Excerpt
“Dead Man’s Dice,” the burly seadog shouts as two ivory cubes come to rest, grinning skulls face up. “You lose Oleth. Six copper.”
“Damn it, Larko. I had that game won. Double or nothing?”
Larko eyes the old minstrel, made bent by a life on the road. “Double or nothing? Are you sure, Oleth? Have silver tucked away in them rags of yours, do you?”
“Ha, up yours.”
Crooked teeth, tobacco stained, grin like a pipe-smoking shark as gruff tones rise on stinking breath. “I tell you what, you win and we are even; lose, you lift me a keg of snakebite grog.”
“Sod off. A keg’s worth twenty times as much as I owe. Besides, bad luck to steal from your own kin.”
“Then cough up the copper.”
The old man’s face scrunches, eyes narrow, as he looks into a sea-weathered face draped with flaxen hair. Scratching his head with a trembling hand, he says, “Ain’t got it, have I. Didn’t think I’d lose to a venom-head like you.”
Ignoring the insult, Larko says, “That ain’t the way things work, Oleth.”
“Come see me tonight. The Angel’s Embrace is in dock, and I’ll raise what I owe, easy.”
“By dipping?” Glancing to the minstrel’s quivering hands, he says, “How you going to dip with them tremors? Think you’ll last long with that crew of whore traders? They’ll carve your face for dipping.”
“Then I’ll sing; tell a story, a joke.”
“They’ll more than like harpoon you if you do.”
“Watch your cheek,” Oleth barks.
“Or what? You’ll sing an old shanty? Make my ears bleed? Now, hand over my winnings or you’re in for a slap.” . . .
