"How could Droid not smile on such an illustrious young man?" Rookwood returned, grinning at him grandly.
A correct answer from Eusebus to the rough challenge through an iron lattice at the top of the crimson portal had the six admitted by sleek-looking door wards in deep green soutaines. Led down a long obverse as red as the front door, Rossamund felt shrewd observation from the row of grilled loophole slits on either hand.Through double doors of dark green they were brought into a suddenly swelling din. Here was a wide room of gilt furnishings, confidentially lit by large paper lanterns of white and vermilion, both walls and floor blood-red much as the gun deck of a ram, as if wild and splattering violence was expected. Folk of all stations gathered about oval tables to play each other at cards, lots and calling games. Coins sat in unequal count by each player-golden sous, oscadril billions, grassus from the Gottlands, silvery sequins, larger carlins, Hergott doubles, strange foreign counters of unusual shapes-and with them wads of folding money. Thick and uncomfortably tepid, the atmosphere was heavy with suppressed anger and naked greed.
Chanceries-gambling houses-were illegal in Boschenberg; surely it was the same in Brandenbrass?
Gaggles of admiring spectators collected wherever aristocratic clients played, oohing and ahhing at the twists and tricks, calling encouragements and commiserations as they sought to ingratiate themselves with their chosen sponsor. In his brief review, Rossamund spotted a wit dressed in an unremarkable gray soutaine, his entire face spoored with a thick blue arrow; a sagaar wrapped in tight hide, wearing the mask of a white horse and gently rocking from foot to foot in the restless motion of the perpetual dance; and several pistoleers with their telltale curling mustachios. While he watched, there came a confused roar of dismay and delight. Cards were thrown down in disgust while one happy fellow in a high periwig gathered his winnings.
Ear bent to Rookwood's brief instruction, a footman in deep verdigris took the six on through the clamor and up broad red stairs to a smaller, quieter room arranged with a trio of gaming tables. One green wall was almost entirely formed of tall grated windows that peered north out on the rain-washed spectacle of Middle Ground at night. Harbor lights glowed dully, clustered in terrestrial constellations of blue and white and the occasional red. In one corner a highwigged quartet of string-fiddlers sat playing gentle music for the quieter collection of clientele gathered about each table.
"Ahh," Frangipanni declared with a thin, rare smile of pleasure at the sweet melody.
"Hmm, yes, always like a snip of Stumphelhose," Rookwood added, naming the supposed composer and smug in his cultural enlightenment.
"It is Greenleaf Whit, actually…," Frangipanni corrected with a derisive sniff and a slight unhealthy wheeze while the other three laughed.
"Ah…" The white-haired gent's face twisted to collect itself against embarrassment.
"Don't worry, my man," Eusebus smirked, patting Rookwood on the shoulder. "It is easy enough to confuse the two; one is a disciple of the other, after all."
"Certainly," the other returned tightly, then quickly went to sit at the available table standing by a massive white hearth taller than a man. "I'm always ardently fond of the fire here… Perfectly distinct and excellently warm!"
"You are not playing?" Avarice inquired of Rossamund, noticing him hanging back by the door as she took her seat.
"No, miss, I will just watch," he answered, recalling with a twinge of melancholy the friendly games of pirouette and lesquin he joined with Threnody and the lighters of Wormstool, where winners and losers traded only chores. "I might sit a hand for favors but not for money."
"Whoever heard of such a thing!" Avarice returned.
"Perhaps he is shrewd enough to know that Droid is not in a smiling way for him," Eusebus interjected with a sardonic smirk and an understanding wink to Rossamund.
The observation held some merit, for Rossamund had never won a single hand with the Wormstool lighters. "I am not very good at cards," he concurred.
"Sit with us anyway, Master Rossamund," Rookwood murmured in his ear. "We shall teach you proper carding."
"We surely will, my man," Eusebus declared winsomely to the young factotum. "Droid and I are poor friends when I sit the table, so we can lose together, you and I."
At such an invitation, Rossamund consented, and while food was ordered-pullet and ramsin broth, slices of warmed vinegar pie and bottles of zin-he watched the fall of cards.
The game they preferred was called flout, where-from what Rossamund could fathom by the incomplete instruction he received-low cards were high and a player had to bluff his or her way to success. When he finally joined, he kept his face as blank as possible, betting small and losing small and wishing he had a falseman's eyes. Rookwood and Trudgette seemed best at the bluff, winning almost as much as each other, and despite himself, Rossamund was drawn into the play, sipping his never-empty glass of vin with excitedly careless frequency. By the fourth round, the pot in the middle growing and growing until it was up to nigh on thirty sous, only Rookwood and Trudgette had stayed in too, their own hands spread before them, the want-to-be fulgar already triumphant with red hag and both crocidoles.
Gaze vibrating and unfocused, Rossamund looked at his hand: red selt, black selt and a black hag-it could not get any lower. Nervously, he laid down his ask-his bet-small as always. Then, rather unceremoniously, he slapped his cards down on the black velvet tabletop to a collective gasp.
Astounded faces blinked in turn at him and at his play.
He had won!
"Ah-hah!" Rookwood exclaimed, clapping him heartily on the back. "Well done, that fellow! Droid smiles on you after all!"
Astonished, Rossamund beheld the pile of silver and golden and crisp papery loot.
Smiling through their teeth, Rookwood's friends tried to appear as enthusiastic as their white-haired friend over Rossamund's astounding win.
Perceiving this, the young factotum summoned a footman and asked for more drinks and a dish of the best taffies and glairs for them all.
"Perhaps our new friend might better like the entertainments below…," Avarice offered, only somewhat mollified at his largesse, her voice heavy with suggestion.
"Um… yes, certainly." Rookwood rose. "Collect your earnings, Master Bookchild; allow me to show you the other delights here."
"I shall come with you," Eusebus declared. "I always do better at dogging than the table, anyway…"
Gathering his winnings by shaking handfuls into the ample pockets of his gorgeous new coat, Rossamund followed the two young men out. Going by stairs to the floor below, his two hosts led him along a broad passage and down a double flight right into the foundations of the Broken Doll.
"If my sire had sent me to the abacus to learn counting as I had wished for, rather than the athenaeum," Eusebus whispered drolly to Rossamund on the way, "I would do better at the table, I am sure."
"Certainly, Master Euse," came Rookwood's quiet rejoinder. "Yet if you were a mathematician they would never let you within sight of a table."
"So the Lots have spoken, then!" his lanky friend retorted. "Like my nanny-pander used to sing me:
Multiplication is vexation, Division is as bad The Rule of Three doth puzzle me And practice drives me mad!
Alas, I am a student of nature now. Better dogging for me, brother!"
The pair of young swells laughed as they halted two floors lower before a pair of heavyset footmen standing guard over an ironbound door. One footman was holding the portal open for a couple emerging from the dark beyond, the woman in her tentlike finery clearly upset, hiding her blotched cheeks behind a frilled kerchief. "Why did you bring me here?" she was demanding, voice tremulous. "Why did you bring me here? I'll never be able to forget that poor-" A sob rendered the next few words unintelligible. "I'll be telling Mother-make no mistake, sir!"