Free Tides Elba by Glen Cook Page A

yet.”
    Everything stopped, including One-Eye stacking his winnings.
    “What?” Otto asked.
    There have always been questions about Otto.
    The rest of us occasionally invest a coin in a tumble with a professional comfort lady. Though the subject never came up before, I knew I had yet to see one whisker below the neckline.
    “Do tell,” Elmo said. “And I thought it was the luck of the draw that I wasn’t seeing what ought to be there.”
    I said, “I figured it was how mine kept from getting the crabs.”
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    “Nope. All tied into their weird religion.”
    Goblin muttered, “There’s an oxymoron.”
    One-Eye’s mood faltered.
    Goblin’s froglike face split in a vast grin. “I wasn’t talking about you, shrimp. You’re just a regular moron. I was talking about slapping the wordsweird andreligion together.”
    “You guys are trying to hex my luck, aren’t you?”
    “Sure,” Elmo said. “Talking about pussy works every time. Tell me about these bald snatches.”
    One-Eye restacked his winnings. He was turning surly despite his success. He had come up with some great stuff, on a subject guys can kill weeks exploring, and nobody seemed to care.
    I shuffled, stacked, and dealt. One-Eye grew more glum as he picked up each card.
    The last one got him. “God damn it, Croaker! You asshole! You son of a bitch!”
    Elmo and Otto kept straight faces, because they did not know what was happening. Goblin tittered like a horny chickadee.
    One-Eye spread his hand. He had a trey of clubs. He had a six of diamonds. He had the nine of hearts and the ace of spades. And that last card was a knave of swords.
    I said, “How many times have you claimed you didn’t have no two cards of the same suit? For once you won’t be lying.”
    Now Elmo and Otto got it. They laughed harder than me or Goblin. The gallery got a good chuckle, too.
    The Lieutenant stuck his head through the front door. “Anybody seen Kingpin?” The Lieutenant did not sound happy. He sounded like an executive officer who had to work on his day off.
    “He skating again?” Elmo asked.
    “He is. He’s supposed to be on slops. He didn’t show. The cooks want to chop him up for soup bones.”
    “I’ll talk to him, sir.” Though Kingpin is not one of his men. Kingpin hides out in Kragler’s platoon.
    “Thank you, Sergeant.” Elmo does have a way of communicating with errant infantrymen. “Why are you people in here, in this gloom and stink, when you could be sucking up fresh air and sunshine?”
    I said, “This is our natural habitat, sir.” But the truth was, it had not occurred to anybody to take the game outside.
    We gathered our cards and beer and shambled out to the street-front tables. One-Eye dealt. Talk dwelt on the hairstyles, or lack thereof, favored by Aloen ladies.
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    It was a grand day, cloudless, cool, air in motion but not briskly enough to disturb the game. The gallery settled in. Some just liked to watch. Some hoped a seat would open up. They joined the increasingly crude speculation, which slipped into the domain of one-upmanship.
    I interjected, “How long have we been playing with these cards?” Some were so ragged you should not need to turn them over to know what they were. But my memory kept tricking me. The face sides never matched up.
    Everybody looked at me funny. “Here comes something off the wall,” One-Eye forecast. “Spit it out, Croaker, so we can get back to stuff that matters.”
    “I’m wondering if this deck hasn’t been around long enough to take on a life of its own.”
    One-Eye opened his mouth to mock me, then his eyes glazed over as he considered the possibility.
    Likewise, Goblin. The pallid, ugly little man said, “Well, screw me! Croaker, you aren’t half as dumb as you look. The cards have developed a mind of their own. That would explain so much.”
    The whole crew eyeballed One-Eye, nodding like somebody was conducting. One-Eye had insisted that the cards hated him for as long as