Ian McDonald - Ares Express

“More maté for madam?” He held up a long-handled biggin. She could tell from the corners of the Stuard boy’s mouth that between one cup of maté and its refill, word of the Asiim Engineers’ disgrace had passed down the High Plains line.

“If you please.”

He refilled the enamelled tin bowl with the aromatic tea. Grandmother Taal fished in her bottomless bag for centavos. The Stuard boy held up his hand, scandalised as if she had offered him her own mummified excrement.

“There is no charge, madam Engineer.”

Grandmother Taal gave his back her oldest and vilest Engineer gestures as he unctuously worked his way down the aisle. The big-faced milch-man had been replaced by an anaemic couple who touched each other’s hands every few seconds. The funeral party had left to perform their obsequies. Across the aisle from their pitch was a sallow-faced young man in a cartwheel hat and duster coat buttoned to the throat. The musicians had opened wicker lunch boxes and were feeding forkfuls of noodles to the tiniest. The tanagers had galloped elsewhere, and the view from the window was of dreary altiplano freckled with upright Deuteronomy farms. The folding vade-mecum told her North West two twenty-four was hours yet at this gentle plod across the trampas. Too dull, this land, these people, this life, for anything other than sleep.

A start. She felt the face before she saw it, or heard the voice. That warm, slightly oily feeling of being observed without your knowledge or permission, that you have been observed for some time. Smell of a watching face. Grandmother Taal opened an eye.

“Madam, your maté has grown cold.”

In her eye was a dapper man of early middle years, slim as a rapier, dressed in a frock suit of crushed plum. He wore no hat, but his hair had been greased and slicked until it shone like gloss paint. Likewise, two long mustachios, waxed and tweaked to the sheen of ebony, swooped away from his upper lip. Grandmother Taal opened her other eye, all the better to three-dee this wonder. Hollow-cheeked, pale, almost olive-skinned. Poor complexion, cratered with orange-peel skin and the memories of childhood pox-scratchings. Eyebrows shaved to the merest hint of expressivity. Over his left eye, a brown leather patch. He carried a cane almost as slender and sharp as his mustachios. He wore gloves.

“I don’t care much for the maté ,” Grandmother Taal said. “It is bitter. It has been stewed.”

“Yes,” the man said thoughtfully. “The service on this route is substandard. I may write to the Line Manager.”

“You would be better employed writing to the chief Stuard.”

“Ah!” The man brightened perceptibly. “You have some knowledge of the ways of the iron road. Are you perhaps, track?”

“I am Taal Chordant Joy-of-May Asiim Engineer of Catherine of Tharsis . Now, introduce yourself, or is the place you hail from so negligent of manners that a lady must give her name to a gentleman?”

The young man laughed and bowed.

“I am Cyrene Caius Ankhatiel Ree, and I am a gentleman of India, in Axidy, where, I am glad to say, etiquette flourishes yet.”

Grandmother Taal harrumphed. Middle-aged though his complexion might be, he was still young, callow, vain, long-winded and self-regarding enough to be the most interesting thing on and around the High Plains Cruiser.

“Well, sit yourself down, as that’s clearly what you’re here to ask.”

“You preempt me, madam.”

He parted the tails of his coat and settled into the club chair opposite. He crossed his legs at the knee in a way Grandmother Taal had always thought effeminate and affected.

“So, Cyrene Caius Ankhatiel Ree, where are you travelling aboard the High Plains Cruiser?”

He rested his hands on the handle of his stick.

“Why, precisely nowhere, madam.”

“You travel for its own sake?”

“I travel for the sake of gambling.”

“A notorious vice.”

“Some say. Some say. But they are invariably the ones who have not heard the stakes I offer.”

“I am forty-two years a-sinning, sir. A billion miles I’ve travelled and a billion sights I’ve seen. I am mother to a dynasty, what stake could possibly entice me?”

By a sleight of hand, one lemon-gloved palm suddenly held a deck of cards.

“Years, madam. Years.”

The card backs bore the Amshastria Evenant, dancing one-footed, with her hourglass and plague bottle and halo of skulls. A flick of the fingers and the gambler spread the cards on the tea table in a wide fan. He ran his thumb along the spread, raising a short, sharp wave.

“Ridiculous, young man.”

He squared the deck, riffled and bridged it twice, dealt a swift hand, three down.

“Five card, two up.” He scooped up his hand, fanned them. The allure of the face-down card is irresistible. Against will and wisdom, Grandmother sneaked a peek. Three of Blades, three of Wasps, ten of Hands.

“Bet two,” Cyrene Ree said.

“Two what?”

“As I said, madam, years.”

Nonsense , the inner angel of grandmothers said, but an older, sharper devil said, aloud, “Two it is, then.”

Cyrene twisted her a card.

“Madam has a ten of Cash. And for myself?”

Grandmother Taal turned over the top card of the deck.

“The Spice of Wasps.”

“Raise another one.”

“ Parvue your one, and another one.”

“Madam is getting the feel of the game,” Cyrene said, twisting her her final card. “Cash, three. And I get…”

“Hieros of Blades.”

“An ill-omened card, I fear. Vue .”

Grandmother Taal turned over her hand.

“Full house, three and tens.”

Cyrene pursed his lips.

“I am well beaten. Two pairs.” He turned them up, sevens and Spices. “You win.”

Grandmother Taal gasped. Like a gush of stale breath or bad blood, four years went out of her. The stiffness and discomforts that are so much part of a woman of forty-two that they seem almost geographical were erased. Muscles tightened beneath her skin. Bones moved to long-forgotten alignments. Liver blotches on the backs of her hands dwindled like desert rain in the sun. Forty-two no more, if Cyrene could be believed. A woman of thirty-eight. Less, if her luck held.

“There,” Cyrene said. “That simple.” Grandmother Taal studied him. Did the mustachios droop a little, were their tips, the highlights in his shining hair, a little greyed? Did lines sit deeper around the leather eye-patch, had the muscles of the face slackened and slumped?

“I think not,” Grandmother Taal said, but four years were oxygen in her lungs, iron in her blood. Cyrene was already shuffling the cards.

“Another round?”

Grandmother Taal nodded. Cyrene dealt another hand. Grandmother Taal bet three years on a strong opening of two Duennas and the Boss of Wasps, twisted a trash four of Blades and an eight of Cash but still outbluffed Cyrene.

In twenty minutes and two dozen kilometres she had shed seven years. This was electrifying, addictive stuff. It’s meant to be , said forty-two years. I know when to stop , said thirty-five years.

“You must allow me the chance to make good my losses,” Cyrene said, smiling.

“And me to consolidate my gains,” Grandmother Taal said, and for the first time wondered what Cyrene’s true age might be, if he were indeed what he claimed, an itinerant wagerer of years on the world’s trunk lines.

The cards slid across the Formica-topped table. Again, a pair and a ten of Hands. Grandmother Taal anted two years. Cyrene immediately parvued and raised another five. Grandmother Taal twisted a second ten. Two pairs. Seven years. Forty-two, again, or twenty-eight.