Read Online Selling Out by Justina Robson - Free Book Online

thought you’d never ask.” The faery reached into his inside pocket and drew out a sealed deck of playing cards, breaking the plastic wrapper with his thumbnail as he did so and shedding the cards into his outstretched hand in a single, flowing movement. The box ended up on the glass table, the plastic in his pocket, the cards in his resting hands. Zal had not seen exactly what happened, he realised. Malachi looked at him expectantly. A soft furl of wild magic, summoned by Malachi’s invisible wings, crept between them—its presence was a guarantee the faery made that both of them would be able to detect magical forms of cheating in the other.
    “No limits Texas Hold ’Em,” Zal said, sitting fowards, starting to like matters much better now they had dispensed with the ridiculous human manners of simple talk and were playing. He flexed his hands and found them stiff. It was too long since he’d played for anything worth winning.
    “Questions for answers. One question per game. Stakes on the Hoodoo Measure Rule . . .”
    “You got the Hoodoo?” Zal would have to fetch one.
    “Always, my man,” Malachi assured him with a smile and from his jacket pocket produced a small handful of recently picked grass. With skilful fingers he fashioned a crude doll with the strands. He pulled a hair from his head and Zal did the same, handing it over so both were wrapped together before being wound around and around the grass to create a separation making head and torso; the hair was the noose that made its neck. “Good enough,” Malachi said and set the doll on the table under the shadow of a daisy. He blew on one finger and tapped the doll on the head with it.
    There was a faint burst of the scent of old battlegrounds, steeped in bloody mud. A tiny voice said, “Don’t cheat and don’t lie, or if you do I’ll have your eye.”
    “Cool,” Zal said approvingly. Whatever else he was, the faery was a good Maker, and Making was one of the most difficult of any magical art. He watched the black faery’s hands shuffle the cards and the tiny Hoodoo doll sat down to wait.
    Malachi shuffled the deck, his fingers moving in a blur, the cards shifting like water, in and out, round about. He dealt two and put the rest aside. Zal studied his cards with a nonchalant air. Queen of Spades, King of Diamonds. The faery glanced at his and waited.
    “Impersonal noninteresting,” Zal said, beginning with the obligatory stake of the lowest and least worthwhile kind of question.
    “Impersonal interesting,” Malachi said, raising him two instantly. The faery watched him closely.
    Zal shrugged and yawned. “Impersonal interesting,” he said, matching the stake.
    Malachi dealt two cards on the table face up. Three of clubs. Nine of spades.
    Zal felt a certain kind of sinking but strove to distance himself from it. He knew that everyone betrayed themselves but experienced liars only betrayed themselves to a practised eye that knew them and Malachi did not know him well enough. “Impersonal sensitive,” he said.
    “Impersonal sensitive,” Malachi matched. He silently dealt out a third card.
    “Impersonal acute,” Zal said automatically, always geared to risk. He looked at the card afterwards: ten of hearts.
    “Impersonal acute.” The sixth card appeared.
    Zal suspected the worst. They showed their hands.
    “You had nothing,” Malachi said with satisfaction showing a ten and a nine; two pairs. “So, should we tell the humans about the Others, do you think?”
    “Nah,” Zal said, gathering the cards up with a sigh and shuffling them himself. As he did so he watched the faery with considerably more curiosity than he had previously felt. How curious that Malachi would bring up such a taboo on the very first play . . . and something so apparently unconnected to his immediate concern. Zal added with some conviction, “They’d only worry unnecessarily and they have a lot of worries to get on with just through learning to know us in our