1 Soul Bound
1.2 Taking Control
1.2.4 An Artful Carnivale
1.2.4.15 Queen of cups
7:15 am, Thursday June 8th, 2045
3 bells of the afternoon watch
Lunday full, 8th day of the month of KrevinBelember, A2F1600
Casimir: “Step right up and try your luck. Find the Queen, if you’ve the pluck.”
Lucian: “The ladies like a lucky guy. I’ll win your gold and make you cry.”
Casimir: “Confidence, now there’s a charm. Chance a try, there is no harm.”
The fit young Slav she’d seen the previous day was now shuffling three facedown cards on the broad ledge of the arch with frightening speed. He had long thin fingers and a shirt with fine lace cuffs so long that they hid half of his hands. He turned one over to reveal the Queen of Cups then delicately turned it over again.
Casimir: “Spin it round, and round it goes; where it stops, the seer knows."
Lucian: “Step closer much closer, don’t even blink. The center’s the card, where my bet will clink.”
Gesturing the crowd to keep their full attention upon the cards, and placing three silver Ducato next to them, was the Vecci she’d also seen playing this game. Was he a regular customer? He looked like a prosperous merchant. She found herself stepping closer, along with many others, eager to see how the bet turned out.
Casimir: “Three coins you laid, and three I’ll match. So let Rac’s secret, before us hatch.”
He laid three polished coins down, one at a time, holding up each one to glint in the sunlight. His voice was relaxing and his posture open.
With great showmanship and formality Casimir chanted a liturgy, his arms moving with wide flowing motions as his hands smoothly formed into a different symbol with each word:
Eckery Ackery,
Ookery Ann;
Fillisyn Follasay,
Nakelas Jan.
At the final syllable he placed his hand over the center card and lifted it up, rotating to show everybody that Lucian had watched carefully enough to choose the correct card. He patted Lucian on the back in congratulations as Lucian gathered all the coins with conspicuous enjoyment and placed them back in the soft leather purse tied to his belt.
Casimir: “Perhaps he found a lucky spot. Should I go, or give it one more shot?”
Cries of “More!” from people in the crowd who’d been waiting their turn forced him to stay.
Casimir: “Do any wish to play with gold? Step right up, if you are bold.”
Oh! This might be her chance.
Kafana: {Wellington, I can afford 1 gold florin, can’t it? I want to give it a try, but my emerald will be unfair to the poor man. Can someone else pick the card for me?}
Bulgaria: {Just watch. I think you are about to learn something.}
A noble lady wearing a butterfly mask, escorted by a man in expensive plate armour, helm closed, stepped up and, after examining the cards closely, she gave a smug expression and commanded him to start shuffling.
That was odd. Kafana switched to Truesight and zoomed in on the cards.
Kafana: {Hey, she’s cheating! The Queen card isn’t flat. It must have been warped when he held it up to show everybody. He doesn’t have a chance, and she knows it!}
Bulgaria: {Just watch.}
Kafana: {But…}
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However it was too late. Casimir had finished his dexterous artistic shuffling of the cards, his patter not as confident as before, and then the butterfly lady had placed not just 3 but 10 florin pieces by the leftmost card.
Casimir: “Are you sure?”
The butterfly lady responded with cruel firmness “Positive” and the escort put his hand on his sword hilt. With slumped shoulders Casimir matched the bet, however his voice as he uttered his invocation to Rac was fervent.
He lifted up the card so all could see, and a gasp went up from the crowd, followed by a cheer. The card didn’t show a queen feasting upon her throne. Instead the image was that of a carefree youth looking up at the sky, about to step off a cliff. Casimir had won!
Lucian, who for some reason had returned, spoke quickly to Casimir, and Kafana heard it only because she was right at the front of the crowd watching the performance.
Lucian: “Scarper nippy minger peri. Finsef pallywag.”
Moments later, they’d both donned masks and faded into the crowd, leaving the warrior trying to mollify the fuming butterfly lady.
Kafana: {Sys, why couldn’t I understand what that man just said?}
System: [Lovariszo is not on the list of tongues auto-translated for adventurers by default.]
Kafana: {Alderney, did you understand what he just said?}
Alderney: {No, it’s Thieves Cant. Carlo wouldn’t teach me. I’ve picked up a couple of words, though. “Peri” is danger, and “Nippy” is fast.}
Kafana: {Oh, a cryptolect! They’re fun.}
Kafana: {Dinah, you there?}
Her expert system replied immediately: [You know it, gal.]
Kafana: {Dinah, could you scan any player recordings of Torello you can access, to pick up instances of overheard Lovariszo, and pass them through a Chomsky-Whorf ludling sieve? Let me know when you’ve compiled a sufficient lexicon for me to gain the skill in-game.}
Back at UCL she’d have had to worry about file formats, installing applications and specifying confirmatory testing parameters. It would have taken hours. Things were so much easier nowadays. It seemed half the skill was now in knowing that something was even possible, so it occurred to you to try.
Bungo: {It was subtle, but I saw the same bend Kafana noticed. How come the guy won?}
Bulgaria: {The whole thing was carefully staged. The first merchant was working with him, just pretending to be a normal member of the audience - what they call a “shill”. His function was to set the pattern, the expectations, and establish a reason why the card might have been bent. They deliberately bent their own card during the first game and, when the lady was playing, he pressed out the bend and introduced a bend in a different card during the shuffle. If that hadn’t worked, he’d have used his left hand to switch the cards while everyone was looking at the gold coins he was displaying with his right hand.}
Alderney: {And if that hadn’t worked he could have swapped the coins for forgeries, accidentally knocked them over the edge into a waiting gondola below, or had a third confederate waiting in the crowd to pick the purse since the mark kindly identified precisely where they kept it. Basically, the house always wins. It only looks like a game of chance.}
Bulgaria: {He had at least two other confederates in the crowd. They’re the ones who cried “More!” and led the cheering when he won. These guys have probably been putting on this show three times a week for half a year or more. They’re experts.}
Wellington: {10 florins would pay for 6 months of tuition for a student at the university, including food and board. Not bad wages for a couple of hours work, even split 5 ways.}
Alderney: {They were unusually lucky to hit a noble. Or maybe not. Notice how they deliberately froze a crowd and jammed them close packed by repeatedly instructing them to step closer? It looked to me like they were intentionally blocking the arch. It is possible they were hired by a local business wanting more customers, or even by a rival noble wanting to embarrass that butterfly lady and who warned them when she’d be coming.}
The crowd had finally dispersed enough for them to get off the arch, and Kafana looked around for any shops doing well from the crowd. A rooftop entrance advertising sweet delights caught her eye, because of a constant stream of people entering it. Warily, she checked.
Kafana: “That shop. ‘Sweet Delights’ isn’t a euphemism for anything, is it?”
Tomsk: “Not as far as I’m aware. Let’s check it out.”
She followed, still holding his arm. Most of the people were now wearing masks, which made it difficult to tell, but she thought she felt lots of eyes upon her.
Inside the building were stairs going down, and on each floor were stalls selling masks. Wooden masks and leather masks. Crystal masks and porcelain masks. Half masks and full masks. Masks of animals and masks of monsters. Generic masks and masks parodying specific people, historic and current (she felt guilty when she recognised one mask as being an exaggerated version of Lady Pia Trinci). Masks of lust and masks of sorrow. Frightening masks, and frightened masks. Masks of abstract beauty and masks of grotesque distortion. Some were common, many were unique. None, to her surprise, were enchanted with magic.
Bulgaria examined a strange circular black velvet-covered mask with no straps called the Moretta; it had two circular eyeholes and reminded him of Rac’s symbol. He put it back with disgust, after finding that it was held in place by gripping a button with your teeth, and designed to keep the wearer mute. Alderney tried to buy a cute kitten mask, but the stall holder sniffly informed her that Gnaga masks were exclusively worn by men masquerading as women.
Alderney: “Huh, let’s skip buying masks today. I can make some that are better than any of these.”
The nearby stall holders looked offended, and a quest popped up:
[Quest “Skill challenge” (repeatable). Prove your abilities or suffer the consequences - Difficulty rank E. Time limit: 7 days arlife. Do you accept?]
Alderney accepted so fast, on the group’s behalf, that Kafana didn’t even get a chance to ask what those consequences would be. Oh well, it was only a minor quest. She put the matter out of her mind.