Chapter 3 Tamsin #2
There will always be some magicians who want more: to cast the illegal curses forbidden to respectable duelists; to disallow their opponent the option to yield; to draw a fight far beyond the clean, contained confines of an arena.
Even after magic shows were fully legitimized as public entertainment for the masses, the underground continued thriving, simply because some magicians will never be satisfied without the real possibility of a death in the arena.
So far as they’re concerned, duels to the death are the only duels that prove anything real about a magician’s skill—about the terrible, beautiful things magic can accomplish.
The underground thrived, in other words, because of men like my father. Allegedly, of course.
There’s never been quite enough evidence to make a real fuss, but Dad’s under-the-table income has always been our family’s dirty open secret, the elephant in every room he enters.
I shouldn’t be surprised that, in addition to financing underground clubs, Dad also rigs dueling bets.
And I guess I’m not. I just never expected him to make me participate.
In all his years of back-alley business dealings—from the illegal magic clubs he ran to the bribes he bartered in to keep them open—he’s never once involved me.
He’s always kept my hands clean. I thought that meant something.
Apparently not.
“All betting is rigged,” says Dad. He doesn’t even sound ashamed. “Why shouldn’t we turn a profit off it?”
“I could get banned from dueling ever again,” I protest. “If we’re found out, we’d both be pariahs.”
“And who’s going to find out?” Dad barks a laugh. “I didn’t get this far without a decent sense of subtlety. No one would know except you and me.”
“If someone even suspects—”
“They’d need hard evidence. And we’d leave none.
” Dad snorts. “Face the facts, kid. You’re a damn good magician.
I wouldn’t accept anything less. But the odds of anyone finding out about our little secret are so low, they’re practically negligible.
The odds of you walking out of an arena with Lysander Rook as anything other than a bloody, half-mad carcass, on the other hand?
Well, I like those odds a lot less.” He shrugs.
“Unless we do things my way. The choice is yours.”
Dad’s never once hit me. Not in my childhood, not in the training arena, not even a spanking when I was a little girl.
But the way I’m feeling now, he may as well have slapped me full across the face.
“So you want me to take a dive and risk my career—and yours, for that matter—for…what, exactly?” I laugh bitterly. “An easy payday?”
“Pay is one thing. My daughter’s safety is another.”
“Right. You want me to lose the biggest duel of my career on purpose for my health.”
Dad’s hands grasp my shoulders before I even register the movement. I inhale sharply as his fingers dig into tender flesh. I forget how quick he is sometimes, even now, a master duelist’s reflexes built into his muscle memory through years in the arena.
“Don’t you understand?” he hisses. His eyes bore into me. “If Lysander Rook defeats you, he doesn’t simply defeat you. He destroys you. Breaks you down into parts, body and mind both. You’d never be the same magician again. You might never even be a magician at all again.”
He closes his eyes for a long moment. When he opens them again, something weary lurks in his gaze.
Suddenly, he seems years older, and so very tired.
“So yes, Tamsin. I’m asking you to take a dive for your own health.
At least that way, you control the circumstances, and we earn a little cash for our trouble.
It’s the best strategy for making the most of a bad situation. ”
I hate that I actually find myself wavering a little.
I try to remind myself that this is exactly the sort of game Dad plays: he always makes his way sound so reasonable.
When I was younger and stupider, Dad’s explanations and excuses worked like a charm.
But I’m not a little girl anymore. And I no longer believe everything my father says just because he’s my father.
I won’t fall for Dad’s tricks again. Not even when he looks at me with such seemingly genuine, weary resignation in his eyes.
“Why would you even let me duel Rook at all?” I demand at last. “If you’re so worried about me losing to him, why did you agree to his second’s proposal in the first place? Why not refuse her terms?”
Dad lets go of me abruptly. His answering smile is thin-lipped, his gaze distant. “Because you already said yes. Who am I, as your second, to prevent my champion from doing what she wants?”
I close my eyes. That tells me everything I need to know.
I remember exactly how Dad reacted when I first told him I’d agreed to take Samantha Chan’s offer.
He never tried to get me to back down. He never tried to turn my yes into a no.
Instead, he stayed silent for a very long time, chewing my words over.
Then he smiled and told me not to squander the opportunity.
The thing is, the way he sees things, these opportunities are never really for me. They’re for him. And if I’d said no to Samantha Chan, Dad would earn no profit. Just like he’ll earn no profit if I beat Rook. If I win that prize money for myself.
His only chance at squeezing any kind of profit out of me is by playing the betting odds. Dad just doesn’t want to lose his cash cow.
“You won’t order me to reject a dueling challenge,” I say softly. “But you’ll order me to lose.”
“I’m not ordering you to do anything, my girl. I’m just an old man, remember?” Dad chuckles. It’s a bitter sound—and the bitterness, I’m pretty sure, is real, at least. “I can’t force you to do anything. All I can do is tell you the facts and let you make your own decisions.”
When I open my eyes, reluctantly, to meet his, he’s watching me softly. If I didn’t know better—if I gave in to the fantasy I want to believe—I’d say that he’s watching me with love. The kind of love that every parent has for their child.
It’s a beautiful fantasy.
“I put everything I had into raising you,” my father whispers. “All I can do now, as a parent, is hope that it was enough to help you choose the right path.”
He lets go. “Practice is over.”
I watch him walk out the door of the training arena. He doesn’t demand a final answer from me. He doesn’t make me promise obedience. And he doesn’t look back.
He just leaves me there, thinking about Lysander Rook and those five magicians, their blood spattered across the floors of those arenas. And I can’t help it: as soon as I’m alone, I start thinking about whether I’ll end up one of them.
If any of this is really worth it.