The Great Merchant: Derick Walker (4)
The dice were thrown. For a commoner, a single roll like this could mean winning or losing a fortune that three generations of honest labor would never earn.
Sweat beaded on the Master's forehead as he watched us play, as if the money on the table were his own. Even a man who had overseen countless games in this little gambling den of his had surely never witnessed a pot this large. The dice tumbled inside the wooden cup.
"Call it."
"Seven."
The cup came up. The faces showed one and four. Wrong.
"A shame. I'll take those chips."
I collected twenty-five of the wooden chips stacked on her side of the table. Now it was Grea's turn to roll, and mine to call.
"Choose."
"Twelve."
I answered without a moment's hesitation. The Master's face went rigid as he watched our table. Grea's expression, by contrast, didn't so much as flicker.
She lifted the wooden cup with unhurried care. Inside, two dice displayed sixes toward the ceiling.
"Correct."
"Seems fortune's smiling on me today."
I collected a hundred wooden chips, thoroughly pleased with myself. By this point even the Master seemed to sense something was off about the game. He kept glancing toward the Mana Bell at the counter. I flashed Grea a grin.
"Sixes are coming up an awful lot today. Same thing happened on your turn, didn't it?"
"That… it did."
Clever as she was, Grea would understand the pressure I wasn't bothering to put into words. I was sending her a message: I had seen through her cheat, and now I was the one cheating in return.
She's going to try to pin the cheating on me? Impossible. She's already done it herself.
I hadn't interrogated Grea about her trick. I had simply seen through it and turned it back on her as naturally as breathing. That meant she had to answer in kind. If she tried to brand me a fraud here, I could hold her to the exact same charge.
And fundamentally, I had no evidence. The Mana Bell remained silent.
So what will Grea do? The same thing I did a moment ago — quietly seal off my cheating, as if nothing had happened.
Walking away from the game was always an option. But would she really be able to?
"I'll roll."
My turn this time. I rolled the dice, and Grea failed to call the number. Another twenty-five of her chips came to me. I had not only recovered everything I'd lost to her — I had taken more besides. Now she had another reason to stay in her seat. It was Grea's turn to roll again.
"Twelve again."
"I haven't even rolled yet."
Grea said it with a dry little laugh. I tilted my head.
"Doesn't matter. The odds don't change."
"Is that… so."
Grea toyed with the dice and dropped them into the cup. In that fleeting instant, she swapped them. I caught it. The same magnetic dice as before. They wouldn't be the kind that always came up six — fours or fives, perhaps?
But can those dice beat my luck?
The fact that she still hadn't left her seat meant she was confident her technique could recoup her losses. A faint light seemed to return to her face. She opened the cup slowly. Both dice inside showed sixes.
"……"
"I'll take those."
I swept the wooden chips from in front of her. The Master, who had been watching our game with a grave expression, finally found his voice.
"Ah… well… it almost seems like the dice have been enchanted today."
"Yes. A very fine enchantment, I'd say."
Grea rolled with a stiff face. The dice she was throwing were her own loaded ones — and she was being beaten by them. A crack seemed to spider across the poker face she had maintained so consistently.
Shall I change the atmosphere a bit here?
My goal was to strip her of every last coin and make her my slave. For that, she needed to come at me even harder.
"Today's fortune has been rather poor. It seems the goddess of dice isn't with you."
Grea hesitated at my words. She was weighing it — whether to walk away, or to try to win back what she'd lost to me.
Rationally, walking away was the correct choice. The usual Grea would certainly have made that choice.
But that won't do. I won't let her walk away. Not a chance.
I snapped my fingers. Luna, standing at attention beside me, bowed her head and set a small sack upon the table. When I untied the mouth of it, platinum coins spilled out in a glittering cascade.
"Hah!"
The Master actually screamed. Even a reasonably successful merchant would be hard-pressed to see this much cash in a lifetime.
"I brought extra today. Had a feeling luck would be on my side."
There are exactly two guaranteed crowd-control techniques that work in every world. One is a sliver of remaining HP. The other is cash. Seeing my money pouch, Grea smiled thinly. In her eyes, desire had given way to obsession.
"Heh. I haven't run out of chips yet."
We changed games. Grea declared that her dice luck was simply rotten today. The game she chose this time was poker.
Poker is the game Grea is most confident in.
It was also the one she played most often. She was a devil at the poker table. She would lose to her opponent in small increments, laying the bait, and then — when they finally sat down with a reasonably strong hand and went for the win — she would crush them with something stronger. A vicious style of play that served heaven and hell on the same plate.
What made it possible was her possessed, supernatural sleight of hand. Grea was a real cardsharp.
"A pair."
"High card. I lose this one."
Grea pushed her chips toward me with a smiling crinkle of her eyes. But she had already won back every coin I had taken from her at dice. Lose small, win big. Her iron rule was being followed to the letter at this table.
Of course, I'm the one letting her win just enough.
Having used the Gambler's Four-Leaf Clover, I was drawing three of a kind or a full house roughly once every two hands. And every time I did, I folded. As the flow of the game settled into the shape she wanted, Grea began to look at ease.
"Hmm. My hand's rather good this time."
I checked the four cards laid out in front of her: the four and five of diamonds, the ace and two of hearts. A strong draw toward a straight. The cards in front of me, however, were the two, jack, and king of spades — a holding that could, depending on the remaining cards, make a flush.
"Clearly I've got the better hand."
"Heh. Feeling confident?"
"Of course. The goddess of fortune smiled on me, after all."
I pushed every wooden chip I had into the center of the table. The Master, who had been idly polishing a glass, fumbled it and let it shatter on the floor.
"All in. This game is mine."
Grea smiled sweetly at my swaggering challenge.
"A game always demands caution."
"I am always cautious. Doubly so when money is involved."
"Heh. For someone so careful, you've lost quite a bit to me, haven't you?"
With an easy expression, Grea gathered every last one of her own chips into the center.
"I'll go all in too. I don't back down from a fight that's been picked."
There was no room left to retreat. Grea turned her cards over, slowly.
The second-highest hand in the poker we were playing. A holding strong enough that she had no reason to fear my flush. Smiling, Grea reached for the wooden chips on the table.
"Heh. Sorry~! But a game's a game. You always have to be careful when there's a contest on the line, don't you? I'm sure you've learned something here, mister."
She said it with a wicked little smile. I nodded at her words.
"Of course. Contests demand caution."
A royal flush. The god-hand of poker, the highest holding in the game — a dream combination that appears maybe once in four hundred and fifty thousand hands. I had just made it. Grea's face went rigid.
"If you're going to make a hand, you might as well make a big one, don't you think? I'll take the chips."
I swept every wooden chip on the table to my side. Grea's pupils blew wide. The Master couldn't even speak; he simply stared at the hand I had opened.
"Good heavens. I've been running this place, and that's the first time I've ever seen that."
"This… this is cheating! This is impossible!"
Grea slammed the table and surged to her feet. The poker face that had been painted on so thickly was gone without a trace. Her face flushed as red as if she'd downed several bottles of high-proof rum, and she jabbed a finger at me.
"You cheat! What kind of hand is that!? You did the same thing at dice, didn't you? Y-y-you—!"
"Buhihit! A cheat? First I've heard of it. This is what you call cheating, isn't it!?"
I seized Grea roughly. She thrashed and tried to wrench herself free, but it was useless. Her physical ability was perfectly ordinary. I tore the flesh-colored band from her wrist. Two cards she had hidden inside it fluttered to the floor.
"Nngh! Th-that's—!"
"Don't tell me you thought I'd only seen through the dice."
"This is…"
Caught red-handed, plain as day. The Master's mouth fell open; he couldn't hide his shock. The Black Wildcat's fearsome reputation at the tables had, in truth, been a lie built entirely on fraud.
"Cheating at gambling. That's more than enough to report you to the lord and have you thrown in a cell — but I won the money, so I'll let it slide. Get the hell out of my sight."
I took the money sack she had brought. Grea clutched at my arm and screamed.
"N-no! That's my money!"
"Which part of this is yours, exactly? Didn't you earn all of it by cheating? This is just your karma coming back around. It was in today's fortune, wasn't it? If you'd just stayed quietly at home, none of this would have happened."
"That… that money is my precious… it's my business capital!"
"Not my problem. Get lost."
I kicked her hard. Of course, I couldn't damage the merchandise, so I only struck her hard enough to knock her down. Grea's body lurched and she went sprawling.
"Now that your tricks have been exposed, you won't be working the gambling tables anymore. No — if you stay in Coulon, you'll probably get beaten and raped by a mob of furious gamblers. How entertaining. A fitting end for a gambler."
I sneered.