A Professional Pirate

Four weeks into a journey aboard The Vagrant Albatross, sea life takes on an increasing raucous tension. Rations grow thin and repetitive, the water needs more and more rum to hide the foul flavors of the myriad things that crawl into or grow out of the barrels, and everyone aboard -- sailor and passenger alike -- finds their coping mechanisms for dealing with the endless rolling monotony of the sun-shimmered sea being weathered away by the brine-soaked spray.

Our minds are becalmed, whatever the conditions of the sea may be.

The most consistent and reliable form of relief is a long night of grog and gambling belowdecks as the poor souls who drew that day's short lots maintain watch and maintenance above. These nights are inevitably a bawdy explosion of all the day's tension and frustration, all frothing over like so many bubbles from a carelessly slung mug of ale. 

Early on, spirits are high and gold flows freely, but by night's end, as sleep and unkind dice steal away the singing revelers one by one, only a steely-eyed few remain, their cards gripped with white knuckles and hands played with miserly precision. 

Deep in this fourth-week night, Farrival Marchant finds himself nose to nose across a too-small, shaking table from Captain Shaeleth Tae, who for a moment almost seems to have fallen asleep beneath her oversized tricorn, its gaudy feathers drooping nearly as deeply as she slumps in her rickety chair. 

But then, after two minutes' too long, she trills in her thick accent, "Your deal, Mr. Marchant. If'n, a'course, you're still game to lose what remains of yer fabulous shirt." 

I love it when a plan comes together, Farrival gloated inwardly.  It was simple, really.  All it took was to wear his blousiest, frilliest shirt. Throw in a priggish “Careful now!” each time the crew tripped over an invisible Stage Hand and almost spilled grog on his pristinely white couture.

Now in the denouement, the good Captain Tae had delivered the straight line he was waiting for, just as if Farrival had scripted it.  This was the real victory.

And also the gold.

Farrival placed his cards face down in order to roll up the sleeves of his fabulous shirt. He folded his arms across each other, revealing a tattoo in verse form:

Fortune favors on his right, upper arm

the bold! on his left, lower arm.

On the other side of the room – though, at the Captain’s invitation, not behind Shaeleth Tae with a view of her cards – Gannet Del Mar barely stifled a laugh reading the true inscription, tattooed in Emerald Pen ink:

It had been foolish to ask Mr. Boneflowers to do the stenciling. But the blood had been nicely Prestidigitated, and Mr. Del Mar ably completed the lettering.

Farrival sent 5 gold rolling to the center of the table.

Shaeleth smirked, pulling the wide brim of her hat lower to disguise the toothy grin Farrival's antics elicited. "Keep your shirt on for now, Mr. M. I plan to earn its removal fair and square.” She casually tossed 5 heavy gold pieces stamped with a strange foreign script onto the table; they seem to appear from nowhere at all.

As Farrival deals the cards, she leans back in her chair, turns, and barks an order at a nearby swabbie, who hurried off to fetch her good rum. With the dark liquor poured merrily into her raised goblet, Tae finally deigned to lift the corners of her cards. The smirk remained, unwavering.

Farrival discarded and re-drew a single card. He jostled the table with his knee, and when the gold pile settled there were 5 more coins, again as if from nowhere.

Keeping his eyes locked on Tae’s, matching her shit-eating grin, Farrival checked his cards in his peripheral vision: three of a kind. He had won! Unless Tae somehow drew three of a kind in a higher suite.

With agonizing steadiness, Tae rolls another thick-rimmed coin across the knuckles of her free hand, clicking her tongue quietly to the beat of the refrain from "Fuck Gadois.” A crew member absently muttered, “There once was a man who cried bwah-bwah,” but all were too engrossed in the game to take up the song in earnest.

With long, audible sip from her cup, Tae punctuates the final bar. "I'll see the 10 and another card, Mr. M." 

Farrival knew the odds of bettering his hand were too long, even for him. So he would not cheat… except as required to prevent Tae from cheating.

“You dance well, mon Capitaine, but the band is getting tired,” Farrival shoved an additional 9 gold into the pot, using this flourish to cover the casting of an invisible Stage Hand. Farrival remotely searched Tae’s sleeve for a hidden pocket or card-dealing device mounted on her wrist.

There! He’d found it! Now he could stop her from dealing– but no! Tae sleepy guise snapped away into vicious glare. Had he exerted too much pressure? Her glare morphed into the Chaliya malign visage. Of course, it had been her all along! "Your luck has run out, little thief!" The crew, now nightmarish mockeries of life beset the Troupe, their numbers and ferocity counterbalancing the group's power. Saba Coll's hagridden face beseeched Farrival from the press of bodies before vanishing–

Still Farrival knows Tae should have detected his Stage Hand. Had detected it? During the game, he’d attributed his successful stealth to the same skill with which he'd skirted all scars since first arriving on the Koumazot Isles.

But his near death in Chaliya’s nightmare had lent him new perspective that forced him to re-evaluate his shipboard success. Farrival felt tempted to retroactively bestow himself with a touch of humility. On the left-hand page of the journal, he wrote:

Farrival's cocky mask slips as he displays his cards on the table.

"Three of a kind, my good Captain" he says plainly, almost consolingly. 

"Nah. Nobody would ever believe that. It doesn’t read like me."

Farrival skimmed the right-hand page to remember the facts as they happened.  Then he returned to the left-hand side to write the embellished ending. He wished the Emerald Pen were an Emerald Pencil so he could erase the nightmare. But erasing the past had never worked for him. Better to embellish the present and gild the future:

Three Candles! The lowest suite, but three of a kind! The dandy had done it!

Unless…

All eyes turned to Captain Shaeleth Tae.

Even Farrival couldn’t intuit her thoughts. Was she truly stunned? Milking her loss? Milking her victory?!

Half an eon later, Tae whispers:

“Oh fuck! He’s got trois!”

Then the crew and the Troupe drank, and brawled, and sang into the small hours of the night - "Fuck Gadbois," and a dozen other shanties, until finally a warm, muzzy conviviality descended upon them all, and they sang as one: