Chapter 33: Risk and Reward

One looked at Six and cocked an eyebrow. Six didn't react as much, though. She just kept meeting my gaze as I studied the board in front of me. My mind wasn't on their actions, though. No, I was too busy realizing that while my situation wasn't perfect, it wasn't as hopeless as it first seemed. I wasn't sure if Six had calculated out the path I was looking at. Still, after about ten moves down a particular path, it seemed that I could at least equalize the position.

"Very well. What do you want?" I asked. I would make her offer first so I had an idea of what she thought was appropriate.

"If I win," she said, "I get to send messages bringing Two and Three to meet us there."

I looked up, surprised. One also seemed interested. "What makes you think that they are already not going to be there?" I asked.

She shrugged her shoulders. "I have a feeling you'd be interested in keeping them on whatever task you sent them on rather than calling them to protect you. I would ask for Seven and Eight as well, but I don't think they could get there in time."

I shook my head. "No, we won't be calling Two and Three. We'll be fine with just us."

Six looked disappointed. "Fine, but I at least get to recruit a mercenary company to act as an escort after we get off the ship."

"Why wouldn't we just do that anyway if we needed one? Why do we need to make this a bet?" I asked

Six looked at me, confused. "Well, you don't think we need to do it, and I do, so why not? Why don't we play for it? Whoever has the best mindset strategy can make this call."

I looked over at One, and it was clear that she also wanted to have a mercenary company as an escort. But for some reason, she hadn't mentioned it. Perhaps she hadn't thought about it, or perhaps she thought I would say no.

Why she would think that, I wasn't sure. I wasn't going to say no to the mercenary company. That sounded like a perfectly fine idea, and maybe my previous self would have said, "No, I don't have any problem hiring mercenaries. Six, if you think that's really necessary, we can just do that."

She looked extremely surprised, and even Four opened her eyes. At this point, I felt Five shifting from below.

"What?" I asked.

One answered first to save me the embarrassment. "It's just normal for you to have such little respect for mercenaries. You say they always fight for gold, and you can never trust them to do anything important."

A sneaking suspicion crept up on me that One had already arranged for an escort and just hadn't told me. I would need to break her out of the habit of going behind my back like that. Maybe in the past, I had been unreasonable about some things, but I wasn't the same.

I realized my mistake from what One said, and I quickly saw a way out. I moved my hand dismissively. "Now that's true, but we don't need them to do anything important. Really? The point of an escort, if you think about it, is just the intimidation factor. The smaller groups that would normally bother us, we could probably handle on our own, sure. But they wouldn't even think of bothering us if we had a large number of people protecting us. I normally would object to the expense as well, but this should be fine."

Six exchanged glances with One, smiling. Then she sighed. "Fine. All right. Um, I guess we don't need stakes then."

I shrugged. "That's fine with me. The game's already embargoed, so it feels weird to add them anyway."

"Okay," Six said. "But don't you want anything if you win?"

I thought about it. Was there anything I could ask for that I wouldn't already get if I just asked directly for it, and they would actually uphold if I asked them to stay behind? I have a feeling that they wouldn't accept that, and if I asked for some favor or time of theirs, they would probably do it anyway.

I suppose really, when it comes to gambling for favors with my Numbered, it was more about giving them things that they earned rather than actually getting concessions out of them, maybe making them stop bothering me about things.

"Um, here. If I win, you'll stop; you, all of you, will stop bringing up getting Two and Three to come to meet us there."

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One objected. "Hey, I'm not even playing. That's not fair."

I looked at her. "We're already getting a mercenary company. You don't need to keep bringing it up."

She sighed. "Fine. I'll stop talking about it."

"All right," I said. But One cut me off. "But if you do lose, I will keep talking about it."

I ran my hand down my face. "Fine. Fair enough, fair enough."

"Okay." Six looked at me and One. "Okay, fine. But if I win, I could choose the mercenary company, not you."

I nodded my acceptance. This really was a win-win when I thought about it. I didn't know what mercenary company to hire. I was sure Six would spend more money than me, but I wouldn't mind being bothered on the way there as long as we weren't betrayed by them. But Six should be good enough for that.

However, I didn't want One to keep mentioning Two and Three coming back for backup. It was just too risky. I know that One thought that I was fine, but I was not confident enough in my acting ability. Not yet, at least. Especially if they got together with Five and started talking about any suspicions they might have. Considering that I was pretty okay with the responses anyway, I decided to go for the risky calculation line that might save the game somehow if I lost spectacularly. Oh well, that would be too bad, but it'd be interesting, at least.

The game continued. The carriage was quiet. I was pretty sure Five had fallen asleep against my leg, and Four was not paying attention to the game. One watched quietly as Six and I made a series of moves rapidly going down the line I had predicted.

After my seventh move, Six reached to make one move and then froze, realizing my plan. Her eyes darted around the board, trying to figure out some way to hold on to the advantage she had.

"Well?" I leaned back, smiling as she searched, relatively satisfied that I had at least surprised her. One leaned forward, interested, and began pointing at the board and moving her lips, doing some calculations in her head. Eventually, Six just reached her hand out to me to share.

"A draw, I guess," she said. I looked over the board and cocked my head. I saw where she was going with this, but I shook my head.

"No, I don't think it's a draw," I told her. She let her proffered hand fall and looked at the board, her face crinkling in frustration.

"E3?" she asked, and I looked at that coordinate, seeing the pivotal move. I nodded.

"Fuck!" she cursed and slammed her hand down on the table with such force that the magnetic pieces jumped.

The sheer frustration and anger in her face surprised the hell out of me. This was not the cool woman that I had gotten used to over the past few days. Five jumped, smacking her head on the table as well as the whole thing rattled above her. Six blushed furiously.

"I'm sorry. Sorry. Are... God damn it," she cursed under her breath. Wow. I had not seen anyone this angry. One giggled in her hand, and her Four shot out of her seat. Four looked around, surprised; she glared at Six once she realized what had happened. It took a little effort, but I stifled my laugh. Six being a sore loser was just too funny.

"Sorry," Six said a little louder. "Fine. We'll stop talking about it."

I smiled and started putting the pieces back on the board from where they had begun to roll across the table. "You know what? Six is a consolation. I'll let you choose the mercenary company anyway."

This immediately calmed Six down. "Fine. Okay. Normally, I wouldn't want your pity, but that's fine."

Four smiled. "Does that mean you're finally done with the chess?"

Six nodded sullenly.

"Oh, thank God," she pulled out a deck of cards. "Five, do you want in?"

Five poked her head up over the table. "Yeah," she said as she wiggled out and perched on my lap. "Master and I can be a team."

One gave me an amused look as I rolled my eyes and adjusted her slightly so that Five was not blocking my view.

"All right, Five. Do you want to play, or do you want to hold the cards?" I was going to be careful about not making any bets this time.

***

That evening, the carriage stopped, and we put our game down before I got out of the carriage. All my Numbered had filed out before me, except for one, who stayed close. The guards were fanned out around the rocky set of ruins that we had stopped at.

When Five called the all clear, One and I started walking into the ruins towards the odd stone circular gateway, I had taken an interest in from the textbooks. It was mostly in one piece, despite the fact that whatever structure that stood here before was long since weathered. The stone was still shiny, and sets of carved runes that I couldn't read rimmed around the edges. The runes were carved in and then inlaid with a different kind of polished stone that might have been painted at one point, but I couldn't tell now. It was just a slightly different color stone.

Running my fingers along the rock, I probed with my magical sensors, trying to feel anything. There was something there, but it wasn't the shadow magic that I wielded, and I couldn't quite interface with it. But there was something. "Hmm," I said, rubbing my jaw. "This is interesting. One, can you grab my notebook from the carriage?"

She nodded and turned around, striding after it. Once One was gone, I stepped through the portal experimentally, wondering if I would just teleport through. Nothing happened. "Hmm, hmm," I said, tracing the runes on the backside that were exactly the same as the ones from the front.

One returned a few moments later with my notebook, and I began jotting down the runes in the same pattern, but somehow I kept messing it up. I looked at it around the fourth or fifth rune and realized I had drawn it wrong. I scratched it out and drew another one, but then I'd mess up later on. It was bizarre. I thought I was drawing the right rune, and then it would be different when I checked. What was causing this?