The strange boy, who is hardly strange enough to be interesting, is trembling a little. Naomi can see it in the ends of his hair.

“With what have you come to play?” Menagerie asks him.

“With my own body and soul.”

Naomi winces. He must think that’s the prescribed response. After he’s directed to sit, he leans forward to examine the goblet in front of him. Cupbearer covers it, holding it still even when the boy tries to pull it away and peer over the rim. The wine casts a gentle light on their skin, violet on Cupbearer’s pale hand and softer in its small circle across the boy’s nose, over his flushing cheeks. His curiosity, at least, Naomi finds sympathetic. He is cute in an exactly traditional way, like a puppy.

He lifts his face suddenly, and Naomi turns away. Usually the humans here try not to look at each other.

Once Magpie is seated, Menagerie spits the cards across the table. Three for each player; they’re illustrated in bold, complex lines, all shaded in a single color. Naomi studies her hand. Black Hound, Black Cat, Blood Fool. The latter dances on one foot like the Hanged Man tarot card. The Hound and the Cat together can be part of a Menagerie or Sorceress hand. Menagerie is a valuable hand, only beaten by a Full Court, and it requires a Queen High and a specific retinue of animals, whereas the Sorceress can be filled out with an Oracle, Witch, or Changeling and any of the animal cards. Much more achievable and, being the fourth-ranked hand, still with a good chance of winning, that would be wisest. But the Menagerie is more exciting, an easy mistake for even an experienced player to make with a slight excess of optimism. So that is what Naomi will play toward, and how she will lose.

Risk management is key to Naomi’s research under-the-hill. The game’s stakes escalate with each round of bets—the more she plays, the more and worse she may have to forfeit. And since the prizes are incidental to Naomi’s purpose here, winning big carries dangers of its own. Most of the human players seem to be drawn here by Magpie’s promised favor, that personal miracle to salve whatever ache originally set them wandering through the world’s strange, dark places. Naomi has yet to encounter anyone fool enough to win it and still keep returning. Like a fish gouging itself on a hook, tearing free at the last instant and making off with the bait in its bloody jaws, then reversing course to see if the hook has anything more to offer.

Not playing isn’t an option, they are only invited into the hill for this purpose, and folding too often courts even more attention—what casino likes a cautious gambler? So Naomi carefully measures risk against risk, and makes herself an acceptable budget of losses.