Playing with a full deck

"Crabbe made them for me."  Madame Sostris sniffed to punctuate her sentence as she shuffled the cards.  They were a new deck; for the first time in a long time it looked like she might actually have a full deck in her hands.  Phlebitis, doomed sailor, tried to look interested.
"Crabbe?" he said, his tone weary and defeated.  Madame Sosotris appeared not to notice.
"He walks the banks of the river," she said.  "You've probably seen him, what with you being a sailor and all."
Phlebitis was indeed a sailor, and made his money by taking cargoes across the Sea of Demons.  One way with frogs that his crew boiled on the voyage, because the people they got the frogs from considered them sacred and would be angry if they knew what was done with the frogs, and the other way with fragile jade statuettes that possibly had curses attached to them.  The curses seemed to stay attached to whoever owned the statuette though, so apart from the odd pang of conscience, Phlebitis managed not to think about it.  Trying to take his ship up a river would be foolhardy.
"Yes," he said.  "Probably.  Does he fall in much?  Perhaps I've even rescued him?"
"I doubt it," said Madame Sosotris.  "His wife did though."
Phlebitis paused and thought about this for a few seconds before replying.  It was clear that this was a deliberate conversational gambit to keep him talking, because he knew that Madame Sostris had an unrequited crush on him, but he was also intrigued as to how she could think this was relevant.  Eventually curiosity won over caution.  "I hope she could swim," he said, going for a fairly neutral comment that didn't commit him to being interested in what she was saying.  Her hands shuffled the cards constantly.
"Yes, but she was run over by a Stinking Barge.  She went under the water and never came back up to the surface."
The Stinking Barges were the city's rubbish-collectors.  They were huge long boats that transported rubbish and sewage downstream to avoid polluting the water that the city depended on for its life.  A few miles outside the city were mountains of ordure and filth that sent out a stench that could make a man want to cut his own nose off his face.  At night, in hot weather, the gases they gave off burned with a pale, shaky blue light that the locals suspected of attracting demons from the sea, and in particularly hot summers they sometimes exploded.  At the base of these mountains men worked, their faces wrapped in cloths soaked in lye, shovelling the filth away into the river, polluting and poisoning the downstream water for thirty miles.  Phlebitis refused to hire men who'd worked on the Stinking Barges because they couldn't get the smell of the refuse off their skin.  He also refused to hire anyone who'd ever been a cultist, anyone who appeared to know what a City Throne was and people who wouldn't drink rum on religious grounds.  So far his crew had been loyal and stable, and he put this competely down to his hiring policies.
"That's sad," he said.  In his experience bodies always came back up unless they were eaten or weighted down first, and his money was on pockets full of rocks.
"Now he collects flotsam from the river," said Madame Sosotris, her hands almost hypnotic.  She was skilled at shuffling the cards, and though few of her clients realised it could prestidigitate any card in the deck to the top almost imperceptibly.  "He hopes to find her in the straw and frayed rope, that her bones might be waiting at the bottom in the mud for the right moment to return to him."
"What's he going to do with the bones when he finds them?"  Phlebitis had a sudden, nightmarish vision of the poor man wiring the bones together and keeping his skeletal wife in his home, presumably a two-room hovel.  Would her keep on display to visitors or in his bed?  Phlebitis shook his head to chase the image away.
"I've never asked," said Madame Sosotris.  "He made this deck of cards though, from things that the river gave up to him.  They're as close to the soul of the city as anything I've ever owned."  She coughed.  "Would you care to cut?"  She held the cards out, and Phlebitis scrutinised them, trying to see if they were bone.  They appeared to be paper, so he reached a hand out and picked a number of cards from the top.
Madame Sosotris bade him lay his cards down, to one side, and turned the top card of the rest of the deck over.
"The strangled Kitten," she said.  "Inverted."  Sure enough, a bedraggled, green-looking kitten took up most of the card, but in the background there was an arm and leg just visible, that might have been human.  The kitten's tongue was hanging out, and its eyes were greyed and hazed.  "Things that people throw away are important to you, and you collect them."
"I'm not sure–" began Phlebitis, but Madame Sosotris glared at him and tapped the card.
"In the background," she said, her finger tapping insistently, "you can see the arm and leg of Belladonna, Our Lady of the Rocks."
Phlebitis fell silent.  His future seemed entwined with Belladonna, who- or what-ever she might be.  He nodded at Madame Sostotris.
"Carry on then," he said.  "Tell me what the mad bitch wants from me now."

Dental Palmistry

Phlebitis paused at Madame Sosotris's door and re-read the sign on it.  At first glance he'd thought it said Oriental Palmistry but now that he was closer he could see that it in fact read Dental Palmistry.  He hesitated, his calloused fist a couple of centimetres from the door's surface, wondering what it could mean.  Indecision wracked him for several seconds; his visits to Madame Sosotris were not made for pleasure but out of painful necessity and the opportunity to not visit was tempting.
The door opened just as he was deciding that madness was as good a reason as any to not knock and not find out his future from her.  A small woman who barely came up to Phlebitis's waist walked into him and said, "Ow."
Phlebitis lowered his fist, seeing Madame Sosotris emerging from the gloom inside her house.  Her eyes seemed dilated and unfocused, and there was a trickle of blood running from the corner of her mouth.
"I said, 'Ow'," said the small woman, looking up at Phlebitis.  He pulled his gaze from the slightly vampiric-appearing Madame Sosotris and looked down.
"Watch where you're going," he said.  "If you were a sailor you'd be over the side in no time, making friends with the sharks."
"Are you saying I'm clumsy?"  The small woman squeaked when she was excited or angry.
"No, I'm saying that the other guys would think it funny to trip you over and watch you fall over the side.  Don't worry.  You look like you'd float for quite a while."
There was a noise like a boiling kettle whistling, which Phlebitis slowly realised was the small woman.  She was so angry that her face had turned a deep purple and she was standing on the very tips of her toes.
"Are you going to move?" he said.  "Only I'm here to visit Madame Sosotris and you're rather in the way.  You seem to be blocking the entire doorway."
The small woman was actually vibrating with anger now and was having trouble staying on her toes as she did so.  Seeing an opportunity, Phlebitis stepped to the side and tugged gently on her shoulder as he did so.  A spasm of panic passed over her face as she lost her balance completely, her hands reflexively pushing forwards to break her fall and pushing her center of gravity further out of alignment, speeding her fall.  Phlebitis stepped over her and pushed the door shut behind him.
"I'b god a midderable code," said Madame Sosotris.
"You always do when I visit," said Phlebitis.  "It's almost like it's been written about somewhere and we just have to play our parts out over and over again."
Madame Sosotris gave him a penetrating look and produced a lace handkerchief from one of her sleeves.  As she lead the way into her drawing room, where she performed séances, table-turnings, read cards and ate dinner, she blew her nose.  It was a long, drawn-out, mournful honking process, at the end of which she dropped the sodden handkerchief into a bucket
"What's dental Palmistry then?" asked Phlebitis sitting down in the high-backed chair that didn't wobble.  Madame Sosotris glared at him but sat on the other one without saying anything.  She rocked slightly as she tried to make it balance.
"A mistake by the sign-writer," said Madame Sosotris.  Phlebitis could see that her eyes were red as though she'd been crying, and her wrinkles seemed to get deeper and dirtier everytime he came.  "Although, a couple of nights ago I did get a visit from a man who had mouths in his palms.  His future was very hard to read, but eventually I figured out that he'd misunderstood the sign and was hoping for Palmal Dentistry."
"Is there such a thing?"
"Ye–e–es," said Madame Sosotris trying not to look at the builder's wrap of hammers and chisels on the sideboard.  "How have you been though?  Surely another eight months alone at sea must give a man certain... urges?"  She winked.
Phlebitis tried to ignore his stomach doing somersaults and forced a smile.  "I'm not alone," he said.  "I'll just have the usual please.  The future for the next six months in strange images and dire pronouncements.
Madame Sosotris sighed softly, suspecting that Phlebitis was somehow mocking her, and leaned back in her chair.  For many clients she would draw out cards or a crystal ball and use them to distract the customer while she engaged the trance, but she'd been trying and failing to seduce Phlebitis for years now.  He could see it all done the real way, warts and everything.  Her eyes rolled up back in her head, revealing jaundiced whites, and her fingers tensed until her hands looked like claws.
"I see a marriage," she said, and Phlebitis snorted.
"You tried this two times ago," he said.  "You do not see me marrying you, you just wish you could."
"No," said Madame Sosotris, her voice now oddly thick.  "I see you marrying a shape, an intelligence that is not moulded by earth into a human form.  The ceremony is under a moon, and there are people and ... and un-people watching.  There are boiled frogs for the wedding feast.  There are... wait, the image is changing.  There is a chair, a golden chair with eyes in the back.  They are watching you, they are looking for you.  Then they cannot find you and the chair warps and twists.  It is angry.  There are more chairs, and they gather around a table to discuss you."
She sat forward, her wispy grey hair spilling over her eyes and gasped for breath.
"Great," said Phlebitis standing up.  "Married to something not human and it looks like one of the wedding gifts is going to be a carnivorous dining suite.  You've outdone yourself this time, Madame."
His money tinkled on the table.  "I should have asked for the Dental Palmistry," he said.  "That might have made more sense."
As the door closed behind him Madame Sosotris finally got air back into her tired, ancient lungs, and called out.  But Phlebitis was already gone.

Lady's maid

There was a tap on the door, and Madame Sosotris, once a famous clairvoyant and still a notorious prestidigitatress, opened it with flair and verve.  And almost immediately tripped on the hem of her white lace dress and ended up in a crumpled heap on the floor.
"Oooh, very Lady Haversham," said a voice, and Madame Sosotris cringed to hear what she thought of as common-accents, accents which she'd removed from her own voice over five years and through three elocution coaches.  "I rather like it, it suits you, you know.  You've got the face for it."
"What?"  Madame Sosotris couldn't help but notice that she wasn't being helped up, and so had to pull herself back to her feet using the small table that she kept by the door for post that she didn't want to read.
"Old."
Back on her feet, she could see that her visitor was the short, dumpy woman with bad skin who insisted on being called Amelia.  Madame Sosotris had considered telling her what amelia was, but had then decided to save it for when she couldn't stand her any longer.  Which day, she now felt, was drawing closer.
"Please, won't you come in?" she said, trying for gravitas and feeling relieved that her voice didn't do the shrieky think it had started doing a lot lately, making her sound like a pubescent boy.  Her doctor had advised her to take up smoking, but the cards had advised her to change her doctor and she was caught in the snares of indecision.
"Oooh, don't mind if I do!  You know, I tell all my friends about this place, I say how nice it could be if you opened the curtains a little, but then I suppose you'd have to dust as well...."
"Is this a social call?"  Madame Sosotris peered around the door as she closed it, checking for television cameras.  Those Channel4 people got everywhere these days, and she was quite expecting a visit from the mad harridans who invaded people's homes and announced that they were so filthy it was astonishing that they weren't incubating tuberculosis and reviving the Black Death.  The path outside was thankfully empty of lurking camera-crew or be-wellied women with a polishing rag and the twinkle of insanity in their eyes.
"Oh, if only!  It would be lovely just to sit down with you one day and have a little coeur-a-coeur don't you think?  But no, I'm on the cock agai– I mean, I'm on the clock again, how silly of me!"  She tittered, and Madame Sosotris decided not to offer her a cup of tea.  "Yes, I've only got a half-hour and I did so want to find out what this month has in store for me.  You're the best fortune teller around, I tell everyone that.  Even that Mystic Millie, I went to her to have my head read you know, and she thought I was a poodle!  Can you believe the cheek of it?  So I'm back here, and I want those cards laid out for me, pronto!"
"Mystic Millie?  A phrenologist?  A poodle?"  Madame Sosotris felt rather confused; her circle of people involved in the mystic arts included an astrologer who was corpulent enough to have to include himself in his star charts as a significant influence on the life of anyone nearby and a fingerprint reader who she knew was actually working for the Met, but no phrenologist.
"Yes, she's got that shop on Abattoir Road.  But like I said, I'm in a bit of a hurry, so can you sit down and do your thing please?"
Madame Sosotris gestured to a chair at her card-reading table and sat on the other side.  The only shop she could think of on Abattoir Road that might fit was a dog-groomer's, and that kind of bemused confusion fitted her mental image of Amelia perfectly.  She took a deck of cards out of the left-hand side of the table, from a hidden drawer.  These cards were already stacked, just for visitors like Amelia.  She offered them for cutting, and then had Amelia hold them firmly between both hands for several seconds, to imprint on your secret soul.  Amelia giggled a little.
"Right," said Madame S. turning the first card.  "This is the nine of clubs, which indicates that there are many secrets to be uncovered this month."  She laid the card down in the middle of the table.  "This then is the four of wands;" she laid this card crosswise on the nine of clubs, "and that indicates that not all of these secrets will come to light of their own accords.  Wands signify wisdom, so you will need to consider events that are unfolding and seek reasons for them beyond what is presented to you.  This is the eight of..." she paused, realising that she'd not turned the card over yet, and pretended to concentrate, "... the eight of coins–" she turned the card, revealing it was indeed the eight of coins and smiled as though pleased with her prediction, "which in conjunction with the other two indicates that there will be a cost associated with understanding some of these secrets."
"Oooooh!" said Amelia sounding like a steam-kettle on the boil.  "What kind of cost?"
"Let us see," said Madame S., grinning.  She turned the next card, and stared at it.  It was not the two of clubs which she knew she'd set next in the deck.  "This is the Tower, inverted," she said, laying it down below the eight of coins.  "It suggests that the cost will be life-changing.  You should take care what you're prying into."
"Well!" said Amelia, shooting to her feet.  "Prying!  Indeed!"
But Madame Sosotris wasn't listening.  Instead she turned the last card for the layout and looked at it for several seconds before laying it down on the table.  "This is the Fool," she said.  'It can indicate the start of a transformative journey."
She looked up and found she was talking to herself, Amelia had stormed out leaving the front door swinging to and fro.  Madame Sosotris looked again at the cards, and quietly finished the reading with, "And death is very transformative indeed."

Madame Sosotris

Madame Sosotris, famous clairvoyante, still had her bad cold. Phlebitis looked in dismay at her rheumy eyes, so watery he wondered if she sometimes thought she'd drowned, and shuddered to hear her ferocious sniff.
Every bloody time, he thought morosely. It doesn't matter what time of year I come, or how hot or cold it is, but that bloody woman always has that bloody cold. Does she keep it as some kind of bizarre pet? She looked up then, and he forced a smile onto his face.
"Madame Sosotris," he said almost pleasantly, "It is always a delight to see you again."
"I have a premonition coming on!" she said sharply, one wrinkled hand moving across her plucked-and-pencilled eyebrows. "You are going to ask me about... the future!"
"Does anyone ever ask you about anything else?"
"No," she said, dropping her hand and looking a little sad. "And it would be nice, if even only for once, someone asked me how I was, or if I'd been keeping well since the last time I saw them."
Phlebitis nodded. "I know what you mean," he said. "The crew on my ship all jump to carry out my orders quickly enough, but none of them ever asks me if they're doing it right, or if I'd like it done differently, or even how I'm feeling for that matter. Sometimes you wonder why you're doing it all."
"People can be so self-centred," said Madame Sosotris. "I don't know how you cope." She arranged her necklaces, many strands of gold, silver, electrum and uranium, across her wattled neck, and adjusted the neckline of her age-discoloured linen shirt, and then looked up again.
"Are you still here?" she said.
"Madame Sosotris," said Phlebitis, feeling in his pocket for the leather purse he'd put there before leaving his ship. "I have come to purchase your services."
"Ah well--"
"Your clairvoyant services," said Phlebitis quickly, stressing the second word. He shuddered again at the look of real disappointment on her face, and tried to push the images that it raised far from his mind.
"You'd better sit down then," she said, ungraciously. "And put that purse where I can see it."
She pulled a torn deck of cards from a pocket of her sea-green skirt and gestured casually to a stool on one side of a small circular table. A lace cloth, its pattern enhanced by moths, draped casually over the table, and she whisked it aside and threw it to the floor. Underneath the wood was polished with age and warped with neglect, and she sat on the other side of it in a high-backed chair with carven arms and legs that would have been impressive in another place. Phlebitis sat, noticing that the deck was barely half the size it had been the last time he'd been here, and waited.
She held the cards out to him, and he shuffled them, cutting them three times always with his left hand and handed them back to her, whereupon she dropped them on the floor, spilling tattered painted pasteboard everywhere.
"Butterfingers!" she swore, sweeping them together as best she could with a calloused bare foot. Phlebitis crouched down and gathered them up, handing them back to her in a higgledy-piggledy pile.
"Right," she said, turning the first one over. "This is the signifier, this is your card." The card she laid on the table, as close to the centre as the twisted wood would allow, was the Boiled Frog. It was a vivid green, its eyes closed and an oddly blissful smile on its all-too-human face, sitting in what appeared to be a copper boiling pan.
"The Boiled Frog," she said. "Sitting replete in a vat of briny water. I am sure that this will have some signficance to you."
Phlebitis ground his teeth and merely nodded.
"Your second card is... Belladonna, our Lady of the Rocks," she said, laying down half a card, torn lengthways so that only half of a woman's face and body remained. Phlebitis stared at it as Madame Sosotris laid it crosswise on the Boiled Frog, unable to grasp why its presence terrified him so much.
When he finally made himself look away from the cards, he found that Madame Sosotris was industriously sorting through the remaining deck of cards.
"I cannot find the Hanged Man," she said. "He was in here this morning, I know it. I had a man in who wanted to know his future, and bugger me backwards with a broomstick if all the cards I could pull weren't the Hanged Man."
Behind her, shadows formed and writhed, and a pair of yellow eyes observed her actions. They met Phlebitis's briefly and conveyed a warning of silence, and he knew without being told that somehow Madame Sosotris was cheating, and that there were forces afoot that disapproved.
"Oh well," she said flipping over another card. "Your third card ought to be the Hanged Man, because if there's anyone I'd like to see hanged it's you, but instead you're getting... oh." The card on the table was the Jade eyeball, depicted as having fallen from the head of a tentacled idol of a god. "I've not seen that one before," said Madame Sosotris. "Oh well, fear death and slaughter. That's always good advice."
Phlebitis pushed the purse across the table and Madame Sosotris made it disappear far more dextrously than she'd handled the cards, and he stood and left, forgetting to thank her for her time. As he walked away, unseen behind him and her, the shadows thickened and the yellow eyes blinked.