing black and red on white against eerily artificial sunset. As the car purred on, the majestic buildings lining the street slipped past in a seemingly endless curve. She didn’t need the prickling of her palm to know that the King of Swords had taken her into the Arcanum.
She felt for the handle on the door. It was locked. At once, Alastor raised his hand in a gesture of reassurance. “I told you I am not here to threaten or obstruct you. A chancer is not subject to the control of the courts.”
“You still seem pretty good at pulling our strings.”
He arched his brows at her. “Everybody who enters the Game does so freely. Even—or perhaps especially—those who claim it to be by accident.”
“I don’t reckon accidents figured much in your career. The way I heard it, to get to be a GM, you have to win every triumph in the deck.”
“But never enjoy them as prizes, remember. A player who desires the Game’s mastery must play round after round, move after move, risking everything over and over. For if just one round is lost, then all triumphs previously won are discounted, and the struggle must start again.… Why, Cat, don’t tell me you’re ambitious to be queen?”
“Not a chance.”
Alastor laughed indulgently. “My predecessor was a queen, you know. She had ruled Swords for a very long time; I think she may even have been one of the first Masters. Yet in the final reckoning, it was found I had won more triumphs from her than from any other. Thus her court became mine.”
In spite of herself, Cat was intrigued. “When was this?”
“Long before your time, in another city and another age.” He gave a graceful shrug. “I was born to a life of ease, yet none of its pleasures satisfied me. I grew weary of the world and my existence in it.” Briefly, his face darkened. “And then I found a new world in the Arcanum, and did not rest until I made it mine.… Here the gamble is infinite, the Game inexhaustible. Every moment of play has the savor of victory.”
“Bet you wish you didn’t have to share that victory, though.”
“What do you mean?”
“Ahab told me how you’re all scheming to be top dog, even though nobody seems to know how to pull it off. He said there’s a special prize just for kings and queens. The Triumph of Eternity. And whoever finds it gets to be the one and only Grand High Game Master.”
“Well,” said the King of Swords softly, “that would be a triumph indeed.”
Cat wondered what had happened to the queen whom Alastor had deposed, and about the life he had given up to rule the Arcanum. They’re all fools, she thought. For all their swanky speeches and scheming, it’s the Game that plays them.
She turned and looked out of the window again. The Arcanum’s sky was bruised purple streaked with orange. A spiral of hearts flashed before her eyes, spinning into cups at the final moment. Behind, a tumble of spades was now an arch of dancing swords.
“Don’t you think it’s time you told me what you want?”
“What an abrupt girl you are,” he said. “I rather thought you were enjoying our chat. Very well. Let us come to the point: the course of play that you three Fools have embarked on.”
So the kings and queens knew about their encounter with the Hanged Man. They must have spied it on some flickering TV screen. Or maybe they’d read it in the cards.
“The next move is yours, Cat. I know you are in search of another chancer to join your cause, and that you know where to find him. But if you do enlist him, and your gamble succeeds, I promise you will regret it.”
“I thought you weren’t going to make threats.”
“This is not a threat, but a warning. The courts may give it only once, so listen well.”
The King of Swords leaned forward to rap on the driver’s partition. The next moment they were drawing up at Piccadilly Circus.
Cat felt even more uneasy once she got out of the car. The statue of Eros that presided over the intersection had been replaced by an effigy of Justice with her sword and scales. Seated on the steps below the fountain were the other king and queens—Odile in white; Ahab, somber-suited; Lucrezia, swathed in furs—all as motionless as the statue itself. Under the shimmer of the vast advertising panels, where Samsung and Coke had changed to alternating symbols of the four courts, Alastor’s languid face pulsed white light and dark shadow, then neon red.
“The Game gives us the chance to make our own luck, Cat. To change ou
r fate. To win our most secret desires, against all odds. Yet by seeking to overturn its rules, you are set on a path that will lead to its ruin.”
“Yeah, and who makes the rules?”
“The Arcanum operates according to its own principles. These will always endure. But without the rules that the courts impose on the Game, there would be no strategy or structure, no restraint.”
“No perks for you, you mean. So is this where you tempt me over to the Dark Side? Promise me triumphs? Heroism and happy endings?” she mocked.
At that, he gave an odd sort of half smile, reaching across to lightly touch her hair. “Poor kitty-cat … If I drew you for my court, you would make a fine knight, I think. Today, Cups holds Justice. Tomorrow, who knows?” He tilted his head toward the three figures on the steps. “We are all Fortune’s fools, and it is not my place to halt the spinning of her Wheel. But in this Game of ours, the winners are those who know it is every player for himself. Remember this the next time your friends coax you through hidden doors, or make their promises, or ask you to take their word on trust.”
Now the king leaned in nearer, his voice very low, breath sweet as cinnamon, as the sky was lit by the acid dazzle of swords.
“And there is something else you should know. The Hanged Man has another, older name. In times past, he was called the Traitor.”
With great effort, Cat dragged her eyes away. The world reeled and sparkled but somehow she managed to straighten her shoulders and shake her head. “If he betrayed the likes of you and your mates, then good for him. Because the courts don’t deserve my loyalty—every player for herself, that’s what you said.”
Black, white and red flared against her eyes. Alastor laughed softly. “Then face the odds and take your gamble, as we all must do.” He took out a coin and spun it high in the air.
And by the time the coin returned to his palm, she was standing under the Statue of Eros, once more alone in the crowd.
Friday was Christmas Eve. Cat got up early, filled with new determination. The King of Swords’ warnings had showed her that the Hanged Man was right: she was neither powerless nor insignificant within the Game. Her years of watching and waiting, of slipping around the edges of life, had come to an end. She would find the missing chancer, and change the Arcanum’s fate as well as her own.
Cat began her search for Blaine at the service entrance to the Martingale Hotel. At seven o’clock in the morning, the yard was bustling with the arrival of those on morning shifts and the taking in of deliveries. Cat decided to try a burly man who was supervising the unloading of crates of fruit from a grocer’s van. “ ’Scuse me, I’m looking for someone who works here. His name’s Blaine and—”
“This isn’t a lost and found, sweetheart. Nor a dating agency.”
“I only want—”
“ ‘I want’ doesn’t get; didn’t your mother tell you? So unless you’re here on official business, you can clear off. Go on—hop it.”
“Miserable old grump,” muttered a woman walking past with a clipboard. “Blaine, was it?”
“That’s right.”
“I know—does some washing up occasionally. Strictly off record, of course.” She winked broadly. “If you can wait a bit, Malek will be coming off shift. He might know. I’ll ask him to have a word.”
Cat did the rest of her loitering in the street. A quarter of an hour later, a small man in a cleaner’s uniform, his dark face tinged gray with fatigue, stopped alongside. “You look for Blaine?”
Cat nodded.
“Why you want?” he asked warily.
“He … he did some odd jobs for my uncle a while back. Stocktaking. We might have a bit of work for him, that’s all.”
Malek didn’t reply at once, but continued to look her over carefully. Whatever he saw seemed to satisfy him. “OK. Blaine he sometime stay in Langdon Street by Turkish shop. Place down the underground.”
In the basement, presumably. Cat felt a rush of optimism: Langdon Street was in Soho.
The air by the Turkish coffee shop was warm and fragrant; mounds of pastries glistened in the window within a garland of red tinsel. To one side was a small hardware store, to the other a boarded-up office. Judging by the layers of flyers and posters plastered on every inch of surface, it looked as if it had been empty for some time.
However, in the dank little space down by the basement stairs Cat could see chinks of light between the boards and hear, faintly, the sound of voices. She knocked on the door.
Immediately, the voices stopped. She knocked again.
There was a minute or so’s wait until the door eventually creaked open a few inches. It was Blaine. The recognition on his face was instant, and almost as instantly wiped clear. “Yeah?”
“My name’s Cat.”
“So?”
“Malek—from the hotel—said you might be here.” His hostile expression didn’t waver and she had a flashback to Flora, playing dumb in the church and badass in the Arcanum. She wasn’t going to let herself be stonewalled again. “I want to talk to you.”
“What about?”
“This.”
She thrust the fourth card from the Hanged Man’s crypt into his hand. The movement took him by surprise and he took the card before he’d realized what it was. As the interlocking wheels shifted into an illustration Cat couldn’t quite make out, his face abruptly changed, its wariness replaced by something hard and resolute.
“You OK there, bro?” Someone else had come to stand behind Blaine: a very thin, very tall white guy with dreadlocks that had been dyed a startling flamingo pink.
Blaine cleared his throat. His sleeves were pushed back, and Cat noticed a ragged scar along the outside of his right arm. He hadn’t taken his eyes off the card, though its face was now blank. “Yeah. Just some kid.”
Cat felt a flash of annoyance: this boy didn’t look more than a year or so older than she was. She fixed him with her chilly gray gaze. “So, are you going to talk to me or not?”
He shrugged. “Looks like I don’t have much of a choice.”
Same here, she wanted to say. The Six of Cups had seen to that.
Cat had arranged to join the others at the greasy diner Toby was so fond of. Their meeting wasn’t meant to be much more than a progress report; she had not expected to find Blaine so quickly, and though she knew the others would be surprised and elated by her success, the closer she and Blaine drew to the café, the more apprehensive she felt.
Meanwhile, Blaine loped along in silence, hands thrust deep in his pockets, hood pulled low. Despite her own reticence, she was surprised by how much his unsettled her. She had kept her explanations as short as possible, as if brevity could reduce them to something manageable and matter-of-fact. But he showed little or no reaction to her account, and accepted her offer to meet the others with a terse nod.
Even so, her curiosity got the better of her. “I know you were in the Triumph of the Moon,” she ventured. “Does that mean you were at the Lottery, too?”
“Lotteries are a pile of crap.”
“But Temple House—”
“Temple House is an even bigger pile of crap. Garden parties! Fairy lights! Chitchat over the canapés.” He snorted. “Makes me want to vomit.”
“I know what you mean.”
“Do you now?”
“I know that everyone involved in this is either desperate or a lunatic or both. And it’s stupid to pretend otherwise.”
“Yeah? So which are you?”
Cat ignored the remark. “If you didn’t get to the Moon through Temple House, you must’ve found its threshold in the city. The one we used to come back, in the underpass.”
Blaine gave a grudging nod. Then, somewhat to her surprise, he went on to explain. “I go out looking for them. I had this idea. I thought if I found enough thresholds, I might be able to work out a pattern. For where and when they turn up.”
“And have you?”
“No.” He grinned, and the shadows in his face briefly ligh
tened. “But since when does this Game of ours go to plan?”
They were approaching the diner now, and Cat could see Toby and Flora in the window. Toby was talking and gesturing excitedly while Flora, pretty in pink, daintily sipped a cup of tea.
Toby was the first to spot Cat and who she had brought with her. “I can’t believe you’ve found him already!” he exclaimed. “Wait—I mean—this is him, right?”
“Blaine, meet Toby. Toby—Blaine. And that’s Flora.”
Flora was staring, fascinated, at his frayed cuffs and dirty fingernails. However, she soon rallied. “Pleased to meet you, Blaine,” she said in her most winning manner. “It’s awfully good of you to come.”
Blaine turned to Cat. “Is she always like this?”
Flora’s airs and graces might annoy her, but Cat wasn’t ready to exchange conspiratorial asides about them. She compromised on a noncommittal shrug.
Toby broke into the increasingly awkward pause. “Look, why don’t you two sit down and we can get some coffee or …” He looked doubtfully at Blaine’s thin wrists and dark-rimmed eyes. “Would you like, er, something to eat … a hot meal?”
“How kind. Maybe you can knit me some socks and take round a collecting tin while you’re at it.”
The air of embarrassment grew stronger. Blaine stretched and yawned enormously. “But seeing as you’re offering, I’ll have bacon, eggs and home fries. And a large tea.”
“… so, basically,” Toby finished, “we need to create a threshold to play the Magician’s card. Then he’ll help us get the aces we need to set the Hanged Man free, and it’ll be prizes all round. Cool, huh?”
The dour waiter plonked Blaine’s plate down with a disbelieving grunt, and went off shaking his head.
Blaine didn’t look too impressed, either. In fact, he seemed more interested in concentrating on his food, shoveling it in with speed and efficiency. When it appeared they were going to get no further response from him, Cat stepped in.
