The Emperor's Edge

The Emperor's Edge Ch. 3 Pt. 2

The next evening, Amaranthe visited the Maze. From the outside, it looked like little more than a warehouse, but the long line she stepped into promised something more entertaining. The establishment had only been around for a few years, but it was already more popular than any other gambling venue in the city. It was more profitable, too, though the question of the place’s legality had come up in more than one enforcer report. This was not her district, though, so she had never visited.

 Dressed in parka, ankle-length skirt, leggings, and the fitted jacket of a businesswoman, she was a little out of place amongst the jostling folks wearing factory coveralls or labor uniforms under their coats. She hoped to meet with the owner, though, not mingle with the gamblers.

When the bouncer let her in, a moment of claustrophobia swallowed her. Hundreds of cheering men and women pressed from all sides. Thick tobacco and warkus weed smoke did not quite obliterate the stench of stale sweat and alcohol-swathed bodies.

Since the crowd kept Amaranthe from seeing the layout, she found a support pillar and climbed onto its concrete base. Rows of benches formed descending squares around a fifty-meter-wide pit filled with the ever-changing maze that gave the establishment its name. Even as she watched, a section of the wall detached and started moving. It slid along one of myriad tracks in the floor and clanked into a new slot on the far side of the pit. Two more walls began a different journey before the first finished. Within the maze, a stout fellow wearing a white tunic turned out of a dead-end and hunted for a new path. Four clackers, mechanical constructs with crab-like pinchers, rolled through the maze on treads. In the center of the labyrinth, a tiny alcove held a dais. A small chest rested on top, its lid open to display a pile of gold coins. Spectators cheered or booed for the lone player, depending on which way they had bet.

Amaranthe dropped off her perch. She had not come to watch the game but to see the owner. She slipped through the crowd until she found the betting cage near the back wall. Several bouncers with the prerequisite prodigious muscles kept the gamblers peaceful. The backs of their hands sported brands, inelegant feline faces with pointed ears and fat whiskers. The marks showed allegiance with the Panthers, one of the larger gangs in the city.

Amaranthe approached the closest bouncer, a man with a cleft chin and wavy black hair. Without the scowl, he might have been handsome.

Before she could speak to him, he turned and yelled at a little man tugging on his sleeve. “I already told you, bets are final! You can’t change your mind in the middle. Go away!”

The man scampered into the crowd. The bouncer turned on Amaranthe.

“What?” he roared.

She stifled the instinct to step back. Instead she met his eyes and asked, “Rough day?”

“Huh?”

She added a sympathetic smile. “It looks like you’re having a rough day.”

The irritation bled away from the bouncer’s face. “Actually, yes.”

“I’m Amaranthe. What’s your name?”

“Ragos.”

“It must be trying dealing with the same silly questions day in and day out,” she said.

“That, I’m used to. But today, two of the bookmakers didn’t show up. The potatoes for our vendors’ potato cakes didn’t come. The furnace that powers the Maze decided to break down, and who do you think got to fix it?” Ragos pulled a wrench out of a back pocket and waved it.

“I didn’t realize bouncers had so many responsibilities,” Amaranthe said.

Another bouncer sidled up to Ragos and grinned. “Most don’t. Unless they’re the boss’s pet.”