Archibald Lox and the Empress of Suanpan Read online

  But as they move, my fingertips detect tiny shifts in the handle. The sensations are incredibly faint and spread across all four fingers and thumb, like pins and needles, only far less evident. I’m sure the vast majority of gamblers never notice the gentle tingles, and if I wasn’t anticipating them – thanks to the voice inside my head – I’d have missed them too.

  I whisper the number 3 to myself, over and over, tracking the dancing atoms inside the handle. As I said to Inez, the Spinner is basically a giant lock. There are tumblers and levers inside the handles, linked to the beads, but the pieces are tiny and incredibly hard to manipulate.

  I drive my hand forward, silently repeating the number 3 inside my brain.

  5 comes up as the bead stops spinning.

  “A great start,” Urszula says. “That’s always the hardest number to bet against. Damned if I go high, damned if I go low. So let’s just go eeny meeny miny… low.”

  She pulls her handle and holds it there a while, staring at her bead as it revolves at top speed. She doesn’t make any out of the ordinary noises, content to let this one play as it will.

  When she pushes her handle forward, her bead stops on a 6. Urszula closes her eyes and groans with fake frustration while Cal, Maiko, Dermot and Oleg cheer. (I don’t hear anything from Inez.)

  “First blood to the young locksmith,” Urszula says as an assistant pins a blue disc to my side of the board. “Maybe luck is on your side today.” She pulls her handle again and winks at me as she whispers, “But I wouldn’t bet on it.”

  16

  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!

  17

  “I don’t believe it,” Baba Jen says, coming to stand beside me and gawk at the trembling assistant who is adding the final blue disc to the board. The tiny thesp nudges my leg and grins. “Nice going, kid.” Then she pokes Urszula and makes a rude gesture. “You’re losing your touch, Empress.”

  Urszula doesn’t respond. She’s smiling thinly, not saying a word. The smile and silence unsettle me. I’d prefer if she was glaring and cursing.

  Cal, Oleg, Dermot and Maiko come charging over to us. A cheering Cal picks me up and twirls me round, while the thesps hurry towards Baba Jen, who raises a finger and growls, “If you mugs try to hug me, I’ll bite.”

  Oleg looks offended, but Dermot and Maiko laugh.

  “You beat her, Archibald,” Cal shouts as he sets me back on my feet.

  “Yes,” I say quietly.

  I look for Inez and she’s trailing the others, studying the silent Urszula. I think, like me, she finds the empress’ subdued response worrying.

  “A thrilling victory,” Urszula finally murmurs as the hubbub in the chamber dies down. “You played the game beautifully.”

  “It was just luck,” I lie, feeling myself blush.

  “Really?” she sniffs and glances at the two handles. “I find that hard to believe.”

  She says it casually, but there’s no doubt in my mind that she’s calling me out, letting me know that she knows I cheated.

  Inez reaches me and lays a hand on my shoulder. “Well done, Archie.”

  “The mystery girl,” Urszula booms. “Do you want to remove your mask now, to celebrate openly with the others?”

  “I’ll keep it on, if it’s all the same to you,” Inez replies.

  Urszula shrugs, beckons one of her assistants forward and whispers in her ear. The assistant races from the chamber.

  “So,” Urszula says to Baba Jen, “will you team up with the thesps again?”

  “Until something better comes along,” Baba Jen sniffs.

  “I couldn’t tempt you to remain, as an employee rather than a slave?”

  Baba Jen laughs and shoots the empress a short, pudgy finger.

  “And you?” a flushing Urszula says to Dermot. “You’d planned to put on a few shows here, isn’t that right?”

  “Yes,” Dermot says. “There’s always an interesting mix of people in Suanpan, so we figured it would be a good place to practise before we hit Cornan.”

  “You’ll have to come up with a different plan.”

  Dermot frowns. “Why?”

  Urszula sneers. “Your friend made a fool of me in front of everybody. A loss is one thing, but he insulted me. Do you think I take insults lightly?”

  “I… he… what?” Dermot flounders, staring at me with bewilderment.

  “How did Archie insult you?” Maiko asks.

  “He knows,” Urszula hisses.

  “It was a straight bet,” Inez says. “Archie won fairly. You’ve always honoured the terms of a bet in the past.”

  “And I’ll honour them now,” Urszula chuckles flatly, “even though there was nothing fair about Archibald’s victory, was there?”

  She looks at me questioningly but I don’t answer.

  “Are you saying Archie cheated?” Inez asks quietly.

  “I –” Urszula starts to respond.

  “Because if he did,” Inez cuts her short, “explain to us what he did and how, and we’ll happily see him punished for it. None of us would lend our support to a cheat.”

  “Speak for yourself,” Cal grunts, planting himself directly behind me.

  Urszula stares venomously at Inez, then her gaze flickers to the audience. She can’t reveal how I defeated her, because if she did, she’d also have to confess that she’s been cheating ever since the Spinner was installed.

  The empress of Suanpan trembles uncontrollably. Her face turns a vicious pink. Her lips peel back from her teeth and she snarls like a rabid fox.

  Then she throws her head back and screams.

  It’s an unnatural scream, and everyone in the chamber winces and covers their ears, eyes watering as the scream gets higher and higher.

  Dust falls on my face from somewhere high overhead. I brush it away, but more falls. I look up, wondering where it’s coming from, and realise it isn’t dust at all — it’s very small slivers of glass.

  Urszula’s scream has caused a crack to split the glass ceiling. It’s still running through it, spreading out above the benches, all the way to the back wall, which also starts to crack down the middle.

  Lots of people are screaming now, afraid that the empress has gone crazy and plans to bring the Spin Zone crashing down around us.

  Urszula abruptly stops, and so does the crack in the glass. She clears her throat, lowers her head and smiles as if nothing is amiss.

  As people settle down, pale and shaken, the assistant that Urszula dispatched comes racing back, clutching a large hourglass. The lower glass bulb is filled with bright yellow sand.

  “Ah,” Urszula says, taking the hourglass and caressing it lovingly. “My timer. I don’t like sleeping for long periods. Eight hours? Perish the thought. I prefer a few carefully timed naps over the course of the day and night. After much experimenting, I found that forty-three minutes was perfect, and I had this hourglass calibrated accordingly. Whenever I retire to my chambers, an assistant turns this over and the grains of sand start trickling through. Forty-three minutes later, a bugler wakes me.”

  Everyone in the Spin Zone is silent. We’re still in shock after Urszula’s scream, and it’s clear to us all that her pleasant front is a deception. Her eyes are glittering, her lips are twitching, and she’s squared her shoulders stiffly, boiling up inside like a volcano ready to explode.

  “Forty-three minutes,” Urszula says, pointing at me with the hourglass. “That’s how long you have to get out of Suanpan. That’s how long all of you have,” she adds, sweeping it around
to take in Cal, Dermot, Maiko, Oleg and Inez too.

  “You’re running us out of town?” Dermot squeaks.

  “You brought this sweet-faced scorpion into my nest,” Urszula says, “so you’re as guilty as he is, you and your whole stinking company of pitiful thesps.”

  “What if we don’t want to leave?” Cal challenges her, and I see Dermot blanch.

  Urszula gawps at him. “I’m the empress of Suanpan,” she says slowly. “A deviser. If you cross me…” She points to the crack high above us.

  Cal’s nostrils flare defiantly, but I can tell he’s troubled.

  “Forty-three minutes,” Urszula repeats. “I’ll stay here that long – though I doubt I’ll snooze – then I’m coming after you. And don’t think you can leave through the usual boreholes. They’re closed to your troupe. You’ll have to exit by those at the top of the cliff.”

  “The cliff?” Dermot bleats. “We’ll never get through all the pods and climb to the top of the cliff in forty-three minutes.”

  “It’s doable,” Urszula disagrees. “It will be a close-run thing, but if you’re fleet of foot and don’t linger during the climb to compose poems about the view…”

  “But –” Dermot begins to argue.

  Urszula upends the hourglass and the first grains of sand slide through.

  Inez curses, grabs Dermot and spins him towards the stairs. “Go!” she shouts.

  Oleg and Maiko have already set off, while Baba Jen, despite her short legs, is far ahead of them, almost at the top of the stairs, evidently having figured out that something foul was in the offing the moment she spotted the hourglass.

  “This isn’t fair,” Dermot wails, but hurries after the others.

  Cal hasn’t budged. “I’ll take her on,” he snarls. “I don’t care if she’s a deviser. She can’t treat us like this.”

  “Of course she can,” Inez snaps, then punches his arm. “Go!”

  Cal sets off once he’s given the order, and Inez touches my shoulder again. “We have to flee, Archie.”

  I haven’t moved. I’m trying to think of a way to stop this.

  “Don’t punish them for what I did,” I croak. “Let them leave. I’ll stay and serve you.”