“My husband used to play Nine Kings. He maintained that he was a mediocre player, though he rarely walked away from a table with much less than he brought to it. He had a reputation as an amiable player who served fine liquor and excellent tobacco, though, so he played with all sorts of men from all over the Seven Satrapies. We were married three years—and I was only beginning to really fall in love with him—before he got me to come to one of his parties. It wasn’t the night he would have chosen for me to see.
“A young lord came. Varigari family. From a line of fishermen before they were raised in the Blood Wars. He came in, new and cocksure, and over the course of the night he went through a small fortune. The lords my husband played with that night were wealthy, and decent men, not wolves. They could see what was happening. They told the young Varigari to quit. He refused. He won often enough that he kept hope, and I could see the resignation on their faces: he loses a small fortune, and perhaps it teaches him a lesson, so be it. Dawn came, and he had nothing, and there was this moment where he bet a small castle in order to stay in. I saw this look on his face. It’s etched into my memory. Do you know what he was feeling?”
Ironfist could feel it right now, the memory was so hot and sharp. “Terror, but elation, too. There’s something potent in knowing that you have pushed your life to one of its pivots. It is insanity.”
“I glanced at my husband, unable to believe what I was seeing. Everyone else was looking at the young Varigari. My husband was looking at everyone else. And I realized a few things all at once.” She coughed into her handkerchief, then glanced at it. “Keep worrying I’m going to cough blood one of these times. Not yet, thank Orholam.”
She smiled to defuse his worries, and continued, “First, about the young man: the small fortune he’d lost was not a small fortune to him, and the small castle he’d bet was probably the last thing his family owned. To him this wasn’t a lesson; this was ruin. Second, my husband was no mediocre player. He had the winning hand, and he had the wealth to risk playing it. He was an expert, but an expert who took pains to rarely win, because he’d found something that was more valuable to him than winning small fortunes and becoming known as a great player of Nine Kings. What he was really doing every time he played was taking the measure of those he played with. Finding not just their tells, but how they reacted to the whims of fate and fortune. Was this satrap greedy? Did this Color get so focused on one opponent that she ignored a true threat? Was this one smarter than anyone knew?”
Scary to think of the White paired up with a man as smart as she was.
She said no more.
“And?” Ironfist asked.
“And?” she asked.
“There was a lesson in there somewhere,” Ironfist said.
“Was there?” she said, but her eyes danced. “I’m so old.”
“I know you too well to think your mind is just wandering.”
She smiled. “When the big bets are on the table, Commander, it’s good to know which character in that little drama you are.”
Problem with being surrounded by brilliant people: they expect your mind to be as nimble as theirs. Ironfist had no idea what she was talking about. He’d get there eventually, he always did, but he’d have to mull it over for a while. “If I may, my lady?”
“Please.”
“Did Lord Rathcore ever play against Luxlord Andross Guile?”
She chuckled. “I guess it depends what you mean. Nine Kings? Never. He knew better. You don’t play against those to whom you can only lose. I’ve seen Andross play. He uses his stacks of gold like a bludgeon. There is no gracefully losing a little bit of gold to Andross. It’s win big or lose bigger against him. For my husband to play Andross was to lose a fortune or to lose the whole purpose of his games by exposing how skilled he was.”
“And if I wasn’t asking about Nine Kings?” Ironfist asked. He had been, but she obviously meant to tell him more.
She smiled, and he was glad that he served her. To be the commander of the Blackguard was to stand ready to give your life for those you protected, regardless of your feelings. But for this woman, even frail and with few days left, Ironfist would gladly trade his life. She said, “All I’ll say is this: Andross Guile isn’t the White, and it galls him deeply.”
But the White was chosen by lot. Orholam himself moved his will through that.
But if Andross Guile had thought being the White was a victory within his grasp, maybe that was because it actually had been. Surely to corrupt the election of a White was the work of a heretic—worse, an atheist. Ironfist couldn’t comprehend it.