The Empress File

unwrapped it, shuffled a few times, passed it to her, and had her go through the routine. She might be asking any of a number of questions: Should I quit the council? Where did the hundred thousand go? Will the murders be found out?
    “You know, stress can twist a reading,” I said conversationally as she shuffled the cards. “Maybe we should wait until you’re a little more relaxed.…”
    She stopped shuffling long enough to glance at her watch and shook her head. “No. It has to be before the meeting.”
    So. It had to do with the meeting. That most likely meant that she was asking whether she should quit, although I couldn’t be sure how she would formulate the question.
    “Don’t try to formulate a precise question. Just let your mind settle on a situation, and let’s see what the cards have to say about it. They’re really not best for yes or no answers.”
    I rolled the cards out. We got a spread that could have meant a lot of things. Her eyes darted around like a bird’s looking for a worm, past the Three of Swords, a deadly card, to the Nine of Pentacles, a card suggesting attainment, and finally settled on the Hanged Man. I tapped the card with my index finger.
    “This is the key,” I said in my most portentous voice. “It stands for sacrifice, giving up something held dear, to clear the way for greater gains in life. This is what I call a forked reading because you can see that the possible futures”—I tapped the Three of Swords and the Nine of Pentacles—“are wildly split. You’re at the crux of a situation. If you make the sacrifice, the road leads to the Nine. If you don’t, it leads to the Three.”
    The Three shows three swords driven through a red heart, a card of sorrow and loss.
    “I see,” she said softly. She swiveled in herchair and looked out the window. LuEllen rolled the crystal ball out of its velvet sack and passed it to her.
    “Look inside, focus on yourself,” LuEllen said.
    Dessusdelit rolled the heavy ball in her hands, moving it into the light from the window. “So much inside,” she said almost dreamily.
    She sat like that for a moment, then turned and said, “Thank you.”
    We were dismissed. “Is this meeting open?” I asked as we went out.
    “Yes. All meetings are open. But I’m afraid it won’t be a happy one.”
    By the time we left Dessusdelit’s office, a few minutes before ten o’clock, the council chambers were packed. We were standing in the hallway, looking over the heads of the crowd, when an argument blew up down the hallway. Carl Rebeck, wearing a suit and sunglasses and escorted by a state trooper, was standing nose to nose with Duane Hill. I hadn’t seen Hill come in, but he had apparently been waiting for Rebeck.
    “What the fuck are you doin’, Carl?” Hill blurted. The trooper moved between the two men.
    “I just wanna go vote and have it done with,” Rebeck said, staying in the shadow of the cop. The cop had one hand on Hill’s chest, but Hill kept peering around him.
    “You gotta come talk to us, Carl. You don’twanna be listening to a bunch of bullshit put out by these piss-ant state jerk-offs,” Hill said, his voice rising almost to a shout.
    The state trooper, who wore mirrored glasses and had a face like the sharp side of a hatchet, said something to Hill and shoved. Hill gave a step, and Rebeck slid past with the cop.
    “Maybe it wasn’t a bad idea, calling Rebeck,” LuEllen muttered.
    The argument in the hall had pulled some of the crowd out of the meeting room, and we managed to push inside. Marvel and two men were sitting toward the back, to the right. We went to the left and stood against the wall. The meeting started twenty minutes later. Lucius Bell showed up right on time and took a seat, looking around expectantly. The Reverend Mr. Dodge, wearing a dark suit with an ecclesiastical collar, showed up a couple of minutes later, carrying a sheaf of papers, and sat at the opposite end of the curved council table. Even from where we were standing, you could see his collar was soaked with sweat.
    Dessusdelit, St. Thomas, and Rebeck came in a few moments later and settled behind the table. There was no talking. Dessusdelit pounded a gavel twice, called the meeting to order, told Mary Wells to turn on her tape recorder, and started.
    Money was missing, she said, taken in the night from the City Hall safe. It had been withdrawnfrom the bank with the approval of herself, St. Thomas, and Rebeck as a test of the