Wild Card Read Online Free PDF

happening to him.” He opened the door and turned back toward me. “What are you waiting for? We don’t want him to lose everything before I’m there to take it.”
     
    *
     
    While we were on our way to Sirens, I fessed up about the rest of what I knew about Lord Sethis Mortsani.
    He was just as good a card player as—if not better than—Phaelan. For the sake of his ego, I left out the “better than” part. My cousin would find that out himself soon enough; it’d be up to his ego to accept that enlightenment when it happened.
    Phaelan was predictably unimpressed.
    He shrugged. “I could always cheat.”
    I snorted. “You could always try, and get your ass tossed in the canal out back. If Nathrach’s boys are feeling generous, you might even be conscious when you hit the water so you don’t drown. I heard that as of last week, oracle crystals have been installed at his high-stakes tables.”
    “Shit.”
    Oracle crystals kept magic—any magic—from being used. Even a simple questing spell would set them off. Questings were usually used to see how much power a magic user was packing; however, they could also indicate whether an opponent’s heart rate was up, or if they were sweating more than normal—basically whether they were bluffing or not.
    It was my turn to shrug. “The man’s trying to run an honest game.”
    “There’s two words that should never be used together.”
    “What?”
    “Honest and game. It’s just not right.”
    “It’s plenty right. That’s why you have a problem with it. On the upside, what keeps you from getting creative also keeps the mages from enhancing their odds with magic. Keeps cards what they should be—a game of skill and chance.”
    “Part of my skill is cheating.”
    I smiled. “Then that’s a chance you’ll have to take.”
     
    *
     
    Tamnais Nathrach’s arrival in Mermeia three months ago had turned the city upside down.
    It took a lot for the citizens of a city like Mermeia to notice you. Suffice it to say that as the former chief mage of the goblin queen, duke of the royal family, and supposedly grieving husband of a recently and mysteriously murdered noble wife, Tamnais Nathrach more than filled the bill.
    There were all kinds of rumors flying around concerning why he’d left his position as what was basically Queen Glicara Mal’Salin’s magical enforcer. It was said that his departure from the goblin court and his wife’s murder were connected.
    Whatever his reasons for leaving Regor, when he arrived in town, he had plenty of money and was ready to spend it. He purchased the palazzo of an old b ut imp ov erished Mermeian f amil y and transformed it into Sirens—the most notorious nightclub and gambling parlor inthecit y .Somepeoplesaidheboughtthepalazzo;others said he w on it in a card game with the f amily ’ s foolishyounghei r .Af e wwhisperedthathe ’ dall b utstolen itusingblackmailorblackmagic.
    Those last two words, at least, were true. Tamnais Nathrach was a dark mage, a practitioner of black magic. I k n e w only too well what that meant. Black magic and the power it gave was an a d d i c t i on, like a drug. The more power a mage got, the more they wanted—and the m o r e t h e y w e r e w il l i n g to do to g et i t .
    To give you a comparison, Sethis Mortsani’s depredations were child’s play compared to what a dark mage of Tamnais Nathrach’s reputed power was capable of. He’d managed to stay at h is qu e e n ’ s r i g h t h a nd f or f i v e y e a r s . I n the deadly world of g o b l i n c o u r t p o l i t i c s, where surviving past lunch was a daily accomplishment, f i v e y e a r s w a s a n e t e r n i t y .
    Sirens consisted of a nightclub on the ground floor and a casino on the second. Tamnais Nathrach was reputed to have a lavish apartment on the top floor. He employed all of the races that called Mermeia home, including elves. In fact, his casino floor manager was an elf by the name of Lorcan Karst, who had been