Kurt Van Ristell

Just twenty-seven bones make up the human hand. From our fingertips down to each crescent spur of wrist, we hold just twenty-seven bones in all. Combine both hands, and you get the number fifty-four. A significant figure, fifty-four’s a deck of cards and all the tools you need to deal it. Magnus was a good engineer, but he had the sort of poker-face that made relationships difficult. You just couldn’t read him, and in twenty-seven years nobody had stuck around long enough to really try to.