Gambling Heart
Page 18
My master’s attention seemed to be mostly on me; or at least his hands were, moving up and down my body while his lips moved softly in my dirty, sweaty hair.
“Don’t you go giving yourself any ideas now,” he murmured. “No notions of freedom for any slave boys we might know. You belong to me, body and soul, and I’m keeping you that way.”
“Slaves don’t have souls, Master.” No more than demons do. So the priests assured us, at any rate. If Master Lucan raised anything from my dead body or my blood, it wouldn’t be a soul bound for heaven; that’s where free folk went. If anyone knew what happened to slave spirits, they’d never told me.
“No, that’s right. Just animals, aren’t you? Bought and sold like any other cattle, collared and branded and owned…”
He sounded so smug about it, I couldn’t help giggling. “Or played for, won and lost at the gaming table, Master.”
“Don’t bring that up again,” he said, frowning mightily. “You cheated. Made a cheat out of me.”
“Never, Master! It wasn’t your doing…”
That was almost worse, though, the suggestion that things had been so out of his control, he’d had a slave boy making his decisions, working him like a puppet. For a moment his frown deepened in earnest; then he sighed and shook his head, patted my butt and said, “Well. Perhaps it’s a sign, that I should seek another profession. I’m tired of gaming anyway. I don’t have the heart for it anymore. Except these last few days, acting as agent for Lucan. Acting the part of a dissolute gamer, I did enjoy that. I don’t suppose it’s a permanent position, though. In fact, I’ve probably just worked myself out of a job. Or you did,” he added, swatting me harder. “You’ve done more than me today.”
“Only in your shadow,” I assured him, truthfully. “And only to see you safe out of here. But I think you should talk to Master Luke anyway. Once we get out of here.”
“Oh, I intend to. We need to sort out what to do about you, for a start. I don’t think he’d let me walk away without coming to some kind of arrangement.” His hand had a firm grip of my collar suddenly, in a way that said, I’m not letting him have you. He won’t take you away from me.
Nonetheless, we both turned to look at Master Lucan, just in time to see him pass his hand over the parchment, speak a few soft words, then tear it carefully in two. At the same time, the uncompleted arch behind him seemed to shimmer strangely in the smoky light; the rocks still stood on either side, but something was very different between them. It took me a moment to realize; then, “Master! The gold’s gone!”
“Yes, it has.” Including, of course, his own gold—though I still wasn’t sure that he really thought of it as his. Except that if he didn’t, then he really shouldn’t be thinking of me as his either, as the gold and I had both come to him the same way, through what he called my cheating. And he was still keeping hold of my collar, like an absolute claim of ownership, so…
Master Lucan did one thing more, bending to snap the little ritual knife beneath the sole of his boot before tossing the shards of it carelessly aside, meaningless now. Then he came striding over to join us, his boy as ever at his heel.
“That’s done,” he said, with an unexpected smile. I hadn’t known him capable of sounding so cheerful. “I’ve closed the gate from this side. Which will tip off the mages at the camp, but there’s no way to avoid that; the men who made this spell will have felt it break. If they have any sense, they’ll be running already. Not that it will do them any good. I know their names now; the Guild will know them soon enough, and spread them all through the empire. Rogue mages are anathema. They will be found, and brought to justice.”
“It’s too bad you couldn’t keep their gold,” my master said, a little wistfully. “On this side of the divide, I mean. Just for a little while. What’s going to happen about that?”
“With the mages fled and their spells broken? Your banker friend will be descended upon, I imagine, by a small host of bewildered gamblers, all wanting to reclaim their money and get along home. If he has any sense, he’ll be following the mages with whatever he could snatch up and carry. More likely, knowing bankers as I do, he’s trying to negotiate for an oxcart and a driver and a few strong men to guard it. Bankers do find it terribly hard to walk away from gold. Let alone to run. He’ll be too slow to get away; his victims will catch him; and he’ll have to redeem all those promissory notes, and he won’t be able to, because some of that money must have been expended, however much they tried to hoard it up. The mages will have taken their share weeks ago, you can be sure of that; and whoever else they’ve bribed or bought outright. He’ll default on his notes and be ruined, and that even before my guild catches up with him. Which, again, it will.”
“So my gold is gone, and the note of hand is worthless?” He sounded so disappointed to be poor again, my broke master. I found myself wondering suddenly whether I needed to be scared again, whether he’d be driven to selling off his last surviving asset, which was me.
“I didn’t say that.” Master Lucan’s mouth twitched, with a dry humor. “The gold will be claimed and gone, I suspect, before we can get back to camp—but that note of hand is guaranteed by his own guild and the Guild of Mages. Even if those mages are repudiated now, they were members in good standing when the pledge was made; it is no forgery, and the Guild’s name may not be dishonored. Bring it back to Amaranth, to our guildhouse there; I’ll see that you are paid.”
“Well. Good. Thank you.” He was hesitant though yet, even with his fortune restored, or the offer of it. He glanced from the mage to me and back to the mage again; he said, “But, if we go there, won’t they take Jay and, you know, burn his talent out of him? You said they would; and I don’t, I really don’t want that.”
“Would you keep him as he is, even if your wealth was the cost of it?”
I held my breath. So did Tam, I think, watching alertly from behind his master’s shoulder. I heard Master Jensen suck air slowly through his teeth—and then he nodded, decisively. “Yes. Yes, I would. He’s mine, and I want him just the way he is.”
“His obedience could use a little work,” Master Luke said, drier yet. Tam winked at me, though, in reassurance; that was when I remembered about breathing. I had to struggle not to gasp too loudly, not to interrupt our free folk in their discussion.
“I haven’t had him long. He’ll learn.”
“I’m sure—but there are also things that he could learn from us. Without doing him harm. I have a proposition for you, Jensen. Trust your boy to us for a season, and let us train him for you. He can never be a mage—that demands a free spirit above all, and slavery is burned into his bones deeper than ever iron marked him. But we can teach him to control what gifts he has by nature, to use them better and perhaps develop more.”
“Why would you, though?” My master snapped his fingers, letting me drop to my knees at his side. His hand came down to my neck, where it loved to lie; this time his grip of me was absolute, uncompromising. He didn’t mean to give me up. My relief was immeasurable. Even so I couldn’t keep from trembling, even as I hugged myself to his leg. Master Lucan was used to getting what he wanted, and I didn’t believe my own master could defy him for long.
“You’ve been very useful to me, lad. You and your boy both. See my own boy here?” He twined a length of Tam’s hair around his finger and tugged lightly, bringing his slave to stand beside him. Tam’s smile was as bright as his attitude was submissive. “Just a body slave he seems, I know, fit to carry bags and run errands and warm my bed at night; and all that’s true, but it’s not all the truth. He may look like one more pretty slut and nothing other, but Tam was a thief before he was taken and collared for it. Not as good a thief as he thinks he was, or he wouldn’t have been taken at all, eh, boy?” Another tug, and a wry snort from Tam. “But even so, a thief of some skill. I find that useful, on occasion. No one looks at a slave and sees anything more than the collar and the brand and the body. A footloose young rogue and his boy can
wander into places that a mage cannot—and if that boy has his own gift of magery, however light and shallow, it could be of inestimable advantage to me and all my guild. All the empire too, perhaps. You’ve earned your boy’s survival, Jensen, just with what the two of you have done today; I’m offering no threat now. I’ll protect him myself, if it comes to that. What I’m offering instead, though, is an opportunity. And a gamble too. There is risk involved for both of you in the work ahead, I’ll not hide that—but on your showing thus far, this could actually be a gamble that you’re good at. That you find more than financially rewarding. I’ll train you too, while your boy’s being schooled: not in magecraft, you haven’t a whisper of that in your bones, but in a thousand other things you’ll need if you take this on.”
I’ll make a man of you, he was saying. I found myself holding my breath again. Master Jensen’s finger twirled my hair, just the same way Master Luke’s had done, and I knew his answer even before he said anything. I felt a surge of relief again, mixed with nervous anticipation—being schooled by the mages didn’t sound anything like fun—and a sense of doors opening before us, a whole new life in prospect.
And maybe my master was reading my mind, because actually all he said just then was, “Can you open a door and get us out of here, Luke? Quickly, before some demon creature comes and catches us both in hell? I’d rather talk this through in a tavern, with a good meal inside us and a flask of wine between us and a soft bed waiting.”
Master Luke cocked one eyebrow. “Do I take it that’s just a long and winding way of saying yes?”
My master laughed abruptly. “Yes,” he said. “Yes, it is.”
Loose Id Titles by Thom Lane
The FRENCH WINE Series
White Flag
Red Light
Pink Fizz
* * * *
The TALES OF AMARANTH Series
Dark Heart
Healing Heart
Hidden Heart
Runaway Heart
Gambling Heart
Thom Lane
Author Thom Lane is an English writer who has published romances and erotica as well as fantasies and other books under other names. In his tales of Amaranth, he is combining as many of those genres as possible…