The coin was spinning.
“Next!” Hairlock demanded. “You are too slow!”
Tattersail saw that the marionette was paying no attention to the card Oponn, and had in fact probably given it only sufficient notice to identify it. She drew a deep breath. Hairlock and the Bridgeburners were tied up in this, she knew that instinctively, but her own role was as yet undecided. With these two cards, she already knew more than they did. It still wasn't much, but it might be enough to keep her alive in what was to come. She released her breath all at once, reached forward and slammed a palm down on the Deck.
Hairlock jumped, then whirled to her. “You hold on this?” he raged. “You hold on the Fool? The second card? Absurd! Play on, woman!”
“No,” Tattersail replied, sweeping the two cards into her hands and returning them to the Deck. “I've chosen to hold. And there's nothing you can do about it.” She rose.
“Bitch! I can kill you in the blink of an eye! Here and now!”
“Fine,” Tattersail said. “A good excuse for missing Tayschrenn's debriefing. By all means proceed, Hairlock.” Crossing her arms, she waited.
The marionette snarled. “No,” he said. “I have need of you. And you despise Tayschrenn even more than I.” He cocked his head, reconsidering his last words, then barked a laugh. “Thus I am assured there will be no betrayal.”
Tattersail thought about that. “You are right,” she said. She turned and walked to the tent flap. Her hand closed on the rough canvas, then she stopped. “Hairlock, how well can you hear?”
“Well enough,” the marionette growled behind her.
“Do you hear anything, then?” A spinning coin?
“Camp sounds, is all. Why, what do you hear?”
Tattersail smiled. Without answering she pulled aside the tent flap and went outside. As she headed towards the command tent, a strange hope sang through her.
She'd never held Oponn as an ally. Calling on luck in anything was sheer idiocy. The first House she had placed, Darkness, touched her hand ice-cold, loud with the crashing waves of violence and power run amok-and yet an odd flavour there, something like salvation. The Knight could be enemy or ally, or more likely neither. Just out there, unpredictable, self-absorbed. But Oponn rode the warrior's shadow, leaving House Dark tottering on the edge, suspended in a place between night and day. More than anything else, it had been Oponn's spinning coin that had demanded her choice to hold.
Hairlock heard nothing. Wonderful.