“The woman who sat next to me at dinner, on my right,” Mab asked over the edge of her glass, “How many rubies were in her necklace?”
Breaha shot her a quizzical glance. It seemed rather a silly question.
“Nine, I think,” she replied, going back to her cards. She pulled a silver from the deck and frowned. No move again.
Mab laid a dark hand over the cards, and Breaha looked up at her, brows furrowed. It been Mab’s insistence that she play this stupid game at all. She gave her teacher a sour frown but met her gaze all the same. Mab was smiling at her, that kind of half grin that told her this was more than a question, it was a challenge. Switching one game for another.
“Think,” Mab pressed, “Or know?”
Breaha wracked her brain for the image. She remembered the necklace, and the face of the woman wearing it. Middle years, fair hair, grey eyes. She'd been wearing a cream colored gown that made her complexion look like spoiled milk, with a gold and ruby necklace that settled right above her collar bone. The details of the necklace fled her mind like water in a cracked vase.
“Think,” she huffed, after a moment, disappointed with herself, but Mab's smile broadened.
“Close. Ten Rubies, if you count the small one of the closure. Now, the man three from my left. What color was his hair?
Breaha leaned back in her chair, shuffling the cards as she thought. She tried to call up the table in her head, like she would a map, with Mab as her bearing. The man three seats down on her left had been wearing a black shirt with a blue brocade vest and had a dark, dropping mustache. He drank only red wine, Breaha remembered, because she'd feared the man's broad hand gesture would cause him to spill.
“Black,” Bae proclaimed proudly, “but he dyes it.”
Mab crossed her arms and grinned, pleased as a cat in cream. The fire light caught in her dark curls, bringing out the gold in her dark eyes.
