High Stakes

The following story takes place during the events of A Traitor in Skyhold, Book 3 of Mage Errant. It is, in fact, a chapter I removed from A Traitor in Skyhold. While it's a lot of fun, and met with positive response from my beta readers, it didn't move the plot forwards, and messed with the book's momentum a bit.  It does, however, stand up pretty well on its own as a story.

Alustin swirled the wine in his gaudy, semi-precious jewel studded goblet, took a sip, and grimaced. It was a truly awful vintage in a truly awful cup. He wouldn’t have let himself be seen dead with either normally, but he’d won the goblet a couple rounds ago, and as bad as it was, this wine was the best the tavern had to offer. It was a little shocking that any tavern in Highvale would serve such bad wine. Though, in fairness, Alustin had perhaps unfairly high standards for wine.

Sadly, not drinking would make him stand out entirely too much.

The paper mage frowned at the circular Spinthrift cards in his hand. They were thick, lacquered paper, with spellforms printed on the back to prevent cheating. Well, they would light up if anyone tried to magic them, but it amounted to about the same thing. 

Spinthrift was a game of memory and deceit. Chance played a role, of course, but less so than in many card games. 

Each round had a single card placed in the center of the table face up, and you had to place a card of the matching suit face down in front of you. You then had to bet on how close to the center card the closest face-down card would be in value, and whether it was more or less in value than the center card. Betting order was decided by mandatory bids, and you could also bid to change your bet after everyone else went. Not to mention that you could make the same bet as others, which introduced quite a bit of bluffing into the game.

To make things more interesting, everyone passed their hands to their right after each round, so if you paid close attention and had a good memory, you had a decent chance of knowing what cards might be played, though the card drawn at the beginning of each round did shake things up a bit.

That didn’t even get into the excessively complicated rules about playing off-suit cards, which if done effectively could utterly ruin someone’s bid— though it also usually cost you the round as well. The most important rule to remember there was that if someone played an off-suit card exactly matching the number on a card, it could cancel out the played card, so long as they weren’t from allied suits. You could still win the hand even if you played an off-suit card, so long as your bet was closest to the actual card.

If no one played an on-suit card, the pot stayed in the center for the next round. It happened a surprising amount of the time.

Alustin, of course, was cheating mercilessly. He was using his farseeing affinity to look over people’s shoulders, though most of the smarter players only looked at their cards when they first got them, and kept them face down most of the time. 

To top that off, Alustin had long since cracked the spellform that warned of magical tampering. It still set off the warning lights on the backs of the cards when he first started tampering with one, but Alustin’s solution to that had been quite clever, if he did say so himself— he was tinkering with the face up center card each round. Management kept the Spinthrift tables well lit to discourage cheating, but this time it was working against them. If they’d used a different anti-cheating spellform, Alustin would have had to try something else— the most difficult cards to tamper with were the ones that set themselves on fire or otherwise destroyed themselves if they were tampered with.

Once Alustin tinkered with the center card, he was able to keep track of it for the rest of the game. He’d tagged about a third of the cards in total, which was helping quite a bit.

Of course, almost everyone else at the table was cheating too, so Alustin hardly felt bad about that.

The wood mage with the wooden legs to his left had several times altered the roughness of the unvarnished table to make her opponent’s cards flip as they tossed them onto the table, and cards couldn’t be withdrawn once they’d been placed. Once Alustin had caught on to it, he started deliberately tempting the wood mage on certain hands— there were times when others knowing what you had could be quite advantageous. 

The scent mage with the ridiculously oversize hat to his right was marking cards with scents that no one else would be able to notice. Or rather, he’d been marking his fingers with scent spells, then rubbing them on the cards to prevent the anti-cheating spellforms from triggering. As rare as scent mages were, they flocked to Spinthrift, since a scent attunement was better at cheating in Spinthrift than almost any other attunement. For that matter, a mostly unattuned scent affinity was quite useful in that. You ended up meeting a disproportionate number of them in Spinthrift games.

Since he was helping Artur teach Godrick, however, Alustin had learned quite a bit about scent affinities, including cantrips to detect scent magic, cantrips to clean away weak scent spells, and even a few scent cantrips of his own. He was using a rather more prosaic way to disrupt the scent mage’s cheating, however.

He had rubbed peppermint oil all over his hands. He was fairly sure that someone else was using anise oil as well. Neither strong enough to be particularly noticeable to non-scent mages, but Alustin was enjoying the scent mages’ growing look of irritation.

The woman just past the scent mage was using either a force or a wind attunement to control what card ended up on top whenever it was her turn to shuffle the discard pile back into the deck. It had taken quite a few rounds for Alustin to even notice it, but given how seldom any one player shuffled the deck, Alustin wasn’t too worried about her. He still wasn’t sure how she was manipulating the cards without triggering the spellforms, though.

The slender, long haired individual just past the wood mage, now, they worried him. He couldn’t for the life of him guess the gender of the individual in question— nor would he be rude enough to inquire— but they didn’t seem to have any magic at all. They were, Alustin suspected, counting cards on a truly impressive level. So far as Alustin could tell, they must have had nearly perfect memory for every card that was played or passed. 

They were also just a terrifyingly good player, and they’d long since figured out that Alustin was their main threat at the table.

There were an unusual number of mages at the table, honestly, even for a game as popular with trained mages as Spinthrift. If Alustin hadn’t spent so many years working for Kanderon as a librarian errant, he wouldn’t have even suspected most of them as mages, with the exceptions of the wood mage and the man across from him.

Who happened to be Alustin’s mark, and the only person at the table not cheating.

Alustin took another sip of the awful wine in the ridiculous goblet as he stared at his hand. The face up card in the center of the table was the five of mountains, and he had the nine of trees, the four of rivers, the two of clouds, and the six of mountains in his hand. The six of mountains would basically guarantee him at least a share in the winning pot, so long as he bet on it. Alustin had seen more than enough games where someone played the winning card, then was manipulated by other players into making a losing bet, but never on a one-away card. 

The complication, of course, was that the scent mage to his right had the four of mountains in his hand— Alustin had just passed it to him.

Alustin’s mark had the seven of mountains in his hand, and the three of mountains was in the discard pile. To make things better, the mark had only just drawn the seven of mountains, so hopefully nobody else realized he had it.

The paper mage set his card on the table, trying to look disappointed.

The force or wind mage sighed, and irritably tossed her card in. Alustin smirked as the wood mage roughened the wood below it, making the card flip. It was the ten of clouds— a clear throwaway card. She didn’t even bother to turn it face down.

“I bid for first,” Alustin called out, tossing a Tsarnassan silver mark into the center.

“Counter for first betting slot,” the scent mage said, glaring at him, tossing down a pair of Highvale silver crowns. Tsarnassan marks were worth a little more than Highvale crowns— the silver wasn’t quite as pure, but the coins were considerably larger— but not enough to matter here.

“Third,” grunted the force mage, tossing in her own silver crown, clearly just wanting the round to be over. The center spot usually tended to have the least bidding over it.

“Counter for first,” Alustin said, tossing in an enchanted ring that helped with hangovers. Alustin wasn’t overly worried about losing it, since he had a solid half-dozen more stored in the extradimensional space tattooed into his arm. They came in handy more often than you’d think, even if you weren’t drinking.

“Counter for first,” growled the scent mage, tossing down three more crowns.

“Bid for last,” Alustin’s mark called. 

“Fourth,” said the wood mage, tossing in a Lothalan silver blank— no one was quite sure why the Lothalans didn’t mark anything on the backs of their coins, but they didn’t, so everyone knew them as blanks. Alustin didn’t think she’d given up the round— it was more probable that she just didn’t want to deal with the bidding war.

“Counter for first,” called the card counter. Alustin raised his brow, and struggled not to laugh. The scent mage looked like he wanted to stinkbomb the whole table.

Between Alustin and the card counter, they forced the bidding on first bet up to a truly unreasonable point— and then left the scent mage hanging there. If he’d been thinking straight, he would have dropped out of the bidding or switched for last, but they’d forced the betting high enough that losing this hand would probably force the scent mage out of the game, unless he was foolish enough to drain his funds entirely.

Of course, Alustin wouldn’t be getting back the funds he’d spent in the bidding war either if he didn’t win this round.

Alustin ended up bidding on the fifth bet, while the card counter took second.

 The scent mage visibly calmed himself as he stared at his hand— his four of mountains was a potent play. “Two above,” he called. 

Alustin struggled not to smirk at the bluff.

The card counter conspicuously avoided looking at Alustin or the scent mage. “Two above.”

The scent mage’s smile grew wider.

“Five below,” the force mage called, rolling her eyes. She couldn’t make it more obvious that she was ready for the round to be over. Alustin frowned— that was just bad play. Even if your card was awful, you didn’t need a good card to win if you bet well.

“Two below,” the wood mage said. 

Alustin took his time about betting, as though he were thinking it over carefully. “One above,” he finally said.

The scent mage’s smile dropped off his face, and he immediately double-checked his hand, making sure the four of mountains was still there.

Alustin’s mark stared at them all as though he could see their intentions, then snorted and tossed his card down. “Three above,” he said. He’d joined a bit later than the others, and it was early enough in the night that he was still playing cautiously. He only had a single coin in, so he wasn’t trying to figure out which of his opponents were bluffing and which were betting honestly just yet.

If his play over the last few weeks that Alustin had been spying on him over using his farseeing attunement was any indication, it wouldn’t stay cautious for long.

“No changes,” Alustin said, as the bet change round began. The bid changes in this variant of the game always skipped the player who went last in the main betting round— though if no one else changed their bet, the skipped player could do so for free.

“No changes,” the wood mage said.

“I’ll change to one above,” the force mage said. Alustin felt himself warm up to her again— he wasn’t a fan of waiting until the bet change round to seriously guess when he had a bad card, but it was still better than throwing away a bet entirely.

The scent mage was looking more and more nervous.

The card counter slid a small silver pendant with what looked like a green garnet into the center of the table. “I’ll change to one above.”

The scent mage growled. He seemed to be straining mentally to figure out what the odds were that Alustin had actually started the turn with the six of mountains in his hand. If both the four and the six of mountains landed, he was looking at a four way split of the pot, which he’d end up losing money on. Realizing it probably didn’t matter, he shook his head. He eyed the pendant, then tossed in a couple more Highvale crowns. “I’ll change to one below.”

No one called him on it— getting too nitpicky about the exact values thrown in wasn’t considered good sportsmanship. Alustin would have thrown in at least three crowns, though— the pendant was quite nice.

The table was silent for several breaths as they waited for the scent mage to flip his card.

Finally, he flipped over the four of mountains and laughed. “Seems I’ll be getting at least part of the pot, then. Or all of it, if our scribe friend here was bluffing about having the six of mountains.”

No one bothered to answer that. 

The card counter flipped over the two of clouds next. From anyone else Alustin would expect it to be a throwaway card, but from the card counter, it was probably some sort of strategy to manipulate the next round, or perhaps the one after it. Alustin had seldom played against anyone as good as they were.

The force mage didn’t even acknowledge their ten of clouds laying face up on the table.

The wood mage flipped the one of mountains. Alustin had no idea why she’d chosen that card, but it didn’t really matter.

Everyone focused on Alustin now. Alustin smiled as he watched them all calculate— they were all trying to figure out whether he actually had the six of mountains or not. If he did, then the pot was about to be split four ways. If he didn’t, then the scent mage was about to  rake in the whole pot.

Alustin smiled even wider, enjoying the tension. Finally, when then tension at the table seemed like it was about to explode, Alustin flipped his card.

It was the four of rivers.

The table exploded into yells and laughter. The four of rivers canceled out the scent mage's four of mountains, making his bet worthless. The three players who had bet one above— on the six of mountains— were left with bets on a nonexistent card.

The scent mage sunk his head into his hands, cursing.

Everyone’s attention switched to Alustin’s mark. It was down to him and the wood mage now, and it would be shocking if he’d played something so far away from his bet.

He hadn’t. Alustin’s mark flipped over the seven of mountains, winning him the round. He laughed as he raked in his winnings.

Alustin studied his mark. The man’s name was Ulric of the Feather. He was a short, heavily muscled man with feathers atop his head instead of hair, a perpetual smile, and a booming laugh. He had two affinities— an acid affinity and a feather affinity. 

Despite the stories about acid attunements, they weren’t usually that scary, most of the time— pools of acid were a lot rarer in real life than they were in stories. And carrying much acid around with you was problematic, to say the least— not least because many of them weren’t stable over the long term. There were ways to mix up acid, but doing so in the middle of combat wasn’t the most sensible course of action. And with a few hard to produce exceptions, most acids weren’t truly that dangerous. Only a couple of extremely rare acids could eat through metal or stone with any significant speed, unlike in stories. There were plenty acids that could do a lot of damage to flesh, but it was rarely immediately lethal, meaning any decent healer could repair the damage given time.

Interestingly, most acid mages had very limited control over rain, but not most other water.

Most acid mages tended to end up becoming culinary mages— their abilities were ideally suited for the kitchen.

A truly powerful acid mage, or an acid mage teamed up with an alchemist capable enough to manufacture truly dangerous acids— now that was another, entirely more terrifying matter altogether. Thankfully, Ulric was neither.

His second affinity was a feather attunement. That was interesting. The animal affinities in general were an odd bunch, but they generally were for a specific animal, not a body part like a feather. Ulric kept bags of feathers on him, wore a cloak of feathers, and had even managed to use his affinity to start growing feathers on his head instead of hair. He was one of those oddities, like Alustin, who could fly without a wind, gravity, or force affinity. Ulric did it by refashioning his cloak and the many other feathers into massive wings, then casting a powerful levitation cantrip on himself— not enough to lift himself up, but enough that his wings could.

While his affinities weren’t the most combat effective, they were quite useful, especially when it came to locks. Acid couldn’t melt metal quickly enough to matter often in battle, but it could certainly melt a lock if you were a little patient. Likewise, you could pick a lock quite easily with a strong enough feather that you could control.

Of course, one combat application his affinities lent themselves to quite well was archery. He could actually guide his arrows in midflight by altering the tail feathers, and his arrowheads were filled with a stable, powerful acid.

Ulric was part of a team of treasure hunters that delved into labyrinths, old tombs and ruins, and even pulled the occasional heist. 

And he and his team had found something that Alustin very much wanted.

The scent mage finished counting his remaining coins, tossed his hand into the center of the table, and stormed away from the table gracelessly, muttering under his breath. Alustin smiled faintly at that.

When the round cleanup ended and they passed their hands to the right, Alustin watched the card counter carefully as they looked at the hand he’d just passed them. If he hadn’t been, he might have missed their brief look of shock on seeing the six of mountains there. They shot him an incredulous look, and Alustin only smiled.

He was careful to throw the next two rounds to the card counter. The card counter gave him a lot of searching looks— though, again, anyone not looking for them would have missed them. 

The card counter threw the round after that to Alustin— in a way that only he recognized— which made him sigh in relief internally. As good as Alustin was at Spinthrift, and as effective as his cheating was, the card counter was in another league entirely. His wordless offer of alliance had, thankfully, been accepted.

Alustin started taking Ulric on a merry chase then— giving him enough big wins that he stayed upbeat and invested in the game, but hitting him with many more small losses, enough that his pile steadily began shrinking. If Alustin took his silver too fast, Ulric would probably drop from the game. But keep his hopes up with big wins, and Ulric would grow even less cautious than usual.

With the card counter following his lead, he was able to pull it off even more effectively. Neither him nor the card counter took all the wins for themselves— they threw plenty to other players to keep Ulric from getting suspicious.

As the game dragged on far into the night, players came and went. Spinthrift games often went absurdly long— there was actually one game in Ras Andis that had been running continuously for over a century. It had been going on so long that it was, so far as Alustin knew, the only game on the planet still using its archaic variant ruleset. 

One of the main reasons Spinthrift games went on so long was the supposed rarity of catastrophic losses like the scent mage had suffered. Losses were supposed to be gradual over time in Spinthrift, allowing people to get out before they lost too much money. It had a reputation as one of the safest ways to gamble. After all, you were only really required to bet a single coin per round, so there was no reason you couldn’t just play it safe the whole game. 

Anyone who went in seriously believing Spinthrift was safe was going to be losing a lot of money.

Before she finally left the game, Alustin did finally figure out that the supposed force mage was nothing of the sort— she had just been that good at sleight of hand. Apparently only for that single trick while shuffling, however. A little unusual, but not that rare for gifted amateurs.

Ulric and the card counter both stayed in, however. As the game moved on, Alustin realized that he didn’t consider anyone else at the table to be even truly playing— as far as he was concerned, it was just Alustin and the card counter, weaving a tapestry of deceit out of the game. He found himself competing against them to throw rounds in ever more elegant ways. For a solid hour, the two of them did their best to try and earn the other as much money as they possibly could, even at their own expense, and they did it without anyone else even coming close to noticing.

Finally, just before dawn, Alustin had Ulric exactly where he wanted him. Ulric’s pile had diminished to almost nothing, and he’d forced up the bidding on a last bid against Ulric wildly. New players usually saw last bets as the worst possible bid in this variant, but they were, in fact, quite useful at times, both for bluffing or publicly declaring your confidence in your bet.

The card counter, who Alustin felt perfectly synchronized with at this point, just quietly waited.

Alustin didn’t let Ulric take the last slot this time, forcing him to spend one of his last few coins on bidding for second bet.

Ulric looked like he was in shock. For a moment, he almost looked ready to just quit the game. He glanced at his cards one last time, and the tension abruptly flowed out of him.

Ulric tossed in his last coin with a smile, taking the fourth slot, the only one still open. Since everyone else had already won their betting slots, he didn’t have to be worried about doing any more bidding.

Alustin didn’t blame him for relaxing. Ulric had a spectacular hand. The face-up center card was the three of clouds, and he had the two of clouds, defended by holding the two of rivers, leaving only a single card that could knock him out of the round, the two of trees. Ulric was essentially guaranteed to get at least part of his winnings back.

Or, he would have been, if the card counter hadn’t been the one to hand Ulric the two of clouds, which they in turn had received from Alustin the round before.

Or if Alustin hadn’t just passed the card counter the two of trees the round before.

As Alustin raked in his winnings off his five of clouds, he waited with bated breath for the moment he’d been seeking all night. As the players prepared for the next round, Alustin started to worry that he’d misjudged, that Ulric wasn’t going to react as he had the last time he’d lost so much while Alustin was spying on him…

“Wait!” Ulric shouted at the last second. “I want to risk it all!”

Everyone froze at that. Risking it all was rarely done, but it was a legal strategy in most variants. The loser of a particularly large hand could request to keep the pot in the middle for another round, but they had to put down a stake to match the entire pot— something you had to be particularly desperate to do.

Not to mention that it was entirely up to the winner of the last round whether they’d accept the challenge. Not many did.

The other two current players— an elderly naga and an overweight Havathi merchant— rolled their eyes, expecting Alustin to reject the play out of hand. The card counter and Ulric watched him intently, though.

He let the silence drag on for a little while before speaking. “What do you have to offer?”

He toyed with Ulric then, rejecting everything. Ulric offered a number of magic items he had on hand, an iou, and even his bow. The Havathi merchant, convinced Alustin was just being cruel, even told him to leave the poor fool to his misery already.

Desperate, Ulric plunged his hand into his jacket. “I’ve got a treasure map!” he yelled.

Ulric slammed a heavily folded sheet of paper onto the table. Its wax seal was imprinted with a spellform that Alustin knew would destroy the paper if it wasn’t opened correctly, or if you tried to cut out the sections of paper it was attached to in order to unfold it. 

The Havathi merchant and the Naga burst out laughing. 

Alustin pretended to look doubtful, but he slowly, arduously let himself seem to be convinced by Ulric’s exaggerated story about how they’d discovered it in an ancient ruin.

It was complete nonsense, of course. They’d stolen it, but Ulric wasn’t drunk or desperate enough to tell the truth about that.

Finally, he let himself seem to be convinced by Ulric, much to the shock of the naga and the merchant, neither of whom had the least objection to getting another chance at Alustin’s winnings.

A few minutes later, Alustin was the happy owner of his very own treasure map.

Ulric left after that, looking shocked. Alustin kept playing, happily losing quite a bit of money to the card counter, who was quite visibly amused by the whole thing.

He also took special care to make sure the Havathi merchant lost most of his stake, a favor he was always willing to do for loyal subjects of the Havath Dominion. He didn’t actually take it for himself, instead carefully funneling it to the card counter and the other players that drifted in and out of the game.

He also managed to finally get rid of the awful goblet as well, losing it to a burly farmwife who Alustin was fairly sure was nearly as good a player as the card counter or himself. 

Alustin doubted the map lead to what Kanderon had Alustin and the other Librarians Errant looking for, but the slim chance it was meant Alustin couldn’t chance giving it up.

Besides, he was at least confident that it was a genuine treasure map, even if it didn’t lead him to the specific prize he was looking for.

He tried not to think about all the other powers seeking the same prize.

It took almost an hour longer than he had expected for the rest of the team of treasure hunters to arrive, a chagrined Ulric in tow. The card counter and Alustin spent most of that time amusing themselves by hiding their alliance from the farmer’s wife. The card counter seemed perfectly aware that Alustin was waiting for something, and was quite content to wait as well.

While entertaining, it didn’t compare to the con they’d pulled on Ulric. Alustin was fairly sure that had been the single best game of Spinthrift he’d played in his life, and he doubted he’d best it anytime soon. 

Kanderon would probably have been furious if she knew that Alustin had put so much up to the whims of a stranger in a card game, but she probably would also have been furious that Alustin’s plan involved a card game anyhow— if it were up to her, she likely would have just stolen it.

But Kanderon really didn’t need to be told everything.

The treasure hunters— surprisingly politely— explained that the map had not been Ulric’s to lose, and offered to buy it back for more than Ulric had bet it against.

Alustin accepted their offer a little too quickly, but he suspected the treasure hunters would believe in greed more than graciousness. The treasure hunters checked to make sure the seal was intact, but they left without noticing that the folded up map was almost a third thinner than it had been.

Alustin was quite proud of himself for that trick. Mages who lived before paper had been invented had used palimpsest spells quite frequently— spells that scraped off writing from parchment or vellum so that they could be reused. Alustin had developed a variant that scraped off the entire surface of a sheet of paper, turning one sheet into two sheets of the same area.

The newer, thinner sheet of paper wasn’t connected to the old one at all, so he didn’t have to worry about removing it setting off the seal.

It was still quite tricky, however. He could have removed the seal with a little effort, but resealing it would be beyond even him— it was quality work. There wasn’t any way to get the new sheet containing the map out without unfolding the whole thing, which he couldn’t do without breaking the seal.

So he’d cheated. He wasn’t a spatial mage himself, but he’d grown quite adept with the tattoo Kanderon had made him. It didn’t simply open a hole in space for him to reach in and out of— the tattoo let him reach across a fourth spatial dimension to access a secured space only accessible to him. (And, though she claimed otherwise, possibly Kanderon as well.)

He used the tattoo to pull the outer sheet with the seal on it across that fourth spatial dimension and into the extraplanar storage space, letting the inner, unsealed sheet with the actual map on it fall into his lap. He then pulled the outer sheet back out and tucked it in a pocket, and pulled the inner sheet into the tattoo.

After the treasure hunters left, Alustin finished up one more round of Spinthrift, then bowed out of the game.

Staying up all night had left him exhausted, but instead of heading up to his room, he headed to the bar, where he ordered a pair of drinks.

He wasn’t overly worried about Ulric and the other treasure hunters returning— he doubted they’d notice anything other than the fact the seal was intact and genuine. 

He was interrupted from his musing— gloating, really, if he was going to be honest with himself— by a slender hand on his hip. He glanced over to see the card counter sipping from the second drink Alustin had purchased, pointedly not looking at him despite the physical contact.

Alustin looked back at his drink and smiled. He was tired, but not quite that tired.

The treasure hunters, to Alustin’s irritation, chose that exact moment to kick down the door, having noticed his trick after all.