Chapter 24: Quiet Bond

I gathered the cards off the floor and the table and squared them into a deck.

I shuffled them badly, and half of them sprayed across the cloth.

Caius waited.

He sat in the chair across from me with his collar open and the new mark showing.

He looked more patient than any man I had ever seen.

"Name the stake," he said again.

"Anything?"

"Anything you like."

I took a paper napkin from the holder and found a pen in the drawer by the stove.

I wrote my name across the middle of it, in capitals, slowly.

Then I laid it on the table between us.

He read it.

His face did not change, except around the eyes.

"That's you," he said.

"That's me."

"Twelve months and a day?"

"I'm writing a better paper," I said. "A stake of me, for any length you can win."

I dealt five cards each, face down.

I did it carefully, because my hands were steady and I wanted him to see that.

He did not pick his up.

He put one finger on the corner of the napkin.

He slid it back across the cloth until it lay in front of me again.

"Fold," he said.

"You haven't looked."

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