Seven of Wands.
Uncle is the first to recover from such a dire reading. “Shuffle them back up and redeal; ask them if a different plan will bring you all home.”
I pick the cards up, shuffle the deck three times, and deal out the cards. The first cards are the same in the same order, as they always are. The second cards don’t change. They’re all negative, casting doom on the plan for everyone except me and Uncle.
I pick up the cards, shuffle them again, and deal one for me and one for Uncle. “Should I go alone?”
Five of Wands on The Lovers, Seven of Wands on the Empress.
The room erupts in shouts. My brothers do not like sending me into a possible enemy incursion vessel by myself with only Uncle for backup.
“You are not going in alone!”
“There are six vessels that have to be disabled altogether!”
“You’re not fast enough to get in and out of them all before they jump to FTL!”
“No! No! You can’t!” That shriek escapes Faulkes, and Reeves grabs him, pulling our brother into his lap and wrapping him up in the comfort of his wings.
Reeves holds up the hands on his wings to silence my brothers. “The cards have never led us astray.” My brothers quiet themselves, and Reeves points to my cards. “Deal one more. Ask if anyone else can go with you. You need backup, no matter what they say, and no offense, Uncle, but you are not my preference.”
Uncle Maxime smiles affectionately. “I know what I am, and while I am an excellent organizer, I am not a field agent.”
I deal the cards again. Me, Maxime, and the third that comes up is The Fool.
I stall out at seeing that. “Oh, fuck no!”
My brothers look at me expectantly.
“Who’s that?” Faulkes asks softly.
I deal out the other three cards: Five of Wands, Seven of Wands, Ace of Swords.
“That’s a hell yes,” Walker points out. “Who’s The Fool?”
I shake my head. The cards are crazy if they think I’m taking Dec on a mission to stop a hostile invasion force. He’s a butler, not a guardian trained specifically for this task. He can barely perceive magic. The tinkral might not be able to harness innate magic as a species but, they can at least see it and they excel at harnessing the magic of other species, not to mention they’re among the most technologically advanced species in the known universe. It’s too bad that in their rush for advancement they made their planet inhospitable for themselves, because we wouldn’t be facing an invasion force if they had ever in all their history stopped to think that maybe making their planet inhospitable to themselves would be a long term problem.
“Thoren.” Uncle’s voice makes me wince, and I blow out a frustrated breath.
“That would be Dec,” I respond with gravel in my voice. “He’s been pulling The Fool since he arrived.”
“The butler?” Hawthorn’s dubious question reflects what everyone else is thinking. “He’s barely more than human. What could he possibly do?”
“Well, tinkral are known for keeping pets. They really like cute things, right?” Faulkes offers with a shrug. “Maybe his cuteness will distract them?”
Tinkral would probably consider humans adorable pets, that’s true, but I’m not willing to stake Dec’s life on their tendency to adopt cute things. They’re worse than humans in that, but no.
“Why don’t we talk to the man himself? He might have more insight into what he can offer than we do,” Uncle suggests, already typing on his phone.
I stand, gathering my cards, and head out to meet Dec at the elevator to escort him to the conference room. There’s no way I’m taking Dec onto the ship of a hostile invasion force no matter what the cards say.
Chapter fifteen
Dec
(The cards have got to be fucking with me)
Thoren’s hand hasn’t movedoff my ass since he pulled me into the elevator that goes down to the basement levels. He opens the door to the conference room where the gargoyles have gathered around a large table upon which is a holographic image of six different, uh...
