Greythorne (Bloodleaf 2)

Now to wait for darkness to fall.

25

I was sitting at Castillion’s desk when he arrived less than an hour later. He had a tired, weary look about him as he removed his overcoat and loosened the buttons at the wrists of his shirtsleeves. He’d regained his rigid posture, however; it was hard to believe I’d ever seen him the way I had, hunched and humbled. The true mascot of a boat named the Humility.

“Long day?” I asked him as lightly as I could. I had retrieved a deck of cards from the top drawer of his desk and was lazily laying them out in front of me, as if I were more interested in the illustrations than in actually playing the game.

“They’re all long days,” Castillion replied.

“Did you accomplish anything important?” I eyed him over the fan of cards in my hand.

“To a satisfactory degree,” he said.

I stiffened. There was blood underneath his fingernails. I could feel the last gasp of its power as he removed a damp cloth from the water basin and began to scrub it away.

There was a cut in the side of his palm. A neat, narrow incision, just like the countless tiny wounds I’d inflicted upon myself over time, all for the purpose of casting a spell.

“You’re a blood mage,” I blurted.

“Not a very good one, I’m afraid.” He tossed the cloth back down into the bowl. “I wanted to go to the Assembly when I was very young, but my father resented the institution. Didn’t like that they’d built their fabled hall on Castillion land, never mind that it predated his claim by a thousand years. And that he could never actually find the building. It shows itself only to those who already know where it is, or those it wants to find it.” He shrugged. “If I were the Assembly Hall, I wouldn’t have wanted my father to find it either.” Changing the subject, he said, “I heard you went to the infirmary today. Kept Mistress Onal reasonably occupied for a while. I can’t imagine that was very easy.”

“It was not,” I said. “She’s very tiring, I’ll admit. Still, there’s little a good game of Betwixt and Between can’t solve. But you know that.”

“I don’t play,” he said.

“Truly? You should let me teach you. If you value gaming to learn strategy, you’ve done yourself a disservice by overlooking this one.”

“It doesn’t seem to have served you very well.”

“I never said I was very good at it.” I forced a laugh. The evening bell was ringing; Onal would be in the gallery soon, shepherding Castillion’s overdressed hostages onto the lifeboats lining the side of the ship.

“You recommend I learn from someone admittedly terrible?”

“Nothing but the worst for you.” I tipped my face up to him. “What do you say, Captain?”

It wasn’t my charm that won him over; it was too thin and forced to be truly convincing. It seemed as if Gretchen was right and he was still a gambler at heart.

He settled across from me.

“Are you sure Mistress Onal doesn’t want to play as well?”

“I’m sure I don’t want her to play. She plays very dirty.”

“It seems to me that the best players always do, no matter the game.”

“It depends on what you value most: integrity? Or ingenuity?” I shuffled the cards and placed the stack on the table between us. “What is right?” I dealt the first card to myself. “Or . . . what is interesting?” I dealt the second to him.

“There’s a problem with your argument,” he said. “It’s based on the assumption that there is a right.”

I passed out two more cards. “Isn’t there?”

“There is no black or white,” he said. “No right or wrong. Everything in this world exists in shades of gray.”

I laid the last of our hands out, my attention catching on the word gray. “A funny way of looking at the world for a man who names his ships after virtues.”

“Virtues exist in grays as well, each valuable only when balanced in the center of the spectrum. Too much humility becomes superiority. Too much piety becomes zealotry.” He leaned forward. “Now,” he said, “what shall we wager?”

“I thought your virtues didn’t allow for gambling with money.”