But in Silver’s wake, Eparah appears next, clad in the black leathers that the Crusaders never seem to take off, and the purple crest with the black mountains and white phoenix on her chest that marks her as our superior.
I stiffen in her arrival. Only my eyes dare to move, flicking to Fox to find that she is too focused on shuffling the cards to have noticed. Güthric has Sai enveloped in a rowdy embrace, so I can’t tell if he’s seen our captain either, and Silver enters the room as if not a single one of us are present.
With no other choice, I return my wide gaze to greet our captain.
“Relax, Halira,” Eparah says smoothly. She filters into the room, smooth and swaying, like a steady brook. “There’s no need to look so alarmed. I’m off duty.”
“Like that’s a thing,” Sai snorts.
I’m still frozen in place as Güthric takes the seat beside me, Silver the one beside him, and Eparah across from Güthric. She detaches her captain sigil from her leather and sets it on the table.
It’s not like we’ve been told not to convene like this, men mingling with the women over spirits and hearty laughs, but there’s something about having our captain among us that makes me rigid.
That is, until she says, “Now, if I had been General Alphonse, well, that’d be a different story.”
Sai bellows a hearty laugh. “Remember when he nearly caught us playing Chicken at the border? We scattered like a dropped bag of marbles, and big ol’ Güthric here”—he leans across the table, shaking the man’s shoulder—“thought his best bet for hiding was behind the thinnest birch tree in the yard.”
“It work,” Güthric grunts, grinning. “He not see me.”
“Only because he thinks you’re a strange man who would find enjoyment in things like spending your evenings with your face pressed against a tree trunk,” Sai says, throwing himself back into his chair in a fit of laughter with tears running down his cheeks.
Eparah joins in, her laughter bright and brassy compared to Güthric’s baritone and Sai’s cackle. Even Silver smiles at the memory. And it must be the rye warming me and melting away my inhibitions, because I feel the snicker crawling up my throat as well, and suddenly it no longer matters what Eparah’s rank is, only that we are all together.
The only person we’re missing to make this family feel complete is Dimitri. They’d stopped inviting him to these gatherings days ago. Most of the time, he’d declined anyway, insisting that he had more productive things to do. I’d been told that on the rare occasion he did show, he’d spend most of the time telling the others all the ways in which they were breaking the rules or wasting their time or other varying castings of judgment.
But tonight, I’d finally decided to come. For myself. I’d been training hard, studying even harder, and I was in desperate need of a break.
Fox gives the playing cards a final shuffle before slamming the deck in the center of the table. “We ready to play?”
“What’s the game tonight?” Eparah asks. “You lot prepared to lose at Basetta again?”
“As I recall, it was I who walked away the victor from that game,” Sai says.
“No Basetta tonight,” Fox tells us. “I thought we’d start with some Primero instead. Everyone know the rules?”
“No,” I admit.
Fox swiftly starts going through the rules, but I just as quickly tune her out when I notice the interaction between two of our comrades. Güthric uses his teeth to uncork one of his bottles of wine. He hands it to Silver, who eyes it warily. But with a wide, toothy grin, Güthric pulls out a glass from who-knows-where and sets it on the table before them. Silver’s smile is nearly imperceptible, demure and satisfied with a hint of appreciation, and she inclines her head for him to fill her glass.
“Understood?”
It takes me a moment to realize someone’s talking to me. As Güthric passes the bottle to Eparah, I shake my head, returning my attention to Fox. “Sorry…I missed that. What were you saying?”
She throws her head back with a groan.
Sai reaches across the table for the deck of cards. “It’s all right. You can join the next match. It’s just as easy to learn by watching. Besides, I appear to have a bone to pick with our captain here.”
From behind the tipped back wine bottle, Eparah wriggles her eyebrows at him.
“In,” Güthric says.
“Fox, you want to do the honors?” Sai asks.
“My pleasure.”
“Halira, you mind? I’ll trade you,” Eparah says, pressing the bottle against my chest and standing.
It doesn’t take long to figure out what she’s suggesting, so I grab the bottle and give her my seat so that the four contenders can be closer to one another.
The bottles continue to be passed around a few times each, but I mostly avoid Sai’s. If I’m going to drink, I at least want it to be a remotely enjoyable experience, and the wine Güthric brought is sweetened with hawthorn berries and honey, reminding me a little of the forest behind my home and the beehives my mother and I would tend.
The game itself is intriguing to watch, but even though I have a visible view of Eparah’s hand, it’s not so easy to understand. Fox deals them two cards a piece and asks if each of them will be bidding. Everyone declines, and she deals out two more.
“We play with a hand of four cards,” she explains to me, but judging from the way her eyes seem to hyperfocus on her hand, I don’t think I’ll be receiving much more instruction from her.
Güthric begins. He announces, “Numerus twenty,” and puts the other unopened bottle of wine on the table beside the remaining cards.
Sai sighs. “You don’t have to bid if you don’t have a good hand yet.”
Güthric frowns, looking to his cards with mounting approval. “I has good hand.”
“A numerus isn’t a—never mind. Eparah, you’re up.”
On Eparah’s turn she says she’ll pass, discarding two cards of high suit to draw two more. When she adds the six of clubs to her existing hand of an ace of clubs and a four of hearts, she winks at me. I pretend to be excited for her, even though I have no idea how that will be of use to her. Her second card is a king of hearts, which I understand to typically be a high-ranking card, but she seems disinterested in it.
At the start of Sai’s turn, he exclaims, “Numerus forty-two,” and tosses a silver coin onto the table.
“You really want to bet on a numerus?” Eparah asks.
“Maybe it’s a numerus, maybe it isn’t,” he says cryptically, only fortifying my confusion.
“Well, if you’re bidding, I hardly think a silver coin matches the bid already on the table.”
Sai’s mouth falls wide. He extends his arms out toward the bottle. “We both know he didn’t spend a single silver on this bottle, so I think it’s a remarkably fair bid.”
Güthric’s smile is wicked.
Eparah snickers.
“Right,” Sai continues. “Now that that’s settled, let me see what you have.”
He reaches out an upturned palm, and Güthric hands him his cards. Sai snorts when he peeks at them, rolls his eyes, and hands them back.