“Why don’t we leave it there for a few minutes, boys?” Jacques suggested to them. “A quick intermission for refreshments.” He sounded as suave and supercilious as ever.
“Refreshments?” said the man with the mohawk. “We don’t have any coin to buy beer; you took it all from us!”
“Easy,” Jacques said as he raised his hands to calm the men. “How about I shout you all a round before we go again? I know you have more coins.”
The men grumbled among each other.
The one who’d spoken before sneered at Jacques. “You get us the beer, and we’ll see if we can scrounge up something to bet with.”
“Excellent,” my old friend said as he plucked three coins from his bulging purse and slapped them on the table. “That should be more than enough to cover your beers. I’m glad you’ve decided to play another round. I really think you lads might be in for a stroke of luck. After all, you can’t win if you don’t play the game.” He winked at the men before he got up and walked over to our table, his half-full mug of beer in his hand.
The three men headed toward the bar, giving Jacques dirty looks as they went. I assumed they wanted to get out of Jacques’s earshot before discussing where they would get more coins.
Jacques took a seat across from me, beside Veronica. Either he had something to hide, or he felt the cold strongly. I couldn’t see why else he would have kept his cloak on instead of leaving it at the door.
“I must say, William,” he said once he’d settled himself, “it is fine to see you again here. My, my, you’ve got yourself some more of those tattoos, I see.” He looked askance at my forearms. “You never were one to pay any heed to your appearance. But I never judge. I did wonder what had become of you, and I’ve missed our adventures terribly.”
Jacques’ voice had a melodic quality to it when he wasn’t hollering obscenities. I could imagine him charming the toughest of merchants out of their wares for far less than their value.
“It’s good to see you again too, Jacques,” I said. “Whatever made you leave Aranor without so much as saying goodbye?”
“Oh that.” Jacques waved his hand dismissively. “A long and tedious story I wouldn’t dream of boring you with. But I see you have made the acquaintance of two lovely ladies.”
I wasn’t blind to his attempt to distract me, but I knew from experience I wouldn’t get any answers out of him if he didn’t want to give them.
“That’s right, Jacques. Allow me to introduce Amelia, a scholar from the Royal Library in Astros. I believe you’ve already gotten to know Veronica.”
Jacques reached out a hand to Amelia and shook hers. “A pleasure, I’m sure.” He looked at me. “I have indeed got to know Veronica, but I hasten to add that it was only in the sense of making her acquaintance. You needn’t fear in that department.”
Veronica went red. “William and I aren’t ... we’re not...”
“Never fear, my dear Veronica. I would never dream of insinuating anything that might harm your unblemished reputation. What you choose to do behind closed doors with my good friend William is your business.”
Veronica huffed and went silent. I assumed she was familiar with such behavior from Jacques.
He leaned in toward Amelia with a hand beside his mouth, conspiratorially. “You see, William need have no concerns in that department in general.”
“Why might that be?” Amelia asked. She was sitting hesitantly, unsure whether to be interested or repulsed.
“Because I have nothing in which to compete with him. The old fellow down there doesn’t work anymore.”
“Oh, I’m sorry to hear that,” Amelia said, her intonation almost questioning. Her cheeks were a bit red.
I sat back, sipped on my beer, and waited for the punchline. I’d heard this story dozens of times before, and it never failed to intrigue me.
“No need for condolences at all,” he said. “I got a pretty good bargain out of the whole arrangement.”
Amelia and Veronica both looked very confused at this. They glanced at me, and I shrugged, gesturing toward Jacques while smiling behind my beer mug. “Don’t look at me,” I said, “I wouldn’t dream of stealing his punchline.”
Jacques inclined his head to me in exaggerated gratitude. “The truth is,” he said, looking ar Amelia, “I gave up my prowess—tremendous though it was, I might add—in exchange for patronage from Loku, the god of good luck.”
“I see,” said Amelia. She was sitting back now, her arms crossed over her chest.
“And now, I get perfect luck in almost any conceivable endeavor. Only downside is, little me down there is totally uninterested in the wenches.” He spread his arms in a resigned gesture and grinned. “I don’t miss it so much really. I was always drawn to the most challenging kinds of women. My reputation as a lover went far and wide, and I was powerless to resist them. I was always getting tangled up in the most undesirable situations. A beautiful woman was my only weakness. Better off without them, really.”
Personally, I figured his ’little fellow’, as he liked to call it, had stopped working for purely mundane reasons, and he wanted to explain why he was totally fine with that. He did have a surprising run of luck, given the crazy escapades he got up to, but there was no reason to believe one of the gods worshipped by superstitious old women in Aranor had anything to do with it.
“And what do you do with this perfect ‘luck’, now that you’ve traded your virility for it?” Amelia asked. She enunciated the word luck with more
