Chapter X
THE GAMBLING PARLOR
Like two wild animals, Viktor and Romulus leapt onto the walls of the hole, scrambling upward with every ounce of their muscle. Romulus tried to dive toward one Orange Split, but the ground beneath him collapsed; his legs fell back into the hole as he skidded on his stomach, scraping his nails across the ground. Viktor rolled toward the farthest Orange Split and hurled it at a gravestone, blasting the rock into pieces. The Crossbones Clan yelped in astonishment.
Meanwhile, Romulus managed to spring away from the hole and grab the second bomb, flinging it away with all his might. When the object struck the shack at the Boneyard's edge, a corner of the building was reduced to flying wooden splinters. Amidst the chaos of breaking jam jars and Romani swears, Viktor spotted the final Orange Split behind him, only feet from the hole. With nothing left of the wick and no time to throw it, he soared through the air and smacked the bomb toward the crater in the earth. It disappeared over the edge, but before it hit the bottom, a deafening blast erupted. A fountain of dirt exploded out of the hole, and Viktor felt a tremendous tidal wave of oncoming blackness.
Viktor's eyelids fluttered open. His head pounded. As his eyes adjusted, he realized he was sitting in a chair next to Romulus, who seemed to be locked in conversation with the Gypsies, who were lounging around a candlelit room.
What is this place? Viktor wondered, taking in walls covered with odd, colorful fabrics. How did we get here?
A lovely girl stooped in front of him, her dark hair framing a glowing face. She patted a cold wet cloth on his forehead.
"H-Hello," Viktor mumbled. "I'm ... I'm ..."
The girl's blood-red lips parted into a smile. "You're awake. I'm Roksana."
"Wh-Where are we?"
"The Doghouse—headquarters of the Crossbones Clan," said the boxer, Andrei.
Viktor felt a blast of cold wind on his back; to his surprise, the back corner of the room had been ripped open, exposing them to the elements. Outside, headstones rested under the dark sky.
"This is the shack by the graveyard?" Viktor said, shivering.
"The house by the graveyard, Aryk-angel," corrected Andrei, his face turning whiter. "And you can thank your friend and his bombs for the cold draft."
"I told you!" Romulus said. "I only lit them because we thought you were going to shoot us or stab us or something."
"What did I say!" exclaimed the musician, Rover. "Scaring someone to death isn't funny—it's deadly! And all so you didn't have to dig a stinking jam cellar yourselves!"
"And who digs a fruit cellar next to graves?" Romulus snapped.
"Actually this is a memorial site, not a real graveyard," said Dukker.
Cappi held his Irish hat over his heart. "Aye! We Ruska Roma are burned after we die. We're travelers and refuse to have our bodies bound to earthen plots."
"Ignore my brothers—they should be ashamed of themselves," said Roksana, and when Viktor looked confused, she added, "They're twins, but I'm their triplet."
Romulus frowned. "Is that even poss-"
"Obviously it's possible! We're standing here, aren't we?" said Cappi.
Roksana shot him a dirty look. "Anyways, these are my friends, Camelia and Lala."
The girls greeted Viktor and Romulus warmly. Camelia had an infectious smile and blonde hair wrapped in a yellow headscarf. Lala was petite and had dark hair full of jewelry. Viktor hadn't seen many Gypsy girls in his life, but these ones lived up to their reputation of being mysterious and striking.
"Well, as far as I'm concerned, we're even," said Andrei. "We played a nasty joke on you Aryk-angels, and you blew up a bit of our home. Fair's fair. Really, I trust you two more now that I know you're not a couple of prissy, straightlaced—"
"No," cried Belch, whose small legs had been pacing dramatically back and forth. "He's mad that trusts in the tameness of a wolf!"
Viktor had had enough of this deranged runt of the litter. "You're the one that's mad! You're half killer, half clown, and fully berserk!"
In a flash, Belch sprang up onto a stool and faced the room, wiping tears of joy from his big brown eyes. "The lunatic, the lover, and the poet are of imagination compact—and I played them all! 'Classical acting doesn't work, Belch.' 'Clean up your act, Belch.' Well, all I hear now is crickets, you scoffers!"
Andrei kicked the stool out from under the tiny boy, who squawked in terror and smacked the ground sideways.
"Et tu, Brute! Then fall, Caesar!" Belch collapsed lifelessly.
"He is ill, isn't he?" asked Romulus.
Dukker nodded. "His mind got poisoned in London with ideas like 'stage presence' and 'the acting process.'"
"And after getting kicked out of every ensemble in England for being too bloody annoying, he leeched onto us during our travels. To this day, he never stops quoting some playwright he dubs 'the Bard of Avon,'" said Cappi.
Viktor glanced at Belch's rigid body. "Is he alright?"
"He plays dead—says it's part of finishing a scene."
Roksana rolled her eyes and turned to the blood brothers. "So we still haven't heard your names? Who are you? Why did you come here?"
"I'm Viktor."
"Romulus."
"Ah, so this is the boy of the forest," said Roksana, casting a smile at Lala and Camelia. "Yeah, we Gypsy girls pick up on Aryk's chatter."
"Who cares if he was raised by wolves or the Leshy," Andrei snapped. "I'm more interested in why these Aryk-angels risked their necks to get a glimpse of Kasta Way."
While Romulus brooded over his fast-spreading reputation, Viktor spoke up, figuring that, if anyone, this would be the group who appreciated bluntness.
"We need answers. We figured your people, from their culture and history with Aryk, might know a thing or two about ... playing cards."
Unlike the youths of Aryk, the Gypsies didn't back away or get angry; instead their eyes roared like bonfires.
"Let me guess, you want to know about the three laws?" said Cappi.
"And the writing on the walls?" added Dukker.
"Yes."
"We've wondered about it too," said Andrei, "but I'm afraid we can't tell you anything new."
Viktor and Romulus were crestfallen. Their trip had been for nothing.
Shaking a finger at them, Andrei continued. "But we know someone who can—men who've lived in Kasta Way in the old times. Now answer this: How much do you have invested in this mystery?"
"Everything," said Romulus.
"Excellent. Then meet us back here tomorrow evening."
Viktor cleared his throat, looking around. "Sorry, but you want us to come back ... after we blew up part of your house?"
Andrei waved a hand. "What's a cloud to a bird?"
On Saturday, Viktor awoke long before dawn and finished his chores by mid afternoon. His mother agreed to let him eat dinner with his new friend, Romulus, but she had no idea that meal was consumed as the boys traveled back across the Southeastern Steppes. Knowing the location of Kasta Way made the trip much easier, and by the time the blood brothers had gobbled down strips of salted meat and fresh vegetables, they'd skirted around the perimeter of Kasta Way, so as to approach the graveyard without navigating endless tents.
Rover, who was leaning against the graveyard fence, broke away from his tune to greet Viktor and Romulus with a wide smile. He ushered them into the Doghouse, which was empty, save for a table where sat Roksana and a boy with messy black hair and olive skin. Viktor recognized him as the youth who had thrown a hammer into the back of a fleeing Masqueraider on that fateful night in Prospekt Street.
"I'm Arseni." The boy yanked his arm out of an icy bucket of water to give them each a cold handshake. Then he motioned for them to sit. "You must be Viktor and Romulus."
Viktor gawked at the tremendous red burn on the Arseni's forearm.
"Aye, bad, isn't it? I was fire-juggling for a noble, and the wag had the nerve to call his hounds. They bowled me over, and my whole sleeve caught fir
e!"
"Y-You're a fire-juggler?" Viktor said, amazed.
"Yeah, but wait till you see the twins do their acrobatics—now that's something."
Roksana snorted at the mention of her brothers. Then she began to clean Arseni's wound with a practiced eye, taking out rolls of cloth and dipping them in a strange liquid to wrap around the burn.
"What's that?" Romulus asked, his curiosity over inventions apparently getting the better of him.
Roksana smiled. "It's oil of pumpkin seeds—the best burn remedy there is. And when you cover a cloth bandage with the oil, you've got Pumpkin Patches, a Ruska Roma original."
"Could you teach me to make it?"
"Later," cut in Rover as he pulled out a card deck. "First, we've got to prepare you for tonight. I'm assuming you never learned how to play Russian Preferans?"
Viktor's jaw dropped. "C-Cards? You have cards? You must know Molotov's banned them!"
"Yeah, but this isn't the most dangerous deck with the vines on the back, is it? That's the one that can get you killed on the spot—or so I've heard."
Viktor's eyes darted to Romulus, who sat unmoving. It escaped neither blood brother that the king of spades had come from such a deck. But what quality set those cards apart?
Over the next half hour, Arseni and Roksana watched Rover teach their guests the basic rules of Russian Preferans, which were surprisingly complex. There were two teams of two, and everyone took a turn being the dealer. The game revolved around winning tricks, which were groups of three cards laid down by the three active players respectively. The highest or trump card of the group won the trick. Viktor understood that you bet on how many tricks you thought you could win with your hand of ten cards, but beyond that, he was lost.
When Andrei returned with the twins from an errand, he urged Rover to hurry it up. "Who cares what they bet—so long as it isn't a misère. They'll have beginner's luck!"
Romulus perked up. "What's a misère?"
"A bet that you would win no tricks," explained Rover. "It's nearly impossible since you're bound to have a few high cards, which would win tricks. Best to stick with lesser bets, like guessing you'll win six or seven tricks."
"So the Parlor?" Dukker said.
Cappi jumped into action. "The Parlor!"
"Only Lady Fortuna can help the Aryk-angels now!" Andrei said. "Let's go before Belch gets back from his audition!"
"Go where?" said Belch, springing through the doorway.
"Blast it!" Andrei punched the door back open and dashed out into the night, shadowed by Arseni and Belch. Cappi and Dukker ran toward the missing corner of the room and flipped sideways into the night air, landing in between rows of gravestones.
"Where are we going?" shouted Romulus.
"The Parlor—a secret gambling den!" And Rover jumped out of sight.
Roksana smiled, amused. "Well, you'd better hurry and follow them."
Viktor and Romulus leapt out of the missing corner of the Doghouse into the foggy graveyard. Ahead, Dukker cackled in delight and did a no-handed cartwheel over a gravestone, his head coming so close to the monument that his cross necklace clanked against the limestone. Cappi ran just as wildly, hurdling row after row of graves with spinning kicks and twists. Though the blood brothers were mesmerized by the twins' acrobatics, Belch pulled off an even more incredible feat, vanishing entirely. Viktor, Romulus, and Rover witnessed the act and ran toward the spot of his disappearance.
Belch popped his rosy face out of the hole dug as a jam cellar. He spit dirt from his mouth and hefted up a broken jar of strawberry jam to his eye level.
"Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio!" bewailed the pint-sized boy to the heavens.
Andrei doubled back to the scene and hoisted Belch out of hole, slinging him over his shoulder like a bag of potatoes and setting off at a jog.
"A fellow of most infinite jest, of most excellent fancy: He hath borne me on his back a thousand times!" Belch cried.
Running along the abandoned grass road, Arseni turned to Romulus. "I meant to ask you about those bombs."
"Orange Splits?"
Arseni leapt over a log. "Yeah, is it possible to make the blast smaller?"
"Sure."
"And could the explosion be timed—you know, so if I threw one up over my head, it would burst away from me?"
"Have you lost your mind?" Rover shouted. "It's not enough to juggle fire—now you want bombs!"
"Give not this rotten orange to your friend," quoted Belch from Andrei's back.
As the gang reached the kaleidoscope world of Kasta Way, they sprinted straight into the anarchy, parting a way through swarms of Ruska Roma. Andrei clipped more than a few men with Belch's flopping head, but when punches were swung at him, the boxer dodged the blows with ease. Viktor could barely keep up, and even Romulus, whose speed surpassed the twins, had a hard time. He was so accustomed to running through a forest of unmoving trees that a roaring crowd proved a foreign challenge.
When a massive, green-hued bonfire came into view, the twins dashed toward the blaze, causing dancers and drinkers around the circle to shriek and dive out of their way. At the last moment, Dukker slid to a stop in front of the flame and turned back to his sprinting brother. Cappi planted a foot on Dukker's brawny shoulder, and Dukker sprang upward with all his might. As Cappi flipped like a corkscrew over the fiery beacon, a young Gypsy pitched bright liquid on the flames, which burst purple. Cappi landed and rolled onto his feet. The twins bowed at either side of the ring to a deafening applause.
When at last Andrei came to a red-and-white striped tent staked in the wet grass, he dropped Belch like a rock. "Alright, this is the Parlor. Now follow my lead."
"And mine," added Belch as he popped up.
"No, not yours. That would be catastrophic."
Andrei slipped through the giant opening flap of the tent, and one by one, the boys followed. Viktor felt reckless energy course through his veins as he and Romulus slipped inside, breaking both Aryk's laws and their own decision to refrain from gambling.
The size of the Parlor was deceiving. From the outside, it looked as though the tent was one of many individual shelters, yet on the inside, Viktor saw that many tents had been joined together to form a snaking gambling den. Game tables were crammed into all sorts of gloomy alcoves along the walls, and men crowded around them rolling dice, flipping coins, but mostly playing cards, and from the looks of it, playing Preferans. Tobacco smoke and muttered curses hung in the air just as heavy as the drooping fabrics that served as a ceiling. Lantern light hid the time of day; twist and turns concealed the tent's end.
Immediately the gang split up, and while Rover was ordered to keep an eye on Belch and the twins, Andrei and Arseni escorted the blood brothers into the far depths of the Parlor. Viktor quickly lost direction among the many forks in the tents, but after passing scores of shadowy figures drinking even blacker brews, Andrei approached two men sitting in the darkest nook of the tent yet.
After speaking Romani, he waved the blood brothers over. "Viktor, Romulus, let me introduce you: This is Yanko, a famous boxing trainer, and Zindelo is a master of horses—the best of the Ruska Roma and maybe the entire Romani Gypsies. Arseni and I will play them Preferans first while you learn by watching."
They shook hands and sat. Zindelo, a powerful middle-aged man with dark features and a large jaw, struck a match and lit candles to better see the cards.
Yanko, an older man with gray hair, a beard, and a crooked nose, spoke: "Kidnapping Aryk's boxers now, Andrei?"
"Like I'd need to," he answered flatly.
The old man's breath smelled like pure vodka. "You might. My inside man says the Spektor boy fights as dirty as his father."
"You're boxing Boris Spektor?" Viktor said, picturing the class bully.
"Christmas Day, bare knuckle," Yanko cut in. "Then there'll be Dmitry versus Isidor, Simionce versus Kliment, and Leo—that's Master Pardus to you all—versus a boxer from a Siberian prison. And by that ti
me, Aryk's river will be frozen. That's a grisly fight location—spooky."
"Why is it spooky?" asked Viktor.
"Well, it's cursed, isn't it?" Yanko clucked in dismay after picking up the ten cards dealt him. "Oh, woe is me! Nevertheless, I bet seven tricks with clubs as trump."
Arseni snorted. "Cards love tears, but we'll accept the bet."
And so, as Yanko and Zindelo began to play their younger counterparts, wagering coins and trick-taking, Romulus asked a question innocently enough, though the other boys knew it was the tip of the spear in their hunt for answers: "So how long have you been playing Preferans?"
"Oh, for decades. I've traveled far and wide dealing horses in Russia," said Zindelo importantly, "and it's that drifting spirit that spreads ideas among our kinfolk."
"Does everyone in Kasta Way travel together?" Viktor asked.
Yanko chortled. "Goodness, boy, and they say Aryk has a school?"
Viktor flushed, deciding to let Romulus ask the questions.
"Kasta Way is a base camp," Zindelo clarified, pulling a swig from his flask. "Bases remain rooted, while smaller groups move about constantly."
"That's odd. I searched these steppes several years ago," said Romulus. "They were deserted."
"Yes," said Yanko slowly, glancing at Zindelo, "Kasta Way did disband for some time. Those were dark days. It's only picked up in recent years."
Now Andrei and Arseni also listened, intrigued.
"Yanko and I are of the few who remember Kasta Way in the early years," said Zindelo, "when it was large and dangerous but full of opportunity. Mind you, everything changed around the time you lot were born—the house of cards collapsed, as they say. Those days are no more, not after Molotov destroyed the cards to keep the peace."
Viktor's mind raced: Molotov destroyed the playing cards in Aryk? Why?
Romulus shrugged. "I don't see how destroying the cards made things much safer."
"Are all you Aryk boys daft?" Zindelo asked. "This was a violent time. Under Napoleon's leadership, France had gone to war against Russia. The world was unstable. Think about who cards attracted—miners, soldiers, gamblers, and recruiters—these men proved dangerous. They may have claimed to be true and faithful sons of the Motherland, but they were also violent sons. To keep the peace, Molotov had to destroy the cards and get rid of the criminals ... though, of course, there is the other story ... the less than ... credible explanation of his actions."
Romulus narrowed his eyes. "I didn't think any Ruska Roma knew that story."
"We know the Legend of the Leopard."