They leave Ostaris in a merchant’s cart, accompanying one Mistress Johanna and her unnamed male companion. Mistress Johanna is somewhere in her fifties, her hair gone a striking early silver. Her companion is about two decades younger, with impressive arms. Their scowls are identical. They’re the sort of merchants who have a hidden compartment in the floor of their cart and are willing to take extra passengers past the soldiers at the gate.
“A smuggler?” Karis had hissed, and Ronan corrected, “An open-minded merchant.”
Whatever Ronan pays Johanna, it’s enough that she doesn’t ask questions, but she and her friend are always watching. Over the next week, even though Karis spends day after day crammed in the cart with Ronan, he only manages to steal the quickest of kisses.
“I don’t think they care,” Karis whispers near the end of their journey, sitting so close to Ronan that their thighs plaster together through their trousers. Benches line both sides of the cart, with plenty of space—but Karis doesn’t want space. “Even if they do, why should we care what they think?”
Spice sacks and miscellaneous metalware fill the cart with fragrance and the occasional clatter. The cart has a roof that opens and closes with a complicated pulley system, which the unnamed companion operates with a grimace every time Mistress Johanna demands an adjustment. Today, the roof is jammed with the front half covered and the back half open.
Ronan’s hand rests on Karis’s thigh for a too-brief moment. Just enough that Karis tenses up with reflexive anticipation—before Ronan shifts a few inches to the side, separating them. “I don’t care what they think,” he says, barely audibly. “I care what they mightsay.”
Karis doesn’t get it.
Ronan sighs, and says more loudly, “Want to learn a card trick?” He doesn’t wait for Karis’s reply before standing up from the bench. Navigating the moving cart with enviable balance, he clears a larger space on the floor, then sits down cross-legged. “Come here.”
Karis wobbles across to join him. The wooden floor rumbles steadily underfoot. Leaning back against a sack of dried shaflower, he watches Ronan pull out a deck of cards.
Ronan’s hands gleam like sculpted bronze in the daylight, each knuckle beautifully defined. His fingers move with expert carelessness as he shuffles the deck in midair. He passes the deck over. “You shuffle it next.”
Karis takes it, torn between the delicious sparks as their fingers touch—and the sudden fear of making a fool of himself. He asks casually, “Any particular way?”
As if he knows multiple ways to shuffle cards in the first place.
Therearemultiple ways, right?
“No particular way.” Ronan isn’t even looking at him. Instead, he dips his finger into a patch of spilled red spice and starts drawing on the floorboards between them.
Relieved by the lack of attention, Karis splits the deck. He transfers a few other cards to the right-hand split, until it looks more even. Then he sets the cards on the floor, pulls up the inner edges—
And somehow flings all the cards upwards like a geyser of confetti.
Cards rain down. They land on Karis, on Ronan, on the half-drawn array of paprika. Ronan sits stone-still until all the cards have fallen, then meets Karis’s eyes. Utter disbelief replaces his usual impassive expression.
“You’re a rare talent,” he says after an evocative pause. “In all the taverns and gambling houses I’ve played, across all of Praia and Charain and Etenia, I’ve never seen anyone shuffle cards that badly before.”
Karis bursts out laughing. The beauty of Ronan’s shock is well worth his own humiliation. “Sorry,” he says through his giggles. “That was an accident. Let me try again.”
Mistress Johanna’s voice creaks from the driver’s seat: “Problem back there?”
Ronan rubs his face, leaving a streak of paprika on his forehead. “No problems,” he calls back, then orders Karis, “Donottry again.”
Karis raises his hands in a gesture of innocence. “All right, all right, I’ll just pick them up. No shuffling, promise.”
The tiniest smile tugs at Ronan’s lips. He lowers his head and fixes up the little paprika array, then rolls a six-sided die next to it. The die lands with a gold-ink six facing upwards.
Blue magic arcs from the array and tingles through Karis before vanishing.
“What—” Karis cuts off, glancing towards the driver’s seat, and lowers his voice. “What was that for?”
Ronan dusts his hands off and retrieves the die. He answers at a normal speaking volume, “They can’t hear us now. Well, they’ll hear the occasional murmur, but it won’t register as anything interesting. Don’t shout, but no need to whisper.”
“Huh.” Karis leans closer to examine the array. Some of the symbols are familiar, others aren’t. He recognizes a rune that usually meansavert, and another that means, alarmingly,protection from harm. “Your Trickster’s pretty useful.”
“He’s useful until he isn’t. There’s always a risk of failure, even with loaded dice.” Ronan starts picking up the cards. “Now, the important thing about Mistress Johanna is that as soon as we get to Melody, she’s going to report our whereabouts to the Dravans or the churches, whichever she finds first. If anyone recognizes your description, it’s safer for you if they still think you’re with me against your will.”
Karis cranes his neck around to stare past the sacks and crates. “Fuck, really? I thought you paid her off! We should sneak out tonight. I can—”
“I want her to report us,” Ronan interrupts.
