On-Grid
Cardfall Casino
“Principal ziaGorn, may I speak with you a moment?”
Majel turned. The person before him was not a regular, though she looked slightly familiar. She was dressed with propriety, the only odd thing being the boutonniere of baccata sprig, with three tiny red berries showing.
Perhaps she was in mourning, Majel thought. He smiled, as befitted the host, and inclined his head.
“Of course,” he said affably. “How may I serve you?”
His interlocutor glanced from one side to the other. The main room was busy at this hour, and apparently her topic was not for public consumption.
“Shall we go to the bar?” he asked.
She smiled.
“Yes, thank you.”
* * *
Majel led his guest to the far end of the bar, where the acoustics had been managed to allow private conversation.
“May I give you wine?” he asked.
His companion held up a hand.
“If I might have a glass of water?”
“Certainly.” He leaned forward to signal Mardek, who arrived almost immediately with a pitcher and two glasses half-filled with ice. He glanced at Majel’s guest, but made no sign of concern, and went back to his station at the center of the bar.
Majel poured water into glasses.
His guest drank thirstily, while Majel studied her more closely.
“Thank you,” she said, putting the glass down. The look she turned on him was quizzical.
“You don’t remember me,” she said.
“I’ve been thinking that I ought to remember you,” Majel said, “only I don’t quite—”
He blinked.
“The last chizler,” he said.
She smiled.
“In fact, the last chizler,” she said, gravely, and that, Majel thought, was why he had not placed her. Her demeanor with Seylin after being taken off the Sixes table, during the interview, and when she was escorted from the premises by City Security, had been tolerant and self-possessed. This gravity hardly became her.
“I came,” she continued, “to give you that guarantee. I am the last chizler, of an arranged set.”
She slipped the baccata sprig from her buttonhole, and laid it on the bar by his hand. “I offer my sorrow, for the damage I and mine did to you and yours.”
He glanced down at the sprig. Three berries, he recalled, meant sorrow and guilt.
He looked back to his guest.
“We did apprehend you,” he pointed out.
“Indeed you did, but did you apprehend those we covered for, by drawing attention away from the Yellow Room?”
“Not yet, no, though we did find and repair the damage.”
She reached to the pitcher and poured herself another glass of water.
“I,” she said, after the glass was filled, “am Deaf. My associates, whom you also apprehended, are Deaf. We were paid to create a diversion at the Sixes table on five separate occasions. Our employer was not Deaf.”
She took a long swallow from her glass and put it aside.
“It was a risky contract, but it paid well, and income had lately been slight. Our purpose was to draw floor security, and patrons, to the Sixes table at certain set times, which meant that we had to be caught, our faces and names recorded. But, since the casino sustained no loss, we were only cited as mischief-makers, which, as you know, falls off the official records at the end of a half-year.”
“Very true.”
Majel had a drink of water.
“You are telling me this for a reason,” he suggested.
“Yes.” She took a breath. “As I said, we are all five of us Deaf. We attended the emergency meeting, heard of the mischief against the school, and the request for data of previously unreported incidents of mischief to be sent to the Coalition. And it occurred to us—as it should have previously—that ours were the names and the faces Security had recorded. That not only would we be found, when it transpired that the action we covered materially harmed this casino, but it would be also a case of Deaf preying upon Deaf. City Security, having their criminals in hand, will not look further, for a Civilized organizer. Nor will they give much credit to Deaf criminals seeking to implicate a respected Luzant.”
Majel raised his glass—lowered it to stare at her.
“You can identify this respected Luzant?”
“Yes, Principal ziaGorn, I can, and I will. He is a regular player here. He did not give us a name, and he took some care to alter his features, but he did not alter his clothes—and I saw him twice on the evening when I played at Sixes. I took care to remember the face he wears here.”
Majel glanced down, saw the sprig of baccata with its three red berries, and picked it up to slip into his buttonhole.
“What shall I call you?” he asked.
“Elza, Principal ziaGorn.”
“I am pleased that you came to me with this, Elza. Would you like a tour of the floor?”
She smiled.
“I would be delighted,” she said.