Chapter 4

  Reacquaintance

  Basil, Duelist-Scholar

  Living Soul

  Uncommon

  Perfect card memory

  I sprinted so quickly anyone could have been forgiven for thinking I’d challenged Randel to a race, never mind the fact that he was strolling on at a snail’s pace, oblivious to me as he sank yet another day into his grand dreams of being an artist. I put him out of my mind entirely. I wished to reach Esmi with all possible haste, and I didn’t have a clue in which drawing room or courtyard my other brother Gale had chosen to receive her. After a few false turns I heard voices coming from the Blue Flower Room in the southern wing. I cringed as I realized I was arriving covered in a heavy sheen of sweat and looked particularly unlovely in my faded, torn sparring whites. My hair was surely a fright. Still, Gale had stories he’d be dying to tell that would be far more embarrassing than my current appearance, so I didn’t hesitate to burst through the cherrywood doors.

  The room within was round, with sections of the walls bumped out to represent the petals of a flower. A pastel blue oval rug covered the floor, a few gold leafed chairs and a swoosh-backed settee positioned upon it. We’d narrowly avoided having to sell the furniture last year. The rear of the chamber had glass doors, which led out to the largest garden on our grounds, but my attention snapped straight to Gale. He was with Esmi on the settee, leaning in with a smile on his lips, saying something too low for me to hear.

  “What a lovely surprise!” I said perhaps a little too loudly.

  Gale turned to face me and so did Esmi. The sweet sprite of a girl I’d played with all those years ago was still somewhere in that smiling heart-shaped face, but she was mostly hidden by a truly stunning young woman with a lush mane of brown curls, sparkling eyes, and full lips. My already-racing heart stuttered. All the worries I’d been chewing on at night since I’d been informed of the betrothal returned with a vengeance. She was much too good for me: beautiful, from a better house, and her inner soul already a Rare.

  I would have stood there like a fool mentally tallying my many inadequacies and never saying a word, but I was snapped out of my self-berating reverie by the sight of a number of wide-nosed faces poking out from various locations around the room. Some were beside vases or candle stands, others leaning out from where the wall curved, and one popped its head up over the back of the settee, right beside Esmi. They were all kobolds, two- to three-foot-tall Fire creatures, unmistakable with their pointed ears, blunt noses, and sharp teeth. They were all cards, their tan or ruddy brown scaled skin just as vibrant as any Soul I possessed.

  Kobold Sniffer

  Fire Soul

  Unknown Rarity

  Unknown Cost

  Unknown Attack & Health

  Unknown Abilities

  Kobold Fighter

  Fire Soul

  Unknown Rarity

  Unknown Cost

  Unknown Attack & Health

  Unknown Abilities

  Kobold Treasure Hunter

  Fire Soul

  Unknown Rarity

  Unknown Cost

  Unknown Attack & Health

  Unknown Abilities

  I had never before seen any kobold cards, so my Soul ability was no help, and the mystery of having their details hidden itched at me. After apparently deciding I was of little consequence, the kobolds became much more relaxed, some drinking tea in small, clawed hands, others sniffing about the room. The one behind Esmi said something to her in its grunting, squeaky language, and her smile broadened even further as she muttered back to it in the same tongue. What did they say? The creatures behaved so tamely that it didn’t seem possible that these were the dangerous volcano dwellers I had always heard about. I would have loved to ask Esmi to view them in their card state, but those hardly seemed like the right words to open my first conversation with my fiancée. We needed to get reacquainted. She rose to her feet to greet me. Gale lounged insolently.

  “Basil,” she said warmly. “I was beginning to wonder if you’d run off.” There was a hint of mischief in her tone. Her voice was low and musical. One of the fabled sirens couldn’t have tugged at me harder.

  I had a brief memory of the two of us running into the Palace gardens to hide when Prince Gerard wanted to play at swords. It had been my favorite response to the Crown Prince in childhood days, and not much had changed since. “Unless you’re hiding a wooden broadsword in your skirts, I think I’ll remain.”

  Her delighted laugh told me she remembered too, and I flushed with warmth at the sound.

  “Truth be told,” I stammered, “Randel only told me of your arrival a moment ago. My deepest apologies for appearing like this.” I waved at my dueling practice uniform disparagingly. I wanted to run a hand through my hair but feared both that I’d make matters worse up there and that she’d see my hands shaking. You could have stopped in front of a mirror for a bare second, you twit.

  “Randel, you spoilsport,” Gale said. “Why’d you go get him?”

  Randel came in after me, Earth source forgotten in one hand, and made a beeline for the kobold sipping tea. “I wanted to spend some time reflecting on the marble slab in my workshop.”

  Our eldest brother snorted. “Your workshop is nowhere near the training hall. And you’ve been staring at that rock for months and haven’t so much as grazed it with a chisel.”

  “It’s my masterpiece,” Randel said absently, peering closely at the Fire Soul. “It’ll speak to me one of these days. I don’t want to make the marble into something it’s not.”

  “Are your grounds so very large that it takes half an hour to get from one spot to the next?” Esmi asked, sounding amused.

  “I get distracted,” Randel said, moving to the kobold’s other side to inspect it closer. The Soul eyed him warily but allowed it.

  “You don’t say,” Esmi said. “You know, Master Randel, it’s generally good form to ask someone before you pester their Souls.”

  “I’m not pestering,” Randel said, his nose three inches from the kobold’s oversized eye. “They’re just so wonderfully grotesque.”

  Esmi’s smile vanished, and an intimidating woman of strength and anger suddenly looked out from her lovely face. She swooped over to put an arm around the creature, pulling it away. “Good sir, my kobolds, just like all kobolds, are adorable. You can take back that slanderous comment or we can have words.”

  “Careful,” Gale warned from his spot on the couch. “I’ve got Charbonder friends in the army, and they say she’s been top of the dueling ranks there for more than a year now. I’d hate to be an only twin.”

  “I’ll leave the card nonsense to you,” Randel said, looking hungrily at the other kobolds. “I’ve got work to do.”

  My lips compressed. Randel’s work had seen me dragging him out of hash dens twice already this month before Father’s other Watchmen raided the place. I hated abusing my position in the Watch thus, low though that position might be, but the cost to my conscience was less than the cost of a scandal if one of the Hintal boys ended up in the Palace cells for hash fiendery. Randel’s search for inspiration in all places was nearly as troubling as his total lack of concern for the family. He loved us in his own way, I was sure, but for him all else paled beside the drive to find and create Great Art. Mother still didn’t know he’d sold the last of his cards to buy exotic fungal paints from a group of traveling Deepkin a few months ago, and I certainly wasn’t going to be the one to tell her.

  “An apology seems like the proper thing, don’t you think?” I said, poking my absent-minded brother in the back.

  “Mm?” Randel blinked over at Esmi, who looked as stern as a judge. Had I not seen her brilliant smile from before, I might have been scared of her. No, I amended internally. I am scared of her. “I’m sorry?” He sounded as if he weren’t quite sure what he was apologizing for.

  I rolled my eyes at the half-hearted effort, but Esmi was grace itself, dipping her head in acknowledgment and favoring him with another smile. “It’s forgotten. I’d rather not quarrel with future family.”

  “As to that,” Gale said, rising smoothly, “the girl is strangely resistant to my charms, so I leave the family-making to you, little brother. I shall withdraw to contemplate my own shortcomings. Hmm, the betrothed couple all alone! Don’t do anything I wouldn’t.” He gave Esmi a ridiculously elaborate bow and a rogue’s wink. “My lady.” He then gave me a smile of purely manufactured innocence. “We spoke of nothing but you the entire time.”

  He collected Randel and ushered him out the door while his twin kept trying to peek more looks at the kobolds, all of whom had withdrawn to the far side of the room. The doors clicked shut, and it suddenly hit home that I was now truly alone for the first time with this stunning woman who was somehow my fiancée – or as alone as one could be when also hosting a gaggle of kobolds. Were they perhaps her idea of a chaperone?

  Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

  “Should I call for someone?” I asked weakly. “Our parents would be scandalized.”

  “I’ll be proper as a maiden aunt,” she promised. “But I wanted at least a moment together before all the formality begins. I hardly recognize you.”

  I shrugged, hoping she hadn’t noticed the sweat stains under my arms. “I’m the same old Basil Blubber-boo hiding in the garden, just taller.”

  “Don’t say that,” she said with a hint of her earlier sternness. “You weren’t that back then, no matter what Gerard ever said, and I won’t believe it of you now. The letters I’ve been receiving show a thoughtful, kind, dedicated man, and that’s who I came to speak with. Did those come from someone else?”

  I was at a loss for words. Self-deprecation came so easily to me I hardly realized when I’d used it, and having this vision of a woman berate me for it even as she praised me left me with my tongue glued to the roof of my mouth. I shook my head mutely.

  She seemed to sense that we should retreat from the subject, because a moment later, she said, “Your brothers are quite a pair.”

  I coughed out a laugh, and then, thinking of Gale hauling Randel bodily out of the room, another, less constrained one burst out of my body, feeling simply marvelous as it did. She smiled at my reaction and one of the kobolds hissed a laugh as well, looking pleased to see her – and maybe even me – happy. I found my voice again. “To find a more opposite set of twins you’d have to look to Fate and Fortune themselves. There are reasons my mother has gone gray early, and I’m the least of them.”

  She smiled, a dazzling sight. “I don’t doubt it.”

  “Gale didn’t, erm…?” I tried to say. “Ah, that is, he has a reputation for…” I couldn’t find a polite way to say it.

  “I have heard of Master Gale Hintal’s reputation, both for good and ill,” she said. “I can’t say he was a perfect gentleman before you arrived – his eye roves too freely for that – but he was careful not to push me too far. He knows I wouldn’t put up with it.”

  “Ah,” I said weakly. “Well.” Ah, well?! Are you the world’s greatest idiot? Come now, Basil, you can do better than this. With effort, I pulled myself together. “Would it stretch propriety too far to ask the lady if she would care to join me on a walk through the garden?”

  She laughed, which sent a trill up my spine. “Even a maiden aunt can take a walk in the garden. That sounds delightful.” She fetched a small box from where it had lain unnoticed on the couch and put her arm through mine.

  We exited through the back door, the kobolds joining us. Most of them must have been Common or Uncommon; I’d only ever heard the one make any noise or attempt to speak to her. It pleased me to know that Esmi had grown into a woman of intelligence as well as beauty even though it made her all the more intimidating. I knew a bit of kestrel, as those were much more common here in Treledyne, many roosting in the floating Grand Library of Istraago chained to the Palace, but of kobold I knew next to nothing. The vocal one could be insulting me or spilling the secrets of the great planar beyonds and I would be none the wiser.

  “You spoke of them often in our letters, but I had no idea you’d collected so many,” I said, unsure where to start our conversation. “Your kobolds, I mean.”

  She looked at me instead of the blue, purple, and cream flowers spread out before us, their colors tinged with red due to the setting sun. The gold flecks in her deep brown eyes sparkled. “I know it’s a bit silly to have them out like this, but I prefer to have their company whenever I leave home,” she confessed. “They’re my friends, in a way. I know some don’t see their fighting Souls that way, but I do.”

  I had a flash of us old and married together, the kobold Souls having not aged a day and still keeping us company. It was an unexpectedly heady daydream.

  I motioned for her to travel on the left path, and she and her entourage dutifully did so. Hoping to entertain her, I explained that my mother’s personal Soul card gave her a way with plants, which is why we had many that weren’t quite in season. I wasn’t aware of what types of flowers should or shouldn’t be available right now, but Esmi nodded appreciatively as if she could see what I described within the menagerie of various types, some potted, others hanging, all in very neat and orderly sections. I didn’t mention that Mother had taken to selling some of her rarer cuttings to the finer apothecaries in the city. Not for the first time, I thanked the Twins that I hadn’t ever confided my family’s financial woes in my letters to her. Her parents would have withdrawn the betrothal offer in an instant.

  While I made little comments like this, my attention often dropped to the package that she carried. It was wrapped in red paper, and I was falling short on guesses as to what it might be. It was rectangular and was just larger than her hand. What would someone like Esmi get me? In some ways, our years of letters had made us the dearest of friends, but in another, very real sense, we didn’t know each other very well at all. Why don’t I have a gift for her? A useless thought, but one that kept coming back to me.

  We passed a collection of chrysanthemums, one of the few flowers I could recognize and remember the name of, and I decided it was time to broach the topic. “I’m so grateful you gave me this time with just the two of us. I can’t tell you how often I wished I could simply walk and talk with you like this. But I must admit surprise. For a woman who has spoken so highly of family duty, stepping outside the norms of the betrothal progression must have been quite an effort. Will you tell me why you came to me all of a sudden like this? I wouldn’t change it for the world, but I’m curious.”

  Esmi stopped in her tracks and chuckled ruefully. “Usually I’m the one telling others to get to the point. You do it far more deftly than I.” She suddenly looked torn, biting her underlip. “I didn’t dare involve Father in this. It’s rather awful, I’m sorry to say.” She sounded profoundly apologetic, which only made me more confused. If something bad had happened to her family or manor, surely news of it would have been buzzing through the city, and Esmi herself looked unharmed.

  “Are you or your father unwell? A relative in trouble?”

  “Master Basil,” I heard someone call, the words stiff as a starched collar. I turned to see one of our butlers, Ossun, standing in a different entryway from our home into the garden.

  “Your Headsman is wandering the halls.”

  I cringed. A Common card would have dissipated as soon as I was more than fifty feet away from it, returning to my Mind Home, just as I imagined some of Esmi’s kobolds would do if she left them behind. An Uncommon, however, possessed a modicum of autonomy, which was how my father and those under him in the City Watch were able to guard the streets with a force of summoned Souls. However, neither he nor my mother would be pleased to happen upon a Soul like the Headsman in their home. Not again, at any rate.

  “I’ll take care of it soon, Ossun, I promise.”

  “Headsman?” Esmi asked me when I turned back to her.

  We hadn’t gone so far to share details about the decks we preferred to use or would use in the tournament tomorrow, though after seeing her today, it was obvious to me that she would be running a number of kobolds.

  “Let’s not worry about that right now,” I assured her. Telling her that I’d built a deck out of executed criminals and lowlife leftovers seemed like a very bad idea at the moment. “What you were saying sounded much more important.”

  She sighed heavily, seeming to deflate. She looked lovely even doing that. “Very well, but only because my news is bound to be worse. I’ll just say it then: Father is… reconsidering our engagement.”

  I felt like I was experiencing Fate’s Grace, time suddenly freezing around me, but seeing Esmi’s eyes shift slightly as she watched me closely for a reaction told me that it wasn’t the same.

  “He is?” was what I managed to get out. Is she here to end it in person?

  “It’s this bothersome boy,” she explained. “He was a decent sort when we were in school together oversea in Charbond, but somewhere along the way he got it into his head that we should be married. Apparently he and his family have been making overtures for the last week now and Father just informed me today.”

  It turned out that getting more details about the situation did not improve it. In fact, it just made me feel more uncomfortable, but I felt obligated to say something in return. “And is he a…suitable match?”

  She nodded reluctantly. “His family is noble, and one of the wealthiest in Charbond. And he is quite the duelist, with a number of tournament wins to his name.” I swallowed, knowing what was coming next if her father was seriously considering the new proposal. “And his soul is Rare.”

  I closed my eyes, taking a deep breath. “Yes. I, uh… that is understandable.” My mind raced. “Should the matter be open to discussion, I don’t mind telling you that I have great hopes to place well in the upcoming Rising Stars Tournament. That will surely give my soul a bit of what is… lacking.”

  I’d hoped to see her brighten at this evidence of my ambition, but she shook her head dully. “That’s just the thing,” she said. “He’s entering the tournament, too.”

  I wanted to panic. Part of me was panicking. Thankfully, the part of me connected to my mouth immediately started information gathering. “What sort of deck does he use?”

  Esmi, blessedly, obliged. “Straight Fire,” she said. “He has Order Source, of course, but he prefers to run only Fire summons. He thinks we match because of it.”

  “Soul heavy?” I asked, half dreading the answer. My deck was designed to eliminate big threats, but besides my Equality Spell, I didn’t have much of a way to level the playing field if my opponent swarmed me with multiple low cost Souls. Esmi herself preferred that style; she was one of the few with whom I’d been able to talk card theory via our letters. She had a keen mind for deck building.

  She shook her head, and I was halfway through breathing a sigh of relief when she said, “The opposite, actually. He runs all Spells, not a single Soul.”

  My stomach dropped into my feet. “Lots of removal?”

  She nodded. “And board clears.”

  My deck was designed to go toe-to-toe with other Souls, building up my Condors for a final big swing. However, if my opponent didn’t give my Souls anything to fight, most of their abilities wouldn’t be useful, and their stats were comparatively lackluster. Worse, if this duelist could target my main threats and deny me the use of my own Equality because they never had any Souls out, it could be an unwinnable match for me.

  I gave her my best smile, even though I knew it would be as weak as watered-down tea. “I appreciate you telling me, but there will be many skilled duelists participating. I may not even face him, particularly if we start on opposite sides… ” I trailed off because Esmi was already shaking her head.

  “He’s going to pay to be in your quarter and one of your first matches, to prove to Father that he can thrash you.”

  “Ah,” I said, trying my best to not look already beaten but knowing I was doing a terrible job of it.

  She gave me a helpless, sympathetic pout. “I told you it was dismally bad. But! That’s why I brought you this,” she said, urgently shoving the package she held into my hands. Seeing the exchange happen, one of the kobolds hissed happily.

  Mechanically, I opened the gift, a small part of me daring to hope that it was a powerful card, or maybe even multiple cards – her lamplighter family was richer than mine, after all, even before the riots. The paper wrapping covered a metal box, and opening the hinged lid, I discovered a silver blue armband studded with a line of sapphires resting inside on a bed of silk.

  “It’s a two-Source fabricator for Water,” she said, clapping her hands in excitement, which a few of the kobolds mimicked. “Water Source has some very useful counters to Fire, and it so happens that I’ve seen this young man duel more than once. His deck depends heavily on a pair of Fire Relics, and a trio of Rust Spells will spike his wheel nicely. I know you prefer Air and Order, but when I checked with our record keeper, he assured me that your family is known to have a collection of Water cards.”

  “We do,” I said carefully, unsure how else to respond. Several interested parties had been to the house to view Mother’s grimoire of Water cards within just this last month, and it seemed certain that her best cards would be gone soon. Even if they weren’t, I knew for a fact she didn’t have any Rust Spells or other Relic removals; her deck preferences had trended in other directions back in her dueling days. If the family wasn’t in such straits I could have asked anyone in the house for a handful of clips and traipsed down to any card shop on the hill to buy a full complement of the card, but as things stood I didn’t dare ask for anything, and Tipfin had cleaned me out. It would be another fortnight before I received my next wages from the City Watch, and by then the Tournament would be over and this Twins-cursed stranger would be betrothed to Esmi in my stead. I didn’t know how I could tell her any of this. The very thought made my jaw lock up.

  “That’s why I had to bring this to you,” Esmi said, sounding hopeful for the first time since she broached the topic. “If you beat him, you’ll prove to Father that his first decision was the right one.”

  I couldn’t get the cards I needed to make the gift useful, and I scrambled for some way to communicate that fact without giving away secrets that would end our engagement far more effectively than a rival from Charbond. “You want me to play with an untested deck,” I said. “In the most important tournament in the city. Tomorrow.” I sounded unforgivably rude even in my own ears.

  She smiled, looking suddenly unsure. “I’m sure you can figure out something effective. You’ve always told me how much you love putting together unique combinations of cards. The more obscure and obtuse the better, right?”

  My deck was different than the norm of most Order decks, but most duelists didn’t have my constraints. It was true that I liked to experiment – carefully – but randomly throwing new things into a deck I’d so painstakingly refined for exactly this tournament offended my Order cultivation in a way I didn’t have words for. How could I tell her that? She was trying to help me. I didn’t have the heart to do anything other than nod limply.

  “Good,” she said, leaning in to give me a light peck on the cheek. Her skin on mine was warmer than anyone else I had ever met, like a soft furnace, and I had a sudden, sneaking suspicion that her personal Soul card must be the cause. The heat was gone as soon as she pulled back, replaced by the cold feeling of the unwanted fabricator box in my hands.

  Esmi smiled at me and waved, her kobolds following in tow behind her.

  I returned the farewell gesture with what little will I could muster. I’d go take a look at Mother’s collections of Water cards and see if there was some way out of this impossible tangle. I had to win if I wanted to keep Esmi, and now I realized that I wanted that very much. Twins help me. I had the feeling it was going to be a very long night.