The news flabbergasted Ganzer. “Orisha Okum—working for Ganna?” He shook his head. “I’ve never heard anything like that.”
“But you’ve seen her here before.”
“Usually talking with players.”
“And have you ever seen those players again?” Kal gestured wearily. “Maybe that’s why you’ve never heard anything about her being mixed up in anything.”
“You astound me,” Ganzer said. “Surely, that knowledge could—”
“Save me? Who’d believe me?” Kal pointed up and around. “She does her meets here, away from the surveillance cams. She knows what she’s doing.”
Ganzer nodded in reluctant agreement. Then he opened his protein bar and chewed slowly.
Kal looked at him. “Ganz, when was the first time you went to a casino?”
Ganzer chortled, nearly choking. “Back before the Empire,” he said when he recovered. “I was younger then, for sure. Governments fall, but I stick around.”
“I was nineteen,” Kal said, the fingers of his hand idly tracing patterns on the table. “Planet I grew up on was run by the Empire—and after they went, the Hutts came in. Name the problem, we had it. I had to get out of there.”
Kal’s eyes took on a faraway look. “The first time I went offworld, there was a casino in the spaceport. And I saw people there—all different species, all walks of life. People who wouldn’t help one another if they were on fire. But at the tables, they were cheering one another on. Someone would hit—anyone—and everyone would be happy, because someone was beating the odds. And for that moment, everyone was equal. Everyone had the same chance.”
“Yeah, but money buys you more chances,” Ganzer said, crumpling his wrapper. “That’s not equal.”
“I know—now. Maybe I knew then. But in the moment, it was…well, magical.”
Ganzer nodded. “They do like you to think that.” He gestured around. “The lights, the sounds, the music—it’s all about the moment.”
“Until it’s over.”
“Everything ends. What’s important is that you enjoyed the ride.”
“And that’s the thing,” Kal said. “Even with my neck on the line and time running out, I had a better time with those guys tonight than I’ve had in—well, I can’t remember. Yet even so, there was something nagging at me the whole time. I felt guilty, because I felt like I should know better.”
Ganzer pointed at him. “You’ve devoted your life to killing the magic.”
“Statistics. Strategies. Anything that would limit risk, minimize doubt. Dissecting every moment, before it happens.” He stared at Ganzer. “You know I don’t even remember the games after I’ve played them? Sure, I remember the cards, the bets, and how they paid. But I couldn’t tell you what I was feeling when I won or lost.”
Ganzer chuckled. “I bet you remember losing the progressive earlier today.”
“Yesterday, you mean.” Kal rubbed his eyes. “Yeah, I sure do. The Three, though—they’re happy even when they’re losing. They can afford to lose—and they know they’ll win again. So they enjoy the ride and don’t care when they crash. I’ve never felt that. I’ve just felt…desperation.”
“I think,” Ganzer said, running his fingers through his whiskers, “you don’t want to win so you can be rich. You just want to be able to enjoy the game.”
“I met someone like that at the track tonight.”
Ganzer put his hand on the table. “That’s it. Listen, why’d you take the job as a prop player?”
“So I could work on my systems—”
“So you could get paid to play. You’ve been playing with someone else’s money—every gambler’s dream! How is it that you’ve never been happy?”
“Because I’ve cared so much about whether or not I win.”
“And instead of limiting yourself to betting what Canto paid you each week, you dug yourself a hole.”
“A hole Ganna wants to put me in.”
“But why? Where were you trying to get to?” Ganzer smiled. “If you were looking for paradise, pal, I’ve got news for you.”
“I’m here,” Kal said, preempting him. He’d never really thought about it—but now he nodded. “I liked it here. I liked my suit. I liked looking like I belong.” He put his hands together before his chin. “I love Canto Bight.”
“Then find a way to stay alive. And then find a way to stay.”
Kal rubbed his tired eyes. It was the goal, all right, and always had been. But he didn’t know how he would manage it with only an hour and a half until dawn. He reached for his shoes.
“Wait,” Kal said, fishing around inside the left shoe. “Something’s in here.” He shook it—and something small fell out onto the table.
Ganzer’s eyes widened with recognition as he picked up the slip. “Why, it’s a fathier bet. From tonight, it looks like.” He peered closely at it. “The number six in the thirteenth?”
Kal reached for it, eyes wide. “Vermilion,” he said. “The Six.”
Ganzer looked up at him. “It’s to show. Third place.”
“And she came in third.” Kal laughed giddily.
“What?”
“Don’t you see? I lost the progressive yesterday because the Vermilion Six was in front of the shoe. And now—”
“Vermilion, the Six, is in front of your shoe!” Ganzer smiled broadly. “Who put it there?”
Kal thought. “Dodi. He mentioned the card while we were at the track, and wanting to bet her. And then I saw him placing a bet later—but Flatcakes’s odds didn’t go down. He must have been betting on Vermilion. And when he brought me my shoes—”
“—he left you a gift.” Ganzer beamed as Kal donned his shoes and stood. “It’s not a big bet,” he said, handing Kal the ticket. “What did it pay?”
“Not what I need it to. But I can take it from here.”
“…PLAYING WITH SOMEONE ELSE’S MONEY—every gambler’s dream!”
Ganzer had said it—and now, after a year and a half as a proposition player, Kal was in the position of doing it again, in what might possibly be the last hour of his life.
He’d risked his poor feet on a breakneck run back to the track, where he’d cashed the Vermilion bet. Dodi hadn’t bet much compared with what he’d dropped on Time for Flatcakes. The payout was just a hundred Cantocoins—exactly what Kal had gotten by betting with Dodi on hazard toss at the beginning of the evening. He didn’t know if it was a wink from Dodi or not—how could he have known how much betting Vermilion would pay? Whatever, it felt like another of the mathematical curiosities that followed the Suertons.
They were nowhere about this time, though. Any magic would purely have to be his own. He hurried through the casino, looking for anything at that predawn hour that might save him. He passed up game after game. Dice, the wheel, slots: These were not the things he knew, any more than he knew fathier racing. He wouldn’t go down seeking a lucky break on a game he didn’t know. He’d need a lucky break on a game he did know, and that took him to the place he had spent so much time: the card room.
It was only a quarter full at this hour. There was no time to consider Savareen whist or his late ex-love, zinbiddle. No, only his first love would do: an easy game he’d learned as a child and savored as an adult. In the wing devoted to it, he saw several indefatigable players amid matches—and nearby, the equally tireless Vestry proctoring trainee dealers.
“This is pazaak.” Her back to Kal, Vestry gestured to rows of two-person tables. “It’s a classic from the days of the Old Republic. Easy to learn, hard to master. At this hour, the Canto Casino deals no cards and takes no rake in these hundred-coin minimum pickup games, but you may be asked to assist in high-stakes contests.”
As Kal searched fruitlessly for any player without an opponent, Vestry brought the dealers before an active game and continued. “Each player takes turns drawing from a common table deck whose cards are numbered one through ten. The object is to reach twenty without going over.”
“Each player may bring a side deck,” Vestry said. “Specialty cards permitted by the rules and available on the open market. For every card drawn from the main deck, the player may use one of these side cards. Most alter the total: plus one, minus five, and so on. Others offer a choice of plus or minus—and there are cards still more rare.”
Kal had worked on his side deck for years, and it was a marvel. Not good enough to beat an Orisha Okum, surely, but it might help him now.
How many times will I have to double up to hit eight hundred thousand? Kal did some quick calculating and swallowed hard when he figured the result: thirteen times. He was contemplating that figure when Vestry noticed him.
“Master Sonmi, I don’t care for loitering now any more than I did last night.”
“I agree,” Kal said, finally spotting an empty seat across from a Rodian. “I’m here to play.” He plopped his hundred-Cantocoin bet on the table.
“Welcome,” said the snout-faced creature, more glassy-eyed than normal from drink and time of day. “No matches at this hour, just single hands to win. Side hand refreshes each time.”
“I love it.” He didn’t have time for more. He reached for his side deck—
—only to remember it was back in his coat. The one he had surrendered to the administrative office the day before.
Oops.
His opponent chose his own hand of side cards and shuffled the table deck. “Hold on,” Kal said. “I don’t have my side deck.”
“—and while the player can go without a side deck, it is very foolish,” Vestry lectured her students. “It puts the player entirely at fortune’s feet.” She turned and flashed him a tart look; she’d overheard him.
“Are we playing or not?” the Rodian asked.
Someone else’s money, someone else’s money, Kal told himself. “You know what? Deal.”
The Rodian peeled from the table deck. “Eight.” It was a good card.
Kal’s was better. “Ten,” he said.
“Nine,” the Rodian said, “making seventeen.” He played a blue card from his hand. “I add two for nineteen and stand.”
Kal whistled—and did so again when another ten dropped. “Twenty. I win.”
“Lucky.”
“I hope so,” Kal said, moving the pot onto his betting circle. “Two hundred this time.”
The second game was messier, with more cards being drawn on both sides—but Kal found himself breathing easy. He had no decisions. He could only ride. After a night of wild ups and downs, some only moments apart, it felt good to let go of the reins and just play.
“I bust,” the Rodian said.
“Again. Double or nothing.” Someone else’s money, someone else’s money.
Two hundred had grown to four hundred—and when it became eight hundred, the Rodian called out to his companions at another table. “You have to see this,” he said, not yet upset about his losses. Nor would he have any call to be, Kal thought: Playing against an opponent with no side cards would be an easy day for anyone. Eventually, Kal had to lose.
But not yet. “Sixteen hundred’s the bet,” Kal said after the fourth hand.
“Too much,” the Rodian said.
His buddy, somewhat better dressed, took his seat—and the challenge. “Easy money.”
A fifth win. The Rodian, a spectator now, asked, “Are you sure he’s not cheating?”
“This is a square house,” Vestry said, having overheard again. She suspended her lecture and called her students over. “It would take some nerve,” she said, glaring at Kal, “to cheat before an audience of dealers.”
Her attitude didn’t alter Kal’s mood at all. In fact, by the sixth win, he couldn’t describe what he was feeling. Was this what it was like to be a Suerton, he wondered? Existing purely and completely free from the game, unafraid of losing and being pleasantly surprised at winning?
“I stand at sixteen,” Kal said, having landed a horrid draw.
“Twenty-one. Blast it!”
Vestry watched, spellbound. “Is…this a new system?” she asked.
“Shh,” Kal said. “Don’t disturb the players.”
—
The eighth win exhausted his opponent, and a new, wealthier one took his seat. It had become a challenge, a sideshow in a place made for them—the rare event able to gather a crowd at less than half an hour before dawn. “You got to see this,” he heard someone say. “There’s an idiot drawing blind, double-or-nothing—and winning!”
Not how I wanted to be known, but…“Twenty,” he said, after the most peculiar run of cards he’d seen. He was above fifty thousand now, more than he’d had at his peak before the fathier races.
“Tournament table,” Vestry said. “I want this under the lights.”
Kal knew what she really meant: at a place where the surveillance cams were more numerous, to spot any funny business. Kal dutifully lifted his tray of coins and carried them through the card room, leader of a parade of spectators and dealers.
“Minn, deal for them,” Vestry said as they arrived at the table, which offered more space for spectators. “And someone send for Master Ganzer, if he’s still on shift. Our players may require refreshment.”
Kal needed nothing—but another opponent, after the one he’d brought with him busted. “Player wins his tenth pot of a hundred and two thousand four hundred,” Minn announced.
“But who’s counting?” Kal said, nearly delirious.
“Do you know what the odds against this are?” a gawker asked.
“The same every hand,” declared someone from behind Kal. He turned to see Orisha Okum approaching to a rumble of murmurs of her name. She’d changed clothes yet again, now in exquisitely tailored business wear—again, in her trademark red. She had a large satchel under her arm.
“The past doesn’t matter, in hands or in life,” she said, approaching the vacated seat. “This is my table, you know. I’ve won several events here. But if you’re here to play, Kal, I’m game.”
WHEN ORISHA SAT AT THE tournament table, many gasped; when she opened her satchel and placed coins matching Kal’s stake on the playing surface, the ruckus swelled still further.
Kal studied her. “Why are you here?”
“You have an appointment in a few minutes,” she said, casting a quick eye at Vestry. Orisha wasn’t going to say more about her and Kal’s private business in front of the floor manager. “I came to escort you to your meeting—but it seems you’re preoccupied.”
“No,” Kal said, pointing to the table. “I mean what are you doing here?”
Stacking her coins, she nodded toward his mound of cash. “You’re going to play and lose that. I can’t stop you from playing—but I can determine what happens to the money.” She drew forth from her jacket pocket a golden container that drew ahhs of its own. Snapping it open, she pulled out a side deck legendary in pazaak circles.
Kal stared at her. No, Mosep wouldn’t want to see a deadbeat he was about to kill lose a hundred thousand to a random gambler. But something about the timing of her appearance seemed fishy.
“You’re not playing for yourself, are you?”
She smiled at him primly. “It’s been nice knowing you,” she said, delicately choosing four cards from her side deck to form her hand. “Are you ready to play?”
“Not without a side deck!”
It was Dodi who’d called out. A path opened in the crowd for a new procession—this one consisting of the Lucky Three, with Ganzer bringing up the rear with a tray full of cocktails.
“Here’s an eye-opener,” Wodi said, grabbing one.
“And so is that,” Thodi said, looking at the mountain of money. “I’m impressed.”
“What’s going on?” Kal asked. “I thought we were quits.”
“Nonsense,” Dodi said. “
You were just quits with us.”
“We never quits,” Wodi added ungrammatically.
“And this,” Thodi said, reaching for his pocket, “is for you.” He handed Kal a small deck of cards bound by a green ribbon. “My special side deck. It’s my best ever!”
“Hey, what is this?” Orisha appealed to Vestry. “He should play his own cards. Or non-cards.”
Dodi placed a single coin on the table beside Kal. “I am—as he so put it earlier—a rider. Kal’s fate is mine.”
“Back bettors can’t supply cards,” Orisha said.
“He’s not just a rider,” Kal said. “He staked me.” He looked back to Dodi. “I found the voucher.”
Dodi grinned. “Vermilion, the Six, to show.”
Orisha started gathering up her coins. “I’m not staying for this.”
Kal put up his hands. “Wait a minute. If I show you the side deck, will you stay?”
She paused. “Maybe.”
He pitched the small deck to her—and she undid the ribbon and started riffling through the cards. Red eyes widened with surprise—and a smirk appeared. “Okay,” she said, putting them down. “Let’s play.”
Kal looked at her—and then the deck—with suspicion. He grabbed the cards and fanned them in front of him. Every card blue—and every card, the same awful denomination.
“They’re all plus-sixes!” The pazaak players in the audience laughed.
Wodi tried to shush him. “Quiet, she’ll find out!”
“She just saw them!” Kal felt his hard-won calm starting to slip away. Plus-sixes were the weakest pazaak side-deck cards, only really useful at scores of fourteen and sometimes thirteen. Kal looked to Thodi. “You didn’t put in anything that reduced my count? Went both ways? Was a smaller number?”
“Then it would look like anyone else’s side deck,” Thodi said with disdain.
Kal leered at him—and then looked to Dodi, who patted his shoulder reassuringly. Kal took a deep breath and peeled off the top four cards for his side deck. “I’m stocked,” he announced. “Let’s play.”
Orisha set herself up well, using her specialty cards to turn a busted twenty-two into a respectable nineteen. Kal, meanwhile, had drawn two sevens—which his side-deck card transformed into a winning twenty.
Canto Bight [Star Wars] Page 27