to hear how stories are told. Every span’s a little different. Your characters might have a different name than elsewhere, or the tale reach a different outcome. Maybe they don’t cut off their toes to make the magic slippers fit.”
“I know that story!” Chork proclaimed.
“Of course you do,” she went on, “and I like to hear how you learned it, what names everyone in it has, how it’s changed, how it’s become part of this span and not of any other. Then when I perform, I’ll get it right for here. I mean, I could tell them in a general way and everyone would be pleased, but I would really rather tell them in the way they belong here.”
“Never realized it was so complicated,” said Garna.
“I’d a’thought you just telled ’em,” Chork added, then loosely waved his hand. “Of course, it’s been so long since there was a story here, we can’t remember. But it’s what I’d do.”
“And that’s why you unload ships and she performs stories,” Garna told him.
“Well, thankee for nothing,” Chork replied.
“I don’t want to cause a squabble,” Leodora said.
“Oh, you’re not causing anything. He’s like that all the time.”
Pelorie added, “To everybody.”
Chork looked at the two of them and started to laugh.
“I know a story,” Pelorie offered. “Fella off a boat told me it last week. You want to hear?”
“All right.”
“But then you have to be our judge, just so we can play a real hand of Lawyers’ Poker. That’s my price.”
“That seems fair.”
“Well, good, then.” He leaned back against the statue behind him and closed his eyes.
Leodora quietly asked Garna, “What’s he doing?”
“Waiting for Meg.”
“Oh.”
“Meantime, I’ll show you the rules of the game so you’ll know how to play it.” Garna reached across the cloth and grabbed the deck of cards.
By the time Meg returned, they’d gone through half the deck, and Leodora had seen enough to understand and act her part. She urged them to play first and tell the story after, and that’s what they did.
The game—or so Meg claimed—went much faster than usual now that they had a real judge. They shouted at one another, bickered, threatened. As a group they cheered when she threw one of the dice, picked a card from the judge’s pile, and handed down a sentence upon Chork that took him out of the game until Garna handed him a card that claimed he had tunneled from jail and into a brothel. “At least,” he said, “I’ll be happy in my retirement.”
“Too bad the whores can’t say the same,” answered Garna.
In the end the play all came down to a lawsuit between Garna and Hamen. They argued their positions and then the judge had to rule. Leodora threw the dice and read the first card, which was called the amicus curiae. It meant she had to consult with the players who’d been kicked out of the game and get their answers. They talked and then outshouted each other, but without any agreed position. Chork and Meg wanted Garna to lose, while Pelorie opposed Hamen on the argument that someone simply should. She threw the dice again, and the card that came up was called bona vacantia, and stated that the properties owned by the remaining parties had to be divided equally between them. As she ruled, Garna stood up, outraged, bellowing furiously, and Leodora considered diving for safety under the cloth, at which point Garna, unable to maintain her façade of fury any longer, collapsed in laughter. Pelorie decreed, “Thus we know that law laughs in your face while it picks your pocket.”
“Just like real life then, is it?” said Meg.
“But now,” Hamen said, “our judge has earned her reward. Eh, Pelorie?”
Pelorie patted the cards into a neat stack. He drew the top one and held it up. “Ad arbitrium,” he read. “At your will, Leodora.”
“You still talking lawyerish, then?” Chork said.
“All right, fold up the game cloth,” Garna directed. “I want to hear this story, too.”
They passed the bottle around another time. It finished empty, and Pelorie set it aside. “Well, then,” he said, “I got this off a navigator. He carried it here from another spiral, so it’s not one of ours nor known hereabouts.”
“Fresh, then, is it,” said Chork.
They all settled back comfortably. Pelorie stood and leaned back beside the statue.
THE NAVIGATOR’S TALE
“There was a girl,” said Pelorie, “who lived on an island. It was one of those backwater places where the vermes breed in the salty shallows and one day is like any