Now what exactly is at stake when folks play Parsnit? Well, that depends on the folks playing. Some Parsnit duelists don’t play for anything but honor—no wager required, just the thrill of spinning a tale out of skill and chance and magic. Some like to make a little profit here and there, folks like Pop and his old crew, who I knew made most of their living off Parsnit duels. Still others take Parsnit to a more serious level. These folks will wager something permanent, something they can never take back, and seal it with a witch’s bond, a sort of burn scar around the ring finger of both duelists. Witch’s bonds are forever, unless the witch undoes them, and they can be passed down from father to son, mother to daughter, blood to blood. Many lives have been won and lost in Parsnit, money changed hands, decisions made and decisions forfeited. It’s a risky game, that’s for sure. And why would anyone risk so much on a card game, on a game of wit and chance and storytelling? What brings folks round time and time again, to talk and jabber, to flip cards and tell their story, to hold real magic in their hands, to watch it flicker and spark across the air and land hot and popping on their tongues? When folks play Parsnit, folks play their dreams.

And that means everything’s possible in Parsnit. Everything at all.

6

LATE THAT MORNING I WASHED up in a town that I figured was Gentlesburg. I don’t know why it’s called that, there ain’t anything “gentle” about it. Matter of fact, if what I’d heard about the place was true, I was as likely to get myself beat up or killed or worse as I was to get a handshake. But I was flat out of food and tired to boot, and besides, if Cecily Bob and Mr. Hugo had stopped anywhere along the river before rowing down to the Swamplands, this would be it. Wasn’t any other town after it, not on this river, not before it became the swamp. Gentlesburg was right at the border, the meanest, cruddiest place I knew of. Folks were scared to come here, the boring nice folks from where my mom lived. They said it was too rough-and-tumble for respectable folks.

Good thing I’m not in the least bit respectable.

I floated past all the big riverboats with all their sails and cargo, early risers loading and unloading boxes and crates and sacks, everything stinking of fish and rotten vegetables and grubby old men, down to a dumpy, rotted pier half-sunk in the water. The only person there was an old woman slumped over in a chair on the dock, snoring. She looked to be about six hundred years old, if you want to know the truth about it.

By then my arms were near numb from holding on to that little plank, and I figured it wouldn’t take me another fifty yards, so I hollered up to that sleeping lady.