Fortune Favors the Cruel - Kel Carpenter Page 0,32
them. Cruel masters and fragmented memories. She tilted her head, giving nothing away as he said, “Rikkers.”
“I play.”
He cut the deck and continued shuffling. “Have anything to bet?”
His eyebrow arched as he squinted, examining her person. Quinn sighed with exasperation and from her pocket pulled a faded leather pouch, full of glass pebbles shaped almost exactly like coins. She tossed the coin purse onto the center of the table, and leaned back in her chair, crossing her arms over her chest. “Will that do?” She lifted both eyebrows, keeping her expression neutral so they couldn’t see the condescension in her expression.
The dealer looked at the bag of what he thought was coins for a moment, considering checking, and then nodded. “That’ll do.” Quinn released a breath.
Then the game began.
Eight cards were laid in front of each of them, face down. Quinn swiped her hand across the table, scooping hers up. The old man pulled a card from the stack and the harlot started giggling. He whispered something in her ear that made the girl blush and Quinn rolled her eyes. He placed a card from his hand on the table face up, and then the bottle drinker went.
He couldn’t have been much older than Quinn, but his bloodshot eyes and raspy cough said otherwise. His lank hair fell unkempt across his forehead as he leaned forward and pulled a card, and then discarded another in the pile. It was her turn.
Quinn actually had a fairly decent hand to start with, given how Lady Luck had smiled on her when she begged to be off the road, she wasn’t sure if it would be pushing it or not to pull from the pile. One of the two discarded cards was one she needed, but to pick it up this early might give too much away. Leaning forward she pulled from the facedown pile and prayed once more that her luck hadn’t run out.
The corner of the card barely turned upward when knew she picked right. Her face entirely stoic, she tossed a throwaway card in the face up pile and turned to the man next to her as the game continued on.
Within two rounds she’d already figured out two of the three to her left held nothing as did the man to her right. The third, the one with ash colored-hair and a hooked nose, he had potential. The only one she couldn’t get a read on was the old man with the half-naked woman on his lap. The woman let out a mewling sound and began grinding against him and the old bastard grinned at the other men around the table, his teeth yellowed, some missing. The three drunkards hooted with laughter, leering at the woman that Quinn was fairly certain was either faking it or had taken something to encourage the way she was acting. Either way, it disgusted her.
The next round came and went, and Quinn was still missing two cards but knew the game wouldn’t make it two more times around the table. She drummed her fingernails on the wood surface, the corners of her lips turning up just slightly. The men took notice.
The tension slowly ratcheted up as each person took their turn and the dealer looked to her to make her move. Two cards down and only one to draw. She pulled the one she needed from the face up pile and tossed one of the spares aside. With nothing more than a flick of her eyes, the eighth card changed and with it, so did her smile.
The hook-nosed drunk let out a curse when she presented her hand.
“That’s game,” the dealer nodded.
Quinn swept her arm out to gather her winnings. She stored most of it in her pockets, including the glass pieces, leaving just enough bronze coins with a single silver on the table to play another game.
This time she played with a smirk, growing bolder and bolder with every hand. Another four games down and her pockets filled with silver and bronze. She sensed tempers rising and rose to take leave. They’d gathered quite the crowd around their table the last two games, and Quinn had to push through the stench of body odor and liquor as she made her way for the door.
Men jostled her, their hands brushing over the thin fabric of her tunic—a bit too much for her liking. Behind her, the scuffing of chairs being dragged across the sticky wooden floor gave Quinn the urgency to ignore it for