I shook my head desperately. “I’m glad to help.” I gestured to Kiera. “But my companion and I are incredibly famished and were hoping you could help us out.”
Iris dabbed her eyes with her damp apron. “Of course, of course! Anything you want!”
“We’ll take a platter of whatever you’ve got roasting tonight and two mugs of Sunshine. Oh, and some of Tercel’s biscuits, if he has any left,” I added with a glance at Kiera, who looked taken aback.
Iris nodded and hurried away.
“Are you some sort of healer for the city?” Kiera asked, her tone less guarded than before.
“Not exactly. I help where I can.” I pulled open a small drawer under our table and fished out a bulging pouch. “Ready to play?”
Anticipation gleamed in her eyes. “What are the stakes? I haven’t got any coins. Unless you’ll let me work for you alongside Ruru.” She gave me a saccharine smile. “Delivering teas and tonics, it sounds like.”
I shook out the Death and Four tiles as a prickle of admiration for her relentlessness stirred in my gut. “I still haven’t decided.”
“Perhaps that should be our wager, then. If I win, you give me the job.”
I cocked an eyebrow. “And if you lose?”
“Then I suppose I’ll just have to owe you some coins from our other job.”
“Nice try. But I’d rather play for something else.”
Immediately, Kiera was on her guard again. “I have nothing else.”
I smiled slowly, wickedly. “Yes, you do.”
I paused to let her—and my—imagination run wild. As if we were just two strangers who had met in a tavern and wanted to enjoy each other’s company until dawn. It had been a long time since I’d allowed myself to even entertain such a simple, yet complicated, pleasure.
And I had no intention of truly doing so with Kiera.
But a dark, yearning part of me wanted to see her squirm in her seat. To catch a little spark of the heat that seemed to flare between us at odd moments. To see something other than fear or suspicion in her beautiful eyes. Like the way she was looking at me now.
I crushed my thoughts into meaningless dust. “Answers,” I said abruptly. “I’ll play you for honest answers.”
She seemed to mentally shake herself. “And if we choose not to answer?”
I dipped my head in agreement. After all, there were a great many things I could never tell her. “Then we will keep asking until there is a question we can answer.”
“How do I know the answer you give me is honest?”
“If you can’t figure that out, then you needn’t worry.”
One of the strategies in Death and Four was bluffing. If she couldn’t decipher my lies from truths, she wasn’t likely to win, anyway.
And I’d been lying my whole life.
Challenge flared in her eyes. “Deal.”
We flipped tiles to see who would go first. Kiera unveiled Mynastra’s fierce visage while I unveiled a lowly three.
Kiera selected her tiles first. I didn’t draw mine until after she’d peeked at hers. Her expression was as carefully blank as it’d been when she’d lied to me about playing well.
I picked up my four tiles, rubbing them between my fingers. The wooden squares were smooth and thin, with each number or deity burned into one side. I’d played with many sets over the years, including one of solid gold and another of animal bone.
I didn’t so much as twitch a muscle at the two, eight, ten, and the god Arduen with his headdress of burning flowers I’d drawn.
Not a bad hand. Only one of each of the four gods existed in the game, as well as the skull of Death. Hence the name Death and Four. The numbers one through ten had three tiles each.
