HAVING BEEN ONE of—” the Dark said, stressing “one of” just enough to show her polite self-effacement by its inclusion, “—the finest assassins in the multiverse,” (she had learned the word from her husband only last week during his pontification about the extra-dimensional nature of the city in which they dwelt, and took a certain delight in displaying it now), “I feel it essential to establish the distinction between assassin and thief.”
The conversation, taking place in the crowded, jostling noodle shop and bar around the corner from the small garden apartment the Dark and Tericatus had chosen as their living quarters, was yet another of the interminable bar discussions that often take place in the city of Serendib. Situated and composed as it is of a multitude of realities, its citizens approach philosophical issues from a variety of viewpoints.
This time the participants were the Dark; her husband, the sorcerer Tericatus, her oldest friend and enemy, Chig the Rat God; and an unnamed woman who none of them knew, who had wandered over from another, presumably less entertaining conversation, and was listening in without introducing herself. Such behavior was a little rude, but not outside the bounds of Serendib courtesy, where often the silent have a reason to be so.
“If there is a distinction—and I am not agreeing one exists—it is surely only a matter of degree,” Chig said. “Thieves steal from people, and what is taking a life but a form of that?”
“You are trying to annoy me,” said the Dark. She suspected he’d introduced the topic on purpose to that end, and opted to use unexpected directness to throw him off guard.
But Chig was not to be diverted. “That is an interesting way to deflect my question,” he said.
Tericatus cleared his throat. “I have found two things,” he interjected. “One is that such things are often a question of how a person thinks of themself. The actions of a thief in a situation may be very different from those of someone styling themself an assassin.” He took a sip of ale.
“And the second?” the Dark prompted.
Chig interrupted before Tericatus could reply. “Then we should be able to put someone into a situation and determine whether they are thief or assassin by how they act.”
Tericatus opened his mouth anew, but this time the nameless woman interjected. “You are saying that whether I am thief or assassin predicts what I will do? That seems easy enough to put to the test.”
The Dark peered at the woman with interest. “Are you one or the other?” she asked.
“I am,” said the woman, “but I will not tell you which, in the interest of science.”
The Dark’s eyes narrowed, but she nodded.
Tericatus said, “But if you know it is a test, you might change your answer.”
“Now you are growing overly complicated,” Chig said. “Let us think of our test situation before we concern ourselves with that.”
“What do you propose?”
Chig stroked his whiskers with a thoughtful paw. “We certainly have the Dark as our baseline, for who is a better example of an assassin?” He gave the Dark an oily smile that she did not return. She was feeling a trickle of unease deep inside. Chig was very fond of long-hidden machinations, and the Dark was reasonably sure that the woman was his catspaw, so to speak. She looked over at Tericatus in one of those moments of unspoken marital telepathy that they shared from time and time. He shrugged at her, meaning, Wait and see.
“It could be a situation that calls for an assassination or a theft, but that would seem a heavy-handed choice,” Chig mused. “Therefore, something outside either realm and yet still a trifle unsavory and outside the law.” He stroked his whiskers lovingly once again, setting them in perfect order.
The Dark decided that supplying her own factor into the situation would surely change it up enough to disturb Chig’s plans. She did not wish to be predictable, and she and Chig had known each other a very long time indeed, so she discarded the first notion that came to her, and then the second, and then even the third as a precautionary move (she congratulated herself on the acumen displayed therein), and said, “Gambling, in the form of the beetle bets.” She was pleased to see what she interpreted as a flicker of annoyance crossing over Chig’s face (although rats are notoriously difficult to read in their expressions) and that he took care not to look at the woman.
“That seems fair enough,” Tericatus supplied.
“Very well,” Chig said in a sullen tone. The woman nodded, and they paid their tab in order to exit.
“What is your name?” the Dark murmured to the woman as they made their way toward the door.
“Victoria,” the woman said, giving her a little smile, flirtatious as a wink, charming the Dark despite herself. She was a very pretty woman, when one looked at her, with long, black hair as lustrous as though it had just been brushed out, and eyes the same shade, made even darker by the lashes surrounding them, reflecting slivers of light from the colored sign pulsing behind the bar.
Tericatus laid his hand on the Dark’s elbow, steering her ahead of him. She leaned to murmur in his ear, “Does she have charms laid upon her?” He shook his head, and she frowned, but kept moving nonetheless.
The beetle races are illegal in Tabat because they alter the laws of chance itself, and that is a very risky thing, because so many things there depend on those laws.
Such events are held near the great coffee roastery that usually (but not always) sits on Serendib’s southern side. The aromas wafting from that establishment—and all the consequent nearby coffee shops—hide the acrid smell from the race/battles that would otherwise force Serendib’s law enforcers to notice their presence on occasions other than the pre-scheduled monthly raids.
The world of the coffee roastery is assuredly a pleasant one. The trees around it, tall and leafy, are laden with lemons almost as fragrant as the factory’s product. In their highest boughs, owlkits nest, the progeny of parents in the nearby brewery, whose line will spread even further with passing generations.
But go farther up the street and the puddles grow oily from a constant, acidic mist, shifting to cobblestones slippery underfoot. The buildings change to fungal, pallid, and flabby structures that must be grown anew every few months.
The coliseum that holds the beetle races is an immense puffball, its massive, warty outer walls sprayed with fixative to hold them in place, flammable as fireworks if not for the constant rain on the other side. Stands held the watchers now, and in the middle an immense round of violet and green marble, perhaps ten yards in width, spun like an enormous turntable on which the beetles crawled, and in its center was a black sphere, filled with stars.
Despite the number of people there—at least a hundred gathered into the wooden stands—silence held. The only sounds were breathing and the ticking of the legs of the great hand-sized beetles crawling over the round.
Each beetle wore around its neck a tiny basket woven of silver wire. Surrounding the round were the beetle-brats, who constantly removed or slipped tiny glass beads into the baskets of passing beetles, marking the bets, while their juniors ran back and forth between them and the crowd in response to wordless hand signals.
Tericatus breathed in the Dark’s ear, “You know it is possible here to lose one’s luck entirely, and that is not something I can cure easily with magic.”
Her only response was a sideways flick of her ebon eyes and a quirked lip that told him that, although he had no clue what it was, she held some plan.
Victoria stooped to a vat by the entrance and took a handful of beads, as did the Dark and Chig. Tericatus refrained, although he gave the vat an uneasy glance as they passed on their way to the stand, noting the thousand colors of beads that seemed to roil of their own volition under his gaze, as though urging themselves toward him.
They began to bet.
The beetles crawled and clacked on the marble round, sometimes meeting to mesh mandibles and attempt to push each other into the great black central round. Two perished in this fashion, the loser pulling the victor in after it, and several faces in the crowd paled or flushed, or looked about for ways of escape before a beetle-brat came to show them towards a booth in the back.
They all gave their beads to a single beetle-brat.
“That means we all win or lose together, you know,” Chig said in question to the Dark.
“I am familiar with the rules, yes,” she said. He shrugged, and they turned their attention back to the game.
How many hours passed, while they watched the beetles?
How many beads went from one basket to another, then another, or went spilling down the void in the center?
How many times were the guttering lamps near the doorways replenished? Dawn was tentatively touching the doorway’s edge by the time they stood, a beetle brat filling each’s hand with a clump of beads much smaller than originally, and moved to the booth to cash out, the only way to know who had won or lost.
“I am not sure what any of this has proved,” Tericatus muttered. He had grown to the age where a sleepless night was not as effortless as it once was, and tiredness gnawed redly at the corners of his eyes and etched lines around his mouth.
The Dark, untouched by the rigors of the night, shrugged.
They stepped into the reckoning booth.
“It appears we have lost our luck!” Chig said in pretend shock.
“Indeed,” said the Dark. “And yet I was prepared and brought my own to substitute, so I have lost luck pre-purchased in the market.”
“Ah,” said Chig. “Then it will be sad to tell you that this was all a trap, and I swapped out ownership of the markers through certain arcane preparations, and you have been saddled with twice the loss, and both of us with half.” He bared his teeth in a grin.
“Ah,” said the Dark. “That would be sad, had I not refrained from doing the same and also performing certain sleights with ownership.”
Chig started to say something, then stopped. “What?”
“You were about to tell me you had anticipated that move, were you not?”
The rat god frowned and nodded. Victoria’s brows furrowed slightly.
“Anticipated. And since your co-conspirator did not do the same…” She shrugged. “She is a thief, and not the same as an assassin, and hence I have won the argument as well. An entertaining evening, for which I thank you.” She bowed to Victoria and Chig with elegant satisfaction, and took her husband’s arm, smiling.
As they walked home, past the trees where owlkits stirred, chirping out a morning sound, she said, “When all of this started, you said you had found two things, but you only told us the one.”
“That is true,” Tericatus said, yawning.
“And the other?” she pressed, after a few more steps.
He tilted his head to examine her. “I am not really sure you wish me to say.”
She frowned. “Out with it.”
“As I said, one is that such things are often a question of how a person thinks of themself. The second thing I have found,” Tericatus said, rubbing his nose, “is that such things usually matter only to oneself, and realizing that may save one some sleep.”
And after that, the Dark was silent all the way home.
