The Necromancer's Gambit: The Queen
Nicolas Wilson
I feel bad for Pawn. He can’t help himself. He’s impulsive- that’s just his nature. Rook fills me in on the ride back to town about the vamp; if I’d known Pawn had just said something stupid I would have at least been more discreet when I contradicted him. She’s driving, because I don’t think my car will survive another ride with Harry behind the wheel.
We follow the King and Queen in Pawn’s old Jeep- not because I think anything’s going to happen, but because we’re all going to the same place. When we get to the Centre, I grab him. “Pawn, take Bishop and Harry to the lab, help her get anything she needs.”
He glances to the royals, shambling up the front steps. “But what about”
“I’ll be here til you get back, and I can keep an eye on them.” He doesn’t move, because he wants to know why I’m staying. “I’m tired of chasing our tails on this; we need to get out ahead of things.”
“The Queen?” He doesn’t bother trying to hide his disdain; I don’t blame him. Relying on divination in an investigation… it’s a desperation move. “Whatever.” He saunters off, in the direction of Rook. “You two’re with me.”
“Knight promised me chicken,” Harry says.
“Yeah, yeah,” Pawn mutters, shoving him into the backseat of the Jeep.
The Centre is a large white, building, designed for grandeur despite its relatively modest size for Portland. It looks like a corporate headquarters, and I suppose, in a way, it is. The Queen waits for us on the main steps. “My ears were burning. I presume you’d like to cut off our assailants at the pass. If you’ll come with me,” he unlocks the front door, and we follow him in. He walks us through the sterile if modern-looking lobby and through a door just beyond; I can tell from the only other light on that King’s retired to his study.
The Queen’s office is lavishly decorated. Rook notices a painting of Oscar Wilde behind his desk, based off the famous 1882 photo taken by Napoleon Sarony, with the poet leaned forward, holding a cane, eyes soulful- and immediately sees the resemblance to the Queen. “That can’t be a coincidence.”
The Queen chuckles to himself. “I noticed the likeness myself at a tender age. I saw his picture in a book and thought, ‘My, what an attractive fellow.’ Of course, it was around
that age that I was noticing quite a few attractive fellows, so it was some time before I stopped confusing my conceit for lust.”
“So you’re…” Rook trails off.
“Fruitier than a fruitcake- or a cocktail- whichever’s fruitier.” That makes him notice I’m within arm’s reach of his liquor cabinet. “Oh, mix me a cocktail.”
“I live to serve,” I say, unscrewing the cap from a bottle of Skye.
“Drinks?” Queen says slyly.
I pour vodka into a shaker. “I think puns are more lame than gay.”
“Gay is lame in some circles; I’ll take it,” he smiles, then turns his attention back to Rook. “I started out a petty bureaucrat- toiling in the obscurity at the edges of our little government, but when I realized the number 2 position in the Gambit was the ‘Queen,’ it was just too good to pass up. I’ve been an incorrigible social climber ever since.” I hand Queen his drink, and he takes a sip from it. “A cosmopolitan? Am I that gay?”
“Gayer. A Cosmo is just the gayest drink I know how to mix.”
“I tease,” he says, “it’s lovely. But I’m afraid it’s not enough.” He walks back around his desk, holding his glass like it’s exceedingly fragile, and continues talking to Rook. “Divination is a finicky art. It’s why uptight young men like Knight don’t have the knack for it; it requires a clarity that the fast-paced, gray-shaded little world he’s carved out for himself just doesn’t allow for. It helps to be home; ideally, I’d feel safe, too, but barring that,” he produces a fertility god pipe where the stem is the god’s shaft, and a pink lighter “being baked clear of my senses ought to suffice.”
Rook gives him a look, though I’m not sure whether it’s because of the drugs or the fact Queen’s fellating his pipe as he lights it, but he catches it, too. “You can think of it as putting myself in shamanic trance, if that makes you feel better.” He rolls the smoke around in his mouth, while rolling his tongue over the stem of the pipe, then exhales. “I don’t suppose either of you would like to partake.” Rook shakes her head, and he doesn’t bother waiting for my response; “pity.”
The Queen goes back to digging in his desk. “I prefer oneiromancy, but forming anything like a useful sense out of the dreams takes days, or sometimes weeks. And perhaps if we weren’t in mixed company I might indulge in some rhabdomancy-”
“If you two want to play with your rods, I can leave,” Rook interrupts.
“Ooh, I like her. But even if he were game, I have reason to suspect Knight would be lousy at it- the divination, obviously; I can’t speak to his other talents.”
“Ahem,” I say.
“Ah, here they are.” The Queen produces a deck of nude male playing cards.
“Cartomancy,” Rook says, and walks around the table as Queen shuffles. “Cut the deck,” he says, and hands them to Rook; she does. He lays out 21 cards, face down, in the shape of a horseshoe. He skips over the first 6 cards to the ones that matter, the ones about the future, and turns those three over. “The King of Clubs, a dark man; and I don’t just mean the tan. A Nine of Spades, though I’d have ventured that to be nearly ten; though maybe the circumference is nine.”
Rook makes a face. “That’s scary. Not hot. Utterly terrifying. You’ve frightened my vagina- it’s going to be hiding until a late spring.”
“It’s simply not for beginners, or the inflexible,” Queen says to her.
“Can we focus?” I ask. The Queen’s expression turns grim.
“The Nine of Spades is perhaps the worst possible pull. Bad luck in all things, destruction, death. And since we skipped the present and recent past, this isn’t Castle’s demise asserting itself- it’s in the future.” The Queen turns over the ninth card. “Seven of Spades. Loss of a friendship or a friend.”
The Queen turns over the next three cards: Eight of Hearts, Four of Spades, Five of Clubs. “Things you didn’t expect: visitors, broken promises, help from friends- that’s cynical, even for you.” He eyeballs me, then flips the next three cards: Three of Diamonds, Eight of Clubs, Seven of Clubs. “Obstacles: legal trouble, jealousy, greed, and trouble from the opposite sex.”
“When are they anything but?”
“You sound like you’ve been playing for the wrong team,” Queen says with a grin he can’t quite contain.
“I’m not so fed up that you should have that twinkle in your eye,” I tell him. “But what’s the outcome?”
Three more cards, and this time he interprets as each is turned over: Seven of Diamonds, “Problems at work.” Four of Clubs, “Lies, betrayal.” His fingers hesitate over the final card, and his hand starts to shake. It’s the Ace of Spades. He takes a drink from his Cosmo. “Conflict, obsession,” and he looks up from the card, to me, as he says, “death.”
“So it’s mostly good news, then.” I wish I’d made myself a drink. My phone rings, and we all jump. The tension is stifling; we’re all wondering if the divination’s already coming true as I open my phone to answer it.
It’s the VC. Which means Guido, their, I’ll be charitable, and call him an ambassador. “Where the fuck have you been?” he screams when I pick up. Then he takes a deep breath. “We need you. Here.”
“I’m indisposed. I don’t suppose you can tell me what’s so damn urgent.”
“Yesterday it was damn urgent, today it’s fuck you and your mother until you get here.”
“I’ll be there as soon as I can.”
“It will be morning soon. You’re running out of time.”
He’s being dramatic. “The Rosemont has all of its windows blacked out. Unless it’s something you need to be outside to show me-”
“We still have to sleep, you know.”
“I’ve been up for almost two days,” unless you count teleportation induced unconsciousness- which is not as restful as it sounds, “so cry me a river.”
Instead he diplomatically hangs up on me. The VC aren’t my constituency; we occasionally help them out- though you’d never know that from his tone.
Queen and Rook are speaking in hushed voices behind me. The cards have been shuffled, and a new series splayed out on the desk. “Experience is a kinder name for one’s mistakes; you’ll forge your own experience soon enough,” the Queen says gently to her, sliding the cards back into a stack before I can see any of them.
Then I hear Pawn come in. “You ladies finished, or you want I should step outside so you can pad each others bras? This one,” he points a finger at me, “could use a little more cleave; be good for his self-esteem.” Queen and Rook flip him off in unison, but I can tell he’s got something to say to me. He glances back at them, and since they go back to their whispers and aren’t paying any attention to him he tells me, “I tried to get ahold of that hunter who had the vamp.” It doesn’t surprise me that I spent one night away and Pawn bent the rules near to breaking.
“No answer.”
“Which means we got a problem the King don’t know about. The hunter I worked with, he was Order.”
“San Michele?”
“Yup- least he claimed to be. He was supposed to be waiting on my call, with him on a leash. Now, Order wouldn’t have fucked up and let the vamp off the chain. So either we got rogue Order, or a convincing fucking fraud.” I must look at him too skeptically, because he adds, “Guy wasn’t a fuck-up; he was headstrong, proud, but I know from fuck-ups.” I smirk. “Don’t. Don’t even say it.”
I don’t.
He glances again, but whispers this time. “Look, there’s one thing I gotta know. Tiny told me how he got his name. And don’t ask me why I gotta know, but this,” he holds out his hand in an oversized ‘O,’ “is that Tiny, or Tiny’s preference?”
I raise an eyebrow. “Tiny was fucking with you. He was like 5’4” until his sophomore year of high school. He grew up short- he just likes fucking with homophobes.”
“I ain’t no homophobe; I’m in the fruit’s office, aren’t I?”
“I’m sure the ‘thanks for your sensitivity’ card from the gay community just got lost in the mail.”
“You gonna get out of here and do your job, or you just gonna stand around fucking with me the rest of the night?”
“Who says fucking with you ain’t part of my job?” I ask him, and he doesn’t seem amused. “Rook, let’s get out of here.”