Jowtan preferred the hall of the Ruined Gods over any cathedral. Cathedrals had their stone-faced acolytes and their rumor-hungry deacons, the kind who never let a lie go unpunished, but here—down in the crypts beneath the river—a man could trade truth for coin and call it honest work. Even the light conspired: torches spat more smoke than fire, their shadows crawling up walls already tattooed with promises from centuries' worth of desperate prayers.
He arrived early, before the midday shift of penitents and faith-sellers, and took the north alcove out of habit. It was just damp enough to suggest mystique, not so wet as to attract the rat-catchers. The stone bench in the alcove had a flat, cold surface perfect for his work. Jowtan drew a scrap of midnight-blue cloth from his satchel and spread it with a single practiced flick, then set down the deck. He handled the cards with the reverence of a priest but none of the conviction.
They were battered—edges nibbled, faces faded—but their power lay in that. Each stain was a history, a whisper from a mark who'd left lighter of purse and heavier of suspicion. His fingers, quick and sure, squared the deck, split it, and recombined it three times. The shuffling was for the audience, not the spirits.
He let his eyes wander the growing crowd. The Ruined Gods' hall drew all kinds, but this was the time of month when the moneyed and the miserable overlapped: merchants who'd overextended at market, minor nobles with secret debts, clerks with too much ambition and too little cunning. He'd worked enough crowds to read their uniforms at a glance—flour merchants wore the white dust like war paint, the magistrate's apprentice still fumbled with his signet, and the old matron in violet sleeves tried to conceal her mourning with a brooch the size of an egg.
Jowtan kept one eye on the true prize: the city's new blood, the unfamiliar faces whose stories hadn't yet been consumed by this place. They were easier. They always were.
The merchant arrived in a rush, trailing a scent of cheap lemon cologne and panic. He looked over both shoulders before ducking into the alcove, jaw clenched so hard the vein in his temple throbbed. Good. Jowtan liked them desperate.
The man stared at the cards as if expecting them to bite.
Jowtan gave him a smile: open, welcoming, just a shade warmer than was strictly necessary. "You're early. Or perhaps time has been running away from you?"
The merchant hesitated, then coughed. "I was told you… could help. With decisions."
"Help is my business." Jowtan gestured to the cloth. "Three-card spread, no extra charge. If you want to pay extra, I can even tell you which ancestor is angriest this week."
The merchant almost laughed, then thought better of it. "Three, then. But it must stay—"
Jowtan cut him off with a raised palm. "Privacy is policy." He leaned in. "First time?"
The merchant nodded, eyes darting to the crowd as if every bystander was a potential creditor.
Jowtan's voice softened. "Shuffle. Just three times. Think about your question, but don't say it." He slid the cards across the cloth. The merchant fumbled, tried to mimic Jowtan's effortless cuts, and failed spectacularly. Jowtan watched every twitch: the man's left pinkie kept brushing his ring finger—a sure sign of nervous habit. His eyes returned again and again to a spot over Jowtan's right shoulder.
Jowtan gathered the deck, knocked it once against the bench, and spread three cards face-down. "Left is past, center is present, right is what's coming for you." He held the pause just long enough for the man to sweat, then turned the first card.
It was the Four of Spades, a card so ominous even drunks sobered at its sight. Jowtan barely raised an eyebrow. "You've had more enemies than friends, but you're still standing. Resilient. Adaptable."
He watched the merchant's face for confirmation. The man flinched, just a little.
Jowtan pressed on. "But recently, something changed. A betrayal, maybe, or someone's turned a routine into a trap." He glanced at the merchant's cuffs—one stained with what looked like berry ink, a tell for ledger-keepers—and said, "Work troubles?"
This time the merchant looked stricken. "My partner. He—" The man stopped himself, color draining from his cheeks.
Jowtan smiled like a man who'd just found a coin on the street. He turned over the second card. The Jack of Diamonds.
"Someone clever, perhaps too clever. The Jack always means risk, but also opportunity. It's a warning: if you play their game, you might win. But if you play yours—" he tapped the card— "you'll survive. Maybe even profit."
The merchant stared at the card as if it might answer for him.
Jowtan resisted the urge to sigh. It always amazed him how marks yearned to be told what they already feared. He let the silence hang, then flipped the final card.
The Queen of Hearts.
He said nothing at first. Let the tension build, let the merchant start to sweat.
The man broke first, whispering, "What does it mean?"
Jowtan gave him the look reserved for secrets too dangerous to say out loud. "It means loyalty is an illusion. Anyone who promises you loyalty in this city is either lying, or setting you up for something worse. If you want to win, trust no one—not even yourself."
The merchant's mouth opened and closed like a fish. He reached for his purse, then hesitated, as if hoping Jowtan might rescind the prophecy for a better one. Jowtan did not.
A silver coin thudded onto the cloth, followed by another, then three more. The merchant stood up so quickly he almost knocked the bench over. Jowtan kept his posture relaxed, gaze locked on the coins until the man had vanished into the murk.
He waited a heartbeat more, then swept the coins into his palm and reset the deck. Already he was thinking about the next mark: the matron in violet, perhaps, or the apprentice who'd been watching from behind the third column. The day was young, and the river always flowed downhill.
Jowtan had always trusted the rhythm: draw them in, build the tension, close the sale. It worked on city girls who wanted their fates rewritten, and it worked on graybeard dockhands who only pretended not to believe. The key was to never linger—finish one story and be halfway through the next before anyone thought to ask about the last.
He palmed the apprentice's coin with a flick of his wrist and motioned the next in line forward. The matron in violet sleeves, up close, looked less formidable. Her fingers were slick with worry, her left earring was a fake, and her perfume almost masked the smell of mothballs. She wanted to talk about her "son," but Jowtan knew the tell of a woman with secrets heavier than family.
He let her speak first. Always do that. A mark who tells their own story will spend twice as much to hear it told back to them.
She asked about omens—her garden had withered overnight, and her cook had seen rats, black ones, in the cellar. The questions were about rats, but her gaze kept flickering to the apprentice's retreating form.
Jowtan reshuffled the deck with a showman's flair, splayed three cards, and built her a narrative of cycles, of bad luck turning with the seasons, of how the river sometimes runs backward before it brings in the golden fish. He steered her gently toward what she wanted: hope, but also an excuse. The woman clutched at the reading like a drowning sailor grabbing driftwood, then pressed two silver coins into his palm. He'd have bet she'd come back next week, with more coin and even darker circles under her eyes.
He was halfway through the next mark, a gaunt young man who stank of ink and debtor's sweat, when the hall's temperature shifted. Not the air—something deeper. The crowd's movement stalled, a single ripple through a sea of faces. Conversation slowed, as if the room itself was holding its breath.
Jowtan found the source immediately.
A man, tall even by northern standards, stalked down the center of the chamber as though he owned every stone underfoot. His cloak—dark wool, silver-threaded trim—was unmarked by the grime that claimed every other coat in the crypts. His hair was silver, not the brittle kind that comes from age but the heavy, coiled sort that suggested either money or madness. His face was cut sharp, eyes set deep and cold. A face made for giving orders and never, ever receiving them.
He wasn't alone, but it didn't matter. The two bodyguards followed at a respectful distance, their hands hidden beneath their coats. The crowd parted for them—no shoving, no protest, just a shared instinct to avoid being noticed.
Jowtan watched the tall man's progress with a gambler's eye. There was no swagger, no show; just a certainty that he'd leave with whatever he came for, or leave the place broken. Jowtan considered making himself smaller, but some reckless part of Jowtan's brain—wanted to be noticed. Not as prey, but as an equal.
He let his current mark babble about dreams of falling, barely listening as he tracked the tall man's path. The noble passed the priests' station, ignored the clutch of acolytes, and stopped—just for a moment—at the edge of Jowtan's alcove. Their eyes met. The man's gaze flicked over the cards, then to Jowtan's hands, then to the blue cloth. A calculation passed across his face.
The moment stretched, thin and fragile.
Then the man moved on.
Jowtan exhaled. He didn't realize he'd been holding his breath.
He wrapped up the debtor's reading in three sentences and four lies, then raked the next handful of coins into his satchel. He let his fingers drum across the deck, distracted, until he realized someone was standing at the lip of his alcove.
The tall man's bodyguard. The younger one. Not quite as imposing, but still the sort who broke knees for a living.
"Message for you," the guard said, voice just above a whisper.
Jowtan looked down. A sealed letter rested on the edge of the blue cloth. Cream-colored paper, no crest or wax, but folded with precision. Not dropped, but placed.
He looked up, but the bodyguard was already retreating. The noble, too, was gone—just a phantom in the crowd, moving toward the altar at the back of the chamber.
Jowtan slid the letter across the cloth, careful not to let his hands shake. No one had ever sent him a letter before. Not here. Not in the open. He considered tossing it, burning it unopened, just to spite whatever doom the noble thought he'd bought with a piece of paper.
Curiosity won. It always did.
He pried open the letter. No signature, no greeting. Just three lines:
"You are invited.
Bring the deck.
Midnight. South dock."
His heart quickened—not from fear, but something closer to anticipation. A summons from a man like that wasn't a threat. It was an opportunity. The sort of opportunity that came with risk measured in broken fingers, or worse, but that was the job.
He tucked the letter away, finished off the next mark in line with a one-card reading, and packed up his station in under a minute. The Ruined Gods would endure without him for a day. He had business with a stranger—and a stranger's secrets always cost more than a mark's.
The deck felt heavier in his coat as he slipped up the crypt stairs and into the dusk. For the first time in months, Jowtan felt the familiar tickle of luck turning. He couldn't say if it was toward fortune or the gallows.
But then, there was no con in the world better than the one you ran on fate itself.