Reeling In the Black Wildcat
For the past several days I had been coming and going from a tavern called Silver and Dice as if it were my own home. Tavern was a generous word for the place—it was, for all intents and purposes, the largest gambling den in Coulon. Not a single soul there gambled for sport. Every last one of them had staked their lives on cards and dice, selling off their houses, their fortunes, even their wives. And of course, not a single one of them had ever won a match they had bet their life on. With one exception.
"Haha. I won today. I'll be taking this."
Grea swept every wooden chip off the table with greedy eyes. Two hundred chips in all—a small fortune worth about fifteen thousand dollars. A mountain of them had already piled up at her seat. Among them were chips larger than the rest, each one worth a full gold. Grea had taken ten gold off today's table. And she had done it playing against me, and me alone.
It had started as a table of several players, myself and Grea included, but it had since become a head-to-head match between the two of us. The timid gamblers had peeled off one by one, and the ones who ran out of ammunition all went bust. In the end, only Grea and I remained. And I, too, had blown through every last coin of the ten gold I had brought today.
"Sorry about that. But for a handsome guy like you, this is pocket change, right?"
Grea was right. Ten gold was pocket change to me now. That was why I had been able to burn through it without so much as a flicker of feeling.
Grea was a professional. She never simply cleaned me out. Yesterday I had taken a sizable win off her and walked away three gold richer. She was carefully modulating my victories and losses so I would never let go of the gambling thread. Naturally, the net profit still favored her. Throw the right bait, land the big fish.
Fall for this devil of a woman, and even the most innocent young man would burn through every last coin he owned.
Impressive. Thorough, too.
If she had simply fleeced me dry, I would have been disappointed. I could never leave my administration and my business in the hands of someone that shortsighted. But she had never once slit the belly of the goose that laid the golden eggs. A wise call.
"Guess today wasn't my day. Well, fine. I've spent everything I brought, so we'll have to pick this up tomorrow. You coming here tomorrow too?"
"I'm always here. So long as there's money, anyway."
Grea said it with a wink. Her words and the greed in her eyes belonged to a worn-out whore, but she was unmistakably a virgin. My virgin radar was pinging hard on her.
The thought of knocking her down and driving my cock into her without mercy made the thing stretch and stir. I pushed back my chair and stood.
"I got cleaned out today, so tomorrow I ought to win big. I'll come especially well-prepared. You do the same. Nothing kills the mood like a game folding halfway through because somebody ran out of cash."
Grea's eyes lit up. I had never said anything like that to her before.
"Oho. That's some confidence. How much are you planning to bring?"
A hundred gold. In Earth money, that was roughly a million dollars. At those words, Grea's eyes trembled. It looked as if an earthquake had gone off behind her pupils.
Grea barely bothered to hide her desires, which made her face remarkably easy to read. Strangely enough, though, the moment she sat down to gamble, she locked into a poker face so complete it was almost frightening.
"I'll be looking forward to it."
She said it in a voice that could have melted iron. I had been scattering bait for days. Now it was time to set the hook.
"That gambler girl. She doesn't look like anything special."
Arme said it with a faintly sour edge. I could hardly blame her for being unhappy that the person I intended to put in charge of something important was a gambler who haunted dens like that. But if she knew what the original story had to say about Grea, that dissatisfaction would evaporate in a heartbeat.
Slurp. Slurp. Slurp.
At the moment I was receiving the most devoted service from my beastkin maid. The setting was my bedroom. Sera, dressed in a maid uniform, sat demurely on the floor and buried her face in my cock as I sat on the edge of the bed. Luna, likewise in a maid uniform, was beside her.
Both of their uniforms had been modified in a rather particular way. The chests were thrown wide open, and there was no fabric at the groin at all. Needless to say, these were not for receiving guests. They were for sex.
"Luna. Breasts."
"Yes, Master."
Luna pressed my face into her chest the way a mother would nurse an infant. What would anyone think if they saw this? A plump, pig-faced slave merchant toying with a beautiful woman—no matter how innocent the eye, the scene looked thoroughly obscene.
"I looked into the woman briefly as well. Grea. Alias: the Black Wildcat. A traveler who moved to Coulon three years ago, apparently. A woman journeying alone is a little unusual, but beyond that she is an unremarkable person. Ah—she is exceptionally skilled at gambling. That much is distinctive."
Luna stroked my head as she spoke, as if I were a child. She was right, as far as it went. Grea was an unremarkable gambler. She was very good at gambling, but set against the riot of colorful characters that populated Solari World, she did look rather plain.
In the original story, however, she was a proven administrator and manager of the highest caliber. She was also a merchant of genuine skill.
Grea. She's talented enough to hold skills related to organization management, trade, and accounting. She looks like a gambler drifting from den to den, but in truth she's a woman with an enormous gift for business.
The reason Grea haunted gambling dens at all was to raise the capital to found a merchant guild.
The story of a man who builds a business stake at the gambling table is the kind of thing bottom-rung gamblers mutter into their cups. In practice, it almost never happens. A gambling den is a place you go to throw money away.
Grea, though, is different.
The truth was that Grea was not a gambler. If she had been a real one, I would never have considered recruiting her. She was not a gambler. She was a con artist.
The reason Grea's win rate is so high is entirely her technique and her special tools.
The more you gamble, the more you lose. That probability is baked into the mathematics. But if you manipulate the game, gambling becomes a money printer that pays out every time. And Grea actually made that happen at the table.
"Grea. She is a meticulous con artist and a genius merchant. There is probably no one on this continent who can run numbers faster than she can. A woman with a terrifying nose for profit."
"What?! A con artist?! That's even worse than a gambler."
Arme's voice was close to a shriek. For the record, her outfit was a pair of skin-tight, stretchy tights, with only the chest and pussy cut away. She looked like a pitiful ninja who had been captured by the enemy.
"No. It means she is not an irrational person who moves according to luck and probability. She is a strategist who coldly calculates only the lines that let her win."
Manipulating a game is not enough by itself. No matter how empty-headed gamblers might be, they start to get suspicious if they never win. Even if they never find proof that the other party cheated, no gambler keeps sitting down across from a player who always wins. In other words, even a rigged game needs technique.
Grea understood that degree perfectly. Other gamblers feared her, and sometimes they avoided her, but she always found someone willing to play. Grea did not always win, and she did not always lose. She gave away the small things and went after the large ones. The calibration was so exquisite that other gamblers simply thought she was strong in the big matches. It never occurred to them that she was cheating.
"Grea is a cautious person. That is why I had to scatter the bait at the right pace."
The reason I had spent the last several days gambling with her was to lower her guard. Someone as wary as Grea would never sit down to a high-stakes match with me from the first meeting. If I had walked up on day one and proposed a game where the bets climbed in gold, she would certainly have smelled a rat. No matter how much money I had, a gambling novice like me would not go that far.
So for the past few days I had been playing a wealthy merchant addicted to the tables. My Deception skill was level 3—the realm of fooling people at a con artist's standard. Even Grea would not be able to sense anything off about the act.
"I've thrown enough bait. Now it's time to land the big one."
Grea would come at me. She would, because she was not a gambler. She was a con artist.
For a gambler, the odds of a match are fifty percent. For a con artist, they are a hundred. The one thing gamblers and con artists have in common is this: once you see through them, it is over.
The next day, I went to Silver and Dice with Luna in tow. A few of the gamblers I had gotten used to seeing were there to greet us.
"Mr. Walker. You're here. A little early today, aren't you? The wildcat hasn't shown up for work yet."
That one was Sunset Killer Vant. The name was supposed to mean he gambled until the sun went down, but he never killed a sunset in his life—he was the only one who died, every single night. He had thrown his household away so thoroughly that his wife had run off years ago. The fact that he still had not come to his senses suggested his wife had been the smarter of the two.
"Who's the pretty young lady?"
"You dumb bastard. That's obviously Mr. Walker's maid."
"You rock-headed moron. You think I asked because I didn't know that? I'm asking her name. Her name!"
"Heh heh! A thug like you asking the name of a maid who works under Mr. Walker—what are you gonna do with it? Wake up, you idiot."
"Ghk! A man's got a right to dream!"
I sat down at a table in the middle of a game and joined in for a few hands. I had lost about five silver when the shop door opened. Every gaze in the room swung toward the entrance as if pulled on a string.
"Oho! If it isn't the Black Wildcat herself, Lady Grea. You're later than usual today. That time of the month?"
"Eat shit. Heh. Today's the day I have a one-on-one with my handsome mister. Master! Throw all these bastards out."
Grea set a pouch stuffed with copper on the counter as she said it. At those words, the other gamblers shoved back their chairs and surged to their feet.
"What the hell is this shit?! Since when do you rent out a whole gambling den? We've only played a few hands!"
"Beat it, small fry. Or sit down with me—if you can cover the stakes."
She said it while slowly licking her upper lip. The look of it was exactly like watching a succubus work a man over, except that instead of my cock standing at attention, a chill ran straight down my spine. The other gamblers shuddered and backed off.
"Ugh. That crazy bitch. What's gotten into her all of a sudden."
Everyone grumbled as they gathered their things. Grea's presence, which was not a joke in the slightest, had cowed the lot of them. Vant glanced at me, dipped his head, and muttered,
"Mr. Walker. Watch out for that vixen. On the days she goes that crazy, she doesn't have a merciful bone in her body."
"I'll keep that in mind."
Once everyone but the Master had left the tavern, Grea settled into the seat across from me with an easy grace. She looked at Luna and gave a little snort of a laugh.
"You brought a pretty maid with you today. Is that your type, mister?"
"It is."
I didn't deny it. The Master brought us cards and dice. Grea turned her head toward the one-eyed man.
"Master. What's my fortune looking like today?"
"Mm. Your birthstone is Eclipse, if I remember right? Today's reading…"
In answer to Grea's question, the Master checked something like a newspaper stacked on the counter and replied.
A day in sore need of good deeds.
Financial fortune: abysmal.
Going out: catastrophe.
Getting through the day unscathed would be the best possible outcome.
Even at a glance, it sounded like a terrible reading. If I were a gambler, I would not have sat down at a table on a day like this.
"Vanilla rum for you."
The Master set a glass beside me. It was the only thing in this establishment worth drinking. As he put the glass down, he leaned in and murmured,
"You'd do well to be careful today."
"Why's that?"
"Grea is viciously strong on days when her fortune is bad. She says it's because she goes head-to-head against the goddess of luck herself."
An amusing line. I snorted inwardly.
"Today, each of these wooden chips is worth one gold. That work for you?"
She set a pouch stuffed with gold on the table. I nodded.