He could contact Elizabeth directly now, or at least send her a message, but she wasn’t in system and there was no telling what Kaycie was up to. She surely had some plan to get Dansby free, but she didn’t know about the addle nor Dansby’s intention to interrupt that trade.
A message would also cost, and he had few enough coins in his pocket.
Just six shillings and eight pence, less than a pound, what he’d been able to take from his mates aboard Tyche in various games that didn’t attract the bosun’s eye.
Not enough for a stake, not really, but it would have to do.
He found what he was looking for soon enough, a loud, brightly lit place far enough from the smelters that the station air wasn’t hot with the scent of molten metal, yet close to the miners’ dock. He watched it for a time to be sure, then entered.
The air inside was thick with vaping mist and Dansby hoped there was none of the addle mixed in with that. The miners here seemed alert, though, not dulled with the drug, so he was probably safe.
He worked his mouth and grimaced — the air was thick with rock dust too, coming off the miners’ clothes and leaving a fine coating on every surface. It was crowded, but not overfull, and the back of the room, away from the bar that lined one side, was full of card tables, which was what Dansby was looking for.
He made his way to the bar first and ordered a mug of beer.
“No trouble now, Navy,” the bartender said.
Dansby smiled. “Not a bit, sir, not a bit. Just looking for a friendly game.”
The bartender scowled, but set a mug in front of Dansby.
“Sixpence.”
Dansby raised his brow at that.
“Will you argue, now, lad?” the bartender asked.
Dansby shrugged and fished out the coin. He’d have to nurse the one beer for a time at that price, as he’d be left only tuppence, his six shillings reserved for the game.
There was only one table playing for such small stakes as his purse was suited for, so he nodded to the bartender, took his mug of thrice-priced beer, and headed there.
The table wasn’t crowded — only four men and three women, in addition to the dealer, so there were seats, but Dansby hesitated, hovering about. They were all clearly miners, with worn ship’s jumpsuits, stained and patched — many still with a bit of dust from whatever tunnel of rock they’d last crawled through or dragged aboard their little mining barges clinging to their persons.
“Sit an’ play or be on yer way!” one of the women finally said.
She was a skinny sort with wiry muscle showing in her forearms where her sleeves were rolled up — from the long hours of chipping away at some rock she’d not want to blast for some reason. There was a stack of shillings in front of her, this table and these stakes not bothering with checks — it was far more than Dansby’s measly six, but not so many as others at the table had. Perhaps two pounds in total. He took her for someone on her last bit of bad luck — well, anyone at the shilling table would be, he supposed, but she seemed angry enough about it that the bad luck must be new.
“Well, thank you for the invitation, miss,” Dansby said, sitting and pulling out his coin. He set his mug of beer down with exaggerated care and his stack of six shillings after.
The table went silent for a moment, even the two men involved in the current hand stopped staring at each other to frown at Dansby.
“What’s that?” the woman, Dansby dubbed her Grumpy, asked.
“My stake,” Dansby said.
Grumpy’s frown deepened. “What? Six bloody shillings?”
Dansby looked around at the others before focusing back on Grumpy. There were different tacks to take at table — a friendly game with your messmates being different from one of higher stakes or a rival dorm back at his old school on Lesser Seward. Times you wanted goodwill or times you wanted the other players to be wary of you or times …
Dansby sighed. He was already in the muck with his Naval jumpsuit and small bankroll. Another time and he might have made a friendly overture to some of the others at the table, who didn’t seem fond of Grumpy themselves. Not today, though — not with time weighing on him and the natural distaste of the miners for Naval spacers against him.
He looked around, meeting eyes with everyone at the table.
“What, then? I’d need more to start against you lot?”
“Call,” Grumpy muttered, tossing four shillings toward the pot.
“Raise,” Dansby countered, setting a stack of eight down carefully.
“Damn you again!” Grumpy said through gritted teeth. She pointed at the man who’d bet before her call. “He’s the bettor and that’s thrice you’ve raised my call! And you checked afore him!”
She was pointing across the table at the man Dansby’d dubbed Uptight and the only other still in the hand.
Dansby shrugged. It wasn’t his fault his hand came after hers and she wished to see another card for just the four shillings Uptight had originally bet.
Uptight sent his own cards skittering to the dealer, which was what Dansby wanted most from his bet — the man wasn’t in a hand unless his cards were good, but he worried about what others had too much and any bet back at him set those worries a’spinning through his head.
“And now he’s out, so we’ll see nothing more of his in the pot!” Grumpy waved her hands as though this was a horrible event.
“I should hope not,” Dansby said, “we’re well-off without his jacks and that straight draw.”
The flare of Uptight’s nostrils told Dansby he’d read the other man’s hand well enough, and some small portion of Dansby’s brain set about calculating what Uptight would do about it in the future.
At the opposite end of the table, the one he’d dubbed Hangry snorted and took another bite of the massive sandwich he’d ordered to replace the bowl of curry which came before.
Grumpy pulled four shillings from the dwindling stack of coin before her and fairly threw them to the table’s center.
“Please don’t splash the pot, Matilda,” the dealer said.
Grumpy turned to glare at him. “Are you saying I’d cheat, Birdhil?”
“Saying there’s rules, an’ saying there’s exceptions, an’ saying that’s two things don’t meet at these tables, so don’t splash the bloody pot.”
Grumpy snorted.
The dealer scooped all the bets into the center, sliding one coin to a slot that emptied into a locked box below as the next bit of the pub’s rake for hosting the game. Dansby glanced around the place, idly wondering how many shillings and, more, pounds, were in the boxes beneath the six or so tables here — collected for no more than supplying the table, the dealers, and the decks of cards, along with a bit of food and drink.
If ever in life I have the chance, I shall open a card room of sorts — or a full casino. Far better to be the house in these matters. He considered what his shipmates from Tyche were about just then. Perhaps a house with all sorts of entertainments. A one-stop —
He broke off and returned his attention to the game before him as the dealer prepared to turn the next card.
“All-in,” he said, sliding his stack of shillings past the betting line. “Nine — such as it is.”
“What are you about?” Grumpy demanded. “He ain’t turned the next card yet!”
Dansby shrugged, giving her a smile he hoped was as irritating as he planned. “It won’t matter.”
Eleven
Dansby slid his cards to the dealer and took the coins the man slid to him in return. He added those to his stacks and counted them from the edge of his vision so the others wouldn’t know he was.
He had nearly eight pounds, more than a bit short of what he suspected he’d need for the tablet, Corders Hole’s prices being what they were, and the night was drawing on. The only two players from the original group he’d joined still at the table were Grumpy and Hangry, though three new players remained as well.
He’d busted Uptight after the man began playing cards he
was horribly unsuited to represent, thinking a bit of randomness would put paid to Dansby’s reading of him.
Others had drifted away over time, apparently sating their desire for the game or seeking a better atmosphere, as Grumpy had only grown grumpier as Dansby’s stack of coin grew. She’d lost all her coin to Dansby twice, as well, drawing more from the pub tender after signing a marker each time.
Hangry appeared content to remain and post his blinds, rarely engaging in a hand, so long as the pub refreshed his beer and plate regularly — considering how often that was, Dansby suspected it might be the cheapest way the man could get the amount of food he seemed to need.
Of the new players, only one was of interest, the other two being idle players who paid too much attention to their cards and not nearly enough to their opponents.
The one, though …
“Ten,” Rabbit said, setting the coins before her.
Dansby stared at the cards for a moment, before looking at the girl. She was still as a rabbit startled in the open, and giving off the same sense of vulnerability — yet, as he’d already experienced more than once, lunging for this prey would have her off into the bramble patch of her cards in a trice, leaving him scraped and bloody.
Nor did she match the other players in their appearance as miners. Her clothes weren’t suited to any space work at all, being a short skirt and deep-cut blouse … Dansby drew his eyes away from that, concentrating on the girl’s cards and looking for a tell she must have.
The girl’s coin had doubled since she sat down, and no little of her profit had come from Dansby — well, from the others at the table through Dansby.
Dansby’s hands went to his own coin stacks, counting by feel while he stared at the girl. Her eyes were down, never making contact with the other players.
His own cards were good, but not the best — still the odds of her having the better were slim. Thoughts spun, his fingers moved, seeming of their own accord, from coin to cards, ready to slide those to the dealer and avoid another bloodying, when the girl looked up.
Her eyes went to his cards, his fingers barely touching them, then up to his face. A bit of widening to her eyes, there — was that hope? A bluff then?
“Call,” Dansby said, adding his own ten shillings to the center.
Then Rabbit smiled and turned over her cards.
Grumpy laughed.
Dansby made his way to the bar.
His eyes were gritty with fatigue, as he imagined the others’ were as well. The players of no note had long disappeared, and when Hangry had risen, taking with him half a plate of chicken wings in a sauce Dansby could smell the length of the table, only Grumpy, Rabbit, and Dansby himself had been left.
He supposed he could play on a bit more, avoiding Rabbit as he needed to and bleeding Grumpy slowly, until more players arrived, but it was early in the station’s morning and there might be none of those for hours.
Better to end things, and the others seemed to agree, rising nearly as one with him.
The clink of coin, nine pounds, in his jumpsuit pocket was comforting, if, perhaps, not quite enough for his needs. He’d have had enough, if not for that wretched, vile, brilliant, lovely girl.
“Beer?” the barkeep asked.
“Tea?” Dansby hazarded.
“Food?”
Ah, now that had a sound to it. He didn’t like to eat while cards were in play, and mention of food sent images of Hangry’s feasting flashing through his mind.
“Whatever won’t put you out,” Dansby said, not wanting to annoy the man’s kitchen this late — early, rather.
“We serve a proper breakfast. No charge, you’ve been at the cards so long.”
“Really?” Dansby stomach growled. He’d been so focused on his need to get a tablet that, even with Hangry’s parading food in front of him, he’d not thought that he’d been on a Naval ship’s common rations for a fortnight. “That would be welcome.”
The man nodded and went away.
Dansby looked around. Other gaming tables were breaking up as well, as though Dansby’s had been a sort of signal, but others, of much higher stakes, were still in play. The bar was filling as well, with those former players. Grumpy and Rabbit were already there.
He moved from his current seat to one next to Rabbit. Grumpy was at the other end of the bar, and he had no interest in talking to her, but the other girl was interesting, now that they weren’t in battle at the gaming table.
Rabbit raised an eyebrow as he sat.
“Thought it best to leave room for others,” Dansby said as a card player moved from a table to his former seat at the bar. “And I’m thinking you owe me breakfast, what with taking so much of my coin at the table.”
“The breakfast is free,” Rabbit said, not looking at him, but a slight curve to her lips did tell him his move wasn’t entirely unwelcome.
“All the better,” Dansby said.
“And if the winner’s owing breakfast,” she added, “oughtn’t you be supplying Matilda’s?” She jerked her head toward Grumpy’s place at the bar’s far end.
Dansby cleared his throat. “I fear she’d just as soon I didn’t.”
Rabbit chuckled.
“I’m Dansby — Avrel Dansby.”
“Ah, so I can stop calling you The Serpent in my head, then.”
“Serpent? That hardly seems fair.”
“No?”
“Certainly I was the shark at that table.”
Rabbit turned to regard him for a moment. “Not just yet, I think. Someday, perhaps, but you’re young still.”
“And yourself?”
“What name did you give me?”
Dansby flushed, and his mind, much as during the card game, sought the best answer, finally settling on the truth. “Rabbit.”
Rabbit laughed, throwing her head back. “Really?”
“Yes, all appearing vulnerable prey before leading me a bloody chase through the brambles.”
She laughed again. “Good, then I’ve got it right.”
The bartender passed them, stopping only long enough to slide plates onto the bar, and Dansby was pleased enough to see that it was a proper breakfast, with, as near as he could tell, both real eggs along with true sausage and bacon, beside the mushrooms and beans he’d expect could be grown on-station.
“How —”
“There’s a mined-out shell near enough the station,” Rabbit said. “Chickens and pigs do well enough on the scraps people leave behind, and perhaps a bit more in grains and leavings from hydroponics.”
“Well, whatever the cause I’m grateful enough to see this after a fortnight on Naval commons.” He swallowed a mouthful of egg and scooped up a bit of sausage with some beans. “Will you share your own name now?”
“Rabbit will do — away from the cards as well as with them,” she said, then grinned. “It will keep you mindful of the brambles.”
Dansby grinned, thinking it quite the thing they’d each given a false name, though he was the only to know it. “Well, then, Rabbit, what is it you do when you’re not taking up the coin that shakes loose in your bramble thicket?”
“I’m a miner.”
That was a surprise, though he’d not call her a liar. Given her dress and bearing, he’d thought she might work for one of the houses, taking some time away for other entertainments — though given her run at the table tonight, she’d earn far more there than from any merchant spacers or Navy men. Perhaps a more exclusive house that catered to the ships’ officers, but with three ships in-system, surely, they’d not have given a girl leave.
“I’d not have taken you for such,” he settled for.
“Why?” Rabbit asked. “Because I’ll spend the time and coin on a bath and change of clothes before heading out for an evening?”
“That,” Dansby allowed, “and you seem a bit more refined than the other miners.”
“’Refined,’ Mister Dansby? Is that an attempt at a pun?”
“The best I may have in m
e, I’m afraid, after a month aboard a Navy ship.”
Now it was Rabbit’s turn to look him over, and Dansby nearly shuddered at what he knew she’d see. His own ship’s jumpsuit was out of the purser’s slops, as he’d come aboard Tyche with nothing, and his hair and beard, much as the latter was at the best of times, had been given little attention.
He’d wanted to fit in aboard ship, with the other Navy men, and gain enough trust to be granted this liberty — then to appear rough and unsophisticated to the other players. He’d not expected to meet so … delicate an opponent.
An echo of Kaycie’s voice asked him what he was about with this bint — her words, of course, as he’d never call Rabbit that — but it had been a long time aboard Tyche and a bit of harmless talk couldn’t be held against him, could it?
Besides, the bint had left the card table with more coin than he himself had, much of it his — or should have been his. A bit of sweet talk, a sad story, and he’d have it all off her.
The coin. I’ll have the coin off her, he insisted to Kaycie’s voice. This is about getting the coin to get the tablet to end the addle trade by Tyche — that’s what you wanted me to do when I found the bloody addle, wasn’t it? Well, there’s no telling where such a task might take one, nor what …
He ran his eyes over the girl and noted that her skirt, quite short to begin with, had ridden up her thighs as she turned to regard him.
… unpleasantness one must endure in the name of …
Rabbit’s knees brushed his thigh as she turned, drawing a line of fire behind.
… oh, bugger.
“Only a month?” Rabbit asked. “I’d have thought you were an old hand.”
Dansby cleared his throat. “A’space, yes, but not the bloody Navy. I was pressed out of Penduli — thrown into durance vile when they’d not let me contact my own ship.”
“Ah,” Rabbit said. “So, a merchant spacer, then?”
“Captain,” Dansby said, “of my own ship and on my own bottom.”
Rabbit smiled. “Captain Avrel Dansby, torn from his ship, caught up by the Impressment Service, and tossed aboard a warship as a common spacer? It sounds like an adventure story.”
Spacer, Smuggler, Pirate, Spy Box Set Page 21
