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“Yes Payold A hundred thousand tonight, the rest once we have the object Make your decisions now Bear in mind that if you say no you will find yourself unable to discuss tonight’swith anyone else”
Satisfied that it had made its case, the bird fluttered up to perch on top of its cage
It was more than Quentin had expected There were probably easier and safer ways in this world for a ician to earn two million dollars, but there weren’t ht in front of hiicians needed et back into the swis He had work to do
“If you’re not interested, please leave now,” the cashier said Evidently he was the bird’s lieutenant He ht have been in his mid-twenties His black beard covered his chin and neck like brambles
The Cro-Magnon guy stood up
“Good luck” He turned out to have a thick Geronna need this, huh?”
He ski card into the middle of the room and left It landed face up: GET WELL SOON Nobody picked it up
About a third of the room shuffled out with him, off in search of other pitches and better offers Maybe this wasn’t the only show in town tonight But it was the only one Quentin knew about, and he didn’t leave He watched Plum, and Plum watched him She didn’t leave either They were in the sa too
The red-faced guy stood against the wall by the door
“See ya!” he said to each person as they passed him “Buh-bye!”
When everybody as going to leave had left the cashier closed the door again They were down to eight: Quentin, Pluer, the Indian guy, and a long-faced wo dress with a lock of white hair over her forehead; the last two had coh the other door The rooely empty
“Are you from Fillory?” Quentin asked the bird
That got so, and the bird didn’t laugh It didn’t answer him either Quentin couldn’t read its face; like all birds, it had only one expression
“Before we go any further each of you th and skill,” the bird said “Lionel here”—it ic Each of you will play a hand of cards with him If you beat him you will have passed the test”
There were soruntled noises at this new revelation, followed by another round of discreet athered that this wasn’t standard practice
“What’s the game?” Plum asked
“The game is Push”
“You ustedly “You really don’t know anything, do you?”
Lionel had produced a pack of cards and was shuffling and bridging it fluently, without looking, his face blank
“I knohat I require,” the bird said stiffly “I know that I areat deal of money for it”
“Well, I didn’t coames”
The man stood up
“Well why the fuck did you cohtly
“You may leave at any time,” the bird said
“Maybe I will”
He walked to the door, pausing with his hand on the knob, as if he were expecting somebody to stop him Nobody did The door shut after him
Quentin watched Lionel shuffle The man obviously kne to handle a deck; the cards leapt around obligingly in his large hands, neatly and cleanly, the way they did for a pro He thought about the entrance exaet into Brakebills, as it, thirteen years ago now? He hadn’t been too proud to take a test then He sure as hell wasn’t now
And he used to be a bit of a pro at this hiic This here he started out
“All right,” Quentin said He got up, flexing his fingers “Let’s do it”
He dragged a desk chair over noisily and sat down opposite Lionel As a courtesy Lionel offered him the deck Quentin took it
He stuck to a basic shuffle, trying not to look too slick The cards were stiff but not brand new They had the usual industry-standard anti- he hadn’t seen before It felt good to have the obvious about it, he got a look at a few face cards and put the while, but this was a ga about Back in the day Push had been athe Physical Kids
It was a childishly sih card ith some silly added twists to break ties (toss cards into a hat; once you get five in, score it like a poker hand; etc) But the rules weren’t the point; the point of Push was to cheat There was a lot of strange , it was a roiling cloud of possibilities, and nothing was ever certain till the cards were actually played It was like a box with a whole herd of Schrödinger’s cats in it With a little ical kno you could alter the order in which your cards cauess what your opponent was going to play before she played it; with a bit more you could play cards that by all the laws of probability rightfully belonged to your opponent, or in the discard pile, or in some other deck entirely
Quentin handed back the cards, and the gaan
They started slow, trading off low cards, easy tricks, both holding serve Quentin counted cards autoood it could do—whensides, and cards you thought were safely deceased and out of play had a way of coot involved in these kinds of operations, and he was revising his esti to overwhelm Lionel with brute force
Quentin wondered where he’d trained Brakebills, probably, saic that you didn’t see co else too: it had a cold, sour, alien tang to it—Quentin could almost taste it He wondered if Lionel was quite as human as he looked
There were twenty-six tricks in a hand of Push, and halfway through neither side had established an advantage But on the fourteenth trick Quentin overreached—he burned so to the top of his deck, only to waste it on a deuce from Lionel The mismatch left him off balance, and he lost the next three tricks in a row He clawed back twocards from the discard pile, but the prelifight