Red Seas Under Red Skies Read Free

the dealer.
    Izmila Corvaleur was nearly of a size with Jean, wide and florid, prodigiously rounded in every place a woman could be round. She was undeniably attractive, but the intelligence that shone out of her eyes was sharp and contemptuous. In her Locke recognized a contained pugnacity akin to that of a street brawler—a honed appetite for hard contests. Corvaleur nibbled constantly from a silver-gilded box of cherries coated in powdered chocolate, sucking her fingers loudly after each one. Her own strat péti , of course.
    She was purpose-built for Carousel Hazard, thought Locke. A mind for the cards and a frame capable of withstanding the game’s unique punishment for losing a hand.
    “Default,” said the attendant. Within his podium, he tripped the mechanism that set the carousel spinning. This device, in the center of the table, was a set of circular brass frames that held row upon row of tiny glass vials, each one capped in silver. It whirled under the soft lantern light of the gaming parlor, until it became continuous streaks of silver within brass, and then—a clinking sound of mechanisms beneath the table, the rattle of many tiny vessels of thick glass colliding with one another, and the carousel spat out two of its vials. They rolled toward Locke and Jean and clattered against the slightly upraised outer rim of the table.
    Carousel Hazard was a game for two teams of two; an expensive game, for the clockwork carousel mechanism came very dear. At the end of each hand, the losing team was randomly dispensed two vials from the carousel’s great store of little bottles; these held liquor, mixed with sweet oils and fruit juice to disguise the potency of any given drink. The cards were only one aspect of the game. Players also had to maintain concentration under the increasing effects of the devilish little vials. The only way a game could end was for a player to become too drunk to keep playing.
    Theoretically, the game could not be cheated. The Sinspire maintained the mechanism and prepared the vials; the little silver caps were fastened tight over wax seals. Players were not permitted to touch the carousel, or another player’s vials, on pain of immediate default. Even the chocolates and cigars being consumed by the players had to be provided by the house. Locke and Jean could even have refused to allow Madam Corvaleur the luxury of her sweets, but that would have been a bad idea for several reasons.
    “Well,” said Jean as he cracked the seal on his tiny libation, “here’s to charming losers, I suppose.”
    “If only we knew where to find some,” said Locke, and in unison they tossed back their drinks. Locke’s left a warm, plum-flavored trail down his throat—it was one of the potent ones. He sighed and set the empty vial down before him. Four vials to one, and the way his concentration seemed to be unraveling at the edges meant that he was beginning to feel it.
    As the attendant sorted and shuffled the cards for the next hand, Madam Durenna took another long, satisfied draw on her cigar and flicked the ashes into a solid-gold pot set on a pedestal behind her right hand. She exhaled two lazy streams of smoke through her nose and stared at the carousel from behind a gray veil. Durenna was a natural ambush predator, Locke thought, always most comfortable behind some camouflage. His information said that she was only recently arrived in the life of a city-bound merchant speculator. Her previous profession had been the command of bounty-privateers, hunting and sinking the slaver ships of Jerem on the high seas. She hadn’t acquired those scars drinking tea in anyone’s parlor.
    It would be very, very unfortunate if a woman like her were to realize that Locke and Jean were counting on what Locke liked to call “discreetly unorthodox methods” to win the game—hell, it would be preferable to simply lose the old-fashioned way, or to be caught cheating by the Sinspire attendants. They, at least, would