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1
For the first time in your decade at an ochaya owned by Lord Kyoshiro, a customer turned your head.
Most of the men and occasional women who called on you were high-ranking Beasts Pirates. Residents of the Flower Capital saw through your pale makeup, but to the invaders, you were just as exotic as any of your fellow courtesans. They should have guessed you didn't belong there either for the very reason that drew them to you: you played the card games they knew, with suits they recognized, a world apart from the strategic board games enjoyed by Wano's educated class.
Your island was southwest of Wano, a sweltering tropic from whose lawless waters you were unceremoniously snatched as a teenager. You weren't sure which of the several pirate crews in this part of the Grand Line it was, but you changed hands enough times to end up in the Flower Capital.
So when all of the Tobi Roppo arrived in the hanamachi in late winter, you knew to brace yourself for a visit from Who's-Who, at the very least, a proud man who talked your ear off about his former career with the World Government irrelevant to you twice over considering the two non-member nations in which you'd lived. It didn't matter if he convinced any of his crewmates to come along for a game. Even if it was just him, he expected you to deal two-person blackjack.
Luckily, tonight wasn't near that boring. About half the Tobi Roppo—including X Drake, who rarely showed his face in this district—and some Shinuchi you'd never seen before followed Who's-Who to what was functionally "your" table behind dividers at the teahouse.
"Poker?" you guessed in lieu of a greeting.
"Baccarat," Who's-Who said, with an ostentatious kiss to the back of your hand.
You didn't let your smile waver. Baccarat involved shuffling two decks together, which meant you'd have to use your personal cards. Other Beasts Pirates who'd been to Dressrosa on business for Kaidou returned with more as "gifts," but the only duplicate you had matched the one you had on you when you came to Wano and tried to only use for—
"Hawkins," Drake said. "Who's-Who says she tells fortunes."
You looked up from your shuffling to see who the disgraced Marine addressed.
The man was shorter than Drake, with blond hair hanging past his shoulders, and while the Tobi Roppo around the table spoke among themselves or flirted with your livelier coworkers, Hawkins looked at you. Or more specifically, at your hands.
At your pause, his eyes flicked up to yours, and he smirked.
⸺
"Read me," Hawkins said.
His voice was lower and rougher than you expected.
"Aren't congratulations in order?"
The teahouse wasn't a proper casino—not that you'd ever been to one—so the players provided the stakes themselves, a show of excess while they bled the land dry. Being the "house" meant you had a bit more personal wealth than others after your boss took a cut. Your meagre savings saw no increase tonight because of the man who came to sit closer to you after the Tobi Roppo dispersed, Who's-Who flustered from his total loss.
"I should be thanking you."
You poured two cups of sake, primly as you could. "All I did was deal."
Hawkins won by betting banker every time.
"You showed your hand. All I did was follow."
The turn of phrase wasn't literal, you knew. "How?"
Hawkins picked up your hand in his and ran his thumb over your knuckles, where Who's-Who's lips had been.
You shivered.
"You wouldn't let that man win," he said, seemingly studying your skin. You didn't put makeup on your body, and you wondered if he noticed the difference in the low light.
"I can hardly read like this," you said.
Hawkins seemed to remember himself and withdrew, clearing his throat.
You separated the decks again with impressive speed. You took good care of your cards, but you handled them every day and knew each edge, the slightest stain on the backs of each, a crease from accidentally sitting on the Three of Diamonds, how slightly smoothed with use the cardstock was compared to its younger twin. Even if you weren't interested in cheating Who's-Who, the imperfections of your deck made it quite unsuitable to an honest game. And using your oldest possession for gambling always made you feel dirty. You didn't know if you believed it did anything or not, but after games like baccarat, you placed them by your open window when the moon was full.
You reached for his hand and rested it on the deck. "What do you want to know, seeker?"
Other men who asked for this saw it as a party trick and you for a novelty. They'd have a line ready like all about you or will I spend the night?, but this Hawkins was too serious, too wooden to make a joke of his own fortune.
"What you see."
You decided you liked his hands.
The card he'd touched was first: "Seven of Hearts."
"Can I ask questions?"
"It's your reading."
"What are 'hearts?' To you."
"Emotion, and not only love," you said. "Other decks use chalices or cups. Things that hold water, which you can't easily contain." Hawkins nodded, like he was really listening instead of humoring you, and you continued. You knew the second you touched the next card. "Three of Diamonds. Diamonds are the physical world, what we can touch," you offered freely. "And the Queen of Hearts."
You said the last one neutrally, beating down the romantic inside you.
"The Seven of Hearts is about confusion, deceit of some kind," you said. "It's either an outside, malicious party pulling the wool over your eyes, or your own self-deception. Kidding yourself. Or both."
Hawkins hummed. "How do you find that with just these symbols?"
You leaned back in your chair, not very ladylike, but people rarely picked your brain like this. "There's an arc to each suit. If 10 is the denouement, there's a climax, and smaller peaks and dips in activity. It's numerological." You looked at the first card. "Seven is busy. For hearts, it's confusion and contradiction. The Seven of Clubs, for example, is more obviously about quick, external action. Does that... make sense?"
It was poor form for a courtesan to dominate conversation like this, but he asked.
He looked at you, at your face, and you wondered what he saw that made him take his time. "It does," he said eventually. "You'd be a good teacher."
You laughed a real laugh at that. "Fate had other plans. As you can see."
Hawkins spared a glance for the teahouse around you, at some other Shinuchi having more raucous dinners and conversation, like he was considering you against the environment. "Shouldn't a place like this have many different characters?"
"I suppose," you said. "Suppose if they chose to be here, it's not a bad life."
"Didn't you?"
You bit your lip. Inappropriate. It made Lord Kyoshiro look more fearsome, more vicious. You came to work for him only after coming to this country against your will, but your history hardly mattered.
"You seem like you read yourself," you said, changing topics.
Hawkins' eyes narrowed, and you knew he wouldn't forget easily. "I didn't want you to be uncomfortable," he said.
"No. The opposite," you said. "It's rare to meet someone who does. Least of all here."
"...I can't say I expected it, no."
"Really? What have you seen lately?"
"They're different suits," he said. "You seem familiar."
"Yes, actually. They're more common—" You stopped. Why did you want to share so much with this man? "What were they?" you said instead.
"The Queen of Cups," he said, looking you in the eye.
Your heart fluttered. "And?"
"Death," he said. "Almost every day."
There was plenty of that around here, in no small part due to the pirate crew he was part of, but the way Drake seemed to introduce him to the others, he was new.
"Interesting," you said. You looked down at the spread. The threes were about other people, and diamonds implied something pragmatic. A coalition. But paired with a card you'd often taken to mean betrayal... you had some idea of how he got here.
"Can I see you again?"
Your head snapped up. He was watching you silently, your brain interpreting his cards without him.
"Yes," you said, and for the first time, you meant it. "Bring your cards."
2
Hawkins, you learned, lived in Kuri.
You almost tempted him to stay for the night, not with any real plans in mind besides to keep talking, but he left long after all his companions did and so close to first light he really should've just slept over before what turned out to be a day trip back to his post patrolling the wasteland of Kozuki Oden's former domain. You wondered if he had no sexual desires at all and really only saw you for your mind, the logical extreme of what other customers wanted from you, but you remembered his knees knocking into yours from how close he wanted to be, how his eyes darkened when you licked your lips, and the kiss he pressed to your opposite hand, lingering and tender.
You shouldn't be interested in him. You disliked pirates as a general rule, and disliked most men. But there was something soft about Hawkins other than his hair, which whispered along your face as he stood to leave you. Maybe if you paid attention to your surroundings like usual, you would have caught some gossip from the other Shinuchi about Hawkins' circumstances. The Beasts Pirates had their numbers from Kaidou's long reign and his... magnanimity toward toward challengers, if you could call it that.
It was only the next day, when you caught a kamuro on her way to throw out some broadsheets that had accumulated around the teahouse, that you saw a news story with an illustration you recognized as Hawkins, alongside a scowling pirate named Eustass "Captain" Kid now in Udon's prison mine. More than a few of your coworkers had male relatives there. It was a place for political dissidents and, apparently, foreign pirates—apart from Basil Hawkins.
He was pragmatic, then, like you.
Your ochaya was humbler than others, but kept girls and women off the streets of the Flower Capital who were too provincial for better establishments to give them a chance, or those displaced like you, or your roommate from your apprentice years whose father and brothers died in a rebellion ten years into this shogunate. It made you curious about Lord Kyoshiro, and acknowledge your lot in life could be much worse.
Now as Hawkins dismounted his steed—you would have called it a qilin, a word borrowed on your island from Kano anyway—you wondered if he thought the same about his own luck.
"I thought you geisha stayed inside," Hawkins said as he handed off the creature to a stable boy.
"I'm already dark."
He looked at you then. Your pale makeup was in place, of course, and brought your face closer to his own pallor, but the sunlight made your hasty brush strokes more obvious, hasty because you saw him turn the street corner from the second-floor balcony and rushed to hide your fatigue from a long and lucrative night.
"I'll take you word for it."
It was irregular for a courtesan of your rank to greet a guest at the door, or indeed outside. You were part of a walled garden that waited to be admired, perhaps plucked at the root, but never eager, never wanting anything for yourself. You should have waited for a serving girl to escort him in. The proprietress curled her lip seeing you enter, and you knew you were due for a scolding delayed only by Hawkins' presence, trailing a respectful distance behind you. The maiko who prepared the room for tea couldn't hide her questioning look.
Hawkins watched you work without saying a word, and you felt nervous for the first time since your graduation.
"Stop that," you said.
"Is that any way to treat a customer?"
"I don't have to pretend with you." You meant you generally: other foreigners with fewer expectations, especially pirates.
"I'm flattered."
Your neck heated.
"This isn't a tea ceremony, you know. You're here at an odd time."
It was nearly noon, and your more popular coworkers were sleeping in.
"It's still interesting."
You were disciplined enough not to snort as you wet the chasen. "I don't see how."
"I've never seen powdered tea before."
You paused. "Really?"
"I have—had," he corrected, bitterly, "a crewmate who divines tea leaves."
Your nose wrinkled, but you thought for a second before shrugging. "My aunt read coffee grounds."
"Coffee," Hawkins marveled. "You're really not from here."
You didn't say anything to that. Your name didn't blend in in the slightest. You were lucky to be pale for your family, or else face powder wouldn't be enough to raise you to this status, and you surely would've sold your body by now. What you lacked in nativity you made up with your mind, playing strategy games with Wanoan men and cards with pirates.
Hawkins reached for the bowl you set in front of him, and you tutted. "Two hands."
He chuckled, and it ran down your spine like a caress.
"'I don't have to pretend with you,'" he quoted as he complied.
You huffed. "Have some reverence. I know you're here under duress, but—"
"Not duress, no. By request."
You blinked.
"You told me to bring my cards." He opened a brown leather pouch at his hip.
"I mean in the Land of Wano," you said.
"Aren't you, too?"
He set the thick deck on a tatami mat to the side, and you frowned.
"Finish your tea."
The way his hair shrouded him made you wish you could see his neck, the bob of his throat as he swallowed, the line of his jaw. Maybe if he wore a kimono you'd have a better sense of his shape, and your imagination would run a little less (or more) wild than it had since the night you read his fortune.
You eyed his cards with your hands in your lap.
"Go ahead," Hawkins said.
You shook your head. "I shouldn't yet."
His eyes narrowed, and he downed the usucha like a shot of alcohol.
You sent a maiko away with the cleaned tea set before you finally met his eye. "What brings you to the Flower Capital?"
"You."
"Really."
"You're the strangest person I've met here."
"I'm not sure that's a compliment."
"It is."
"You have no other business?" you said. "The shogun?"
Hawkins shook his head. "I answer to Kaidou."
"And I'm stranger than an ogre."
"There's strange," he said, "and then there's aberrant."
Hawkins spoke in terms of piracy, you assumed. Kaidou's abberance was his strength and his age, the continuity of his hold on Wano and islands like yours.
You gestured at the deck. "May I?"
He inclined his head.
The first time you saw a proper tarot deck was in a port city nearer to your homeland. One of your captors—who really wasn't all that bad, considering—stopped by a divination parlor, and you were transfixed enough to pilfer the ordinary deck of playing cards you used now.
You let the deck rest in your palm. The dimensions were large and the paper thick, with a rougher texture that said it wasn't for gambling, the showmanship of slick cards sliding against each other like water. You knew you couldn't gracefully shuffle it in any way you were used to, and your eyes flicked to Hawkins' hands, large and flat on his knees.
You flipped the first card onto its back like you were leafing through a book. "Prescriptive," you said aloud. The illustration was unambiguous, which you bristled at. It was the Two of Cups, exchanged by two figures like wedding bands, and you thought of the tea bowl that passed between you two moments ago.
"Practical," Hawkins countered.
"For what?"
He hummed, his gaze fixed somewhere past you, like he was considering his words. "Combat," he landed on.
You fingered the edge of the card. It occurred to you you knew little about him, only that he wasn't from the Grand Line, but you'd been through too much to be easily surprised. Most power users in Wano were Zoan types, like all the Tobi Roppo and the Gifters among the Shinuchi, so it was really unlikely that Hawkins would join their ranks without a Devil Fruit of his own. But to incorporate these cards...
"I imagine swords and batons do the most for you." You flipped to the next one: the Eight of Swords, a blindfolded figure fenced in by blades.
"I've made it this far."
You exhaled a laugh. "How modest."
"I try not to have illusions."
You examined at every single card in the deck like this. Hawkins tired of sitting in seiza after a while and reclined on his side, like a housecat, resting his jaw in one hand and watching you handle what you knew to be an intimate part of himself, a weapon and a guide. If he really left Kuri for this...
"Stay," you said softly, selfishly.
You laid down the Four of Cups, the final of 78. Hawkins glanced at it, too, and you both knew it was double-edged.
3
The way Lord Kyoshiro stooped to fit in the passenger cart you shared didn't make him any less impressive. His pompadour drooped a little further down his face from the squish of the ceiling, but somehow you knew he leered through rather than at you. Though he didn't make a habit of visiting your teahouse—it made less money than most under his protection in the Flower Capital's hanamachi—you had no reason to fear him, at least not as a woman.
This outing, however, was quite unusual.
"What do you want me to say? Lord Kyoshiro."
Around noon your boss summoned you to have tea with the yakuza, and he asked you "You read fortunes, don't you?" And odder still: "And you count cards."
It was a very... casino turn of phrase. Wano had karuta, but you'd only seen it used for a New Year's grabbing game that couldn't possibly benefit from the sort of cheats you'd learned for poker and their like.
Kyoshiro must have liked your answer, given your current proximity.
He looked down his nose at you. "Shouldn't you ask who you're reading first?"
Every question this man put to you was so transparently a test, and you were very aware of the katana at his waist.
"I can guess."
The road you were on led nowhere but Orochi Castle.
"The shogun is unsettled these days," Kyoshiro said. "Do you know why?"
Why should I? Kurozumi Orochi was a spiteful little pissant, not that you'd ever seen him up close to judge his scale beside other men, and his paranoia was the reason some of your coworkers were orphans.
"Oh, I forget. You're not from here."
You gave an ironic little smile. When you were sold to this ochaya to settle some minor Beasts Pirate's debt, Kyoshiro questioned you personally about the waters beyond Wano, how your captors even entered the country, who their contacts were. You were 16 and sullen and unobservant then, and this commission was only your second encounter.
"12 years," you said. The failed raid on Onigashima happened when you were a maiko.
"There is a curse on Shogun Orochi," Kyoshiro said. "It goes: Like the moon—"
"'Curse'?" you interrupted.
"Curse."
"I understand."
"You know it?"
"It's probably better I don't. I don't want him to suspect me." Though you wondered if he was that clever. "The moon, huh?"
You wished you had Hawkins' cards for this, with its large, colorful astrological illustrations. Frankly, your own cards lacked the showmanship necessary to pull off whatever deception Lord Kyoshiro was angling for.
You kissed your teeth as you looked at him. "Do you have hanafuda on you?"
Kyoshiro barked a laugh. "You ask a yakuza."
"Well?"
The already-small deck he produced looked tiny in Kyoshiro's hand, and you wondered how the pirate you'd entertained twice now would handle them. You hadn't seen Hawkins in over a week since the lazy afternoon and night he spent with you, maddeningly proper through it all even as you slept in the same bed. He didn't offer to write, and neither did you, though you wondered if it wasn't disinterest but rather ignorance that it wasn't improper, because it was hardly your place to suggest such a thing. Or maybe you should have precisely because he was innocent to the ways of the hanamachi.
You flicked through the cards until you found the full moon, and then a phoenix. "We call this fenghuang on my island," you said.
"Hmm?"
You held it up, and Kyoshiro squinted in the slight light of the rickshaw. "Ho-o," he translated.
Hawkins would've asked you to say more, would perhaps pluck the card from your fingers or hold your wrist as he studied it, his thumb ghosting over the pulse there before he withdrew like he should.
You'd see him again soon. Assuming you didn't offend the shogun.
⸺
Apart from being separated from much of his crew, Hawkins didn't mind his new role. His strongest combatants stayed in Kuri to reinforce the Beasts Pirates' presence in the region, and all he had Kaidou's assurance the others were doing well, wherever they ended up. As a shinuchi, he had more freedom to travel, whether for extraneous tasks with the Tobi Roppo or his own discretion.
Not many cages were the whole of a country beyond the World Government's grasp, and only this one had you.
It was highly unusual for him to be taken with anyone of any gender, but he'd never met a cartomancer apart from his teacher in the North Blue. You were almost too good to be true, but he wasn't so arrogant to think someone would go out of their way to distract him like this. And you were a distraction, how every night Hawkins stared at the moon and counted its phases from the time he last saw you.
Unpleasant as he found the whole business, Hawkins found himself asking X Drake more about the courtesans of Wano in an effort not to look a fool in front of you, though Drake said that was only his third time in the hanamachi in two years and tried to redirect Hawkins' inquiries to Black Maria. Hawkins was uneasy with the woman's manner, but he didn't know any courtesans but you. There must have been others, surely—arch and luscious like Black Maria, refined and untouchable like the Komurasaki he'd only seen in bromides—but all he wanted was the warmth that broke through your armor, your sharp mind and the play in your speech.
You were subtle and wary, sad and wise. You felt like him, because you were, brought to this land with even less choice than he had, and he saw a much more optimistic future for himself in how you settled here than he could say any of his fellow pirates inspired.
Hawkins would have ridden straight to the Flower Capital if he didn't take a detour to Hakumai, where the Grudge Dolph was docked, to dig out the tarot deck he used in Paradise. He didn't know if giving gifts to courtesans was standard procedure, and he didn't care. But when he finally arrived at your ochaya in the evening, the proprietress glanced at him for just a second before saying, "She isn't here."
"Excuse me?"
Your boss took one long drag of her pipe before saying, "A summons."
Hawkins looked around. He couldn't know what was happening in private rooms, but the teahouse was lively as the night you met. "With the other oiran?"
"They're here."
"Who—?"
"Trust we protect your privacy as much as any other customer's."
Hawkins could have sworn at her, but a tall woman poked her head into the foyer at that moment and said, "Send him my way, ma'am."
The proprietress looked up at the ceiling, sighing in what must have been assent, how the courtesan slunk in and hooked her arm into his with no small amount of force. Irritated, Hawkins considered firmly shaking her off, but she murmured in his ear, "Lord Kyoshiro took her away." He stilled at that, and she clucked her tongue. "Keep moving."
"Who are you?" Hawkins asked on the way to a private room.
"A friend," she said. "Yoko, if you must."
His eyes narrowed. "Explain."
"Lord Kyoshiro owns this teahouse. It makes him the last profit, so he hardly visits." Yoko poured a cup of water and pushed it toward him. "No one has ever heard of him using his own services, which means he must have brought her to someone else."
"When was this?"
"Mid-day. Which is unusual in itself. Wealthy patrons tend to want us for evening engagements—parties and whatnot. And you know her: there's better musicians here and in the whole hanamachi, so—"
"Someone wants her skills."
Yoko inclined her head. "I saw you two. You do the same thing, shinuchi."
"I don't deal poker."
"There's only one power in this land that a yakuza like Kyoshiro would play errand boy for."
Instead of answering or agreeing, Hawkins reached for the deck at his belt, flicking the leather pouch open and sliding the first card out. The Emperor glared up at him.
Yoko lowered her voice enough that Hawkins had to strain the hear. "He's given to excess. A single courtesan wouldn't cut it for a banquet. If there was one tonight, we'd know about it, and this district would be half as busy."
"...What are you saying?"
"She should be back by now. We all respect Kyoshiro. He either plans to return her personally or trusted someone else to do it."
Hawkins reached for the water and realized his jaw was painfully clenched. "I see." The courtesan rested her chin in her hands and studied him for too long a moment to go unnoticed. "What?"
"I can see why she likes you."
His stomach did a flip. "Does she?"
"We were girls together," Yoko said. "She's never paid attention to anyone like this, man or woman. And she's had her admirers."
Hawkins' mind flicked to Who's-Who, how the Tobi Roppo sat directly across from you as you dealt that game and watched you the rest of the night.
"I have to go," he said.
She bowed. "Hurry back."