Page 100 of Foul Days

Kosara grabbed the dice and threw first. A two, a three, and a five. Completely useless. She wished she hadn’t wasted her three sixes for the test run. Blackbeard won with two fives and a four.

Kosara threw the dice again. She got a weak combination once more. Luckily, Blackbeard’s dice were even weaker.

“One-one,” he said, as if she wasn’t paying attention.

Before she threw the dice again, Kosara rubbed them in between her hands and blew on them for good luck. It didn’t help. Three ones. It couldn’t get any worse than that.

Blackbeard also rubbed the dice between his large palms and blew on them, his moustache twitching as he tried to cover his smirk.

He threw three sixes. Unbelievable.

“You win,” she said with a sigh. This was why she had to stop gambling.

Instead of replying, he pushed the glass of truth serum towards her.

She downed it in one go. It slid down her throat, thick as syrup, and sat heavy in her stomach.

For a long moment, Blackbeard stared at her. Droplets of wine caught in his moustache, rolling down his beard, glistening just as bright as the golden beads.

“Tell me”—his eyes flashed—“how you lost your shadow.”

Kosara tried not to let the surprise show on her face. “So, you noticed.”

“You don’t get to grow as old as I am in Chernograd if you don’t have a very sharp eye. Well?”

Kosara started talking. She couldn’t stop. Her tongue shaped the words on its own, her lips moved against her will. She told him everything: about the game of Kral and Irnik, and the teleport brogues, and the Zmey.… That last part was particularly embarrassing.

Perhaps this had been a mistake. She should have gone to bed like Asen rather than sit here, spilling her guts in front of a stranger. The one thing that made her feel better was the fact that after all this was over, she’d probably never see Blackbeard again.

Towards the end, she felt the serum’s hold over her weakening. Just to make sure, she sneaked in a few small lies. It wasn’t easy. Her tongue fought against her as she struggled to form the words, but she won in the end.

“And that’s how I saved the prince-regent of Belograd from drowning,” she concluded.

Blackbeard ran a hand over his beard, making the beads clang. “I didn’t know you could take a witch’s shadow.”

“You can’t. It needs to be given willfully.”

“And once you’ve given it away…”

“I have no power over it.”

“I’ve heard they don’t come cheap.”

“They are expensive,” Kosara said, before she managed to stop herself, finally. She’d been trying for a while. She didn’t like where his line of questioning was going. “But that’s a different story.”

Blackbeard gave her a knowing smile. He finished his drink in one long gulp.

“One more game?” Kosara asked. That was her problem with gambling. Once she started …

Blackbeard took the dice. He won the first round, but Kosara beat him the second. The third time, he threw the dice at the table with such gusto, two of them rolled off the surface and landed on the floor, immediately disqualifying him.

“Oops.” He laughed. “You win.”

He didn’t seem to mind losing—from what Kosara had seen of him earlier, he enjoyed telling stories.

The glass of truth serum glinted in the lamplight as he raised it in the air. “Cheers!” He downed it in one go and shook his head rapidly, as if to dispel an unpleasant taste. “Ask.”

“The compass,” Kosara said, feeling its weight in her pocket. She’d had a while to think about her question. “Where did you get it from?”

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