He glanced up at her. ‘I would, believe me. Except that all my instincts are on fire — as if some damned white-hot dagger is hovering at my back. And not just me, but Scorch and Leff, too.’ He rose, began pacing.
‘I haven’t begun supper yet,’ Tisera said, ‘It’ll be awhile — why don’t you go to The Phoenix Inn for a tankard or two? Say hello to Kruppe if you see him.’
‘What? Oh. Good idea.’
She watched him leave, waited for a few dozen heartbeats to ensure that he’d found no reason to change his mind, and then went to one of the small trapdoors hidden in the floor, sprang the release and reached in to draw out her Deck of Dragons. She sat at the table and carefully removed the deerskin cover.
This was something she did rarely these days. She was sensitive enough to know that powerful forces were gathering in Darujhistan, making any field she attempted fraught with risk. Yet Tiserra, for all her advice to Torvald to simply ignore matters, well knew that her husband’s instincts were too sharp to be summarily dismissed.
‘Renegade Seguleh,’ she muttered, then shook her head and collected up the Deck. Her version was Barukan, with a few cards of her own added, including one for The City — in this case, Darujhistan — and another — but no, she would not think of that one. Not unless she had to.
A tremor of fear rushed through her. The wooden cards felt cold in her hands. She decided on a spiral field and was not at all surprised when she set the centre card down and saw that it was The City, a silhouetted, familiar skyline at dusk, with the glow of blue fires rising up from below, each one like a submerged star. She studied it for a time, until those fires seemed to swim before her eyes, until the dusk the card portrayed began to flow into the world around her, one bleeding into the other, back and forth until the moment was fixed, time pinned down as if by a knife stabbed into the table. She was not seeking the future — prophecy was far too dangerous with all the converging powers — but the present. This very instant, each strand’s point of attachment in the vast web that now spanned Darujhistan.
She set down the next card. High House Shadow, The Rope, Patron of Assassins. Well, that was not too surprising, given the latest rumours. Yet she sensed the relationship was more complicated than it at first appeared — yes, the Guild was active, was snarled in something far bloodier than they had anticipated. Too bad for them. Still, The Rope never played one game. There were others, beneath the surface. The obvious was nothing more than a veil.
The third card clattered on to the tabletop, and she found her hand would not rest, flinging out the next card and yet another. Three tightly bound, then. Three cards, forming their own woven nest. Obelisk, Soldier of Death, and Crown. These needed a frame. She set down the sixth card and grunted. Knight of Darkness — a faint rumble of wooden wheels, a chorus of moans drifting like smoke from the sword in the Knight’s hands.
Thus, The Rope on one side, the Knight on the other. She saw that her hands were trembling. Three more cards quickly followed — another nest. King of High House Death, King in Chains, and Dessembrae, Lord of Tragedy. Knight of Darkness as the inside frame. She set down the other end and gasped. The card she wished she had never made.
Closing the field. The spiral was done. City and Tyrant at beginning and end.
Tiserra had not expected anything like this. She was not seeking prophecy — her thoughts had been centred on her husband and whatever web he had found him shy;self trapped in — no, not prophecy, nothing on such a grand scale as this. .
‘Oh, husband,’ she murmured, ‘you are in trouble indeed. .’
Her eyes strayed once more to The Rope.
Outside, a cart clunked past, its battered wheels crackling and stepping on the uneven cobbles. The hoofs of the ox pulling it beat slow as a dirge, and there came to her the rattle of a heavy chain, slapping leather and wood.
