Page 17 of Rhapsody of Ruin (Kingdoms of Ash and Wonder #1)
Rhydor
The game hall of Shadowspire was a cathedral to the kind of power I distrusted most. Lanterns hung in chains of silver over long tables, the light bent and softened by glamour until every card gleamed, every gem on a noble’s mask seemed more brilliant than it was.
The walls were paneled in shadowglass etched with constellations that turned ever so slightly when no one looked directly at them, and ward-candles burned in sconces shaped like crescent moons, breathing out a smoke that tasted faintly of cloves and something sweet I couldn’t name.
Beneath that perfume lay the odor I recognized from war camps, wax, sweat, the metal tang of greed.
Politics had a scent, even when the Fae drowned it in incense.
A hush rolled over the first ring of tables when I crossed the threshold.
Not silence, not here, Shadowspire never allowed a full silence, but a tightening, a held breath dragged across a thousand throats at once.
Masks turned. Fans paused mid-flutter. I felt the weight of their attention settle like a mantle I had not asked for and would not shed.
My men fanned behind me as if we were walking a kill-box, which, in its way, we were.
Torian took my right, calm, attentive, his eyes flicking not to the glitter but to the angles: where the exits sat, which tables had enough space for a quick retreat, who stood within reach of a concealed blade.
Korrath’s cane tapped once at my left; he was listening, always, for the tells that lived in sound rather than sight, the catch of a breath, a chair dragging a fraction, the hiss of a word not meant to be heard.
Tharos moved with the unhurried confidence of a man who knew he could break a table and everyone on it if he chose.
Draven slouched charmingly, turning the heads he wanted to turn, eyes never stopping even when his smile did; and Brenn, flame-bright and irreverent, whistled under his breath until three masks glanced our way in annoyance, which was exactly what he wanted.
Sir Thalen Morwyn lingered near the arch with his helm tucked beneath his arm, as if he had only just wandered in and had not been watching me since the hunt. The knight held himself with a just-so discipline that said he cared about rules he didn’t always understand. Useful, that.
I did not go to the tables where dice glowed faintly with enchantment or where mirrored boards reflected a dozen false moves.
I bypassed the boards that breathed shimmer into their patterns to disguise sleight of hand.
I stopped instead at a low table with a glassy black surface, its edge inlaid with plain discs of bone and obsidian.
Two Fae nobles and a dealer in a stag-mask sat there, their tokens stacked in small towers, their wine untouched.
The rules were simple; a child could learn them.
The winning would come from the place these people believed they hid best: their faces.
“Prince Aurelius honors us,” the dealer said. The stag-mask’s antlers cast narrow shadows over his shoulders, a trick of light designed to make him seem larger than he was. “Will Ash risk its ash against Wonder’s wit?”
“Wit cuts cleanest when it doesn’t lean on tricks,” I said, lowering into the empty chair. I set my wrapped sword across my knees under the table and rested my palms lightly on the edge, as if to say I had brought my own steel and would not ask to borrow theirs.
A noblewoman in a mask of hammered silver smiled behind her fan. “How brave.”
“Or stupid,” her companion murmured into his goblet. His mask was cut like a fox, the same sleek cruelty we had seen in the gardens. “Shall we teach the beast to fetch?”
Brenn reached for a tray that had no business being in Draven’s hand and switched the goblets with a flourish neither noble saw.
Draven smiled without teeth and tipped the tray to a steward with a graceful apology.
“My lord,” he said, blandly kind, “you nearly drank the anchoring cordial. You would have found yourself very obedient for the next hour.” He winked. “And exceptionally dull.”
The fox-mask stiffened. The silver-masked lady hid a laugh in her fan and set a token on the line.
The stag-dealer laid out the bones.
The first hand I played like a man who believed his own press.
I matched a bluff too early, and when the fox-mask pressed, a little tremor in his ring finger, a gleam behind the slit of his mask, the dealer slid the pile from my side of the line to his with a flourish.
The courtiers around us made that pleased little sound they make when blood is drawn and the victim doesn’t bleed in a way they recognize.
Brenn cursed cheerfully in Drakaryn. Torian didn’t so much as breathe.
I let the sting sit in my mouth and tasted its shape.
Silver-mask’s fan trembled at the hinge whenever she lied.
Fox-mask glanced to his left before he overbid.
The dealer’s fingers twitched, tiny, stubbornly repetitive, each time he leaned on the stag-mask’s glamour to nudge the outcome of a draw. Not enough for most to notice. Enough.
The second hand I lost as well, this time by a sliver, this time to the dealer.
Korrath coughed once from the pillar where he leaned, and I realized the stag flickered his antlers at the exact moments his fingers twitched.
A glamour tell as plain as a banner. I took the information and said nothing.
If I called him now, I’d win the hand and lose the map.
In the third hand, Draven drifted away and reappeared at my back, murmuring, “Two on the left circle touch their masks before they lie,” then melted to another table to whisper something too soft for anyone but me to catch to a noble in a peacock’s crown.
The noble laughed and tapped a finger twice on the table whenever his neighbor bluffed for the next ten minutes.
Draven never looked my way again. He didn’t need to.
Brenn settled in being obvious and was, for once, useful by drawing attention; they looked at him long enough to miss Tharos step into a shadow near a dealer at the far wall and simply be a wall until the dealer’s hands steadied.
I played the fourth hand as if I had learned nothing.
Halfway through it, Sir Thalen’s reflection in the shadowglass caught mine; he tipped his head.
I felt the weight of his attention shift as he realized what I was doing, letting the hall think I was a blunt instrument long enough to make them comfortable.
On the fifth hand, I set a small stack of obsidian discs on the line. The fox twitched his eyes to the left. The lady’s fan stuttered as if a hinge were about to snap. The stag’s fingers lifted from the deck and didn’t quite settle all the way down again.
I didn’t match. I waited.
The fox grinned wider under his mask as if he thought I’d blinked, and doubled. The stag turned another bone, twitching, twitching, not twitching, twitching.
I still waited.
The lady exhaled, forgot to tremble her fan, and called. The stag hesitated. He reached for the next bone, and I lifted my hand.
“No glamour,” I said, not loud, but the rule turned the air cold. “The table’s a test of wit, you said. Let it cut clean.”
“Prince,” the dealer protested, antlers tipping as if wounded. “I have no, ”
I only looked at him. He knew I had seen.
Everyone who mattered understood it now, too; you could feel the shift ripple outward like wind under a door you thought was closed.
He inclined his masked head, tapping the corner of the deck against the glass twice as if to realign invisible weights, and dealt the final turn in honest shadowlight.
The lady’s fan trembled a fraction too late. The fox glanced left.
I smiled with half my mouth and pressed my tokens forward. “Call.”
The dealer looked down, considered saying something oily, thought better of it, and slid the pile to me with hands that didn’t twitch at all. A carved disc of polished bone clinked atop the stack. The crest carved into it was a tower shrouded in mist, a silver moon above a broken key at its base.
Varcoran.
They hadn’t expected to pay a Varcoran favor to a dragon tonight. I let my hand rest over the disc for a heartbeat too long before I pocketed it. The fox’s jaw set under his mask. The silver lady’s fan stopped moving entirely for one, two, three breaths.
“Beginner’s luck,” someone said behind me.
“No,” Sir Thalen answered without asking my leave. His voice cut cleaner than mine might have. “Discipline.”
The word made three faces flinch. I tucked it away, folded carefully with the bone disc in the pocket at my hip. The crowd at the table shifted from sneer to assessing. The difference was small. It mattered.
I could have pressed then. I could have ridden the tremor in the dealer’s hands and the crack in the lady’s fan, could have leveraged the fox’s tell until he flung his mask at the wall and snarled.
That wasn’t why I had sat here. I hadn’t come to break a few nobles and leave them too angry to be useful later.
I’d come to make the hall understand I could play without fire, and to remind it that I would not forget when it cheated.
I bowed my head a fraction. “A good game.” I made sure my voice didn’t carry triumph. It carried sardonic respect instead. I stacked my remaining tokens into a tidy tower and pushed them toward the center. “You may have these back. I have what I came for.”
“What’s that?” the fox asked before he could stop himself.
“A seat,” I said, because he didn’t deserve better, and the noblewoman snorted behind her fan and then remembered she didn’t laugh at dragons and masked it with a cough.
The hum around us loosened. The hall allowed me to withdraw. That was a victory more valuable than pressing until someone bled.