The Blacktongue Thief

56 Towers

Towers is a vicious game. Some call it Thieves and Towers, some call it Traitor’s Towers. You get sixty cards to a deck, made of Archers, Sappers, and Thieves (the Servants), Soldiers, Queens and Kings, and Towers, of course (the Masters). The most powerful cards are the Fates—one Death, also called Plague, and one Traitor. Some decks, called Mouray decks after the Gallardian city, also include a Doctor to stay death’s hand, but purists don’t like that. It seems unrealistic. Death always wins, doesn’t it? You get those nicer Mouray decks at court. In taverns, you’d better have a Lamnur deck. From Holt. The art’s not as good—the Thieves are just a hand—a fucking hand!—but the play’s more brutal. Fewer Coins, more Bees and Archers. Bees and Coins are the Means cards—you need them to fuel your Masters. I won’t bore you with the whole set of rules; just know Towers is like a war right there on the table, and it sucks money out of purses faster than a two-squinny harlot. Starts more fights than religion and politics together. And it’s addictive.

We decided to play with matched pots, whoever had the most at the end of one Game wins, one Game consisting of three Tourney rounds—where you jockey for position, saving back cards for the final—then the War round, which is no joke.

Ürmehen had a special table rolled out, a great tree’s trunk that had somehow grown around the skeleton of a man. It had been cut just over the cavity with the man lying fetal, like a cut view of a giant’s womb, and glassed over with thick, greenish glass from Pigdenay, bubbles in it and all.

We used a brass cup for the ante pot, a copper bowl for the War chest. The distinctive sound of Towers, heard in taverns, brothels, and monasteries from Ispanthia to Hrava, is the double clink. When you bet on a Tourney round, the same goes to the War chest—that’s where the money gets made. Clink-clink. A shave to you, clink-clink. Goin’ to bed, see you at the War. I’m in for ten, clink-clink, and ten besides, clink-clink. A lucky or clever man could win or bluff his way through the Tourneys and make as much money as whomever won the War, but if you won the Tourneys, you likely had good cards to save back for that last round. This is what often got me chased out of taverns, running for my life. My luck draws strong cards.

Though not always the obvious ones.

Ürmehen dealt first, smiling with his wildcat furs and his tousled, ink-black hair, his arched libertine’s eyebrows. Now that he was closer, I felt magic coming off a ring he had, a silvery ring in the shape of a cat wrapped around his finger, biting its own tail. It seemed to jar something in my memory, but I was too distracted by the game to make the connection. Here came my first six cards! I got a Coin, two Bees, two Thieves, and a Sapper. He won a decent little pot, and I let him run me because any folded cards are forfeit, so I didn’t fold.

He had four Bees and two Towers. I could have smashed a Tower with the Sapper and robbed off two of his Bees, but he still would have one Tower standing, and me with no Master to beat it and all my good cards spent. The Coins and Bees are perishable, they can’t be banked back. But I kept those Thieves and that shovel-wielding, Tower-killing Sapper. He kept the Towers, because he had Bees to feed them. Servants don’t need feeding. Think of it like the lower classes are good at surviving; Thieves steal their food, Sappers grow gardens, Archers hunt. Armies, castles, and monarchs? Machines for eating and spending, no good without gold and honey.

The second Tourney, I led with a Soldier and Sapper, threw one more Soldier, one Tower. No Means at all. As far as he knew, I was dry, and had what’s called a starveling hand. Useless, as good as dead. He led with Bees and Soldiers, nothing impressive, but all fed and ready; he stayed in, so I knew he was saving a wallop. I hoped it wasn’t the Traitor, but I guessed I’d feel a luckless chill if he had one. My guts told me he had a Queen.

I threw the King down second to last and bet hard. He bet harder, hoping I had drawn the Death card and meant to bluff. You see, if Death visits your hand, your most powerful card got sick and died. You can’t fold with the Death card, either, not until you play him. You let on that you’ve got it, your opponent will drain you dry. But if, just if, you manage to make them fold, you get to keep that Death card for the War, and in the War? Death is your friend. You can send him like an arrow to the heart of any card the other plays. And the best thing about that move is that they won’t see it coming. Towers is a card-counter’s game, but there’s just enough chance in it you can’t account for everything.

So brass-balled Ürmehen, scared of Death after all, called me on it, bet hard, and when I clink-clinked my reply, he flipped his Queen. When I showed him the Coin, which brought my King and one Tower to life and won the hand for me, he stood up and paced away, issuing what must have been a chain of Gunnish oaths fit to make old Wolthan blush. He reined himself back in and sat, even offered me beer. He got to save his Queen for the War. It was still anyone’s game. It usually is, until the last card falls.

The third Tourney was his. He bet the moon, and I let him do it because I got two Archers and two Sappers, and I had to play them to keep them. He ran me nearly out of money, then banked a King to balance mine, a second Queen, and one more Tower to make three. He was going into the War round as rich as Old Kesh, but my luck felt good.

And now came the War round. But first, Ürmehen wanted a break. A fiddler came in, an old woman with a long, skinny braid wound around her belt, and she played a sweet air. When she was done and I’d thrown her a copper shave, I asked to play her fiddle, a scratched, warm old Gunnish thing, and she handed it over. I said, “This song, from my native Galtia, is called, ‘I Lost My Arse at Towers, and It Hurts to Ride My Horse, but I Haven’t Any Horse, So You Can Ride My Ass,’” and those who spoke Holtish laughed. Ürmehen translated, and the rest laughed, too. I played a jolly reel. This moved my host to bring out the hard stuff, and we drank the last of his wodka. I was starting to like the bastard. Down we sat again.

How you sculpt your War deck is of the utmost importance in Towers. You get exactly ten cards, you see, but you can’t save Coins or Bees, so you have to hope to draw some. Go too heavy on Masters and you might not draw enough Means to fuel them, especially if your enemy has Thieves, which he knew good and well I did. He had a crushing advantage, but dared not use it all. So, as I figured out later, he sacrificed his Soldiers, hoping to draw enough Means to beat me. He drew well, as it turns out.

I was making sacrifices, too. I knew he had a King to tie my King, and I could never out-Master him, nor would my one Tower serve. But I was rich in Servants, so on my Servants I laid every hope. I left my mighty King and Tower out of the draw, going low, as they say; a very risky gambit.

It was my deal, which gave me an advantage. Gods know the cards didn’t. I had all Servants, and almost all the Servants in the deck; four Thieves, three Sappers, and three Archers—great luck that I had not drawn Bees or Coins, which would have been useless to me. The bugger started with two Queens and a King, two Towers, two Bees, and a Coin. As if that weren’t imposing enough, he also drew both the Traitor and Death.

He could have won with that hand, had he known what I had, but there’s the rub. Ürmehen threw down his two Bees to watch my Thieves snatch both up. He played a Queen I swiftly killed with an Archer. He tried two Towers, humphing as my Sappers pulled those Towers down one after the other, but yet he hoped to wear me out.

Out came another Queen, who drew another Archer of mine to kill her, but he threw the Death card down to that Archer’s misfortune, saving the good lady. He now had a Queen on the table, and myself naught but his two stolen Bees. He played his King. I sent another Archer, and reluctantly, he used his mighty Traitor to snatch that up for himself and hold in his hand—I’m sure he’d wanted to save the Traitor for the King he’d seen me save.

Now he played a Coin to feed his Queen, but here came a wicked Thief of mine, which he promptly slew with his stolen Archer. You can’t kill a Thief with a fucking Archer, unless this was some weird Gunnish rule, which I took it to be since nobody raised an eyebrow. I closed my mouth before I even opened it, as we say in Galtia, and took a deep breath.

And then I smiled.

He was going to lose, anyway.

He had a King and Queen on the table and a Coin to feed them both. But he was out of cards, wasn’t he? And here came the last squinnying Thief in the deck, my Thief, me, to filch that Coin. And him still out of cards. I played my third Sapper, a miner, covered in shyte and dirt. And with those Bees, he had buckets of honey he didn’t even need while Ürmehen’s King and Queen starved to death in the field. Had he known I had all four Thieves, he might have played Death and the Traitor against them and kept his Coin. But he was saving his strength for a King of mine I’d shoveled under.

The game was so exciting I nearly forgot I was nowhere safe at all and at the mercy of the man I had just thrashed. I had almost hoped he’d show himself a graceful loser, but I knew that losers, graceful or otherwise, don’t long last in command. He slid the copper bowl full of War winnings toward me, greater as it was than his winnings in the Tourneys.

With all his den’s eyes on him, and me sweating in the cold cave, he said, “And now, we play again. Double or nothing.” As I looked about, with the eyes of the three score vicious youths on him, some of them watching for a hint of weakness to exploit, I didn’t even hold it against him.

With feigned enthusiasm, I said, “Fair play!” and shuffled the deck.

It would be my deal first.

Of course I threw the second game.

Ürmehen slept in a natural cave off the sewers, a small cave, but holding barely any whiff of foulness, unless I’d simply grown inured. It had a proper bed with a wood frame, a straw-filled mattress and a bearskin. A bear skull daubed with witchmoss glowed in a glass cube. A bookshelf sagged in the middle, and a rack winked with odd weapons. A light blue silk tapestry depicted a rich fat man in white robes decorated with gold crescent moons holding a cage with a beautiful white bird in it, a Molrovan snow-hen by the looks of it. Ürmehen lived in seedy luxury.

Once he had me past his bolted door, his spearguards outside, ready for orders, he invited me to sit on the bed.

“Let’s just have done with it,” I said. “You know this isn’t to my liking.”

“I’ll tell you what’s to your liking!” he yelled, but then whispered close, “Shut up, Galt. I told you I’m a man of my word.” He waited for a moment, watching me, then looked at the door. “Now make some little noise like I fuck you.”

I grunted.

“Yes, this is good. I almost believe you. Again.”

I groaned and ended on a yelp.

“Yes! A natural actor!” he hissed. “You could make your living in an actor-wagon or carnival!”

He now grabbed the frame of the bed and rocked it once.

“Mph!” I said.

He waited a heartbeat and then did it again.

I exhaled a held breath.

“Good! It is almost like we actually fuck together!” he whispered into my face with his beery wodka-tart breath.

“Don’t get excited,” I whispered.

I saw then that a fox-foot pendant had fallen out of his shirt.

“Fothannon?” I said.

“Yes. Here we call him Reffra, but it is the same. The chief of thieves. My actual god, not fucking Wolthan or worse, that laughing-sack Tuur, who failed us. You saw perhaps the cocks I drew on him.”

“Yes. Good work. Quite lifelike.”

He laughed once, like a fox yip, pleased with himself.

“Are you ready?” he said.

“Er … for what?” I said.

“We held the queen down here. We held her for almost a moon. We kidnap her after the king died, hoping to ransom her back to Ispanthia. They are sending an army here to get her. If we can wait for the army, they pay us in gold. But it is hard, she is hard to keep down here, but I think it makes more mischief if I do not tell you why. Even your Guild did not know I had her, even with their merchant man and their fat wizard. Even with their killers on Bald Island. But at last the Guild find out. Even I am not so strong to avoid death from them, their assassins, so I agree to sell her to them. To the Full Shadow. He is giving me money like I never seen before. He is giving me a ring that I fall like a cat. To jump from third story is nothing now.”

The ring of Catfall.

And when he had told me all he felt like telling me, he kissed me chastely on the forehead. He then shame-walked me out of his chambers like he’d cleaned my chimney good.

But he hadn’t.

He was a man of his word.

He didn’t dare to.

He probably thought I’d have killed him.

So he didn’t.

Not even a little.

And if you believe that, I envy you the life you’ve lived thus far.

It wasn’t until I was well away from my fellow fox-follower’s den that I spat his Catfall ring into my hand and pouched it.