The Magic Trick (The Card Game #2)

Ch 5 - Spies on Both Sides

CHAPTER V

SPIES ON BOTH SIDES

 

 

A light breeze can collapse a house of cards. This looked more like a windstorm. When Viktor had left for Saint Demetrius some ten days ago, the House of Cards had been in perfect shape. Now it lay wrecked, ruined, raided. Shelves were tipped, maps ripped. Shredded papers were everywhere. Old wine bottles had been hurled against the walls, staining the supporting logs dark red. Boxes and chests rested on their sides, their contents dumped out like they’d had too much to drink. Even the decorative fur skins had been ripped apart, many of them still pinned to walls not by nails but by daggers. Whoever had done this had been angry—murderously angry.

The Betrayer of Cards is in our midst. Viktor bit his lip. Did someone find old evidence of the Betrayer here? Is this the author’s work?

Viktor took careful steps over the toppled tables and broken chairs. He glanced into the side room and found the armory was just as disorderly. Swords and guns were crisscrossed on the floor. Gunpowder barrels had been emptied; half of the weapons were buried in great black mounds. Turning away, Viktor neared his makeshift bed. The several layers of furs had also been torn into rags and strewn about. The loaded pistol he kept by his bedside was gone.

The Betrayer of Cards is in our midst … Is this the author’s way of warning me? Then another thought, sinister and evil, tangled around Viktor as if he had walked through a spider web. He’d overlooked one main flaw in coming to the House of Cards. What if the Betrayer of Cards … is a Card? Then he would still have a card … and that card would lead him…

Suddenly Viktor looked up, the chaos around him taking on new meaning. The next moment he was in a mad dash, tripping and tumbling over obstacles. There was no time to load flintlock weapons. There was no time to gather belongings. He snatched a dagger pinned against the wall, bit the hard iron between his teeth, and scrambled up the near vertical staircase on all fours.

At the trapdoor, he slipped out into the night and eased the hatch shut, his nerves screaming. Darting to the burrowed path at the edge of the clearing, he bear-crawled a few feet in and froze under the cover of the Great Fairy Ring’s hedges. Not a second later, he heard a single set of footsteps approach. A man’s silhouette walked into the open space and gave an angry grunt. The trapdoor to the House of Cards swung open with a screech.

**

“Right,” Romulus said, just having heard Viktor’s story. He sat on his makeshift bed in his own underground lair, the Wolf Den looking as impressive as ever with its roaring fireplace and reindeer antler chandelier. A score of half-finished inventions sat on a long worktable, and in the corner, Blizzard was curled up peacefully. “Well, that’s it then. The Brassard graffiti wasn’t a lie. The Betrayer of Cards is out there, and he’s still plotting.”

“Yeah, plotting against us,” said Viktor.

“No, that man ripped the House of Cards apart because he was searching for something,” said Romulus, “not someone … Think about it—killing you would have been easy. He could have just hid and ambushed you.”

Viktor scowled, not liking the idea of his murder being ‘easy.’He leaned back on the workbench and stayed quiet.

Romulus sighed. “Look, how did you leave the place before we went to Saint Demetrius? You probably left some clothes there, right? Maybe blankets or food?”

“I guess.”

“Right, so whoever ransacked it was well aware that someone had been there, and they still didn’t care. Which brings up another point—under no circumstances can we go back there. The Betrayer is going to hand the location over to the Leopard. In fact, he probably already has. I’ll bet it was Masqueraiders who did that looting. They’ll probably start guarding the place. It’s a surefire trap to catch rebels.”