by Kaye Chazan
Aelister peers over their feathered and beribboned heads, catches sight of himself in the looking-glass and doesn’t let go. At the moment, he looks more a mess of turned-out seams and chalk and pins, and he doesn’t see what’s so particular about that. But he smiles, brightly as he may, and bides the ladies when they tell him to stretch out his arms or peak on his toes, and tells them he looks forward to it, because he does.
The Duke, after all, doesn’t usually have a shadow.
As for the rules,” the Duke explains, later that day when the Mistresses Milliner and March have gone home with Aelister’s unfinished clothing, “come, boy, sit down. Let’s play a hand or two, shall we?”
The servants clear the table, and Aelister reclaims his place at the Duke’s left hand. Once the cloth is clear, another servant brings a decanter of wine, several packs of playing-cards, and a long strange paddle, with an angle near the handle very like that of a spatula.
“Shuffle,” the Duke commands, then— “Oh. My oversight, boy, I had forgotten.” Aelister’s arm is, of course, still in its cast, and since the Mistresses left it is in an even neater linen sling. A pity, Aelister thinks—he is quite good at shuffling—but the Duke proceeds without him. The Duke has removed his gloves to do so, and even without them his hands are nearly as white, with bony knuckles as large as dice. He works through one deck, halves it, and shuffles that half into another. “Don’t be surprised if you see two cards of a kind in a hand,” the Duke says. “After all, there are six of them to a deck now, six fives of spades, six sevens of clubs. Do you follow?”
“Yes, your Grace.”
“Good. Now, with that in, the suits of the cards don’t matter at all in this game, except to aid you in counting, I suppose. So how many sixes are there altogether?”
Aelister counts in his head, “Twenty-four, if there are six of each suit.”
“Ah, but the suits don’t matter! And also, this is a game in which the court cards count for nothing. Everything is what it says it is, in baccarat. A nine is nine, a five is a five, and a queen has no value at all. Do you follow?”
“Yes, your Grace.”
He deals two cards, face down, to Aelister, who slides them up from the tablecloth. A five and a seven, both spades. “Total the value of your cards, and if it is more than ten, take that ten away. Only the number in the last place counts. You want your total to be as close to nine as possible—”
“—without going over,” Aelister finishes for him. “Yes. I see. May I ask for another card?”
The Duke grins, ear-to-ear, and slides Aelister another card: a king of diamonds. “Does this help your hand any?”
“No, your Grace.”
“Show me.” Aelister turns up his hand, twelve to twelve to just two, and the Duke laughs. “Rotten luck. A good thing you had no money on it.”
“But gambling is illegal—”
“His Highness doesn’t care, and neither shall we, tomorrow night.”
Aelister taps his fingers on the cards. He likes the feel of them, the wax over their paper, the faint grid underneath. The king of diamonds looks off either side of the card, toward the door on one and the Duke on the other. “What happens if my total comes to zero?”
“Naught. That’s what we call baccarat. If you are unlucky enough to turn up only court cards, you lose, and play passes to the next man.”
“All right. It seems to me that there are still more rules than I know yet,” Aelister says, smiling.
The Duke slides his hand across the top of the decks, and turns over cards one at a time, face-up on the tablecloth. His eyes are hard on Aelister’s, as unmoving as the pictures, king of diamonds after king of diamonds after king of diamonds, six, seven, eight, nine kings in all—
“What is the paddle for?” Aelister asks.
The Duke laughs. “For handling the cards, good or bad.”
Leaves have been added to the dining table, so now it stretches all across the room, even if all the men are gathered at one end for playing. The far side is laid out with food, the last of the roast rabbit and turtle soup and new desserts, and tall shapely bottles of alcohol with foreign names and foreign colors. The sticky remains of a trifle cling to the walls of a great glass bowl, and Aelister has been at it three times already but there’s still more cream to be had and the Duke always says that Aelister can have his run of any food in this house, so if he considers a fourth helping, he doesn’t consider it for long.
“Baccarat,” the one of the guests acting as dealer says, and he slides a great deal of chips across the table into the Prince of Wales’ place. Everyone applauds, and Aelister has to duck under a jutting elbow and flailing coattail. Why, it’s as crowded in here as it was on the street! So much for learning from the Duke, Aelister thinks, scraping the cream and cake into yet another little dish. He has to set the dish on the table and steady the bowl with the elbow of his broken arm, but he manages. They’ve paid me no mind at all.
Altogether, they are ten men, counting the Prince and the Duke but not counting Aelister. The Prince himself takes up space enough for one and a half, but does so grandly and without clumsiness. From how Mistress Milliner and Mistress March described him, Aelister had thought he would be stern like a schoolteacher, but the Prince is bursting with humor and generous with his laughter—as generous, at least, as his sneezes, for he seems to have caught the Duke’s cold from two weeks or so ago, and between that and the alcohol his nose is both ruddy and running. Aelister’s spoon slips off his dish and stains the tablecloth, but no one marks it, the way no one has marked even his presence much at all tonight.
And so much for his Highness’ particularities, Aelister thinks, loud as far as the confines of his own head. He creeps over to a cushioned chair in the corner, sets the trifle down on a side-table, and fidgets with the hem of his waistcoat. The mistresses told him not to button it. Then why did they make a buttonhole? While he eats, he stares at the Prince, and the Prince’s last button is also undone, but that’s because he’s such a large man and it probably doesn’t fit him properly—but then, he’s the Prince of Wales, and why shouldn’t he have clothes that fit him? So little makes sense here.
By the time Aelister has finished this next helping of trifle, the Prince has won three more hands and then lost a critical one, but he laughs as the dealer paddles the cards away. “I say, I was looking forward to losing. It pays to be the banker.”
“Gentlemen, the words of a generation,” the Duke says, flicking an errant card toward the dealer. The men around him toast and laugh, and the Duke, out of liquor, calls for more. “And from the lips of a royal, no less.”
“Mind you, I’ve been a royal so long, they’re starting to say I’ve abused the privilege,” the Prince says, and the laughter that frames this decree is even more uproarious.
“To the Queen,” someone says, and of course the men toast. Aelister does too, with a forkful of trifle. (It has sherry in it, so it must count.) The Duke notices this, holds Aelister’s eye, and laughs a little longer than the rest.
And the men all look where the Duke is looking.
The Prince turns last of all, since he first spreads his laughter from man-to-man, and then bows his head to sneeze. But when he looks up, wiping his nose with his pocket square, he turns over his shoulder and chides the Duke, “Really, your cook put too much pepper in that rabbit,” and then, only then, does he catch Aelister toasting with the fork. “You’ll forgive me, young man, but I didn’t catch your name.”
“I never dropped it,” Aelister says.
“Ha, of course not! What are you called, then?”
There are still some cards upturned on the table. Half the court is looking at Aelister, and half away, all at the same time, face and upended face.
“Whatever it pleases your Highness to call me,” Aelister says.
For a moment, the Prince is silent, and all eyes flicker back to him. Aelister sees that the court cards on the table have their other sets of eyes toward the
Prince, and Aelister’s heart catches in his throat. One of the jacks of hearts bends at the waist, leaves the frame of the card behind and folds himself into symmetrical halves, and Aelister shouldn’t be looking but he tells the card Stay down, I want them to look at me, not you, as loudly as he can without opening his mouth.
When the Prince tips back his head to laugh, the buttons of his waistcoat strain, and now Aelister knows just why there are still buttonholes even on the bottom.
“Good god, man,” the Prince laughs, swinging am arm out toward the Duke, “where on earth did you find this creature?”
“That’s between me and the boy, now, isn’t it?” The Duke laughs as well, though less, and gestures to Aelister again, all at the level of the guests’ eyes. They follow his hand. Aelister squints at it.
Dealing, he thinks. He’s dealing me their attention.
Laughter makes the flush across the Prince’s nose even brighter. “Well, now that his Grace has you, what’s he got you up to, young man?”
“The third floor, your Highness.”
“Pardon?”
“The third floor of the house, your Highness. He hasn’t let me onto the roof.”
Aelister doesn’t understand what everyone finds so humorous about this. He would like to, but for one thing, he knows it’s not his place to ask, and for another, all the men are watching him, as they’ve been dealt. The jack has wandered over to the baccarat paddle and is climbing up the curved handle, which is difficult because he has no legs, only another head and arm where the rest of him should be—
“And what would you do if he let you up to the roof?”
“—Climb the chimney, your Highness,” Aelister answers, all instinct.
“Do you like to climb?”
“Very much, your Highness.”
“Is that how you hurt your arm?”
“No, your Highness, I hurt it falling.”
The Prince not only laughs at this, he slaps the table so hard that all the bottles ring and the spoon slides around in the trifle and the dead rabbit jumps off its tray, and the cards, all the cards, are kings of diamonds. Well, not all of them: The one jack has made it all the way up the baccarat paddle and is preparing to jump off into his Highness’ drink. Aelister tells it no.
“You’re off your head, young man,” the Prince says, “I like it,” and he sweeps his glass off the table and raises it again. The jack falls flat. “What will happen if I ask you to recite something?”
“I’ll answer you, your Highness,” and all the cards lay still.
“Ha, and do you think it will be more exciting than baccarat?”
“Certainly, your Highness.”
“You don’t enjoy baccarat, young man?”
“Whether I enjoy it or not doesn’t matter since I’ve not played at all, your Highness.”
“Never so! Then which would you prefer: to join us at the table, or entertain us with your wit?”
Aelister considers this. “I don’t understand why I can’t do both, your Highness.”
“Well then, come here! I do hope you know the rules, young man.”
Even after Aelister looks down at the undone button on his waistcoat, every eye in the room is on him. The Duke, even all in white, has nothing—and yet he smiles as proudly as anyone has ever smiled at Aelister. “The Duke has been so kind as to teach me,” he says, and it is the first thing that no one has laughed at at all.
Going to bed is difficult after that, no matter how tired Aelister is, from talking and smiling and losing at cards. “Everyone loses at cards,” the Prince said before he left, and Aelister had agreed, “Yes, everyone loses time,” and the Duke said it had been the capstone of a truly wonderful evening. All the light in the world buzzes behind Aelister’s eyes, and everything he sees is fogged through, like looking through a wall of water, or the haze of heat by the railroad tracks blurring the black iron to grey. The banister curls and the carpet climbs and the statues follow Aelister with their eyes, just like the guests, and the Prince, and the Duke. All the cards are packed away, though Aelister’s not so sure about that meddlesome jack, but he’ll find it, he thinks, if it’s anywhere it shouldn’t be.
He slips on the stairs, bangs the elbow of his broken arm on two steps before he stops sliding, down, down, dizzy and down. The Duke comes for him, and carries him the rest of the way. The stairs wind, and Aelister buries his face in the Duke’s cravat, but even the fabric and its orange gemstone pin swirl together into a blinding sun.
A servant takes over once Aelister is in his room, helps Aelister out of his clothes without a word. By the time the Duke comes back in, Aelister is still standing beside his bed, wondering at the candles and where the wax goes after it burns. The Duke laughs, untucks the blankets, scoops him up again and lays him out in bed.
“Count for me,” the Duke says, smoothing the summer quilt out on Aelister’s shoulders, minding the cast and sling.
“Count what?”
“Anything you see.”
“But I’ll shut my eyes soon, your Grace.”
“Then count what you see in the dark.”
Aelister nods, and turns his face into the pillow. “Oysters, then.” He can see them too, in neat rows, like children at assembly. They’re rather happy in the rain outside.
“Oysters, boy?”
“In the dark. Marching. With shells on their backs like insect wings.”
The Duke’s fingers settle in Aelister’s hair, and he sees that, somehow, eyes closed or not—but what’s black and white on Aelister’s head isn’t so in the red behind his eyelids. The city, the world, is warm all over. “Count them, boy.”
“One. Two. Three. Four. Six. Three. Eight.”
Morning brings with it a spectacular headache, the likes of which Aelister has never felt, in his head or anywhere else on his body for that matter. When a servant wakes him up with toast and tea, all Aelister smells is the cloying jam and his breakfast is, as a result, rather short-lived. The servant cleans it up quickly and sends for the Duke, who Aelister can hear laughing at him from all the way downstairs. When the next servant comes through the door bearing a tray with fried eggs and tomatoes, charred all through with pepper, Aelister nearly blacks out from the stench.
“If I ran this house there would be no pepper in the kitchen at all,” Aelister says to no one at all, and scrapes the burnt parts of the tomato onto the side of his plate. “And I don’t care if that trifle made me sick, I’d rather it than pepper any day.” But he eats the eggs and tomatoes as best he can, and puts enough sugar in his tea that he can drink it very fast. By the time he is done eating, and washing up, and being dressed, he feels, if not all healed, at least no longer inclined to stay in bed all day.
Since by then it is past ten, the Duke has gone out, and it must be dreadful to be out in this rain, even heavier than it’s been all summer. Aelister walks through the dining room, marvels at how it’s all gone back to normal. The table has shrunk to its usual size, and the statues all face the ways they should, and of course all the cards and chips and paddles are gone. He settles in the library instead, though even reading the titles of the books on the wall makes his head hurt.
He sends one of the servants for a pack of cards, and receives it, all ordered. He still can’t shuffle properly, and the servant doesn’t know how to shuffle at all, so he makes a quick game of fifty-two pickup instead and lets that stand in. None of the court steps out of the cards this time—they are, after all, just cards—but now the deck is shuffled enough for a game of solitaire. The print on the cards is large and bright enough that it doesn’t exacerbate Aelister’s headache, but what the game of solitaire lacks in painfulness it more than makes up for in sheer all-consuming boredom.
Besides, this is a much better idea: He turns all the cards face up and finds last night’s jack of hearts, or one just like it, and props him up in the terries of the rug when he won’t stand on his own. “You little vagrant,” he says, and pokes him in the center of his do
ubled chests. “You ought to answer for your crimes.” He then assembles a jury of pip cards, three of each suit so as to be fair, and averages their values to six just to be safe, with only one ten and only one two but doubled fours and eights. The king of clubs shall be the judge and the king of spades the bailiff, and while it seems strange that the jack should be defended and prosecuted by queens it is the next logical choice, so diamonds shall speak for him and spades against. Clubs shall be the keeper of the record. “But the queen of hearts—the victim?” he wonders. “No, no, the plaintiff. Jack would never kill his own queen.”
“So it’s a murder trial?” the Duke asks, in the doorway.
“Yes, your Grace,” Aelister answers without looking up. He’s not certain when the Duke came home, or how long he’s been playing, but the game is rather absorbing.
