“…because here’s what I think,” Malen concluded. “You don’t need another thin plug. Or a thousand. Or even another River Queen.” He gestured around him to indicate the boat. “You don’t play to win anymore. You play to see others lose. You play for the grip a won-wager gives you over your opponent. You play for the value of the thing not to yourself, but to the player who loses it to you. You relish the toll it takes on them.” He paused, staring intently into Gynedo’s eyes. “Tell me I’m wrong.”
After a long moment, the straw-boss smiled again. “And how should I counter bet? What do I put up against a used pen set that a would-be poetess never had the chance to use?”
“They are everything to me,” Malen answered evasively, looking down at Marta’s four nice things.
“And the game you’d have us play?” The tone in the straw-boss’s voice sounded the way Malen did when he was placating Roth on some trivial request.
“Double Draw will do,” Malen suggested casually, though in truth it was his best game.
Gynedo sat still for several moments, looking from the items on the table to Malen and back. And for all the man’s ability to keep a bettor’s expression, it was clear he was intrigued. Malen had in all likelihood just proposed a game (not the plack deal itself, but the stakes) that opened a new way for the man to take a thrill again from games of chance he’d clearly mastered long ago.
“You like your chances, then?”
“I’m not wet, am I?” Malen said, referring to the joke of plungers thrown overboard. He then offered the first smile of his own.
With an enthusiasm he guessed the straw-boss hadn’t felt in a very long time, the man said eagerly, “Let’s play.”
Gynedo pulled out a fowl deck with which to play their hands of Double Draw. It added a layer of difficulty to the game. These plackards had been painted with the semblances of birds, each plack bearing one of five: quail, crane, grebe, vulture, and magpie. And each bird had one wing tucked neatly against its side, while the other was raised high, a clear number of feathers on display—one to twelve, to be exact.
Games played with fowl decks, though, weren’t straight pairing games. With this deck, the feathers were at the heart of the odds. A vulture feather was worth two grebe feathers, a grebe feather worth two crane feathers, a crane feather two quail feathers, and a quail feather worth two magpie feathers. Magpie cards were different. A magpie card allowed the player to multiply the feather count of any single card in his hand by the number of feathers the magpie displayed.
In truth, the birds represented five So’Dell families that had spent time in the ruling seat over the last several hundred years. Some decks had human faces in place of bird heads. And if you happened to play a member of one of those houses, the feather weighting was likely to change. As were the puns about fowl and foul—the ruling class weren’t a popular sort. But mostly, the placks made for good gamble-sport.
Double Draw went like this: Two plackards were dealt down, two up. Chancers made a bet, then got to exchange any three cards. They’d bet again. And, if they desired to, exchanged one more card after their second wager. Of course, betting can escalate back and forth between players after that, but no more cards are drawn.
Gynedo dealt out the first game. Malen had a strong plackard down, an eleven-feather magpie. With some hesitation, he pushed in Marta’s pinch-comb. And almost immediately, he felt at ease, back where he’d been as a young deckhand.
He went on a winner’s streak, which is to say he lost only four of eighteen hands, but only after he’d won some coin, so that he wasn’t risking Marta’s nice things anymore. At this rate, after a full night of gambling, he’d have several months’ worth of food money, and rent besides.
But Gynedo grew bored playing hands with no real consequence to either of them. Malen could see it in the man’s wandering eyes. On the nineteenth deal, the straw-boss carefully assessed the coin neatly stacked in front of Malen, and after the plackards were laid, matched the lot of it, plus a marker for a shamble-shack deed.
“What’s this?” Malen thought he knew, but wanted to hear it.
“My raise. A leaky-roof, blood-cough nursery that I can’t find a buyer for.” He grinned wickedly.
The lower east end of the harbor had become a shantytown, where people taken with the blood-cough were quarantined away from the rest of city. Or at least, the poor blood-coughers were. Clean-boot folk had money for physick healers and fresh water. The rest wound up in the shantytown. In the beginning, the little shacks had been temporary quarters built for itinerant deckhands who followed seasonal work from harbor to harbor and needed a quick roof. Built in haste, these places were riddled with holes and uncomfortable besides.
When deck laborers set down roots in Wanship, the shanties became a slum within a slum. Until the blood-cough. And yet, the current wave of disease would pass, and property was no bad bid. A deed meant land ownership. Malen could hold on to it until this season of illness passed. Then, move in, or sell. Either way, it was a significant raise.
With only the briefest hesitation, he pushed Marta’s pinch-comb into the center of the table.
Gynedo made a disapproving noise in his throat. “My friend, I don’t wish to be indelicate, since I know what these items mean to you. But take stock for a moment. Do you think this pinch-comb calls my shanty deed?”
Without hesitation, Malen said, “No, it’s a raise.”
The other’s eyebrows rose in surprise and curiosity. “That so? Let’s hear why.”
“I’m betting the memory of love. The… the subtle suggestion of a woman that I should touch her.”
The man’s eyes glittered with interest and scheme. “So you’re wagering your fondness for sex. I can see—”
“That’s not it at all.” Malen held up a hand, asking for a moment to collect his thoughts. “I can get a woman’s box. Any man can. A tumble in the sheets can be had on the wharf for a dry night in a warm bed.” He tapped the table near Marta’s pinchcomb. “What I’m betting is the memory of tumbling with a woman I love. A woman who loved me back. And your raise… it’s a disease ward. It may come eventually to be worth more. But today, right now,” he tapped again, “it don’t mean a plunger’s damn.”
“A call then,” Gynedo conceded, still smiling.
Malen nodded agreement. “First draw?”
“Two,” he answered, tossing in his two up placks, which were middling feather counts.
“And two for me.” Gynedo dealt out replacements.
The straw-boss then tapped his lip several times as he seemed to be considering what to do. He had the look of a man now fully enjoying the game, its slow waitings, its considerations, its swift turns and long odds and sharp bites when bad placks turned up.
Gynedo looked up from his hand, giving Malen a long, thoughtful stare. He then picked up a pen, dipped it in ink, and scratched out a note on a small square of paper. When he was done, he slowly blew it dry, catching Malen’s eye as he did so. Then he slid the paper into the center amidst the rest of the plack pot.
Malen sat still for several moments, denying his eagerness to read the man’s bet. When he’d held back long enough to seem dispassionate—a key for good gamesmanship—he leaned forward and turned the paper around so he could read it.
A year’s free access to Gynedo’s provisions-and-goods account at the dock mercantile.
His heart raced. This was an unreal bet. It took everything he had to keep his excitement off his face.
As straw-boss, the man would have buying authority for the entire riverboat. His credit with wharf shops would be top drawer. It would mean as much food as he and Roth could eat for a year. It would mean household items they’d gone without: new mattresses, gifts on important days. It would mean academy for his son, since he’d have ready access to supplies and books and clothes that weren’t thrice-mended.