Dark Age (Red Rising Saga 5)

“Freihild.”

“Ja?”

“You’re still a liar. But you’re right.” Someone starts to say Freihild is deft in all things. “Yeah, yeah, shut up. You nailed it. I played Xenophon. And now you deserve to have your name remembered, Freihild, deft in some things.” She looks loftily at the other skuggi. Gudkind gives her a powerful nod, like she just killed a foe. That means a compliment from me is worth something. So maybe I read them wrong. Maybe they don’t distrust me down to my very marrow after all.

“Pinks are the best players of Karachi in the worlds, not Whites, not Coppers, not Reds,” I say. “The only people that could hold a candle to them were those Gold snakes on the Palatine. Lies were their first musical instrument. But I’ve seen even the Fury herself lose a hundred billion credits to Quicksilver’s Rose on a lone star bluff.”

They guffaw. “A cunning foe like Atalantia would not lose to a Pink,” Gudkind says, offended.

“She did,” Xenophon confirms. “At the Aristotle Club. January eleventh, 732 PCE. Were you robbing the place, Mr. Horn?”

“Security, asshole. Not even I’d rob one of Atalantia’s clubs.” I look back to Gudkind. “So the Fury lost. How, you ask.”

Gudkind blinks. “I did not ask anything.”

“Rhetorical,” Freihild says.

“Ah.

” He vaguely remembers the lesson.

“May I continue now?”

“Ja.” I wait for Gudkind to correct himself. “Yes.”

“Rhetorical again. Mind the sarcasm,” Freihild says. “It is all he speaks.”

I continue. “Everything you need to know about Karachi can be found in the faces of the other players, in the breathing, the blinking, the talking, the silence, the deviation from any pattern. Obviously don’t be a mule’s tit and bet the bank on a minor star match, but if you got a lock on your opponent, you’re on high street. Now you lot have the most paralyzed faces this side of a Silver’s at a slave auction, but your body language gives you away.” I jab a finger out. “Hammerhead over there started heaving like a thirty-year-old virgin soon as he got that major star run. Skeleton here got squinty when she tried to bluff with a lone high comet. Even Xenophon has a tic. You lot read the snow as kids, right?”

They nod.

“And the wind and beast droppings and whatever else was on your pole. Reading people is no different, but it is everything. It will tell you if you can bribe a person, intimidate, manipulate, bamboozle, befuddle, seduce. Killing is easier sometimes, but rarely better in the line of work you’ll be doing. Killing removes an obstacle. And what are obstacles?”

“Potential assets,” Freihild leads half the skuggi in answering.

“Exactly.” I beam. “That is how the Sons of Ares toppled the greatest war machine that ever existed. That is how I kidnapped the Reaper’s only son. Hieg?”

“Hieg,” they echo. Some, including Freihild, touch their foreheads at the word Reaper.

“Now, the other Colors have practiced lying since birth. Bullshit is the vernacular of cities. Gudkind over there probably thinks whores actually like his Venusian earrings.” They make huge guttural sounds. I flinch, thinking they’re about to kill me. No. It’s just two hundred Obsidian assassins laughing their asses off. A few of them take a knee and wipe their eyes. Right, no sexual mores here.

“Gudkind does love whores,” Freihild says. “He is deft in many things, especially whores.”

Gudkind nods. “I do. I am. It is no lie. They are such delight for my spirit.”

“Well, everyone’s got a hobby.” I absently pat his arm. They freeze. I swallow and take my hand off him. Gudkind laughs and pats my shoulder.

“Indeed. A hobby! My hobby is whores!”

I manage to press on. “By the time I’m through with you, you’ll be such lie detectors you’ll never be able to go to another brothel without having an existential crisis.” The word doesn’t translate. “Without losing your…Pax! You still here?”

“Andi,” he calls from the wall.

“Without losing your andi. Your spirit. Now…” I light a match. The wind blows it out. Freihild kneels and cups her hands to shelter the next match from the wind. Making progress here. I light two burners and flip her one, then Gudkind too for equality and all that. “Now…I don’t wager physical pain will make a tick’s prick of difference to you, so we’ll put the pain where it counts. Today, we play Karachi until you are all poor as Reds or learn to read people just as well as snow. And to make sure it is real, you will each make real bets, backed by your war hoard. I know you’re all bloody millionaires. Or were before you found Jewel Street down in the city. So break into groups of seven, and get started.”

It is the fastest they’ve ever obeyed me. As they form into groups, I sense movement on a balcony in the war-wing of Griffinhold. Valdir stands flanked by his braves watching Freihild laughing as she forms up a group of skuggi for cards. They all seem to be competing for the chance to play against her. The look on Valdir’s face is not one of anger, but something far more complicated.

Then his eyes flick to me, and his face betrays him again. He knows I saw how he looked at Freihild. Man might be used to everyone thinking he’s a walking death god, but if Sefi saw him looking at the young skuggi like that, I’m not sure how long he’d be walking. Something about the Queen tells me she isn’t exactly the sharing kind.