A Plain-Dealing Villain (20 page)

The room fell into a hush as Royce raised his hands. He strode in a slow circle around the shrouded conduit and grinned like a rock star.

“Friends. Visitors. Honored guests. Welcome. These annual games are a time-honored tradition, as established by my predecessor so long ago—both as a tribute to our benevolent Prince Malphas and to the entire Choir of Greed. After all, what better way to promote the virtue? We charge you to attend, then set you at each other’s throats as you try to win your money back.”

That got a laugh from the crowd. He paused, waiting for the ripple to subside.

“The original games were gladiatorial fights to the death. We had to revise that after a few years because, well, people stopped signing up. Now our bouts are bloodless, but no less exciting.”

Herbert leaned my way and murmured, “Not always true. In ’08, that was the first and only year we played Monopoly. Four people died.”

I blinked at him. “How do people die playing Monopoly?”

“House rules.”

“This year’s grand prize,” Royce said, “in addition to a cash pot of fifty thousand dollars, is a rare treat. A Tyrian shekel from our prince’s private art gallery, formerly owned by Judas Iscariot. A piece of living history—and who knows what dark powers it might possess?”

“Ain’t got none,” the man with the Okie accent drawled in a low voice as he unwrapped his cigar. “Had my lab rats check it out while it was on display. Just a fancy coin is all. I’m here for the
paper
money. You got a light, mister?”

Calypso turned his empty hand in a flourish, and a silver lighter sat nestled between his fingertips. He slid it across the table.

Royce clapped his hands sharply. “And now, the rules. The game is Texas Hold’em, no limit. You will each be issued ten thousand dollars worth of chips, and there will be no rebuys. When you’re out of chips, you’re out of the game. The ante will start low and steadily increase over the course of the tournament. As we begin, the small blind is one hundred dollars, big blind is two hundred.

“Games will last until we’ve lost enough players to consolidate tables, at which point we’ll resume after a brief intermission. Now, I shouldn’t have to say this, but we expect a clean tournament. Any cheating, be it through sleight of hand, chicanery, or the magical arts, will be punished by torture and death. Torture which, I assure you, will only be the beginning of your eternal misery once our people catch up with you in hell. I do hope we’re all on the same page here.”

While Royce aimed that barb straight at me, I was entertaining myself watching Stanwyck at the next table over. I’d seen literal ghosts that weren’t as pale as his face.

“To the victor the spoils,” Royce announced, holding his arms high, “and to Prince Malphas the glory. Let’s play.”

One of Nadine’s boys circled our table, laying out stacks of colored chips. Royce sat back down and cracked his knuckles.

“I hope no one minds if I deal first? Host’s prerogative.”

Texas Hold’em is arguably the trickiest poker variant, not the least because it seems—at first glance—incredibly simple. You get two cards. Just two, facedown, and three turned faceup in the middle of the table for all the players to share. As the betting goes on, round by round, two more faceup cards are eventually added to the table for a total of five. If you’re still in the game at that point, you put together your final five-card hand between the five communal cards and your two facedown ones.

Of course, nothing’s that simple. The longer you stay in the game, and the more cards you get to choose from, the more chips you need to risk. If you don’t have a strong hand, but your cards have potential, do you bail early or push your luck? A skilled Hold’em player has just the right mix of aggression and caution.

Two hands in, and I had all the confirmation I needed that Royce had stacked our table: these players, even Herbert, were pros. No carelessness, no easy mistakes to punish. I folded every hand, bowing out fast and letting them fight it out.

The fourth time I folded in a row, Royce clicked his tongue. “Are you here to play cards?”

“Sure,” I said. “I’m here to play
good
cards. As soon as I’m dealt a couple, we’ll talk.”

You can’t stay out of the game forever. Two rotating positions—the blinds—
have
to bet at the start of each new hand. Sooner than I expected, I heard Nadine shout out, “Blinds have now increased. Two hundred for the small blind, four hundred for the big blind.”

Double what they started at, and we were barely twenty minutes into the tournament. Making sure nobody sat on the sidelines for too long.

The dealer position rotated along with the blinds. Once the deck sat nestled in my hands, I heard a faint growl. Pinfeather sat on his haunches next to my chair, the German shepherd glaring at me with too-human eyes.

“Really?” I asked Royce.

Royce shrugged eloquently. “He doesn’t trust you. Can’t imagine why.”

I was tempted to bottom-deal myself a good card or two, just on general principle, but I played it fair. Honesty paid off for a change: my cards were a king and an eight, with two kings faceup on the table. If another king came up—or if the cards kicked me a second eight, building a full house—I’d finally have a solid hand. I got my eight in the next round of bets and rode it all the way to the showdown.

“Kings full of eights,” I said, showing my cards. Calypso, the only player who hadn’t already folded, only had two pair. Somehow, I wasn’t surprised he was the biggest bluffer at the table.

I raked in my chips, passed the deck of cards to Herbert, and looked down at Pinfeather. “Also, your breath is
terrible.
”

The dog whined and trotted away.

My luck didn’t hold for long, but that was the nature of the game. The stacks of chips ebbed and flowed between us. It was easy to see Josh taking an early lead—the kid was a mathematical machine with a face of stone, and his plays were impossible to predict. The Okie, Royce, and I took the worst beatings, but we all hung in and kept playing.

An hour into the tournament, I saw open chairs at every table but ours. The fast and the reckless dropped in no time, weeded out by their more conservative rivals. I kept folding early, saving my chips, waiting for the perfect hand. When Nadine raised the blinds to one thousand and two thousand, I knew I couldn’t keep turtling for long.

One of her boy toys set a glass snifter by my hand. Three big rocks of ice bathing in three fingers of whiskey.

“I didn’t order this,” I said.

“Compliments of the house.”

It didn’t smell right. The whiskey had all the hallmarks of age—a genuine clear, dark color from doing hard time in an oak barrel, not the artificial caramel coloring they put in the cheap stuff—but when I lifted the snifter to my nose, I caught an alkaline edge to the liquor.

I didn’t set the glass down, though. Not right away.

This is crazy
, I thought.
It’s a setup. It’s the most obvious setup in the world. I’d have to be beyond stupid to take a single sip of this.

But it’s just one sip.

This close to my face, I spotted something at the bottom of the snifter. The faintest traces of a sigil, sketched on the underbelly of the glass in cherry-red lipstick.

A desire spell. I’d used them myself, once or twice.
You want this
, it said as it fired off,
you need this
, and whispered sweet nothings into your limbic system. The problem with desire spells was that even when you knew one had been cast on you, it didn’t stop working. Right about then I was more parched than a man crossing the Mojave on foot, and that whiskey looked like the last drink on Earth.

I forced my arm down, setting the snifter aside, and focused on the game. That was the plan, anyway. With the enchanted glass sitting there, screaming for my attention, my carefully constructed house of cards turned into a condemned tenement. I let Calypso bluff me, giving up the biggest pot of the tournament so far, and then I threw away a hand that could have turned into a queen-high flush.

Damned if I do, damned if I don’t. As long as the glass is there, I’m thinking more about the whiskey than the cards. It doesn’t matter what they actually laced the drink with.

Maybe I imagined the smell. One sip wouldn’t hurt. Then I’d know. Maybe that’s the whole trick—that there’s nothing wrong with it and I’m fighting for no reason
.

It was junkie logic, twisting and rationalizing a lousy decision until it seemed like a good one. It felt like scratching a bad itch as I lifted the snifter—quick, before I could talk myself out of it—and took a sip.

The drink hit me with a chemical fist and burned down my throat like napalm. Whatever they’d done to it, the whiskey was stronger than it had any right to be; one tiny sip and I felt as lightheaded as I normally would after two shots and a chaser. If I could down the whole glass without passing out dead drunk—and I gave it even odds—I’d be worse than useless.

Can’t drink it, can’t not drink it
. That only left me one option. I folded on a decent pair, buying me a minute to focus while the others played. The amplified liquor buzzing around in my head made it even harder to resist drinking more, and I snatched up the snifter again.
Just one sip. Already had one. Two won’t hurt
.

We lie to ourselves for all kinds of reasons. Usually, like the first time I put the snifter to my mouth, it’s to justify making a lousy choice. Sometimes, though—just sometimes—you can make that lie work in your favor. Wreathed by the desire spell, that glass could have been made from gold and diamonds. It was a priceless gift, something to covet and protect. Moving my hand to knock it off the table, or throwing it at Royce’s head for that matter, would have been unthinkable.

With it already cradled in my hand, though, all I had to do was open my fingers and let it fall.

It still took every ounce of effort to make my muscles obey, pouring my willpower into the fight until beadlets of cold sweat broke out on my forehead. One by one, my fingers wrenched back, loosening their grip. I felt like I’d thrown away a fortune when the snifter tumbled to the floor.

Then the glass shattered, a crash that echoed throughout the room and killed the buzz of conversation, and the spell shattered with it.

Everyone looked my way. It was my turn to deal. I shuffled overhand and locked eyes with Royce.

“You should call somebody to clean that up,” I told him. “Now let’s play some cards.”

Players dropped like flies all around us. I saw Stanwyck get up from his table, shaking his head, going home a loser. He spotted me watching him and hustled out of the parlor.

That’s right
, I thought,
run for it
.
Just like I want you to
.

Amy Xun had already been knocked out of the game. She sat on the sidelines, watching intently. We made eye contact, and I flicked my gaze toward Stanwyck’s retreating back. Amy nodded. Message received.

There was a lull in the action while Nadine reshuffled the seats, cutting six tables down to three. Our table was the only one that hadn’t suffered a casualty yet, but the time wasn’t far off. Herbert was the first to fall, going all in on his last hand and running out of chips when Josh beat his full house with four of a kind.

“Been a pleasure,” Herbert said as he pushed his chair back. He slipped me his business card and added, “Hopefully you remain hale and hearty, but just in case, my clinic is always open.”

“You work in the city morgue,” Royce said.

Herbert shrugged. “Sometimes it’s a morgue, sometimes it’s a clinic. I
am
a man of science.”

The Okie was next to go. He’d been playing as conservatively as me, folding on four hands out of five, but then Nadine raised the blinds again—setting the minimum ante to four thousand and eight thousand a hand—and three lousy plays in a row ran his stakes down to nothing.

“Aw, hell,” he sighed, snuffing the stub of his cigar. “Maybe next year, huh? Good luck, fellas.”

Now it was down to Royce, Josh, Calypso, and me, and Royce and I were the low men on the totem pole. With the mandatory antes this big, and one of the two blinds hitting me every other hand, I had to make every play count. I figured it was time for my next move.

“How about a side bet?” I asked Royce.

He met Josh’s raise, tossing a handful of chips into the pot, and looked my way. “What do you have in mind?”

“We’re both representing rival courts. Let’s face it, regardless of who wins the tournament, what people really want to see is which one of us comes out on top.”

“Fair enough,” he agreed.

“If you get knocked out of the tournament before I do, you have to announce in front of everyone,” I said with a nod toward the shrouded conduit, “
and
your boss, that the Jade Tears beat the Night-Blooming Flowers fair and square.”

Royce gave me a cocky smile. “Now that’s the kind of side bet I enjoy. A little danger to spice things up. But what do I get if you’re eliminated before me?”

I pretended to think about it, rapping my fingers against my cards, even though I already knew what I’d say.

“You know what I was after, coming here.”

Royce looked across the room, where one of Nadine’s men stood watch with the metal briefcase cuffed to his wrist. He chuckled.

“Have to honestly say, sport, for someone who’s supposedly a skilled thief, you weren’t exactly difficult to see coming. No hard feelings. Caitlin got a black eye by association, and her prince will have to make a public apology to mine. I call that a good day. And we really do want you on our team. I can be forgiving about minor sins.”

“I’ll tell you who isn’t on your team: the person who hired me to rip you off.”

His eyes went a little wider. I had his attention. “And that would be whom, exactly?”

I smiled. “Knock me out of the tournament first, and I’ll tell you. How’s that sound?”

He extended his hand across the table. “It sounds like we have a bet.”

What came next was the easiest part of the plan: I just had to lose convincingly. Beyond folding a couple of decent hands instead of letting them play, that barely took any doing at all. Josh and Calypso made sure of it. I wiped out on a garbage hand and tried to look disappointed.

“Well, look at
that
,” Nadine said behind me, loud enough for her voice to carry across the parlor. “The champion of the Jade Tears, going home in utter defeat. Vanquished at the hands of Prince Malphas’s hound, no less.”

“Don’t rub it in,” Caitlin snapped at her, walking over to meet me as I rose from the table.

Nadine rubbed her hands together gleefully. “I think someone needs to take out the trash around here. Oh, wait, Royce just
did
.”

I rapped my knuckles on the table and inclined my head to Royce. “Good game. Once you’re done, we’ll talk about the side bet.”

Caitlin put her arm around me. I let her lead me away, not too far from the table, and leaned my head against her shoulder.

“This had better work,” she murmured, “or I’m going to have a lot to explain to my prince.”

“So far, so good,” I told her. “Now we just have to wait for—oops, there he goes.”

Royce threw up his hands, watching the last of his chips disappear. All the same, he strolled toward us with a sunny smile.

“Bad break,” I said.

“I didn’t have to win the tournament, sport. I just had to beat
you
. That’s all anyone’s going to be talking about tonight. So ready to give me a name?”

I jerked my head toward the door. “Out in the lounge, not here. This is for your ears only.”

“Fine, fine.” He snapped his fingers at Nadine. “Time for the final round, love. Consolidate the tables and keep an eye on things, would you kindly? I shan’t be long.”

I left Caitlin there, walking alone with Royce to the outer lounge. With all the action happening in the gambling parlor, the bar was a ghost town. I took a seat and waved over the bored-looking bartender.

“After all that action, I could use a drink,” I said to Royce. “A
legitimate
one.”

“Don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said, eyes twinkling.

“Maybe not. Maybe that was Nadine’s game. Tell you what, just to show there’s no hard feelings, I’ll buy for both of us.” I looked to the bartender. “Crown and Coke. Two, please.”

“Appreciated,” Royce said, “but there’s still a tournament in swing, and I shouldn’t be gone for—”

“Relax. Something I learned a long time ago: when a man has a story to tell, you let him tell it in his own time. You get all the important details that way.”

Royce grumbled, but he ended up on the barstool next to me, patient as he could manage while I waited for our drinks to arrive. I raised my glass before taking a swig.

“To your health. All right. So. I first became aware of the Judas Coin thanks to a post on the deep web.”

“Right,” Royce said. “Believe it or not, we’re already aware of that part. Could we speed this along?”

I walked him through it anyway, spinning out the lie nice and slow. How I’d made contact online with a local who wanted the coin. How I’d flown to Chicago and spent a couple of nights scoping out the Bast Club. How I’d come up with a plan for the big heist. None of the details were anywhere close to the truth, but they matched the story he’d already been sold.

“—and then Mack and Zeke gave us the slip when I tried to tail them in my car, so I knew finding wherever you stashed the coin was a lost cause. We abandoned the entire plan.”

Royce pinched the bridge of his nose. “Like I’ve said ten times now, we already
know
all that. I just want the name of the person who hired you. That’s it.
Please
.”

“Oh,” I said, snapping my fingers. “All right, you won the bet fair and square. Just keep my name out of it when you go after him, okay? It was Damien Ecko.”

He leaned a little closer on his stool. “Damien Ecko? The jeweler?”

“Yeah, you know him?”

Royce shook his head. “By reputation, that’s all. He doesn’t really have any dealings with my court. Did he say why he wanted the coin?”

“No, but he doesn’t play cards, so he knew he didn’t have a chance of winning it fairly.”

“Hmm. Well. I imagine he’s covered his tracks, but I’ll have my people question him regardless. Thank you for that.”

“Hey,” I said, frowning like I’d just realized something. “I haven’t seen him here today. Have you? I’m wondering if he skipped town, thinking you were onto him.”

Royce shrugged and slid off the stool, brushing off one sleeve of his jacket. “If he did, he did. He won’t cause any more trouble regardless. Oh bother, it’s been a while, hasn’t it? I really need to get back to the game.”

“Right,” I said. “I’ll join you.”

We came back to a dead-silent parlor, all eyes on the showdown at the final table. Even Calypso had been knocked out of the fight, and only two players remained.

“Oh, no,” Royce breathed, his face falling.

“Oh, yes,” I said with a smile, standing beside him.

Josh flipped over his cards, looking cocky as ever, but his pile of chips was half what it used to be.

Across the table, Corman did the same.

“
Nadine
,” Royce hissed, grabbing her by the arm as she strolled by. “How could you let this happen?”

“What?” Her eyes went wide. “Let what happen?”

“That.” He pointed at Corman, then at me. “
He’s
with
him
.”

“And how would I know that? It’s not my fault!”

“Never mind, just, just—” He pinched the bridge of his nose again, took a deep breath, and lowered his voice. “Mix him one of your special drinks. Fast.”

Nadine put her hands on her hips. “I can’t
do
it ‘fast.’ It’s a complicated spell. If you’d asked me twenty, even ten minutes ago—”

“Oops,” I said lightly. “Almost like somebody distracted you at a crucial moment, to keep you from cheating. Funny how that worked out, huh? Of course, you helped.”

“Helped?” Royce spun on his heel. “What do you mean,
helped?
”

“Everything we did—the whole ‘champion of the Jade Tears’ thing, the rivalry—had one purpose: to make you fixate on
me
. All I had to do was keep you distracted and stay in the game as long as I possibly could. See, I knew you’d stack the deck, so to speak, and put all the heavyweight players at our table. You couldn’t risk the chance that I might win the tournament and make Prince Malphas look like a chump.”

“Alas,” Caitlin said, sauntering up and slipping her arm around mine, “I didn’t just bankroll one player. I bankrolled
four
.”

“How’d Margaux and Bentley do, anyway?” I asked her.

“Bentley made it to the final round, you should have seen it. Margaux…eh, I think we’ve agreed that poker isn’t her game.”

“Know what happens when you pit the big guys against each other, right out of the starting gate?” I said to Royce. “They whittle each other down. Meanwhile, that left all the fish at the other tables, waiting to get gobbled up. Corman used to play poker for a living. Just guessing, but I’d say he hasn’t lost his edge.”

Corman slid a stack of chips across the felt. He wore a lazy grin.

“Raise,” he said. “I’m feeling lucky.”