[City of New York, November 3rd, 1866]
Inola woke with a start to the sound of one of the dockside girls vigorously entertaining a client. Though she couldn't see which bed was being so sorely tested, the thin partitions between them did little to drown out the noise. With a resigned sigh, she rolled out of her bed and dressed.
She gathered up a few supplies and walked out to the docks, where she was greeted by the first splash of purple in the dawn. The ocean was a green fire, and the seas were lively. The whole scene made her rush to drop her easel and plop down with her legs crossed. She opened her inkpots and began painting an abstract inspired by the colors before her. Inola then gave the landscape a second pass, straightening the lines and filling in the weak spots. New splashes of color joined the starry violet as the morning chewed away at the night.
"Good omen," Karsten noted from behind her. "Beautiful dawn."
"I thought so," Inola acknowledged. "Don't have the time or the tools for a full picture but I thought my little inks might do a little justice."
"Very pretty," Karsten observed, seriously. "I like how the dawn is opposite the sun. Unexpected."
"I..." Inola hesitated. Looking at her picture, he was correct. A cold yellow sun peaked over the green-flame surf, surrounded by darkness and white stars but the further up her eyes went, the brighter the day until at the very top there was blue sky. "I didn't mean to do that. How strange."
"Interesting," Karsten dropped to the boards next to her and nudged her with his shoulder. "Wonder what that means."
"Does it have to mean anything?"
"Everything means something to someone. It's the importance to the rest of us that's the question."
Inola frowned, thoughtfully. "I see. What's the importance of this to you?"
"It's pretty and weird. I like it." He gave her an encouraging smile.
Inola laughed, "Well. Aren't you just easy to please."
"Matter of fact, I am. I find a certain amount of agreeableness helps me enjoy my life."
Inola snorted, but had no response. They sat and watched the sunrise for a bit, until a commotion erupted from the entrance to the dockside house.
Palmer burst into the street, followed by several of the dockside girls. They weren't so much berating him as they were herding him the way one does with an intransigent chicken, with clucks and whistles. "Right, right! I get it, I'm out!" Palmer bellowed, and the girls went back inside. One of them, a young woman who looked to be one meal away from starvation, glared at Palmer before joining the others.
Beckham straightened his disheveled clothing and put his hat on his head before looking around. Seeing Karsten and Inola, he beamed as if he hadn't just been run out of his lodging and trundled over to them with a shouted greeting.
"Trouble with your accommodations?" Karsten chuckled.
"Minor disagreement," Beckham grinned. "I had not realized that all prices were final, so I tried to do a bit of haggling."
Inola gasped, scandalized. "What did you say?"
"Well," Beckham answered, carefully. "I mentioned that she could do with a few meals, and that if I was paying by the stone she'd be worth about thirty cents..."
"Beckham!" Inola shouted. "You can't just say that! I thought you Brits were supposed to be more proper!"
Beckham shrugged, "I personally would rather not pay for a shrinking violet. My tastes run towards the wilder ladies who wouldn't be offended by such things."
"You're a beast!" Inola insisted, looking to Karsten for validation.
Karsten grinned and shrugged. "At least the old badger's aware. Many people go through their entire lives without ever knowing what they want."
"I'm not that old," Palmer grumbled, patting his pockets and looking around. "I have to go scrape my men off the floor of whatever pub they're crowding. What's your plan for the day?"
"Romy has never been to this city before. I figure some of us could show her how we do things on this side of the pond."
Palmer barked a laugh. "Well, have fun. She seems to dislike mundane joy. Missed her calling in a nunnery, I think."
"I was educated in a nunnery, in fact," Romy's voice interjected.
Inola and Palmer both jumped. Even to Inola who was looking in that direction, even as singularly pale as Romy was, she had not been noticed approaching. Dupont was just exiting the dockhouse as Romy stepped up next to Palmer.
"Sorry, Miss Havek," Beckham stuttered, "I was being scandalous for Miss Gibson's benefit..."
"No need for apologies," Romy smiled. There was something of a snake in her cold, tight-lipped expression. "I have been accused of seriousness by many others. Quite the opposite from the sisters, though. Their words were always more along the lines of, 'sünderin,' 'schlampe,' and 'todgeweit'. I'm afraid I was a bit on the wild side for the poor nuns to keep up with."
Inola's eyebrows climbed high and she remarked, "I'd never have guessed..."
"Oh yes," Romy answered, with a hint of good humor breaking through, "I became very good at hiding such things from the sisters. I was so good at hiding it, men and women alike would be half naked and panting before they realized that they were being seduced."
Palmer gasped too hard and choked, sputtering. Aaron gawked at the surrounding docks as if worried someone may have overheard, while Karsten merely nodded knowingly as if some internal assumption had been confirmed. Inola smiled at her at first, and then the smile faded as her thoughts turned to their art session at the carriage house. A subtle heat touched her cheeks and she wondered if Romy was kidding. The pale woman's expression wasn't helping; her serpentine smile had been replaced with a self satisfied little smirk.
Before anything else was said, Palmer excused himself and trotted off.
"As if men can actually be scandalous," Romy sniffed. "They don't have the imagination."
Inola laughed, nervously, and attempted to change the subject. "So, Karsten. This was your idea, wasn't it? Where are we going first?"
Karsten leaned back on his hands and raised his face to the sky, letting the sunlight pass over his shut eyelids and basking in the dawn. "Make a day of it, I suppose. We'll have to acquire some money, buy some more presentable attire, and then wander around the Bowery until we get tired of it."
"I didn't agree to this, did I?" Aaron moaned.
"No, but you're coming anyway. Otherwise I'll let them eat you alive," he gestured with his chin to a small gaggle of dockside girls who had gathered next to the door. They were talking excitedly and glancing at Dupont with increasing excitement.
"I... don't have the constitution to stay," Aaron acknowledged. "Apparently I am coming with you. Where do we start? Is Madame Posat financing this venture as well?"
Romy started to answer, but Karsten got to it first, "Nah. I know just where to start. If the place hasn't been burned to the ground."
With that, the group was on their way deeper into the city. The clash of smells made Inola wrinkle her nose, and she produced a perfumed hankerchief from her bag to provide some relief. A gleam caught her eye from Karsten's hand.
Looking closer, she now saw that he sported a thick, squarish thumb ring on his left hand. In the clasp of the ring was a rough-looking silver-black stone. As they walked, he fished a fat, polished coin from his pocket and began running the coin over the ring in an oddly methodical circuit for a nervous tic.
"What's that?" Inola asked, cocking an eyebrow.
Karsten looked at her, with exaggerated sheepishness. "My lucky ring. Got it off a sailor in Wilmington."
"Are we going somewhere that needs luck?"
Karsten simply smiled and pointedly didn't answer. They located a small restaurant and ate a quick meal before continuing on to the seediest street that Inola had ever seen. A lively gambling den went unnamed, but boasted a sign depicting a grinning tiger in a surprisingly high quality painting.
At the early hour, the den was lightly populated with night shift workers and street toughs. Inola, Aaron and Romy hesitated while Karsten confidently selected a table and gestured them over.
What happened next was too fast for Inola to really track. She'd heard about Faro, it was extemely popular in Paris, but she had never actually witnessed it being played. Cards were lined up on the table, the players placed their bets on the cards, and a banker for the house drew two cards from a box to determine the winners and the losers.
It wasn't long before she noticed a pattern; Karsten was winning, and everyone else was losing. The first several times there was naked surprise on the banker's face. Eventually, this gave way to a red rage as hand after hand paid out to Karsten. For his part, he pretended not to notice the increasing anger directed at him.
Inola looked at the others for some clue as to what was happening. Aaron hadn't seemed to notice, but Romy was smirking in the manner of an audience member who had figured out a magician. Inola followed her gaze and happened to see the magic at work. When the banker glanced down to look at the cards he had flipped, Karsten's stack of coins jumped to the winning card. His hands not being anywhere near the table precluded anyone from making an accusation, and he was slick enough to do whatever he was doing just as all eyes were otherwise occupied.
The banker obviously knew beyond a shadow of a doubt, but something was holding him back from speaking of it. Karsten's wide grin let the dealer knew that he was aware of the situation. Several times, the banker slid a long cane over the edge of the table, perhaps looking for strings, before finishing a hand.
A scant hour after they had arrived, Karsten excused himself, collected his prodigious winnings and left. He tipped the banker with a wink on his way out. Inola and the others hurried after him.
"How did you do that?" Inola asked, when they had turned a corner on their foray deeper into the city.
Karsten held up the thumb with the ring and in the other hand showed her the coin he'd been passing over it. "Lucky ring. Coin goes on the bottom of the stack of bets." He released the coin and it jumped away from the ring, almost too fast for him to snatch it out of the air. "When the winning card is revealed I just pass it under the table and the coin is repelled from the ring. The trick is to stack the coins so they don't fall. That would give the game away."
Inola's mouth dropped open. "So you cheat?"
"Everyone cheats," Karsten laughed. "That's Faro. Everyone nudges their bets when they can get away with it. So long as they're not caught, it's just part of the game."
The cartographer absorbed this information. "What about the dealer? He couldn't have been older than sixteen. That poor kid is going to get sacked."
"Bankers are the biggest cheaters. He knew I was cheating because he had a gaffed box. Mirrors, hidden panels, those places don't spare expense on them. Problem is that he couldn't say for sure I was cheating without telling the rest of the table how he knew."
"You're a monster," Aaron noted, laughing. "Perhaps that boy will find more gainful employment..."
"His employment is gainful enough," a voice called out from behind them.
They turned to see a short, broad man. His clothing marked him as largely with the working class, but his suspenders had gleaming silver clamps and his shoes were immaculately shined and well-heeled. The men on either side of him exaggerated his lack of height, and made his broadness trivial by comparison. The same would go for the three men who blocked their path on the other side.
***
