Kal looked to Vestry with bewilderment, sure she’d move to relocate these cretins immediately. But the pit boss merely spoke into her collar comlink, summoning workers who took the Suerton’s coat and brought him a towel for his shiny head. Seconds later Ganzer was there with drinks for all three brothers—and a pitying glance at Kal that said he knew who these characters were. Kal longed to ask, but Wodi had other ideas.
“Hey, I want to play,” Wodi said, hopping onto the seat his brothers had occupied. His wet trousers made a sickening squelch on the chair.
“This is Kal,” Dodi chirped.
“Best of luck!” Wodi said, slapping Kal on the back so hard that the Heptooinian pitched forward, knocking his drink onto the table before him, sending fizzy water everywhere.
“Look what you did!” Kal said, recovering the tall glass.
“Sorry,” Wodi said. “Get this guy another drink!”
Minn, overwhelmed, looked fretfully at the besotted surface. “I can’t deal there.”
“Wodi, you’re a fool.” Thodi pulled out the chair to Wodi’s right. “Here, Kal. Nice spot for you.”
“I don’t want to move,” Kal said. Of course, he did, but he didn’t want to lose his last-to-play position. He looked to Wodi. “Can you scoot down?”
“And then another of our chairs will be wet,” Vestry said, glowering over her dealer’s shoulder. “Move to the vacant seat if you wish to play, Master Sonmi. Or I’ll close this table and send you all to another.”
“No, no.” Kal remembered the precious cards the decks held. “I’m moving.”
“Good fellow.” Wodi downed the drink Ganzer had brought him and looked at the table. “What’s this game, again?”
“Zinbiddle,” Thodi said. “But you’re not playing with our money, not after running off on us.” He collected his and Dodi’s funds from the table.
“That’s okay,” Wodi said, placing his sole coin on the bet circle before him. “I’ll bet this.”
Minn, mesmerized by the trio, had to be snapped to attention by Vestry. “Oh, yes. We have a game.”
In his new seat, Kal leaned back over his stakes and struggled to focus as the cards fell. He’d lost position by moving, but Wodi clearly had no idea what he was doing—and, with no stake beyond his initial ante, no ability to buy extra draws to improve his hand. And the cards Kal received were a delight, everything he needed to be able to work toward an Ion Barrage. They were the cards he knew were in the decks—so good, in fact, he calculated the odds that Wodi was similarly blessed were low indeed.
“You’re all in?” Kal asked the Suerton. His brothers could always supply him with late money to help him out.
“Sadly, I do not come from a generous and forgiving family.” He turned and glared playfully at his relatives—who had now been joined by several curious onlookers, some no doubt surprised to find such excitement going on with the sun still up. “This coin’s plenty. I’m just having fun here.”
“Very well.” Not having to bet the later rounds on his hand freed up Kal’s finances to buy additional draw cards, replacing the less desirable ones at the higher levels of his pyramid. It cost everything he had left, but it meant that the right final card at the summit would create the mathematical piece of art he’d so long pursued.
And then that card fell. “That’s it,” Kal said, breathless as he exposed his bottom row of cards—the base of his pyramid. The figures and colors traced a beautiful chevron, topped off by a still more beautiful ace.
Minn looked dazzled. “Player has a natural Ion Barrage!”
“Wonderful, Kal!” Dodi said, ebullient. The green guy seemed genuinely happy for him. “You’ll win the progressive!”
Vestry raised her hands, appealing for calm. “There is business left. An Ion Barrage doesn’t end the game like a zinbiddle,” she said. “We still have a showdown.”
“Fine, whatever,” Kal said, unable to stop grinning.
“Well, I do have these,” Wodi said, exposing his hole cards. “Is this anything?”
The watchers gasped. “C-could be,” Kal said, blood draining from his face. Wodi had somehow gotten the identical array of cards that Kal had—but on the deal, without having done anything to improve his hand. Kal quickly found some solace: Wodi still needed the capper, and Kal had showing the only regular card finishing an Ion Barrage. Wodi’s only out was so rarely in play that Kal never bothered to account for it.
“Final card,” Minn said.
When it hit the table in front of Wodi, Kal nearly fainted. Vestry looked over her dealer’s shoulder, stunned—and made a pronouncement. “Gentlebeings, we have a second Ion Barrage—capped by the wildest of wild cards, the Vermilion Six!”
Cheers erupted. “The automatic shuffler puts the card near the back of the shoe,” Thodi said, referring to the long container Minn had dealt from. He gawked. “It’s five-hundred-to-one the card would even be in the deck!”
“Five hundred and sixty,” Kal whispered, dizzy. As Dodi shook Wodi’s shoulders, Kal appealed to Vestry. “Wait a second. I showed an Ion Barrage first. I should win the progressive!”
Vestry shook her head. “House rules, Master Sonmi. To take the jackpot, you must win with an Ion Barrage. His is ranked higher. He wins the pot and the jackpot.”
“It’s the same hand,” Kal insisted, pointing to his own cards. “And mine’s a natural. His uses a wild card.”
“And you know very well this is Kuari zinbiddle, as developed on the Kuari Princess. There’s one wild card and it always trumps.”
Stupid cruise ship gimmicks! Kal watched as Vestry stepped aside to allow a procession of attendants to deliver to the table trays of coins worth more than eight hundred thousand units in Canto Bight currency. He’d never seen such fanfare in the afternoon. Standing, he pointed at the trays and sputtered. “I—I still hit an Ion Barrage first!”
“You know better,” Vestry said, irritation evident. “It was a showdown. The hands ‘happened’ at the same time.”
“Then we should split it!” As Dodi began piling trays onto Thodi’s outstretched hands, Kal grabbed for a tray still on the table. “I paid in a lot of these coins!”
“Hands off or I call security!” Vestry circled around the table and seized the tray from him. “It’s not your money,” she snapped.
“I worked for this, for hours, weeks, months!” Kal turned toward Wodi and gesticulated wildly. “Then this…thing walks in and bets one coin!”
“A coin and a chair,” Thodi said. “All it ever takes.”
“Don’t give me that.”
Dodi touched his arm. “Relax, friend. It’s all in fun.”
“It’s a game!” Kal yelled. “It’s not supposed to be fun!”
Kal turned to see Minn posing for a publicity holoimage with her deal, the poor kid visibly unaware of how she should feel about having lost the house nearly a million on her first day. Kal broke the moment by swiping the Vermilion Six from the table. He eyed it. “Is this thing even real?”
“Stop!” Vestry grabbed his wrist and pulled the card from his fingers.
“Pal, there’s no need to get upset,” Wodi said, standing as Kal wrested away from Vestry. Wodi pulled a single coin from one of the trays and handed it to Kal. “Here, a new stake.”
“A new stake?” Kal frowned at the coin in his palm. “Thanks a lot!”
He didn’t see where the coin landed after he threw it, but he knew it went far.
THE FIRING HAD GONE RATHER quickly, Kal thought, considering most of the administrative team had left for the day. Perhaps the gears of bureaucracy had been greased by the surveillance holorecording of his rant, which extended well after the thrown coin—and which he’d been forced to painfully watch while listening to Vestry’s angry narration to the administrator. Or possibly the motivation had come from where the coin had landed: in the cocktail glass of a surprised agricultural baron of some renown.
Whatever the reason for his termination’s swiftness, he
wouldn’t have been able to fulfill his function anyway. He’d spent all his money on the last hand, and the casino had no use for a proposition player who couldn’t afford to play. And since he had “failed to comport himself in a manner consistent with Canto Bight’s standards for hospitality and decorum,” there wouldn’t be any more money coming to him. He was out.
Just not out of the casino—not yet. Yes, he had surrendered his fine cape and jacket, which were property of the house; that had been the worst of it, in some ways. He’d loved looking suave. But there was documentation to finalize, requiring him to be back in the office in the morning—and as he had nowhere else to go, he found himself in Ganzer’s Grotto, off the main card room. Music was playing, thrumming from a band famous enough to be at Canto Bight but not worthy of a larger room; Kal wished for the quiet of the daylight hours, but there was nothing to be done. He’d sat at the counter to face away from everyone else, open bottle in front of him and head in his hands—and fortunately everyone had understood that bit of interplanetary language and left him alone.
Except, of course, for the one person paid to intrude. “You were cashiered?” Ganz asked.
“That’s a funny word. Sounds like they give you money.” Kal tugged at his shirt. “They took my jacket.”
“The cravat doesn’t really work without it.” Ganzer didn’t look directly at him as he wiped down the bar. “You all right?”
Kal shook his head. “I don’t know. It’s as I told Vestry: I’m normally so disciplined. Every day, every hand. No ups, no downs. That’s who I have to be.”
“And you ran into something that didn’t make sense.”
“I don’t get it,” Kal said, looking up. “Who are those guys? Vestry acted like the casino knew them.”
Ganz grinned. “No, I guess playing day shift you wouldn’t have seen them. They’re normally in later. We call them the Lucky Three.”
“The Lucky Three?”
Rag in hands, Ganzer leaned against the back counter. “The way I hear it, they’ve turned up in casinos and at tracks across the galaxy. When they win big, they win real big. When they lose, they don’t care—because they know they’ll get it back.”
“Are they cheating?”
“Not that anyone can tell,” Ganzer said. “Canto keeps a close eye on them. A few winners can be good for business.”
Kal concentrated. If even Vestry thought they were clean, that said something. It also explained why she’d been hanging around so much. “How are the brothers doing it, then?”
Ganzer shrugged. “I don’t think even they know. They’ll win it all and then lose it—and never stop smiling. Management’s asked them to stay away from the high-limit games against the house—but they’re hard to control. Minds of their own, those boys.”
“I don’t think they’ve got a brain among them. But they’ve got my money!”
“Not anymore. Canto Bight’s won it back.”
Kal’s eyes went wide. “No!”
“Yep. Your big winner just threw it all away on the jubilee wheel. The one with the big ears and big ideas—”
“Thodi.”
“—talked him into dividing up the money and betting every single possible outcome. The wheel stopped on Black Hole.”
“The one space you can’t bet.” Kal was enraged anew. “That was eight hundred thousand!”
“They don’t care. The two of them came in here and told the third—and all of them were off immediately to the hazard toss table. Winning again, my server tells me.”
They only lose when they have a plan? Kal entertained the thought for a moment and dismissed it. It wasn’t worth further thought. “They blew up my life. I’m busted out.”
Ganzer sighed and nodded. “Only hard thing about life on Cantonica is figuring out a way to never have to leave.”
It was an aphorism among those on the planet who worked—or played—for a living. So many, the two of them included, had lived in places torn by poverty, sickness, or war. Cantonica’s dry air was a magic elixir, allowing one to forget—and ignore—all the sufferings of a crowded galaxy that had too much history and was making more every day.
Ganzer took Kal’s empty bottle. “Where will you go? You’ve still got your ship, right?”
“That’s—uh, complicated,” Kal said.
The bartender accepted that answer.
Kal frowned. “You’re sure they’re not cheating?”
Ganzer sighed. “It’s a strange galaxy. When I was young—”
“Here we go,” Kal said. Ganzer had the bartender’s love of tales.
“—back when I worked construction in the Core Worlds, I used to go to this diner where these two hustlers were always winning free meals off the other customers by rolling chance cubes at the counter.”
“Low stakes.”
“Which is why people took the bets. After I’d lost to both of them enough times, I was sure they were cheating—switching in loaded dice or something. So then one day this Jedi Knight came in. You heard of them?”
“Not much.”
“They were a sort of peace officer before the Empire. People said they used some kind of magic. Anyway, this Jedi Knight offered to play both of the gamblers. The first took off and never came back; the second played him and lost.”
“So he used his magic on the second guy’s dice.”
“No, he said he didn’t do anything. He didn’t have to. What was it he said?” Ganzer spoke next in a solemn voice. “The honest person only fears losing. The cheater fears discovery, and does so long after the die is cast.”
“Pithy.”
“So what did the Lucky Three fear earlier?” Ganzer asked. “Losing, or discovery?”
“I don’t think they were afraid of anything.”
“Then odds are they’re not cheating.”
Kal groaned. “Don’t mention odds to me.”
Ganzer snapped his fingers. “I almost forgot. I have something for you.” He reached for his pocket.
“I won’t take your money, Ganz.”
“It’s not mine, it’s yours.” He produced a single coin. “It’s the one you threw. I fished it out of the baron’s glass.” He passed it to Kal. “Actually, it was the brother that was in here who suggested I give it to you. The happy one.”
“Dodi, I think. I’m sorry I know.” Kal studied the coin. “They must really want me to have it. Severance pay, I guess.”
Seeing a group of partiers enter, Ganzer stepped out from behind the counter. He called back, “Do yourself a favor. Don’t spend it here.”
“In the casino or at the bar?”
“Neither!”
Kal studied the coin—and then realized he was being watched. He turned his head quickly to a table in a dark alcove on the side of the room, where a long-limbed crimson-skinned woman had stopped dead in her solitaire play to study him.
“What?” Kal blurted.
“Looking to see if you were going to throw that one.” She gestured into the card room. “You’d get more elevation out there.”
Kal rolled his eyes. The woman collected her cards and rose to approach him. Against the monochromatic styles of the casino, she immediately stood out. Everything about her was red: hair, dress, satchel—and eyes, narrow and watchful. He’d seen several members of her species here, all either employed as entertainers or being escorted by others. That only reminded him that company was yet another thing he could not afford to keep.
“Look, this isn’t a good day,” he said as she reached the bar. “And you’re not my type. Or species.”
“If that’s how well you read people, it’s no wonder that’s your last coin.” The woman claimed the seat next to him and started dealing a solitaire zinbiddle hand on the bar. “You’re Kaljach Sonmi. We need to talk.”
BEFORE KAL COULD ASK HOW the woman knew his name, it dawned on him that he knew her.
“Wait a second,” he said as she dealt her cards on the bar. “You’re Orisha Okum! You won the Savareen
whist tournament last month. And another before that.”
“That one was pazaak.”
“Yeah. I stayed up late for that.” She was a star, more important in his eyes than any of the VIPs who floated through. More than a player: an artist, summoning the cards she needed when she needed them. He stared in admiration. “You’re really good.”
“I know,” she said, never looking up at him as she played cards to her pyramid. “At Canto you have to be. And if you’re not good, you’d better be rich.”
“Or lucky,” Kal said, sagging.
“Show me a career player who believes in luck and I’ll show you a former career player. You of all people would know that.”
“But how would you know me?”
She kept to her cards.
Kal decided he’d had enough of being slow-played. He slapped his hand on the bar. “Well, this has been a thrill.” He rose. “It’s been a long day. Nice getting to know each other.”
“I told you I already knew you.”
He looked at her—and she returned the glance. It was enough to make him sit back down.
“Let me tell you your story,” Orisha said, continuing to play cards. “You came from one of those trade route planets—which means the planet itself got traded. Between Republic and Separatists, Empire and Alliance, First Order and New Republic…”
“I’m no good with names.”
“But you are good with games, and your people learned them from the troops passing through, when your houses weren’t burning down. You grew up—and when the pyrotechnics hit a lull, you got away. Freighter, probably, maybe a stowaway. Probably you made it onto a cruise liner as a domestic at some point, where you learned the games the posh crowd played in places like this. Somewhere, somebody staked you—and you made it to the table.”
Kal said nothing. She was doing fine on her own.
“You’ve played all over, since—but you found that those wars back home followed you around, and so you’ve kept moving.” She paused and gestured to the surroundings. “Which brings you to Canto Bight, the one place where you know they can’t touch you—and where you can play against the best.” She looked behind her into the card room. “There are countless pros like you here. You all think you know what you’re doing. But none of you are rich enough to win against people who don’t care about money. So you wind up playing earlier and earlier—and longer and longer, grinding on some system to make a third of a percent a day.”
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