Two nights after the theater, Thuvvik and I were walking back to our room after dinner when Eninald came running up to us. Thuvvik gave him a curious eyebrow raise, but I was too busy fighting the urge to smile to pay that much attention.

  “Kara,” he said, smiling warmly. “We’re playing cards in the navigation room in about an hour. You want to join us?” There was a pause where he seemed to finally notice Thuvvik. “You are invited as well Thuvvik.”

  “Appreciated, but not tonight,” Thuvvik said with a smile that didn’t match his ears. “I do enough gambling traveling for trade.”

  Eninald laughed and I looked between the two of them confused, but neither of them felt the need to explain. It was only once we were back in the room when Thuvvik turned to me and sighed before sitting down.

  “Lesson time.”

  “After dinner?” I skeptically asked.

  “Yes. While normally time for self betterment, making sure you don’t sell yourself into nudity or slavery is valuable use of my time.”

  I felt myself turn bright red at the idea of being nude. Thuvvik waited for me to finish sputtering before nodding and sitting down.

  “Don’t know what game they’re going to play, but there are some rules of gambling that are true regardless of game. First: Assume that any money you bring you are going to lose. No matter where you go, there going to be someone better than you who been playing longer.”

  “On ships? These are men who spend months, years, aboard ship where one of few entertainments is gambling. They will be much much better than you. Any money you bring will be lost. But, you will learn things.”

  “Which bring us to second rule of gambling: When gambling you are not looking to win money. Won money is nice bonus, but what you actually win is entertainment and connections. People lot friendlier with people they gamble with. Money isn’t lost, but rather invested.”

  I blinked. This was not the way I expected this conversation to go. I’m not sure what I was expecting, perhaps a warning on the amorality of gambling or effective strategies in play, but it wasn’t a philosophical approach to investing money.

  “It probably should have been expected. Thuvvik is a merchant after all. They think primarily in coin.”

  Point.

  “Third rule,” Thuvvik continued, “Do not gamble anything you would dislike losing. Losing a few coins is annoying, but not dangerous. Going into debt to gamble is very dangerous. Losing clothing and becoming nude very dangerous. Favors exceptionally dangerous. Understand?”

  I blinked and gulped, suddenly uncomfortable with going out at all.

  “Here is bag of fifteen copper. When bag is empty, you are done gambling for night. If you double amount in bag, you are also done.”

  I nodded, taking the bag in hand.

  “No go, shoo. I have reading and you have date.”

  Date? I didn’t recognize the word but Thuvvik had already opened his book and was completely ignoring me. Sighing, I made my way back up to the deck and into the navigation room.

  *************************************************************************************************

  I had never played with cards before, so there was a short instructional period where Eninald had to teach me how they worked.

  “Each card has a suit and a value. There are several ways to arrange the values from lowest to highest and each culture has their own name for the higher cards, but we’ll be using the Runnan rules tonight. They’re what most places we go play by, so it’ll be the most helpful for you.”

  I nodded, watching as he laid the cards out in five columns.

  “For the elves, each card represents a type of person in a society. The number cards represent the lower classes. The one of a suit is the lowest card, the two, and so on all the way up to the nine of a suit. From there it goes into the middle classes: Merchant, followed by Priest, Craftsman, and Soldier,” he said, pointing to the cards with a coin, a book, a hammer, and then a sword in order. “Finally, there’s the Emperor at the top in the upper class who’s the strongest of each suit.”

  I nodded, making sure to memorize the order. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, M, P, C, S, E. Then I paused and looked the cards over.

  “That’s the elven order, but how would the sequence be different for other groups?” I asked.

  “Depends on the culture,” he stated again. “But for example, in the Menic lands the middle classes are less linear. Priest beats Soldier, Soldier beats Craftsmen, Craftsmen beat Merchants, but Merchants beat Priest. It makes a circle.”

  I blinked looking the cards over. “That seems…. Complicated?”

  He laughed. “Which is why we’ll be sticking to elven rules tonight. They’re among the more straightforward of the options.”

  I shook my head, amused that the elven option was the least awful one for the first time in my life before looking back at the rows.

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  “That row only has number cards,” I said pointing to the bottom set of cards.

  “Which brings us to our suits. For the standard deck there are five suits. Air, Earth, Fire, and Water, the classical elements, are your standard suits. In elven rules there is no sequence to them, they’re all equal in power and importance. But the fifth suit, which I learned as lacuna, doesn't translate well and no one on board will call it that anyways, so it’s often called ‘Black’.

  “What’s the closest translation you have?” I cut in.

  He tilted his head and scratched his chin in thought. “There’s no single word, but the definition is something close to ‘A space between two things that is absent of material, but could be filled in.’”

  I blinked. “A void?”

  His eyes lit up, “I don’t know that word, but it sounds good and rolls nicely.”

  “So your elements are Air, Earth, Fire, Water, and Void. And void has fewer cards because?”

  “Void is the most powerful suit. It’s what we call a ‘trump’ because it beats all other cards.”

  “Nothing beats everything. It’s almost a pun.”

  “Beating other cards?”

  “Right, so we’ll be playing a game called Pudge. It’s a trick taking game…”

  *************************************************************************************************

  I glanced wearily at the four coins I had remaining. Pudge wasn’t exactly a hard game. Bid how many tricks you thought you could take and then lay down cards trying to take them. The trouble came from keeping track of what everyone else bid and estimating how many tricks you could take. I had a decent understanding of how to play and what to work and had even won a few games. But, as the night went on my coins slowly dwindled.

  I watched as Gavet, the man to Eninald’s left, shuffled the cards and was mildly amused to note that the Void nine was on the bottom of the shuffle which meant it would go to Eninald. It also meant that once again I was going to be without the highest trump. In all of the night I think I had seen it maybe once in my own hand. The cards were dealt, hands were picked up, and to my lack of surprise I had another relatively weak hand. Only one trump and no rulers. I bid low, sure I wouldn’t make much if any points, and watched as Gavet took the high bid. Tricks were played, cards were taken, and I tried my hardest to take as many points away from Gavet as possible. I started leading fire, since it was my strongest and shortest suit meaning it was most likely that Gavet couldn’t trump it. Eninald picked up the play and we were able to keep him off tricks for a while. It was only once Eninald played the Emperor of Water and Gavet trumped it that I noticed the problem.

  “Wait, what,” I said, staring at the Void nine that Gavet had just thrown down.

  “It’s a trump,” He said smugly.

  “Yes, I am aware. But it was on the bottom of the deck. You said the deal starts with yourself, which means that it should’ve gone to Eninald.”

  Gavet shrugged, but Eninald and Pintel’s eyes narrowed.

  “Really Gavet, really? Bottom dealing with a newbie?” Eninald accused.

  “And you didn't cut us in?” Pintel said with a glare.

  I looked between the three of them, confused and uncertain.

  “Bottom dealing?”

  Eninald didn’t take his eyes off of Gavet,“He pretends to deal off the top of the deck, but instead pulls the card off the bottom. It’s a cheat that happens when people know the bottom card. And here I was thinking I was clever, making sure to use my own deck to ensure we weren’t dealing with Pintel’s marked one.”

  Pintel let out a noise of indignation, but Gavet laughed. “Rich talk coming from you En. You bid five tricks last round, but there were only four coins there when it came time to pay out.”

  It took an embarrassingly long moment to realize the implications.

  “You’re cheating. You’re all cheating?”

  Eninald had the decency to look guilty but Pintel and Gavet just laughed.

  “Of course we are,” Pintel said between chuckles, “This isn’t some Gamblin’ Hall. This is a ship. Cheating is half of the game here.”

  “I want my coins back,” I said, holding my hand out. That just made them laugh harder.

  “Nah, nah. You lost them unfair and square. If you want them back then you’ll have to win them back,” Gavet said firmly.

  “But you’re cheating!”

  “And?”

  I pursed my lips in thought. On one hand, I had learned a lot of Runna and it had been fun getting to know Eninald’s fellow sailors. Plus, Thuvvik had warned me that I was likely going to lose all this money anyways. On the other…”

  “Fine, you can keep it,” I said. “But you have to show me how you’re doing dealing from the bottom.”

  Eninald groaned and Gavet laughed again. “What you got to do is hold the deck like so. It helps block people’s view. And then you move one hand like this while pushing the bottom with the holding hand like this…”

  *************************************************************************************************

  The next two months passed by somehow slowly and quickly all at the same time. The routine of wake, eat, study, eat, practice was only interrupted by the occasional bit of theater or card practice with Eninald and his friends. We didn’t play as many games after that first night, but I did spend a lot of time learning the basics of deck manipulation. It wasn’t the most directly useful use of my time, but given that maneuvering cards required a bit of nimbleness, it indirectly helped me practice my spell forms, working to increase my range of finger motion.

  Regardless, every day was roughly the same, which meant that time slipped away from me. If it wasn’t for the fact I had taken to journaling and tallying the days, I would’ve been surprised at just how much time had past. Two months at sea. Two months spending my days learning languages and my evenings split between practicing magic and spending time with Eninald.

  By the time shore was sighted, I had a good enough mastery of Runna that I could carry on conversation in the language for the entirety of a night of cards without needing to ask for a translation and could follow the plots of the theaters without needing to gather words through context. My Sylvan and Porforo weren’t quite as good since the only person I could practice with was Thuvvik, but they were passable enough I could be understood most of the time.

  I had even started to learn Komen, the mordibund human language, from incidental exposure. Eninald was fluent and was more than happy to spend time with me talking in one of ‘The Languages of the Stage’, but most of his time was spent trying to… I’d say ‘court me’, but it was a bit coarser than that. Thankfully the Captain, a stodgid man by the name of Weatherns, often picked up the slack and made a point of teaching me words that were useful, indirectly at first and then directly when I explained I was curious about ‘my ancestry’.

  All in all, I was very happy with how much progress I had made and how ready I felt. If only I knew what would happen next.