2 The Lions Gambit

I laugh to myself at the familiar atmosphere, the anxious screams of the hopeful, the smell of rotting garbage and the stench of cheap alcohol. I close my eyes and take it all in, a smile on my face.

"Boy, didn't you vow to never come back," I open my eyes to see a middle-aged lady with an awful lot of jewellery hanging from her body.

"No, I vowed never to lose," I retort cheekily.

She smiles and says," Go on in, I will set you up with Meren."

I try to look offended," Are you trying to steal my money?"

"Boy, be happy that I am letting you back in, I am angering a lot of people with this move. The least I can do for them is to set you up with the lowest possible chances of winning," she answers somewhat gravely.

"Thanks a lot, I will remember this," I say sincerely.

She nods and doesn't look at me again, welcoming another potential customer inside. The Lions Gambit is situated in what used to be the slums of the city, now unused by even the homeless. The venue constantly changes and you have to have the necessary connections to be able to find it. Going past the broken doors I am greeted by a dimly lit room, the room is about the size of a warehouse but is in very dire condition, the paint is peeling off the walls and most of the bulbs are shattered.

"Sidus, over here," a voice calls out to me. Looking towards the voice, I spot Meren, she calls me over with a beckoning gesture.

I smirk and pretend to ignore her.

A few seconds later and a hand is pinching my ear, dragging my body along with it.

"Ouch! Meren, you needn't have done that," I say indignantly.

"Shut up and follow me," she says while shaking her head.

Meren drags me to her table, one visited by only the very stupid or the overconfident. Both kinds almost always leave with lighter pockets. The game Meren plays is called Boltunder, a mechanism shoots out a series of marbles into the air, the marbles all land in a tray, where five of the marbles fit into five pre-made holes. On each of the marbles is a small inscription, visible only when it is flying through the air, the player will have to remember each and every inscription and which marble that inscription is on, keeping track of over 15 marbles until they fall into the slot. It is not a game of pure chance but involves actual skill, skill which Meren has plenty of.

Boltunder has a frightening reputation in the Lions Gambit, colloquially known as the fools game, not because of the difficulty of the game itself but because of the dealer. Meren is very skilled at the game and her guesses are very accurate, so accurate that only once has she been beaten, only once has she tasted the bitter stuff of defeat.

"Looks like you aren't as good at the game, as you thought," I say while purposely poking fun.

"You won through luck, let's try again now and we will see who wins," she boasts.

I shrug and say," It is no fun playing when you already know the outcome. The outcome being, my win."

Meren doesn't reply but I can see the fire blazing in her eyes. Meren is not one to accept a loss easily, fighting until she tips the scale.

In many ways, she and I are similar, both of us being orphans, we both have the burning desire to push forward, to become the most powerful, and until then, I will not stop.

Meren loads up the machine with the marbles, "Are you ready?" she asks.

"As ready as I'll ever be, I reply.

With a series of clanking, groaning noises, the marbles start shooting out, one after the other moving through the air quickly, making whistling noises as they blow past. My eyes flit past each and every marble and soon I remember each symbol and the marble it is on. "Clink" the marbles fall to the tray, only five of them falling into holes. The symbols on the marbles can only be visible in the air, once they are placed against an opaque object, it is impossible to read the symbols on them.

Meren smiles, she looks confident, almost too confident. Meren looks to me questioningly as if to ask whether I can win. I shrug and try to uphold my poker face, I am confident enough that I have remembered all the marbles, but seeing Merens happiness makes me somewhat nervous.

"It is not too late to quit," I say trying to divert the topic and make her forget the marbles.

"Actually, it is, so if you wanted to quit, it is too late," she snaps back.

I laugh at Merens comeback and receive one of her smiles in exchange. Taking the coarse sheet of paper that Meren handed to me, I write down all the marbles, their positions and their symbols. What we are playing is the highest difficulty of Boltunder, one in which the player will have to know not only the symbols of the slotted marbles but also which slot each symbol fell into. This game of Boltunder is horrendously hard and very few people have the nerve required to gamble on this version of Boltunder.

"Do you want to increase the bet," Meren asks overconfident in herself.

Just what I was waiting for, if I had asked to increase the bet, Meren would start getting unsure and might even do one of her sleight of hand tricks. Cheating was not uncommon in the Lions Gambit.

I manage to look unsure but after some thought I say, "Sure, but only 15 silvers, okay?"

Meren laughs and nods, taking out a handful of silver coins and placing them on the table, I follow her action, by emptying my pouch next to her money.

Now, Meren starts to get scared, she realizes that I just went all in.

I laugh in my mind, how the tables turn.

Meren flicks a switch and suddenly, the tray starts shining, emitting brilliant light. The symbols on the marbles are clearly visible, they are duck, mongoose, snake, snake, dragon. I nod in nervousness, trying to up the ante, but Meren does not take the bait.

"Reveal," she manages in a half stutter.

I overturn my closed sheet of paper, revealing a perfect guess. Meren does not even reveal her sheet, grudgingly pushing the money towards me and crumpling and throwing her sheet of paper.

Meren looks at me hopefully," Again?"

"You must think I am blind," referring to the small pair of spectacles that she has removed from her pocket. Spectacles that can see through a game of Boltunder.

Thoroughly offended, I get up to leave the place when a coarse hand rests on my shoulder.

I turn to look at the smiling face of a familiar person. I sigh in resignation, this was bound to happen.