Oh no you fucking don’t. This is one damned psych test I can’t take.
A leering patron whispered something in the woman’s ear.
She laughed, but her elbow in his chest sent him crashing to the floor, his ale – splosh – in his face. Around him, guffaws and slow handclaps celebrated his fall.
The blow wasn’t malicious – but was hard enough to make the point.
Sera shifted, a gentle ripple of warning. Ecko stayed exactly where he was, barely daring to breathe in case she looked up and that cleverly orchestrated gold chain snapped shut its last shackle...
C’mon Eliza, don’t do this one...
The woman rattled the dice one last time, then threw them across the table. They clattered to a stop. A circle of groans echoed round her. A couple of gamblers scraped back stools and headed for the bar.
“Wish I knew how she did that.” The older man at the bar shook his head and his companion chuckled.
“If you did, mate, we’d all be living like lords in a Padeshian brothel.”
They turned back to their ale jugs, chuckling.
Unmoving, his cowl down over his face, Ecko watched motionless, as though he could see the very fractal ripples spreading from this single, poised moment...
So. I go one way, the pattern does one thing, I go the other, it does something else? Which way’s right, for chrissakes? Which way gets this damn thing done?
Beside Triqueta, her admirer was picking himself up. He was clearly absolutely rat-assed: stumbling, muttering, his movements erratic. As the woman dropped the dice – one, two – back into the pot, he plonked himself by her side and reached for the jug.
His movements were slow, blurred by booze, but deliberate.
Watching the tableau unfold, Ecko was utterly silent, caught on a realisation – on the apex of a sudden, adrenaline rush of understanding.
It wasn’t just this decision – it was all of them. His every choice, tiny as it may seem, would affect everything else that he did, everything else that happened around him and to him and so on...
Jesus. Trying to wrap his head round the sheer size of this was gonna drive him batshit.
“’Nother round then!” Triqueta rattled a cheerful, rhythmic tattoo with the dice pot, caught the sightline of one of the vets at the bar and winked.
The bets started again – and a round of jeers as several of the soldier types shook their heads and pulled out.
Beside her, the leerer had descended into glowering. He refused to bet, just sat there, hands round his mug. She gave the pot a final shake and threw the dice again.
The groans redoubled. A pile of treasure was pushed over the tabletop.
The drunk muttered, “I saw that.” He came to his feet, swaying slightly, then sat back down with an unsteady thump. He was shit-faced, anger rose from him like whisky fumes.
Sera was already moving, swift and quiet. Ecko’s targeters hit there, there and there. If he’d wanted to, he could’ve kicked the fucker into the middle of next week, rescued the damsel and made his decision, made the pattern ripple and change round him...
But he had a better idea.
No, Eliza, I hadda give up girls. My mom told me.
Grinning, he slunk from the bar top like a sliding shadow, a soundless, scentless patch of darkness that flowed across the floor.
“I said I saw that!” The drunk was up and reeling. “You damned cheating bitch.” Turning to glare at her, he made a clumsy grab for the pot. “Damned Banned – you’re all fil–”
Sera didn’t get close. A sharp back blow of the woman’s fist broke the drunk’s nose. He spluttered and fell back, a hot rush of blood exploding down his already-soaked shirt.
“I warned you once, sunshine.” She dropped the pot, stepped back from the impact, hands wide, but her sharp, yellow eyes looking for the next threat. “You saw that, right?”
“Oi!” Another of the grunts was on his feet, stool going over “You’re out of line, bitch!”
“Don’t sweat it, mate,” a third one answered him. “He had that coming.”
“Chearlshit. If she’s not damned cheating...!”
“I’m not cheating, you sonofamare.” Triq wiped her bloody knuckles on her breeches and grinned. “I’m just lucky.”
They were all moving now, stools crashing backwards, raised voices, accusation and drunken indignation. The two older guys at the bar rolled their eyes and set down their mugs.
Ecko was close, so close, he was almost under the table.
Brawl kicking off in t-minus...
“Enough!” The doorman’s bark reverberated from the walls. He had the bloody-nosed drunk by collar and belt – a moment later the guy was sailing out of the door and into the dust.
Triqueta backed up, hands still wide.
“Hey, you know he had that coming.”
Sera nodded brief assent, rounded on the nearest and loudest. He closed a fist in the front of the shirt thing the bloke had on, and propelled him smack back into the wall, snarling. Karine reached for a bottle.
For a moment, Ecko thought she was going to smack the nearest patron over the head with it and he grinned. Any second now...
But she was smarter than that. With a deep breath that swelled her cleavage, she bawled, “Okay you lot! This round’s on the house!”
Loose cheers scattered the aggression, the brawl dissolved before it began. As Ecko returned to his point on the bar, Karine winked at him. “Cost us less than the furniture.”
In spite of himself, he chuckled, his adrenals uncoiling.
Okay, Eliza. Let’s see what you do with this...
He had the goldie girl’s dice in his lithe, mottled hand.
* * *
In the chaos, Triqueta of the Banned had slipped deftly – and tactfully – out of the tavern’s front door.
Swift and silent, like the final flicker of daylight, she’d untethered her little palomino mare and left the dusty noise of the ribbon-town behind.
Free.
The sun had gone, sunk to its death upon the distant Kartiah, and rich blue darkness drove the last of the light to frame the mountaintops. Triq tightened her knees on the mare’s warm, bare back and she rode away from the ribbon-town, from the Bard’s ale and music, from the squabbling drunks of the Range Patrol and her own Banned family.
Much as she loved them, there were just times...
In the midst of the almost-brawl, she’d lost her fireblasted dice. She’d split her knuckles on that sonofamare’s face and the young patrolman she’d had her eye on had wandered away... Triq knew when her luck had run out. It wasn’t her night and she was better off wrapping her thighs around the flesh they needed the most.
As a kid, Triqueta had been fostered in the unrolling, ramshackle poverty of a trade-road ribbon-town. She’d been quick with feet and fingers before she could count. At six, she’d returned to her mother in the Banned – but held to the philosophy of her errant desert sire: celebrate your life, live for the now, take what you will, but hurt none.
Above her, two moons slowly rose to sail the ripples of cloud. Oblivious to the world below and ever in opposition, they lit the wild grass to a brilliant shimmer of light.
Like the stones in her cheeks, the desert was still in her blood. She was wild souled and happiest under the sky.
She’d not seen her sire since she was a kid – not even when her mother was killed by scuffling road-pirates. As Triq’s little mare cantered way out across the edge of the sleeping farmlands, she let drop only an idle thought – that family was what you made it.