Spellslinger (Spellslinger #1)(15)
Her face took on a theatrically offended expression. ‘“Nothing but a deck of cards”? I’ll have you know that I’m deadly with these things.’
I watched as she laid them out on the table in front of us. Now that I had a better chance to see them I found myself entranced by the cards’ bright colours and beautiful, elaborate paintings. Even the ones bearing nothing but numbers and symbols were elegantly composed and stirred up stories of deadly battles and courtly intrigue in my mind.
Ferius split the cards into four stacks, each decorated with a different symbol. She picked up the first stack and fanned it out in front of me, pointing first to a card with an elaborately drawn number nine surrounded by shields. ‘This is a numbered card.’ Then she pointed to one showing an illustration of an oddly dressed man bearing a crown seated on a golden throne decorated with chalices. ‘This is a face card.’ She closed the fan and put the four stacks back together. ‘There are four suits, each with ten numbered cards and three face cards.’
‘What’s that one?’ I asked, pointing to a card that didn’t seem to be part of any of the suits. Instead it showed a woman carrying fire in one hand and ice in the other.
‘We call those discordances,’ Ferius replied, quickly removing it from the deck and stuffing it back into her waistcoat. ‘Those cards are a little too dangerous to mess with for now.’
Before I could ask how a card could be dangerous, Ferius launched into an explanation of the basic mechanics of the deck and described some of the games that could be played with them. She rattled off names: Country Twist, Royal Courts, Desert Solitaire, Six-Card Standoff … they went on and on. Each game had its own rules and strategies. I was utterly confounded by the complexity of it all. It had never occurred to me that there was more than one game that people played with cards.
I stared in awe as Ferius shuffled the deck, her hands moving smoothly and confidently as the cards flipped around her fingers. It was like watching a master mage performing a dazzling series of somatic shapes one after the other.
It was like magic.
‘So,’ Ferius said, grinning at my expression, ‘want me to show you a few spells?’
7
The Cards
I don’t know how long we sat up playing cards, but by the time we stopped the first rays of sun had made their way through the open window of my mother’s study. Playing cards. The term didn’t even begin to describe what it felt like to me.
I had no difficulty memorising the rules of each game or learning the different ways of handling the cards. I’d always been quick with both my head and my hands. It was too bad that magic wasn’t just twirling your fingers and saying the right words.
‘You got me, kid,’ Ferius said, miming an arrow to the chest as she pretended to fall backwards.
I looked down at the cards on the table. I had beaten her at a game of Speared Jacks. My first game of it in fact.
‘All right,’ she said. ‘Don’t go getting a swelled head.’ She picked up the cards and shuffled them back into a tidy stack.
‘Are we stopping?’ I asked, disappointed.
She shook her head. ‘Just want to see you try something else.’ Ferius took one card off the top of the deck and held it between her thumb and forefinger. ‘See that knot of wood in the centre of the door there?’ Before I could answer she snapped her wrist and the card flew through the air, striking dead centre in the little imperfection of the door’s wood before bouncing off onto the floor.
‘How did you do that?’ I asked, utterly amazed.
She handed me a card and showed me how to place it between my own thumb and forefinger. ‘It’s all in the wrist.’
I gave a toss of the card. It landed a few inches in front of my foot.
‘Again,’ she said, handing me another card.
‘What’s the point? It’s not like—’
‘Just throw the card.’ I did, and this one flew a little further, maybe two whole feet before flopping to the floor. The third did better than that. On the fourth try, I hit the door. By the time I’d worked my way through the deck and we’d picked up all the cards again, I could hit the target easily, and all I could think was, I’m good at something.
It’s hard to describe the sense of elation I felt. Maybe it was because I’d spent the last several weeks failing at everything I tried, or perhaps just because I’d almost died and my head still wasn’t right, but for whatever reason, I was smiling a big, stupid grin.
‘Feels good, don’t it?’ Ferius asked.
I flicked a card towards the edge of the door. I could almost line it up so that it would stick in the gap between the door and the frame. ‘It’s all right,’ I said, not wanting to sound too eager. ‘It’s not like it’s real magic or anything.’
Ferius raised an eyebrow. ‘Not real magic? Of course cards are magic, kid. I’ve got all kinds of spells I can do with them.’
‘Like what?’
She flipped a card into the air – a three of shields. When it landed back in her palm it was the ace of spells. ‘Like using them to make someone else’s money magically move from their pocket to mine, for example.’
‘How?’ Then I realised she was just talking about gambling, not actual magic. ‘Oh, right.’ I turned away and pulled back my wrist to fling another card at the door.