“You have a big hand?” he asked, as if trying to elicit some response that might give him a clue.
“Oh, a big one,” Sangk replied, leaning back and rechecking his cards, as if reassuring himself of his decks value.
“Why such a big bet?” Marius mused, almost to himself. “Four cards in. What have you got? King queen? Two princesses?” He riffled a small pillar of coins. “So many cards left.”
“Confused?”
“Ahhhh.” Marius rubbed his face. I should get an award for this, he thought. The Queen of Muses herself should place a laurel around my ears. “Why so big? You could still lose so many cards.”
Sangk said nothing, simply crossed his hands and waited. Marius shook his head.
“Okay,” he said, voice full of uncertainty. “I call.”
Four more cards passed, each bet growing in size, until Marius had Sangk right where he wanted the fat man to think he had Marius – pot committed, with so many coins in the pot that when the second to last card was drawn he had no option but to throw the rest into the centre for fear of folding the hand and being crippled. Sure enough, as soon as he pulled the card from his deck, Sangk reached down and pushed his stack over, spilling his coins across the table.
“Everything,” Sangk said. “All of it.”
Marius laid his cards face down, placed his hands on top of it to signify that he was merely considering, not folding. He made a great show of examining the fallen money and comparing it against his own. To call Sangk’s bet would cost him everything. Exactly what he wanted. Once he won this hand he would have his opponent out-coined by a factor of more than eleven to one. After that, it was only a matter of time – a very short time – before he had them all.
“Call,” he said, and turned over his cards. “Two princesses.” He stood up, and reached over for the coins.
Sangk smiled, and slowly fanned his hand on to the table.
“One queen, one bishop,” he said, and laughed. “No wastrel.”
“But… how…?”
“Did you mean this?” Sangk casually flipped over the peasant card next to the bishop, revealing the tiny split at the top corner.
“What…?”
“Please,” Sangk sat back and held his arms wide open, appealing to the room around them. “Do you take me for a fool? Do you think I don’t know the make-up of my own deck? Each little mark, each little signifier?” He clapped his hands together, and leaned forward, picking up a card at random and holding it in front of Marius. “Do you think I didn’t learn to do this at my father’s elbow when I was a child?” he asked, stroking the card with his thumb, opening a split almost identical to the one on the bishop. Marius stared at the fresh mark as the fat man rubbed it against the face of a second card, muddying the edges until they were almost indistinguishable from either the wastrel or the peasant.
“No.”
“Oh, yes, I’m afraid so.”
“No.” Marius shook his head. “You can’t do that.”
“In my own house? I think I can.” Sangk leaned over and began scooping coins towards himself. “I win, don Hellespont. Whatever your little game was, you’re busted. It’s time for you to get out.”
“How the hell…?
“What?” he asked, laughing. “Did you think I didn’t recognize you? The way you walk, or hold yourself? The way you always lead with a small bet and never commit yourself until the third card, time after time after time?” He rose from the table, and began to scoop the money towards him. “Did you really think covering yourself up and putting on a funny voice would hide you from me? You’re as big a fool as your father, don Hellespont, if you think you can deceive me like that.”
“It’s Helles. I go by Helles.” Marius scraped his chair back and stood.
“Like I care,” Sangk nodded to the burly doorkeeper. “Escort this bankrupt out of my house.”
The giant came over and grabbed Marius by each arm. Marius struggled, and gave up almost immediately. He may as well be trying to squirm through wood. Sangk stood before him, and grabbed the edge of his hood.
“Next time,” he said, and flipped the hood back, “try a better…. Oh, Gods!”
He stumbled backwards, arms rising to cover his face. Marius turned his head to look at his captor. The doorkeeper let him loose, and stepped back, fear and disgust written across his previously impassive features. Marius smiled, and the doorkeeper broke, and ran for the nearby staircase.
“Oh, Gods,” Sangk was crying, over and over. “He’s dead. He’s dead. Oh, Gods.” Players at other tables were looking at them. Marius stared back. As he turned to each startled patron they leaped from their chairs and join the crush at the stairs.
“They’re coming back,” Sangk cried. “They told me when I bought it, they told me. Oh, Gods…” He began to pray in his native Tallian, a long stream of syllables punctuated only by a rising ululation. Marius stepped forward and grabbed his collar, drawing him up.
“What are you talking about?” he said, shaking the heavier man. “What?”
“The duke,” Sangk babbled. “The men he killed. They’re buried down here, in the walls, in the back cave…” He began praying again. Marius let him go and he fell to the floor, pressing his head against the cold stone, begging forgiveness from whatever Gods he could rally to his cause. Marius turned away. The room was empty. Only he and the babbling man at his feet remained. He bent over the table, scooping the coins towards himself and counting them out. Eighty riner. He gathered them up, made his way to the next table and the next, gathering the abandoned winnings together. When he had finished he counted one hundred and fifty riner.
“Not a bad haul,” he said to his terrified host. “I should come here dead more often.” He separated out a hundred riner and placed it in various pockets, then picked up the first of the remaining coins and waved it at Sangk.
“Never steal what you can’t swallow,” he said. “First rule.” He placed the coin in his mouth, and gulped it backwards. It stuck in the top of his throat. Marius gulped again, pushed and pulled at it with the base of his tongue until it jumped into his mouth. He tried again, with the same result.
“Shit.”
There was no spit in his mouth, and, dead as he was, he could not summon any. He pondered the coin for a moment. Then he tilted his head back, opened his mouth as wide as he could, and dropped it back in. Gulping, and jerking his head back and forth like a baby bird, he managed to get it down.
“Like a lizard swallowing a mouse,” he told the wailing Sangk. “I’ve spent a lot of time sleeping under bushes.” One by one he gulped the remaining coins down his gullet, until the table was empty. He looked over at Sangk for one, last, smug comment, and stopped.
Deep within the unused rear of the cave, where a small corridor lead to a tiny antechamber, something stood. Had he been alive, Marius would not have seen it. But his dead eyes, able to distinguish shades of dark from each other with much keener facility, saw the shape, and the one behind it, and vaguely, the impression of several more.