A Just Man and His Cards

On the far north coast of Rundell, a sailor and a miscreant have a pleasant discussion about card strategy on a dark and formerly stormy night.

A deep fog enveloped the bay. It had been a stormy night, but the rain and lightning had passed, leaving a cold damp grip over the town in its wake. And like a pack of teenagers rolling into a corner store ready to do some serious shoplifting, the fog sauntered in.  

It was a thick fog. Sneaky. Oppressive. The kind of oppressive that has you lighting a lantern against the night, lest something sneak into your bedroom while you sleep, and smother you with your own pillow. There were howls in the night from the town’s dogs, who seemed to sense that all was not well in the slightest. There was no teamwork in their howls. They were the howls of dogs who were alone and afraid.

There was one place, however, that had life in it. It always had life, no matter how oppressive the weather was to the rest of the town. It was the church of the town-folk. The TRUE church of the town, where people went to find God and drown their sorrows at the same time. If, by finding God, you meant someone to share a bed with. 

It may not seem fair to say this was the town’s church, but by sheer volume, “Oh God” was shouted there more often than at the old temple on the hillside. And the offerings made by weighty purses were far more generous.

The “Emerald Siren” was a pub, by license, and a bawdy house, by accident and repetition. But the old town of Miraan was far away from any other point of civilization, and on an important trade route between the old Kingdom of Rundell and the free cities of Targannon. There are certain expectations of a town of its size, and as trade picked up in the early days of the war, Miraan did the practical thing and turned a blind eye¹ to the offering of services to lonely sailors. 

The alternative was a lot of brawling and the occasional murder.

But tonight was an unfortunate night, as Selena and her sister Magdalena were both out of town visiting their estranged mother. Their father had died in an unfortunate tree fall incident, and this turned out to be the one thing that would bring them back to their homestead. It was not an unhappy reunion, though neither was it happy. It was complicated.

But this was also the night that a privateer ship docked. And so there were fighting men in town. 

And no professionals to manage them.

The doors of the Emerald Siren blew apart as a man came hurtling through it at non-terminal sideways velocity. He bounced off the ground, rolled a bit and then came up to his feet, spinning with dancer’s grace to face the door and his, we presume, attackers. 

Three men with cudgels came out of the pub looking eager and menacing. Well, two of the men had cudgels. The other man, presumably the one who did the throwing, was cracking his knuckles.

“You say you didn’t cheat, but Lars here saw you palm a pair of cards, and frankly, I believe my old buddy Lars more than I believe you, little weasel man,” said the brutish man. He was brutish in the way that all sailors who are responsible for cracking heads are. An experienced brute, with long years of service keeping recalcitrant un-drunk sailors disciplined. A brute with passion for his job.

“Pete was it?” said the man, dusting himself off, attempting to look nonchalant about the whole being “tossed out a door” thing. The brute grunted and moved in towards the nonchalant man. He swung without replying. The nonchalant man side stepped and weaved around Pete. He was light on his feet. And needed to be, as he was about a third smaller in size than ‘Pete the Brute.’ Pete didn’t have hams for fists, he had boars.

“I think Lars may have a personal interest in framing me for cheating, if you must know.” the man said, dodging another wild swing from Pete. He was doing an admirable job of not getting punched in the face. 

“It’s a common tactic for a sailor to cheat one of his fellows at cards, only to blame a stranger for it.” The man said, again dancing out of the way. “It’s called misdirection! The second oldest trick in the book, right after ‘I love you!’²”

“Shaddup and fight, you pansy. I didn’t come out here to hear your blather but to knock your teeth in and string you up on the gallows of our ship!” Pete roared at the man. Pete was swinging with the grace of a windmill in a hurricane.

“Now I consider myself a just man,” said the man as he nimbly leapt back to his feet after diving out of the way of Pete’s awkward bull charge. Pete crashed into the ground. He was not a nimble man. This simply enraged his inebriated self more. 

“And also a man of the law!” he continued as he skirted away from Pete. Several other pub patrons had joined the ruckus outside and there was now some hooting and jeering as they watched the spectacle unfold. The locals knew neither “Pete” nor the “Nimble Man” and didn’t have much stake in how this show ended, only that it entertained.

“And so I shall prove to you my innocence!” he called with a theatrical flair, thrusting up his hand in a quick dramatic pose before diving out of the way of another wild haymaker. It was obvious to everyone in the crowd this man was enjoying himself, and they were here for it. They cheered at this pointless bravado, in the same manner they would have cheered for a free round of ale.

“And how will you do that?” Pete said with a sneer. He balled his fists and looked furious at his failure to pummel this pansy into submission. This was far below his usual quality of brute work. Some part of his brain was genuinely assessing the impact that this ‘fight’ was going to have on his reputation come morning. He was going to have to do something severe to make up for the lack of mashed pansy-brains. 

“Like this!” the smaller man said, and then leapt into a roll, diving towards the crowd. People gasped as he came up from his roll, a long sharp blade flashing out of somewhere. 

When they spoke about it later, no one could remember where he drew that blade from. It was too long to be up his sleeve, and too straight to be in his pants. An absurd choice for a hidden weapon, they all agreed. And yet…

Lars stumbled back in shock and horror as the blade flashed towards him, dropping his cudgel and clutching at his sleeve where the blade sliced him across the wrist. 

Only where blood should have fallen, a stream of playing cards came falling out of his eviscerated sleeve, splattering the ground in an undignified ‘pttfffaafffft.’ 

The tableau stood still. The crowd sucked in its breath in astonishment, Lars looked bewildered, and Pete… well… Pete looked both angry and calculating in a way that rarely occurred on Pete’s face. His eyes narrowed as he looked at the cards on the ground, and his ‘ol buddy Lars.’

“You traitor!!” he cried with a strangled shout of anger, frustration, beer and violence. 

The smaller man whisked away his blade to somewhere mysterious. No one could remember where, as they were caught up in the sailor on sailor drama that was beginning to unfold in front of them. 

Pete had decided that pummelling Lars was going to be a far simpler task than pummelling the small man, and was now assuming it would be easier to externalize his reputational loss that way. Lars, aware of Pete’s cruelty and absence of negotiating and reasoning skills, had decided that it was him or Pete.

They’d known each other a long time and had strong mutual distrust built on forced interdependence.³

The crowd, enthused, fully endorsed the fight that they had come out to see. Everyone was content. In a manner of speaking.

Especially the smaller man who had decided that now was an excellent time for a late night stroll to somewhere else. As he walked down the street, whistling cheerfully to himself, a woman in a long dark coat with even darker embroidery, caught up to him and started walking beside him.

“A just man of the law, Renfrau?” she said to him, her tone a mix of amused sarcasm, the flavour of poisoned honey. Had anyone been paying attention, they would have said that the fog seemed to close in around the pair as she approached him.

He looked at her and broke into a grin. A fox’s grin, or maybe a small coyote’s. 

“I AM just a man. And I never said which side of the law I’m on.” he said, laughing. He tossed her a small pouch. “Here’s the money I owe you, as promised.” 

She snorted a very dignified snort. One might even call it ‘pretty’, but the wise would never say that to her face.⁴ The purse disappeared into one of her sleeves.

“I don’t know why you didn’t just cut their purses or throats since you were going to rob them anyways.” she said with a sigh as they walked into the night.

“I wanted them to have a chance to catch me. That way, its more like earning it.” he said with the pure logic of a lunatic. He stopped to put his foot on a railing at the edge of the pier, and with his hands on his hips, looked out into the fog covered bay. His was the look of a man who had done ‘good work’ today and wanted to take a moment to appreciate it. 

There wasn’t much to see. The fog obscured everything.

He was just being dramatic. Gazing not into the sunset, but into the fog. Which is basically the sunset’s less popular, moodier cousin. Renfrau was a firm believer that one should never let a thing like the weather interfere with a good dramatic pose.

Robin; Thanks for reading! If you enjoyed this story, please share this with your other nonsense loving friends. It’s difficult as a writer getting your work in front of people who’d enjoy it and so I’d appreciate your support.

1. They did, in fact, do a lot more than turn a blind eye. Lord Snearington was quite insistent that the entrepreneurial ladies would have to pay taxes as any other businessman in his city would need to. These were, of course, mostly covered by his rather more liberally inclined youngest son Rorestboyle’s excesses.

2. The Author does not personally endorse this world view.

3. Anyone who says "You can choose your friends, but you can't choose your family" has likely forgotten what it’s like to be in early school or has never gone to prison. Sometimes your choices suck and you just ‘make do’.

4. There had, in fact, been several people who made the mistake of telling this woman she was extraordinarily beautiful, obviously neglecting to notice the “dark sorceress vibes” she quite intentionally adopted in her aesthetic.

Not all of them are dead, but a statistically significant number of them are dead or now have an “it’s complicated” relationship with being alive.