Shadowkill

2

The door was three massive planks with a dalbir jug carved in low relief head high in the center plank. She pushed the door open and stepped into a long room with bare roof beams and smoky lubrinjah-oil lanterns hanging from those beams. It was a warm and rosy room, the amber lamplight waking amber and crimson lights in the smoky oily wood and the crimson leather on the stools.

Funny, she thought, all the worlds I’ve been on, a bar is a bar is a bar…

There were groups of men sitting at tables, others on stools at a long solid counter by the inner wall. It was built atop a knee-high platform that was just wide enough for the scatter of stools. They must lose a lot of drunks on that, she thought, fall off and break their necks. Oh well, that’s their problem.

The low mutter of talk died away as she moved into the room, picked up again as she strolled to the bar, relaxed and easy. For the first time on this world she was in really familiar territory. She was the only woman here, but she’d met that before, it just meant she had to be quiet and quick to establish her credentials.

There was a brass grab rail under the counter’s edge. She ignored it, stepped up and settled herself on one of the ladder legged stools. The other patrons made their hostility felt. The weight of their stares tried to push her out of the place. She ignored that, knocked on the wood to summon the barman sitting on his own stool, leaning against the cabinets behind him.

He took his time about coming but he did come, and something in the way he moved tickled at Rose’s memory. She kept her face calm, tried to trace the tickle. Who…

He set his hands on the bar, played a small impatient tune with his thumbs.

There was a tiny white scar below his left thumbnail, three lobed, like a classic flurdelli. Yes. Well and well and well…

Abruptly she was back in an ivory and gilt room and he was seated across from her at the Vagnag table…

She blinked. “Something in a local wine. White and dry,” she said, “No gahwang in it, I hope. It’s a tasty herb, but rather overused, don’t you think?” She spoke in interlingue, not the local patter, the first step in settling what she was. “Rather too much of a good thing, yes?”

He nodded without speaking and went off, returning with a glass bottle stoppered with waxed leather rolled into a tight bundle. He showed it to her, removed the stopper with an odd misshapen gripping tool, poured a little in a glass, and passed the glass to her.

She checked the scar again. Yes. It’s him. She tasted the wine, concealed a grimace as it bit back. “It’ll do,” she said.

She wore a simple black dress back then, avrishum from Jaydugar, outrageously expensive, a gift from her last lover but one. He probably stole it but she wasn’t fussy about provenance those days and appreciated the thought, though she didn’t appreciate the occasion that induced the gift. A black dress doesn’t erase a black eye. He’d vanished one day. Killed, she thought, and moved on taking the dress with her, lost it that time she got in trouble on Tyurm, mourned the gift a lot more than the giver. That night her hair was braided and pomaded and set with jade and pearls, with a necklace of jade beads and pearls dipping into the deep vee of the dress. Three of the men in the game weren’t professionals or obsessive gamblers, they had eyes for more than their cards; she’d dressed for them. He was the fourth man, quiet, thin and almost too handsome. When he sat down and brushed at his sleeve, fingers signaling a pro, she was annoyed. She’d gone to a lot of trouble setting up this game and was irritated to find another of her guild intruding onto her pasture. She drew her right forefinger along her jawline, flicked it from under her chin. Sign for back off, these are mine.

He smiled and tapped thumb against thumb, the first time she’d seen the scar. Challenge. She didn’t hesitate, tugged at her left earlobe. Agreed.

They fought their war under the noses of the other players, stripping the marks almost as an afterthought; the last Chapter was between them, all for all. The dice and the cards had gone for her, and she was just enough cleverer in her play to clean Table, Pen, and Holse.

He bowed and walked off smiling, a flicker of his fingers congratulating her and acknowledging her victory. He had reason for the smile, he’d cleaned Table in at least half the Chapters and won Holse twice. The last Chapter had put a hole in those winnings, but he’d doubled his stake and that was enough to satisfy all but the pickiest. She left that night on a free trader going elsewhere at a leisurely pace and before she slept, she wriggled with a pleasure she hadn’t felt in years. It was a good hard fight and she’d enjoyed it enormously.

She sipped at the wine and watched the man move off to stow the bottle in the cabinet he’d got it from, driving the stopper in with the palm of his hand and laying the bottle flat. This was a long way down from that. She sighed. For both of them. In some ways.

He should have gotten that scar removed, why he’d kept it she hadn’t a clue unless it was a mascot of some kind. Ah well, ah well, that’s the way it goes. He was good, but he wasn’t first rank even at his peak and he’d been sliding from second the last time she’d seen him. Where was that? Cazarit? Lumilly? No, I can’t remember. Long time ago…

She sipped at the wine and thought pleasant thoughts. Those days she’d lived hard and fast, everything was sun-bright and coalblack, the ups were shining soaring joy and the downs were misery condensed. She’d lived a calmer life since she’d hired on with Digby; there were satisfactions in that, but sometimes, she yearned for the old times… She downed the last of the wine, knocked her knuckles on the wood and straightened her shoulders as he got the bottle out again and brought it to her.

There was still some of his bone beauty left, but he was wrinkled now, like old parchment left in the rain and put away wet. And there was something odd about the left side of his face. Stroke or wound. Maybe. Bad dye job on the hair. A dead black that left him looking older than god. “Traggan 2,” she said as he filled the glass again. “The Silver Circus. Forty some years ago. Remember?” She brushed at her sleeve, flickered her fingers through the pro-sign.

He set the glass down, pushed the stopper home. “They call me Hadluk here. Been some changes. How’d you know?”

“I’m Rose. Was blonde then. In black avrishum.” She nodded as she saw recognition flare in his eyes. Finally, she thought. “The coloring is camouflage.” She reached out, ran the tip of her forefinger over the tiny scar. “You don’t want folk to know you, you should get rid of that.”

He shrugged. “Here? Who cares. The wine’s twenty kuries a pop.”

She set a silver pera on the bar, watched him sweep it away, count out her change in the copper kuries. “Ah well, way it goes. Word is you run Vagnag here.”

“Not me.” He drew his thumb down the subtly distorted left side of his face. “Past it, Rose, long past it. Gray market ananiles. Bad batch. Burnt gaps in the old brain. Can’t do the calcs any more.”

“Too bad. I would have enjoyed another pass.” She didn’t mean it, but it was the polite thing to say. “Buy yourself a drink on me. Old times.” She pushed the coppers back at him to pay for her second drink and his, signed to him to keep the change and watched, amused, as he chose a different bottle to pour for himself.

He swallowed, shuddered. One eyelid drooping, he leaned against the wall cabinets, hip hitched on the flat top. “Heard you hit a slippery patch a while back.”

“Wheel turns, Hadluk. Just let me make the right connections and it’s all back again.

He nodded, but she could see pity and a flare of malice in his dark eyes. He’d lost his face, no wonder he quit, he must have started growing tells like weeds. “Need a stake?” he said; wariness replacing pity.

“No.” She didn’t elaborate and he asked no more questions.

Humming under his breath, he began playing finger games on the bar, short nails adding an edge to the thumping of his fingertips.

Rose tapped a counter rhythm. These were pleasant little sounds, innocuous, but by the time they broke off their game, they’d bargained out his commission for introducing her to a game, his percentage of the take, and set a time for her to show back here.

She took a swallow of the wine. “I don’t want to come on as a whore,” she said, “give me the local protocols.”

“Hmm. Long skirt, arms covered in the evening. That’s important. Bare arms after dark are an advert of intent.”

“I’ll dig something up.” She drank the last of the wine, pushed the glass away. “Before I show, see the others know I don’t play on my back, huh?”

“That hasn’t changed, huh?” He grinned at her, a tinge of red in the whites of his eyes; whatever he was drinking, it was powerful stuff. “Don’t worry, I’ll pass the word on.”

“Thanks.” She slid off the stool. “See you when.”