![]() Like any other task, I like to complete thank you cards both effectively and efficiently. "Not the ones in charge of memory, I hope.“Silent gratitude isn’t much use to anyone.” G.B. "Not bad," I said, "but I can't spare any more brothers at the moment. Finding out where he was seemed of first importance. I did not ask him how he was managing it without my Trump. I had decided to go looking for an assemblage of all my simple pleasures in one small nook of Shadow. Still, it was a very nice crop - silver-chased, beautifully tooled - and I made good use of it. He gave me a fancy riding crop for a going-away present - to hasten the process of affection, I suppose. I had often noticed that his fondness for me tended to increase as an inverse function of my proximity. Dad was still around, and when I noticed that he was getting into one of his grumpy moods, I decided it was time to take a walk. The Jack of Diamonds began talking to me.Īnyway, I was here in Amber some years ago. "Not the ones in charge of memory, I hope." He looked like hell, and he seemed to be chained or tied to something. Then the face rearranged itself and I saw that I was right. The Jack said, "Random." Then its face blurred and it said, "Help me." I began getting a feel of the personality by then, but it was weak. "Forget it, Random The reframing is out, too." And there I was, staring at the Jack of Diamonds again, with the guy across from me not knowing whether to be mad at my long distraction or concerned that I might be having some sort of sick spell. Some sort of watch-thing, it seemed - too bright for me to make out its outline, to guess its proper size. And I remembered the presence coiled about the base of that tower. Brand there in some sort of tower - a small point of stability in that flowing scene. Rocks that glided like sailboats across the land. ![]() It was far from Amber, somewhere where the shadows go mad. Then I saw the landscape - over his shoulder, out a window, over a battlement, I can't be sure. All this changed one night when I was sitting there with a full house and the guy across from me was trying to make up his mind whether or not I was bluffing. Sort of postcard like hellos via the Trumps every now and then, and that was about it. I spent a little over two years in Texorami, happy. Guys like me living around the edges of things. Sailors and assorted travelers passing in and out. Gentlefolk, merchants, and peons - the same straights as in most other places. ![]() Lots of good port smells - spices, coffee, tar, salt - you know. Palm trees and night-blooming wallflowers. Well, anyhow, there I was in Texorami, making music and women, winning at cards and jockeying around the sky. Hell of a way to go, you know? His throat. He started a nasty argument over it one night - could have gotten serious - but Gerard and Caine broke it up. If you kept beating him at anything you had to be cheating. The trouble with him was that he was good at so many things he wouldn't admit even to himself that there were some things other people could do better. He once accused me of cheating at cards, did you know that? And that's about the only thing I wouldn't cheat at. And that was it for the rest of the night. When I was done playing I'd go find some action, women, or cards, usually. I played drums till all hours in a basement spot up the river where the walls sweated almost as much as the customers and the smoke used to wash around the lights like streams of milk. I had a little red sail plane I used to go sky surfing in, every couple of days. Texorami was a wide open port city, with sultry days and long nights, lots of good music, gambling around the clock, duels every morning and in-between mayhem for those who couldn't wait. ![]() Or, easiest of all, Brand could have called Dad himself. Julian, to look better than the rest of us and to score points with Dad. Caine would have gone out of curiosity, I think. Eric and Gerard were more the heroic types and would probably have welcomed the adventure. You will have to come the long way around." He had called me, and it was quite possible that I would be cutting his throat by letting anyone back in Amber in on the fact that he had gotten the message out. So I suppressed my impulse to yell for reinforcements. ![]()
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