“Fleece the workers in Brightwater of all their earnings of course,” Jacques whispered in reply. A wise move, since I could see the three workers he’d been playing with returning to their booth with full mugs of beer. “Not the locals, though,” Jacques continued. “They’re honest, hardworking folk, and I’d never swindle them out of their meager earnings. The kind like those I’m with tonight? They’re ripe pickings for someone as lucky as I am.”
“So, who have you been gambling with?” I nodded at the booth next to us. “You said they were workers; what do they work on?”
“These fine gentlemen are sappers,” Jacques said.
“What’s a sapper?” Amelia asked.
Jacques puffed his chest out. He loved explaining things to people. “Sappers are workers in the mines. They shore up the walls and ceilings of the new shafts and repair the old ones.”
“I’ve heard they aren’t too kind to the slaves that work there,” Veronica said. I could tell she was doing her best to avoid looking at Amelia and I when she said the word ’slaves’.
“No indeed, you are correct.” Jacques waved his beer in the air as he spoke, his flourishes somewhat dramatic. Despite this, he was speaking with a lowered voice. “They have been known to deliberately do shoddy work. They find it comical when the shafts collapse on groups of the slaves as they are collecting the Beast Cores.”
“How awful!” Amelia exclaimed.
“That it is,” Jacques responded. “That is why I have no qualms fleecing them of their earnings.”
I looked over at the sappers at the booth. They had returned with full mugs of beer in their hands, but they did not look happy. I looked closer at them as they clustered at the end of their table that was furthest from ours.
As I had noticed earlier, they were fairly easy to distinguish from one another, despite their clothes. The man with the mohawk seemed to be the leader. The other two, one with a dirty eyepatch and the other with his red and misshapen nose, leaned in close to mohawk and muttered angrily, throwing occasional resentful glances toward Jacques, which he studiously ignored. I figured they were probably plotting to screw Jacques over.
“Keep talking,” I whispered to Amelia, Veronica, and Jacques.
The two women looked at me with confused expressions, but Jacques caught my meaning immediately. I rolled my eyes toward the booth behind us, and Amelia nodded, suddenly realizing what I intended. I wanted to overhear the sappers’ conversation.
“Would you ladies like to know how I met young William here?” Jacques asked the two women at my table.
“Very much,” Amelia said, playing along with an excited nod.
Jacques began a tale that was most definitely not an explanation of how we’d met, and I let his voice fade to the back of my mind as I concentrated on what the sappers were saying.
“He’s already won nearly all our earnings,” the one with the mashed nose said.
“How does he do it?” Mohawk said. “It’s like he can read our cards.”
“That sounds like cheating to me,” Eyepatch said.
I suspected it was more likely that these workers were not the sharpest when it came to card games.
“What are we going to do about it?” said Mohawk.
They were not speaking all that quietly, and I could see a number of other workers in the vicinity pausing in their conversation to listen in. I figured they were pretty drunk and were unable to realize that their whispers were, in fact, shouts.
“We’ll have to go back to the mines and work for another two months to get all that money back again,” said the one with the red nose.
“I don’t know if I like the sound of that,” said Patch. They all looked in our direction.
“Uh, Jacques,” I interrupted him midway through his elaborate—and entirely fabricated—retelling. “Do you happen to have a plan for hanging on to your winnings?”
“Why, of course.” Jacques smiled. He didn’t look too concerned.
“And that plan would be...?” Amelia asked when Jacques didn’t go any further.
“Why, silly me.” he slapped a palm to his forehead. “Did I neglect to explain?”
I nodded. “You did.”
“You are my plan.” He spread his hands to indicate the three of us, a generous, sweeping gesture, as if he’d just offered us a round of drinks.
“Fantastic,” Amelia muttered sarcastically. .
I wasn’t thrilled either, but at the same time, I had been curious to try out our new tattoos. They’d been crafted with the express purpose of fighting in close combat, and I could even think of a few ways to use them that wouldn’t break the tavern’s rules.
I looked over at the sappers again.
“I have a new idea,” announced Red Nose.
“Oh yeah?” Mohawk asked loudly. “What would that be?”
The other workers nearby were all listening. I glanced around me. It looked like at least six or seven other workers might get involved if a fight broke out. And from the way they were all glaring at Jacques, I assumed they wouldn’t side with him. More than likely, they’d also lost much of their earnings on previous nights to Jacques’ unbelievable luck.
“Let’s just take the money off him again,” Red Nose shouted.
The other two cheered and leaped to their feet.
“Here we go,” I said and got to my feet as well, leaving my pack on the bench.
Amelia and Veronica stood to their feet as well.
“You ladies sure you want to defend my friend here?” I asked. “He’s not exactly guiltless.”
“Any friend of yours is a friend of mine,” Amelia said.
“I’ve been meaning to teach these sappers a lesson,” Veronica said.
“Great,” I said with a smile. “This should be fun. Let’s hold off on using our tattoos at first. I want to give them a good fight before we annihilate them.”
I put my hand out and firmly gripped Jacques by the arm. “I’ve only been in town five minutes and you’re already getting me into trouble.”
Jacques rolled his shoulders and flashed me a lopsided grin.
“Just like old times,” he said.
Chapter Thirteen
I stood side by
