Kal Moonheart Trilogy: Dragon Killer, Roll the Bones & Sirensbane (58 page)

‘It was said that Gaspar Azul robbed the governor’s mansion, and stole away the entire family fortune,’ the Magician said. ‘But even under torture he never confessed. And the treasure has never been found.’

‘Do you think Amaro Azul knows where it is?’

The Magician gave a cruel sneer. ‘No. I believe Gaspar was telling no lie: he didn’t steal anything. The governor’s torturer never failed to get the truth out his prisoners.’

The way he said it, with such pride and venom, left Kal in no doubt as to who the governor’s torturer had been.

The game progressed in silence once more. And once again, Kal lost.

* * *

The night got later, and the Cheating Parrot got hotter. Kal was sweating freely, and she was painfully aware of the fact that her armpits were soaking her shirt. Still, she had to stay just a while longer and see her plan through. ‘I’ve lost thirteen hundred loons tonight,’ she told the Magician. ‘But I reckon you’ve used up all your luck, and I need to win my money back. So I challenge you to one more game … this time for a thousand.’

An excited rumble passed through the gaming house. All of the other patrons had abandoned their own games to watch this crazy woman lose and lose to the Magician. Now she was practically begging him to ruin her. The Magician himself remained calm and collected, despite his heavy robes and hood. His mouth twitched at the corners, the closest he ever got to a smile. ‘Well then,’ he said ‘Let us play.’

The option to raise the stakes was available at the start of a player’s turn, and the Magician offered to double before any dice had even been thrown. If it was a scare tactic, it backfired. ‘I was going to do the same thing,’ Kal said, accepting the offer. ‘I need to make sure I cover my losses and make some kind of profit, too.’

The Magician just shrugged. ‘Remember,’ he said, as he made his opening move. ‘If you cannot pay your debts, then you start working for me. If you lose too much, then you
belong
to me.’

Kal just sloshed the ice around in her glass and took a swig of her rum, trying not to give the impression of someone who was literally gambling for their life. ‘Double it again,’ she said, turning the doubling cube to show the number four. She rattled her dice around in her shaker, and rolled
midnight
: a double six. It was an auspicious start, and some people watching actually cheered. The Magician silenced them with a glare.

Kal’s advantage was short-lived, though, as the inherent randomness of the game levelled the playing field. If anything, the Magician was now gaining the advantage as he built a wall of counters mid-way around the board, creating a tricky obstacle for Kal, and a useful staging ground for his own advance. Inevitably, the Magician offered to double the stakes again, to eight thousand doubloons.

Kal accepted. So long as the game remained reasonably closely-fought, she wasn’t
too
worried. The Magician’s underhand tactics only afforded him a small advantage. As she knocked back the last of her rum, she saw him cheat again: as his long-sleeved arm reached across the board to move his pieces, his other hand also moved. Concealed beneath the dark red cloth of his robe, he surreptitiously moved one of his other pieces—an almost unnoticeable shove of a single counter from one point to the next. But enough, not only to move the Magician’s pieces one step closer to home, but also to strengthen his overall strategic position, to give him more options regardless of the next throw of the dice, and to put extra pressure on Kal’s attempts to get home.
Underhand indeed.
If Kal hadn’t been making an effort to memorise the position of all the pieces, she might never have noticed what was afoot.

This time, however, it wasn’t going to work. Another lucky double six meant that Kal was able to move her trailing counters clear of the Magician’s defences. Both armies of wooden discs had now passed each other, which meant there were no more chances for blocking or capturing. The game was purely in the hands of the dice now, as both players raced their counters home. Kal offered to double the stakes to sixteen thousand doubloons, and for the first time the Magician had to pause to consider.

‘You have a small advantage,’ he said, ‘but I have nothing to lose. Sixteen thousand doubloons is a small price, compared to the chance of having the great Kalina Moonheart under my will forever. I accept the double!’

He was right, too: accepting or declining a double was more a test of nerve than of strategy. Statistically, the Magician was correct to gamble for the larger prize, rather than just giving up without a fight. And he was right about Kal’s financial situation, too: she couldn’t rely on the letter from Zeb in her pocket to cover a debt of what amounted to around fifty thousand Amaranthium gold crowns. And also, the Magician now had the option to double
again
before the game was through.

Which, of course, he did. Whenever a player had all their counters in their home corner of the board, it was simply a matter of rolling the dice and
bearing off
the pieces one-by-one. The Magician had whisked away five of his fifteen counters already before Kal managed to get all of hers home. The Magician turned the doubling cube to read thirty-two.

Kal had come too far to back down. She couldn’t afford to pay up either way, so if she was going to lose, why not go out in style?

The spectators had gone silent now. Kal’s downfall was imminent; her life was forfeit and they were paying their respects by keeping quiet. The Magician had only two pieces left on the board—he would win next turn no matter what he rolled. It was now Kal’s turn, but she still had
four
pieces left, all of them gathered six points away from freedom.

Kal rattled the dice in her shaker for a long time, watching the predatory look in the Magician’s eyes.

‘Double,’ she said, simply.

The watching crowd gasped and groaned. They must have thought that this was nothing less than sheer masochism. The Magician surely must have suspected a trick at that point, but what else could he do? ‘Take,’ he said, accepting the offer. Kal could see a sudden flicker of doubt in his dark eyes as she set the doubling cube to show sixty-four.

Sixty-four hundred doubloons rested on Kal’s final throw. Only a double six would allow her to move all four counters off the board. She looked the Magician in the eye and released the dice from her shaker, letting them tumble onto the wooden board.

The dice were two of the set of four that she had purchased earlier at the vudu emporium. The other two were perfectly normal wooden dice, painted blue with gold spots, and even stamped with numbers that marked them out as a matching pair belonging to the gaming house. It was
that
pair that Kal had played with all night, after pretending to scoop them out of the pot when she had first sat down to play. The pair she rolled
now
though (and had also made use of on two other occasions during this game) were also blue with gold spots, with exactly the same number stamped on them, and exactly the same minor marks and scratches that the first pair had.

There was just one small difference …

The crowd erupted in shock and awe, and the Magician fell back in his seat as though he had been shot.

Kal didn’t look down; her eyes never left the Magician’s.

‘Midnight strikes,’ she said.

II.vii

The Girl Who Got Burned

The Magician raised his hand and gave a signal. A silent servant came over to the table and counted out Kal’s winnings: sixty-four hundred doubloons in various currencies: bags of coins, bars of gold and straps of bills.

Kal stuffed the notes down her shirt, hitched the bags to her belt and clutched the gold bars to her chest.

‘Do not worry,’ the Magician said, sensing her new unease. ‘You are under
my
protection now. So long as you remain in Port Black, anyone who even
thinks
of robbing you—and I
will
know if they do—answers to me.’

Kal nodded. ‘Thank you,’ she said.

‘No, thank
you
,’ the Magician said. ‘It has been an agreeable and entertaining evening. If you want more where that came from’—he nodded at the gold in Kal’s hands—‘then please bear my offer in mind. I need managers for new gaming establishments that I plan to open up. Someone with such an expert eye for
foul play
would be most desirable.’

Kal said nothing. She just nodded and backed away slowly. A dumb retort here could be fatal. What she really wanted to say was,
You can take your job offer, stick it in your Sirensbane pipe … and smoke it!

But instead, she turned and left. The street outside, despite being busy with nightlife, felt cool and safe compared to the Magician’s stifling lair. Kal sucked in the warm Island air greedily. The wind carried the smell of fried pork, and Kal felt the saliva rise in her mouth. She sought out the vendor and paid him with a gold coin. He barely had enough change. Kal walked up Main Street chewing on spiced, salted pork and rinds.

She reflected on her success. Tomorrow morning, this whole chilling escapade would be behind her. Kal would take Lula and leave this strange world of magic, zombies and vengeful pirates. She would get word to Ben about the governor’s downfall, and let him deal with the Magician. She, meanwhile, would take care of Lula: Kal was certain that she knew how to free her of the curse, and of the tangle of lies she was caught up in.

Lula! Kal’s heart surged at the thought of the Island girl’s flashing eyes and luscious skin. If there was one thing left to do before she could consider this whole affair over, then it was to win Lula over for good.

And as with all of Kal’s battles, the key to winning this one would be in the preparation …

* * *

Half an hour later, Kal stepped out of
Elizabeth Bonny’s Haberdashery
fitted out from toe to top in brand new threads. She wore knee-high sealskin boots, black high-waisted velvet trousers, and a red and white striped silk shirt with an outrageous collar. Her belt was four inches wide, the buckle a slab of silver, and over her shirt she wore a black leather waistcoat with gold buttons. Kal’s money was now in a new leather satchel that hung at her hip, its strap over her shoulder. Her tricorn hat was decorated with feathers from some fearsome creature that Kal had never met, and didn’t ever want to meet: the giant carnivorous bird known as a
roc
.

Kal strode up Main Street with such an air of confidence that the throng of people parted before her. At the edge of the downtown district, she paused, though. There was still one more thing to do in town …

She about-turned and ducked down a side-alley, heading towards a sign over a shop that showed a mermaid coiled around an anchor. Inside, a brawny pirate was laid out on a couch, shirt off, while another man bent over him, wielding a long needle in one hand, and holding a pot of dark blue liquid in the other. Next to the couch were two buckets: one was filled with smoking ash, the other smelled of urine.

‘I’m nearly done with this fellow,’ the man with the needle said. ‘Take a seat. Look through the books if you want some ideas.’

‘I know what I want,’ Kal said. ‘I’ll draw it for you while I wait.’

* * *

As Kal crunched up the driveway to the mansion, she was struck by the stillness of the night. The skin at the back of her neck prickled, an accompaniment to the sore itchiness of her new tattoo.
Everyone is just lying around in a drunken stupor
, she told herself; but even so, she couldn’t shake the feeling that something bad was storing up its evil power and preparing to strike. The sooner she got off this island, the better.

The entrance lobby of the Blue Mahoe was almost empty. The candles on the chandelier had burned themselves out, and Captain Dogwood sat alone at a table lit only by a single candle. In the shadows cast by the moonlight, Kal could make out the two teenage members of the
Swordfish’s
crew. She only knew them by the names of the gods they had played in the pantomime at the equator: Whalo and Vuda. They were kissing passionately in an alcove under the stairs.
Surely a good omen
, Kal thought, smiling.

Dogwood caught the smile, and his eyes took in Kal’s new get up. ‘Successful night, Moonheart?’ he snapped. And then, as if she were a member of his guard: ‘Come on; report.’

By way of an answer, Kal tossed the straps of money onto the table. Dogwood peeled off a bill and studied it by the light of the candle. Under the heat of the flame, the secret markings—a spiral of stars—became visible.

‘The Magician paid you with these?’ he asked.

Kal nodded.

‘Might not be his, though,’ Dogwood said. ‘The gaming house might be laundering the cash.’

‘The Magician
owns
the gaming house,’ Kal said. ‘So, either way …’

Dogwood nodded. Then he laughed: a harsh bark. ‘So it looks like I’ll be making an arrest tomorrow morning!’

‘Don’t,’ Kal said, putting a hand on Dogwood’s shoulder. ‘He’s dangerous. Leave town tonight with me and Lula.’ Kal looked around. ‘Where is she, anyway?’

Dogwood shrugged off Kal’s hand. ‘Don’t tell me how to do my job, Moonheart,’ he said. ‘I’ve got to make up for my, er,
lapse in judgement
. I’m never touching a pair of dice again. Your friend’s upstairs, anyway. Last I saw her, she was downing shots with that pirate, Azul. They were making a game of it.’

Kal cursed and went to the stairs. The silent darkness above taunted her imagination with a thousand terrible things. She ascended slowly, stepping over a drunken sailor, whether from the
Swordfish
or the
Drago Azul
, she could not tell. In the east wing, all the doors were shut except one, and from inside the room Kal could see a faint glow, and hear a snuffling, scratching sound.

She crept closer as silently as she could. It was a good job her new boots were soft leather and didn’t squeak. She inched her head around the doorframe and saw …