Chapter 186: Single-Card Divination

"One of the judges is my aunt," Richard said, putting the connection on the table.

"Isabella Ashford, associate professor in the Department of Classics at Imperial Capital University."

Mr. and Mrs. Coleman exchanged a glance.

It was fast, but Richard caught it.

"...Ashford," Mrs. Coleman repeated.

"Yes."

"Your mother is an Ashford?"

"She is."

"Then..." Mrs. Coleman adjusted her wording. "Did your family use to live in the capital?"

Richard took a sip of tea without answering directly.

That string of questions told him most of what he needed to know.

Underneath the politeness, the household was running a ledger on him.

"Where's Coleman?" he asked, steering the conversation elsewhere.

"Out back," Old Coleman said, rising from his seat. "I'll take you."

"Dad."

The call came from the top of the stairs.

Coleman came down carrying a set of protective gear.

"I'll take him out myself."

He jerked his chin toward the back. "Come on."

Richard stood and set his teacup back on the tray.

"Thank you for the tea, ma'am."

"Don't be strangers. Stay for dinner."

"No need, I have—"

"You have to stay," Mrs. Coleman insisted. "I've already told the kitchen."

Richard glanced at Coleman.

Coleman didn't take the bait; he just turned and headed for the back door.

Richard followed him through the kitchen and out into the yard.

It was larger than he'd expected, enclosed on all four sides by old red brick.

Richard swept the walls with his Spirit Vision.

A very faint ether trace lingered in the marks cut into the masonry.

"What are those carvings?"

"My grandfather's generation," Coleman said, dropping his gear onto a bench by the wall. "Basic anti-eavesdropping inscriptions."

"Still work?"

"Long dead."

Coleman tapped the base of the wall with his boot. "The bricks held up, though."

He looked back at Richard.

"The yard's a size larger than most people's around here. The walls are thicker, too."

"My family's produced a few Hunters over the years."

He stood by the bench, buckling on his protective gear piece by piece.

"We even had one on the Secret path who did weapons work."

"Back when the Industrial Revolution was starting up, he caught the wave. Hit Minor Adept and made enough money to keep the family afloat for generations."

He fastened his helmet strap. "By my dad's time, most of it was spent."

"So they're looking to you?"

"Yeah."

Coleman checked the fit of the helmet.

"Before the military academy results came out, they fussed over me the same way they just fussed over you."

"After the letters came, the collie ate better than I did."

Richard didn't say anything.

Coleman snapped his shoulder guards in place and walked out into the middle of the yard.

"They're only being this nice because you're on the Scholar track."

He stopped and held out a hand.

"Ignore them. Let's get to work."

Richard set his bag against the wall and pulled out his roll of silver needles.

"Ready."

The moment he spoke, Coleman started moving.

His pace was even, his steps short, his direction shifting without any pattern Richard could track.

Richard locked onto him with his Spirit Vision and ran through the Moon Nail sequence.

Catch the needle, draw the breath, pierce the needle.

Halfway through the third stage, he caught Coleman's lead foot shifting half a step to the left.

Richard adjusted his line.

He threw.

Thwack.

The needle grazed Coleman's left shoulder and bit into the brick wall behind him.

The form was clean, but the shot was three inches wide.

Coleman worked the needle out of the mortar and tossed it back.

"Again."

"Alright."

Richard caught it and reset his stance.

This time he figured Coleman would break left again and aimed an inch to that side from the start.

The instant the needle left his fingers, Coleman shifted half a step right.

Thwack.

Another mark in the brickwork.

Over the next run, Richard tried every lead he could think of.

Moving lead, fixed lead, close aim, far aim, left shoulder, right shoulder, chest, waist.

Six throws left six shallow pits in the wall.

He stood at the east end of the yard, his breathing starting to fray.

Coleman pulled the sixth needle from the brick and weighed it in his palm.

"You're reading my setup," Richard said, finally catching on.

"Yeah. Pre-reading's a basic exercise in the Path of Blood Ignition."

"I can't see ether, but your whole breathing rhythm shifts when you gather."

Coleman lowered his hand.

"Once the rhythm changes, I know the throw's coming."

Richard remembered his aunt saying something along the same lines that morning.

"Your range and precision are fine, but you don't screen anything."

"Is there a way to mask it?"

"Don't gather before you throw, don't throw when you gather, don't pull back once it's out."

Coleman rattled off the three rules. "Try the simple one first—once you've gathered, hold it instead of throwing right away."

For the next half hour, Coleman used the plainest drills he had to fix Richard's release.

They only ran for thirty minutes because Richard's ether gave out.

And that was with [Healing] letting him use his breathing to bring the recovery rate up.

Almost every needle he threw in that stretch got dodged or knocked aside.

When they finished, Richard rolled his needles back into their case.

By dragging out the intake phase, he could already keep that warning flare of ether from showing before the release.

Reining in his Spirit Vision while reading a moving target was its own kind of [Perception] training.

Coleman unbuckled his helmet strap.

They dumped their gear back on the bench.

The question Richard had been carrying all afternoon finally came out.

"Coleman, let me ask you something."

"Go ahead."

"If somebody found a way to fix your circuit defect, would you still take the Hunter path?"

Coleman set his canteen down.

He let a dozen seconds pass before he answered.

"...I don't know."

"You don't want to?"

"I do."

"..."

"But Hunter training's a grind."

The boy looked down.

"Those two years at the academy, I was up before dawn running ten miles, lifting weights, holding my breath, doing pain drills."

"I worked harder than anyone in my intake because my parents were standing behind me with a whip."

"They were waiting for me to finish and pull the family out of the hole."

"Every night I lay in bed hurting from head to foot."

"But even hurting like that, I had something to aim at."

Coleman picked up the canteen and took another pull.

"The day I walked out of the instructor's office, that aim was gone."

"You ask me if I want to go back to it—I think about it every day."

"Those two..."

Coleman nodded toward the house.

"They knew you were coming, so they dragged every decent piece of furniture out of storage.

They left those calling cards out where you'd see them, too. That's every respectable name in the family that's still breathing."

Richard nodded, stood up, and went to get his bag from the wall.

"I'm not staying for dinner."

"Good. I'll handle my mother."

Coleman clapped him on the shoulder. "Don't skip next week, or I'll have to listen to them sighing all evening."

Richard laughed.

"I'll be here."

Coleman pulled the heavy door open.

Richard walked out of the yard.

He went back through the kitchen and the hall to the front room.

Old Coleman and his wife were sitting by the hearth waiting for him.

"Richard," Mrs. Coleman said, getting to her feet at once. "Dinner's almost ready."

"Mrs. Coleman, I have things to take care of at home. I can't stay tonight."

"...Why the rush?"

"Look at the state of my trousers," Richard said, pointing at the dust on his cuffs. "I need to go wash up."

"We'll have the driver take you."

"No need, I can take the omnibus."

"You have to take the carriage."

Mrs. Coleman wouldn't hear no for an answer.

"You got that dust in our yard."

..................

At two o'clock on Sunday afternoon, Richard went up to the third floor of the Branch Office as usual.

Before he even reached the door, he heard a familiar woman's voice dressing someone down inside.

When he opened it, he had to bite the inside of his cheek to keep from laughing.

Old Biggs looked like a schoolboy standing in the corner. He was hovering by the table with a drafting pen in his hand and sweat running down his face.

Mrs. MacNeil sat across from him.

She had a copper dish and several Inscription Diagrams spread out in front of her; she held a red pen in one hand and had just circled a stroke Old Biggs had finished.

"Bigelow, you've gone over this turn three times and it's still crooked."

Mrs. MacNeil set her pen down. "How many years have you been doing this?"

"Senior Sister..." Old Biggs sounded like he was begging. "This group's awkward to begin with—"

"Awkward?" Mrs. MacNeil looked up.

"When you run into this out in the field, are you going to tell the evil creature 'this one's awkward to begin with' and ask it to wait while you draw it again?"

Old Biggs shut his mouth.

Richard stood in the doorway, not sure whether to come in or back out.

Old Biggs looked up, saw him, and his face lit up like a lamp.

"Richard! You're here!" He practically hurried over. "Good, good—Senior Sister's here, let me introduce—"

"I've met him," Mrs. MacNeil said without looking up. "Whitcom."

"Right, right, Whitcom."

Old Biggs nodded hard and took the chance to shuffle two steps sideways, nudging the diagram with all the red circles toward the corner of the table.

"Bigelow." Mrs. MacNeil pulled the sheet back and set it in front of him again. "I didn't say stop."

Old Biggs's shoulders went right back down.

"Alright, look at you."

Mrs. MacNeil laid her pen on the table. "Take it home and do it again. Bring it to me next week."

"Next week?"

"I'll still be in Briston next week."

"Yes, ma'am."

Old Biggs gathered his sheets and shrank off to the side.

Mrs. MacNeil turned her attention to Richard.

"Here?"

"Yes, ma'am."

"Sit down."

Richard got up from the bench and brought a stool over to the table.

"Where did Old Biggs get to with you these past two months?"

Richard gave a straight answer: "Spirit Vision up to twenty seconds of fixed gaze, divination up to Stone Reading."

"Mhm," Mrs. MacNeil said, nodding. "That's as far as he can take you."

"..."

Over at the other table, Old Biggs didn't make a sound.

"Don't sit over there pretending I can't see you," Mrs. MacNeil said without turning her head.

"Come here."

Old Biggs shuffled back.

"There are three or four places in what you taught him these past two months that need straightening out. I'll talk to you about it later."

"Go sit back down."

Old Biggs slunk away.

"Don't look at him like that."

Mrs. MacNeil brought her eyes back to Richard.

"Your problem with not screening your Spirit Vision is worse than his."

Richard straightened his back.

"I know what you've covered over the last two months."

"Old Biggs's part is done. What I'm teaching you starts with Tarot Cards."

"...Tarot Cards?"

"I used them once that night in Whitcom."

"The Bridge-Crossing spread," Richard said. "You turned the Bridge (Edmond), the Origin (Maggie), the Crossing (me), the Destination (Theodore), and then the Obstacle at the end."

"Good memory."

Mrs. MacNeil reached into the leather case beside her and brought out a box.

"My teacher's deck. You've seen it."

She lifted the lid.

Inside lay a stack of Tarot Cards resting on dark blue velvet.

"Don't try to fix your gaze on them," Mrs. MacNeil said flatly. "You wouldn't be able to read them anyway."

"Today I'm teaching you to recognize the cards."

She pulled the twenty-two Major Arcana from the stack.

"Learn these twenty-two first."

She dealt them out face-up on the table one by one.

Richard knew the names well enough.

"These twenty-two," Mrs. MacNeil said, setting the last of them in place. "Each one stands for an archetype."

"An archetype?"

"An image that keeps coming back in the human mind."

She tapped her finger on The Fool.

"The ignorant and fearless traveler."

She tapped The Magician.

"The one with sufficient will to mobilize elements."

"The High Priestess: hidden wisdom."

"The Empress: abundance."

"The Emperor: order."

......

She went through them one by one, giving each card a single short definition.

"Your Stone Reading," Mrs. MacNeil said. "How many symbols in that set?"

"Old Biggs taught me nine."

"The Tarot has twenty-two Major Arcana, plus fifty-six Minor Arcana—seventy-eight cards in all."

"The combinations you can get out of a deck are a lot more complicated than stones."

"Today we'll start with single-card readings."

The medium drew a card and let it turn between her fingers.

"Single-card?" Richard asked.

"The simplest way to read Tarot."

She gathered the twenty-two cards and shuffled them once.

Richard could see the thin wash of ether moving through the pack.

When she finished, she set the deck back in the middle of the table.

"Ask a question in your head, then draw."

"Any question?"

"Yes."

Richard asked his question silently and pulled a card.

He turned it over.

[The Star - Upright]

Mrs. MacNeil took a look. "What did you ask?"

"...I asked whether my next article would get published without any trouble."

"The Star upright means hope, cleansing, inspiration, guidance."

"On the face of it, your article gets published and does well."

She changed direction.

"But there's another side to The Star. The card shows a woman kneeling by the water, pouring what's in her hands back into the river."

"When she pours, the water goes back where it came from, but her hands are empty."

"So..." Richard frowned.

"The article gets published, but once it's out, it's going to cost you something."

"...Like what?" He felt a sudden chill.

"I don't know," Mrs. MacNeil said, turning the card face-down again.

"Tarot's like any other reading—it only gives you a direction.

And since I'm not involved in what you're asking about, the reading's weaker than usual."

Richard sat there for a long moment without speaking.

He remembered what Charlotte had said when she closed the folder:

"There's a draft coming off these pages I can't name."

"Made up your mind?" Mrs. MacNeil asked.

"...Still thinking about it."

"Take your time."

She shuffled The Star back into the pack.

"A Tarot reading gives you a direction so you can make a choice."

"Whether you put that piece out is up to you."

"Up to me."

Richard took a breath.

"That's enough card recognition for today. Go home and memorize the upright and reversed meanings for all twenty-two Major Arcana."

"Next Wednesday afternoon, you're coming with me on a job."

"...A job?" Richard thought about what the medium did for a living—was she taking him to a séance?

"Civilian Guild's Private Jobs."

Mrs. MacNeil put the deck back into its wooden box.

"You can't learn this just by talking about it. When we get paid, you get twenty percent."

"Be at the door of the Branch Office at two sharp on Wednesday. Don't be late. You don't have anything else on, do you?"

Richard stood up.

"The school put me on an open schedule. I just need to put in for a half-day off beforehand."

"Go on home, then." She waved him away.

On his way out, Richard looked back at Old Biggs.

The man was still hunched over his drafting table, curled up like a dry leaf as he fought his way through his homework.