A Poisoned Wager [Victor]

[Bedlam]

Season of Fall, Day 48, 511 AV “Tell you what,” Jan flashed a smile. “You got talent. Real hand for the cards, ya’see. Guys like me, we know.” He didn’t look it. The kid was of height with Victor; his clothes seemed patched together from a hundred different fabrics, and it seemed to Victor that it was made for someone larger. “I’ve worked here a long time,” he said, “and I haven’t seen someone like you since, well, since I joined in, and I think it might be time to repay the favor.” The crowd was starting to filter out. A smoky haze hung in the air and candlelight cast bright shadows across the room. There was a man and a woman with grim expressions playing cards in the corner, a child sitting between them, not taking part, staring intently at the cards. There were tables piled high with more gold mizas that it seemed one man could ever safely carry, and there was talk among the men of bringing in a wheelbarrel. A man with long brown hair watched them, smiling. “Listen,” Jan said. “I’ve been working here a long time, but I’m starting to think I’ve overstayed my welcome.” He put a hand on Victor’s shoulder, shifted his foot slightly. “We gamble for more than money here,” he said. “So I’m put my job here on the table. We’ll do a little gamble on the side. I win? Thirty gold mizas,” he held up a trio of fingers. “But, you win?” “A little spot to sleep when you can’t find one, pair of good meals every day,” he raised his hands as if holding some great treasure. “My place here?" Jan spread his arms. "All yours.”

[Victor Lark]

Victor considered his latest acquaintance’s proposal with a lingering grin, his narrow eyes narrower in half-serious contemplation. Whether or not the small amount of drink he had ingested had any say in his decision, it was a fact that the foreigner was drunk on his winnings and the thrill of the game. How much exactly he had earned and lost, Victor could not say, but he knew his purse was heavy enough for this wager. The question was: why?

His fingers broke from where they had been steepled against his mouth. “I’ve a bed, thank you,” he replied, mocking contempt. “And I’d say I’m a better gambler than a worker. What do you do here, stand beside the games and wipe the beer and blood off the floor when they’re done?” He laughed with more camaraderie than derision, secretly curious as to what a career in gambling truly entailed. His shirt was mere cotton but it was clean and well-fitted, colored a fashionable green; if not for this place, he probably would not have associated with the likes of Jan. In theory, the Wager’s most foolish of patrons knew not to befriend a fellow gambler, but the aging night had made him amiable.

“But a gamble on the side...” He did not bother to restrain a look of interest, or maybe it was an affect from real hesitance. “...sounds fun.” He pulled himself from the man’s hand and leaned back in his chair, eyeing the velvet-wrapped gold on the table. He would not lose, of course, and after he won, he would have some entertainment for a few nights before he inevitably quit. With a careless shrug, he glanced away from Jan as if it made a difference to the commitment.

The real question was, “Why not?”

[Bedlam]

The corner of Jan's mouth curled upward, stretched his smile a little further. Silent, one of the other patrons nodded toward the pair of them. "The House plays in every game in the Wager," Jan gestured, sharp and sure, to keep his partner's eyes from the rest of the den. "I deal those cards," he lifted a hand. In his hands was a deck of cards in the Ravok style; Victor could see the Voice's face from where he sat, on the bottom of the deck. Jan sat opposite Victor. "I clean the tables when the game is done. I do whatever no one else can do for the Wager." He bridged the cards, and the quiet was cut by the sound of clipping paper. "You shuffle. We wouldn't want any cheating, would we? The accommodations are very good here. I know some who stay their whole lives." The man with the long coat, Thorren Belvare, was too far to hear, but read the shape of the words on Jan's lips. He raised a glass to hide his expression, but his eyes were laughing. "Name the game," Jan let an arm rest on the table in seeming nonchalance and it seemed that half the den had stopped to watch them.

[Victor Lark]

With a breath of a chuckle, Victor took the cards and split them. Another Voice, outlined in red instead of black, flashed at him from the bottom of the other half. He tried not to let his face stiffen at the coincidence. That woman and her men could not see him from across a country and a sea. Still, even though he had been reminded of them more than once tonight by similar and the same cards, he could not help but feel some residual tension, stirred up by an entire childhood beneath a black sun. The shish of falling paper obscured the images and left them to the game.

Victor’s eyes remained on Jan when they did not glance down to regard his shuffling. He teased, “And I presume you make good money putting your skills to use against your own patrons?” The subsequent smirk told that he did not plan on making his new opponent any money tonight. How priceless, to beat a game of cards against the man who dealt them for a living!

Fhif, fhif, : two cards were suddenly laid out on the table, one for each man. As Victor deposited the rest in a neat stack between them, he announced, “Portraits. We don’t need a House—” He looked over the rest of the room with an idle explanation on his tongue, but he paused when he noticed how all the room’s eyes seemed turned in their direction. His brow furrowed with more distaste than suspicion before it turned back to Jan in silent question. Then his expression lifted like a shrug and he glanced at his card. “We don’t need a House, to play the Blind Man’s Bet.”

[Bedlam]

Jan smiled like a knife. One by one the other eyes turned from their table. "Good a game as any," he said, agreeably. "One play decides it all." Stakes, high and fast. Everything on the line. Jan tapped a finger on the side of the table, drew. He frowned at it, ran a finger across his cheek. “So,” he said, “what do you think I should do with your money when this is over?” Jan nodded to the deck. “Draw.”

[Victor Lark]

His card snapped to the table again, sheathing the six swords that lurked on its bottom side. An unassuming smirk regarded Jan’s frown with hesitation. Victor knew well enough not to take it for granted, but his winning streak’s vanity distorted his judgment. As his hand moved to draw, his curled lips answered, “I think you’d better consider how you’ll use any money, without a job.”

He slid the second card over the first and bent them at his eyes together. An eight marked with a black Sun glared at him from behind its brother six, and Victor bit the side of his mouth. He was perfectly safe, but ruined if the ubiquitous ten-cards floated near the top of the pile. The sly silver around his pupils grinned as he regarded Jan’s eyes, his mouth, his card, the deck. “Draw.”

[Bedlam]

Jan's eyes touched his cards, his eyes frowned for a fraction of a second, the tip of his mouth twisted down. Jan's face went smooth, and his smile came back, but smaller. The bar was thick with the scent of burning candlewicks and a dull, smoky texture suffused the air. "No need to worry about me," he said, his voice light, tight. His fingers drummed on the table as he eyed his cards. "Whichever way this game goes . . ." His nose twitched, nervous, and he left the rest unsaid. ". . . Draw." He pulled the card from the top of the deck. "Why'd you come here, Victor? Promising kid like you? Plenty of places in the city you could squat." He spread out his cards in one hand, examined them, elaborately casual. "What brings you to our old Wager tonight?"

[Victor Lark]

Jan’s expression twisted like bad luck, and the grin on his Victor’s brow replied with softened uncertainty. He checked his cards distractedly. They had not, in fact, changed to something better or worse at the magic of his opponent’s displeasure; they remained as mediocre as before, and Victor did not hesitate to improve them. He drew, and two black Suns rose and set before his eyes, carefully hidden atop the small stack of cards beneath his hand. A smile rose on one end of his mouth, but it was probably only a response to Jan’s question.

“I like the games,” he replied, shrugging. “Not enough people play for the sake of playing, I think.”

Victor was not fond of explaining himself; he was not very good at it. He sat up from where he had reclined in his chair, perching both forearms against the table. Peering playfully at the pupils of Jan’s eyes, he countered, “How do you like it? Surely you could find another place, if all you wanted was a meal and a bed!”

[Bedlam]

"Ah, Victor," Jan shook his head, his smile rueful. "A man after my own heart. Games are made for the sake of playing! You understand. But that's not all." Jan paused. "I have a duty to this place. To keep the games moving. To let the patrons play their games. It's part of what working here means. I can't leave until I find someone to replace me." Jan stared at his hand, and a flicker of what might have been uncertainty touched his eyes. "Might be tonight will be my last night, and I'll leave to find something better." He shrugged, as though to say it did not matter to him. "I'll stand." Jann smiled again, and the hesitation gone like mist in morning, set his cards on the table. "Your move, Victor. Draw or stand? It's your choice."

[Victor Lark]

A happy glare peered through his narrowed eyes, mimicking those of girls he had known who suspected a proposal that had not been made. A thought flashed in the back of his eyes, unknown to the muscles of his face. Duty, he said, and can’t leave. It was not guilt in his plan to inevitably quit that made him pause; not even his slightly inebriated mind could decide what exactly it was. He looked at his cards, and then at the neat stack that sat unassumingly between them.

He was too close, really. It was more likely that the next card would bust him than do him any good, and yet... what was three gold? Maybe it didn’t matter, maybe it did. The familiar rush of the risk rose in his throat. His smile grew again from where it had faltered. Without a word, he took another card.

Then Victor laughed, showed his cards. “Twenty-one.”