“The Tower reversed.” Tyy pointed above the patter “This above you lies.”

Lorq placed the card, then drew a seventh.

“The Two of Swords, reversed.”

Upside down:

A blindfolded woman sat on a chair before the ocean, holding two swords crossed on her breasts.

“This before you lies.”

With three cards in the center and four around, the first seven cards formed a cross.

“Again choose.” Lorq chose.

“The King of Swords. Here it place.” The King went to the left of the cross.

“And once more.” Lorq drew his ninth card. “The Three of Wands reversed.” Which went below the King. “The Devil—”

Katin looked at the Mouse’s hand. The fingers arched and the little nail bit Katin’s arm.

“—reversed.”

The fingers relaxed; Katin looked back at Tyy.

“Here place.” The upside-down Devil went below the Wands. “And choose.”

“The Queen of Swords. This final card here place.” Beside the cross there was now a vertical row of four cards.

Tyy squared the pack.

She brushed her fingers under her chin. As she bent over the vivid dioramas, her iron-colored hair broke on her shoulder.

“Do you see Prince in there?” Lorq asked. “Do you see me, and the sun I’m after?”

“You I see; and Prince. A woman also, somehow related to Prince, a dark woman—”

“Black hair, but blue eyes?” Lorq said. “Prince’s eyes are blue.”

Tyy nodded. “Her too I see.”

“That’s Ruby.”

“The cards mostly swords and pentacles are. Much money I see. Also much struggle about and around it there is.”

“With seven tons of Illyrion?” the Mouse mumbled. “You don’t have to read cards to see—”

“Shhh…” from Katin.

“The only positive influence from the Major Arcana the Devil is. A card of violence, of revolution, of struggle it is. But also the birth of spiritual understanding it signifies. Pentacles at the beginning of your reading lay. They cards of money and wealth are. Swords them overtake; cards of power and conflict. The wand the symbol of intellect and creativity is. Though the number of the wands three and low is, high the reading it comes. That good is. But no cups—the symbol of the emotions and particularly love—there are. Bad is. To be good, wands must cups have.” She lifted the cards in the center of the cross: the Kosmos, the Three of Pentacles, the Page of Swords.

“Now…” Tyy paused. The four men breathed together. “You yourself as the world see. The card covering you of nobility, of aristocracy speaks. As well, some skill which you possess—”

“You said you used to be a racing captain, didn’t you?” asked Katin.

“That with material increase you are concerned, this card reveals. But the Page of Swords you crosses.”

“That’s Prince?”

Tyy shook her head. “A younger person it is. Someone already close to you now it is. Someone you know. A dark, very young man perhaps—”

Katin was first to look at the Mouse.

“—who somehow between you and your flaming sun will come.”

Now Lorq looked up over his shoulder.

“Hey, now. Look…” The Mouse frowned at the others. “What are you going to do? Fire me the first stopover because of some stupid cards? You think I want to cross you up?”

“Even if he you fired,” Tyy said, glancing up, “it would nothing change.”

The captain slapped the Mouse’s hip. “Don’t mind it, Mouse.”

“If you don’t believe in them, Captain, why waste your time listening to…?” and stopped because Tyy had replaced the cards.

“In your immediate past,” Tyy went on, “the Ace of Pentacles lies. Again, much money, but toward a purpose pointed.”

“Setting up this expedition must have cost an arm and a leg,” Katin commented.

“And an eye and an ear?” Sebastian’s knuckles rippled on the head of one of his pets.

“In the far past, the Nine of Pentacles lies. Again a card of wealth it is. You success are used to. The best things you have enjoyed. But in your immediate future the Tower reversed is. In general this signifies—”

“—go directly to jail. Do not pass go. Do not”—Katin’s ears glowed again as Tyy narrowed her eyes at him—”collect two hundred pounds @sg.” He coughed.

“Imprisonment this card signifies; a great house topples.”

“The Von Rays have had it?”

“Whose house I did not say.”

At that Lorq laughed.

“Beyond it, the Two of Swords reversed lies. Of unnatural passion, Captain, beware.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” the Mouse whispered.

But Tyy had moved from the cross of seven cards to the row of four.

“At the head of your endeavors the King of Swords sits.”

“That’s my friend Prince?”

“It is. Your life he can affect. He a strong man is, and easily to wisdom he you may lead; also your death.” Then she looked up, her face sharply distraught. “As well, all our lives… He—”

When she did not go on, Lorq asked, “What, Tyy?” Her voice calmed already, became a deeper, solider thing.

“Below him—”

“What was it, Tyy?”

“—the Three of Wands reversed lies. Of offered his beware. The best defense against disappointment expectation is. The foundation of this the Devil is. But reversed. You the spiritual understanding of which I spoke will receive in the—”

“Hey.” The Mouse looked up at Katin. “What’d she see?”

“Shhh.”

“—coming struggle, the surface of things away will fall. The workings beneath strange and stranger will seem. And though the King of Swords the walls of reality back will pull, behind them the Queen of Swords you will discover.”

“That’s… Ruby? Tell me, Tyy: do you see the sun?”

“No sun. Only the woman, dark and powerful as her brother, her shadow casts—”

“From the light of what star?”

“Her shadow across both you and Prince falls—”

Lorq waved his hands over the cards. “And the sun?”

“Your shadow in the night is cast. Stars in the sky I see. But still no single sun—”

“No!” Only it was the Mouse. “It’s all stupid! Nonsense! Nothing, Captain!” His nail dug, and Katin jerked his arm away. “She can’t tell you anything with them!” Suddenly he lurched to the side. His booted foot kicked among Sebastian’s creatures. They rose and beat at the end of their chains.

“Hey, Mouse! What are you—”

He swept his bare foot across the patterned cards.

“Hey!”

Sebastian pulled flapping shadows back. “Come, still now be!” His hand moved from head to head, knuckle and thumb working quiet behind dark ears and jaws.

But the Mouse had already stalked up the ramp across the pool. His sack banged his hip at each step till he disappeared.

“I’ll go after him, Captain.” Katin ran up the ramp.

As wings settled by Sebastian’s sandals, Lorq stood.

On her knees Tyy picked up her scattered cards.

“You two back on vanes I put. Lynceos and Idas I’ll relieve.” As humor translated to agony, so concern appeared a grin. “You to your chambers, go.”

Lorq took Tyy’s arm as she stood. Three expressions struck her face, one after the other: surprise, fear, and the third was when she recognized his.

“For what you in the cards have read, Tyy, I you thank.”

Sebastian moved to take her hand from the captain’s.

“Again, I you thank.”

In the corridor to the Roc’s bridge, projected stars drifted on the black wall. Against the blue one, the Mouse sat cross-legged on the floor, sack in lap. His hand molded shapes in the leather. He stared at the circling lights.

Katin strolled up the hall, hands behind his back. “What the hell’s wrong with you?” he inquired amicably.

The Mouse looked up, and let his eyes catch a star emerging from Katin’s ear.

“You certainly like to make things complicated for yourself.”

The star drifted down, disappeared at the floor.

“And by the way, what was the card you stuck in your sack?”

The Mouse’s eyes came back to Katin’s fast. He blinked.

“I’m very good at picking up on that sort of thing.” Katin leaned back on the star-flecked wall. The ceiling projector that duplicated the outside night flashed dots of light across his short face, his long, flat belly. “This isn’t the best way to get on the captain’s good side. You’ve got some odd ideas, Mouse - admitted, they’re fascinating. If somebody had told me I’d be working in the same crew, today in the thirty-first century, with somebody who could honestly be skeptical about the Tarot, I don’t think I would have believed it. You’re really from Earth?”