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This spin is different. The empress made a soft sucking noise the first time she spun, and it sounds similar now, but she’s added a short, repeated pattern. The difference is almost imperceptible. Almost.
This is how she controls the lock. Specific sounds affect the movement of the beads and allow her to draw any number of her choosing, on either her go or an opponent’s. It’s a simple trick but it’s worked all this time, on thousands of people, so I guess sometimes simple really is best.
I feel the change through my fingers, a prickling sensation towards the right of my handle, and when Urszula stops her bead, the number 8 is revealed.
“Low,” I say, and pull my handle.
Urszula makes a different but repetitive noise, and that virtually undetectable prickling sensation comes again, this time even further to the handle’s right.
While everyone else in the chamber is shocked when I stop my bead, I’m not surprised to see the number 9 on display.
“What a kick in the teeth,” Urszula winces as a yellow disc is added to her side of the board.
“Who could have predicted that?” I sigh theatrically.
“It happens to us all every now and then,” Urszula chuckles. “The one thing I’ve learnt over the decades is that there’s no sure bet in life.”
Unless you stack the odds in your favour, I almost add, but keep the observation to myself, not wanting her to know that I’m onto her.
I draw my handle back for the third time and concentrate, twitching my fingers ever so slightly, thinking of the number 3 again.
“You do know that I’m done for if this doesn’t work?” I say to the voice inside my head that urged me to take on the fabled empress.
“Have faith,” the voice replies. “The lock was designed to respond to a vocal key, but there’s a physical override, and touch actually works better than sound.”
“I guess we’ll soon find out if you’re right,” I mutter. The voice hasn’t steered me wrong so far, but I’m dubious regardless.
I repeat the number 3 silently, letting my fingers slowly glide across the handle. After a while I feel a tingling through my index finger, close to the left side of the handle, and I drive my hand forward, more in hope than expectation.
To my relief, the bead stops on 3, as commanded.
Urszula calls high, then slyly directs her bead to stop on a 2, tricking the crowd into believing that she’s as vulnerable as anyone else to the imps of cruel misfortune.
“You’re back on track,” she beams as Cal and the others (but still not Inez) cheer again. She’s doing a good job of pretending to be a benevolent opponent. If I didn’t know better, I’d be tempted to believe that she really does wish me well.
I do nothing as Urszula interferes with my draw and guides me to win the fourth spin, then steals the next two for herself, to set us up at three points apiece.
I spin a natural 4 at the seventh time of asking – I get the impression that Urszula lets her opponents spin the occasional random number, even when the stakes are high, perhaps for her own amusement – and the empress, after a staged hesitation, calls low.
“It’s probably foolish,” she tuts, “but I have a good feeling about the low numbers this time.”
She nudges the bead to stop on 2, and her supporters whoop and applaud.
“Sorry,” she says, treating me to a finely honed compassionate smile.
I shrug away her insincere apology, focusing as she draws her handle back for the penultimate spin. I thought she might let it spin randomly again, to give me a chance of drawing level, but I feel her pushing it towards 7, and figure she plans to win the match by five points to three.
The bead stops on 7 – cue a round of disappointed groans from those who are betting on an Archibald Lox victory – and Urszula cocks an eyebrow at me.
“I’m tempted to go high,” I murmur. “You beat the odds last time with an outside bet. Maybe I should try that too.” I hum and haw, before shaking my head and despondently deciding, “No, I’ll go low.”
I draw back my handle and immediately feel Urszula urging my bead to stop on 8 or 9. The tingling sensation is stronger than before as she turns up the heat, expecting me to fail as everyone else has done.
I gently stroke my handle with my middle finger, diverting the patch of prickles towards the left. It’s like rolling microscopic ball bearings across a flat surface. There’s resistance – the tumblers and levers have been set to yield to Urszula’s call – but I easily overcome it, physical touch winning out over the sucking and whistling sounds, as my inner voice predicted it would.
“Told you so,” it says smugly, and I toss it a grateful mental tip of a massive, imaginary hat.
I sneak a glance at Urszula, to check if she’s aware of what’s happening, but her expression hasn’t altered and she’s preparing a victory smile. The locksmith who put the Spinner together taught her how to use it, but must never have revealed its inner mechanisms to her.
I drive my hand forward and the bead stops on 5.
“Hard –” Urszula starts to say, then stops.
“Yes!” Oleg roars.
“That’s the way, Archibald!” Cal shouts.
I make a clicking noise with my tongue that Inez would be proud of. “I knew that going low made sense, but I had a terrible feeling it was going to stop high,” I say with all the fake innocence I can muster.
Urszula’s left eyelid twitches. She looks down at her hand, then up at the beads, then turns her gaze on me.
I try not to smile too widely, but it’s hard to hold it in.
“That was... unexpected,” she croaks as a worried-looking assistant pins a blue disc to my side of the board. There are now four for each of us.
“All down to the final spin,” I say, forcing a note of gloominess into my voice. “I’ve only won one of the last four, so I’m not feeling too confident. Maybe I should have let you go first when you offered.”
“It would have been the wise thing to do,” Urszula says hoarsely, “but let’s see how things play out. Spin.”
I draw back the handle without looking at it or the bead. Urszula is still staring at me and I return the stare coldly, letting her know that I’ve rumbled her, that this isn’t just for me, but for all the other people she’s cheated. It’s dumb to show my hand – I should act baffled, make her wonder if something has gone wrong with the machine – but I’m all fired up.
Gazes locked, I count to ten... fifteen... twenty inside my head, tormenting her as she’s tormented a long line of doomed opponents. She makes a loud hissing noise all the way through my count, trying desperately to drive me to a number of her choosing, but I bat aside her attempts with the ease of someone who might have been doing this all his life.
I stop my bead on the number 2.
“How’d I do?” I whisper, not breaking eye contact.
Urszula tries not to look at the bead but can’t help herself.
A smirk lifts her lips when she sees the 2... then dies away as she reflects on the fact that she wasn’t able to force me the way she wanted, and that therefore this is a number almost certainly of my choosing.
“Two!” Cal yells happily. “You spun a two, Archibald!”
People laugh, but Urszula isn’t laughing, and nor are her assistants. They’ve seen her swoop to victory on countless occasions, only losing when it’s inconsequential, and they know this is a different experience. I’m sure Urszula has always accepted her meaningless losses with a wry smile and a shrug, but there will be no smiles or shrugs today. The empress is royally fuming.
“Low or high?” I ask pleasantly, rubbing it in.
Urszula gulps – actually gulps – and looks at the bead with a pained expression. She knows she should call high, but wants to call low, because she can see that’s where I plan for her bead to end up. But if I can control the Spinner the way she now believes I can, I’ll simply switch and make it go high if she calls low, and she’ll look like a fool. And if I’m not controlling it – if the last two spins were the result of a technical glitch – there’s a chance that she might still call correctly and win.
“High,” she eventually spits, and yanks back her handle.
She drives it forward again immediately, nearly catching me out, but I twitch my thumb just in time, and her bead stops on the lonely, lovely number 1.
Game, set and match to Archibald Spinner Lox!