After nights spent behind the bar, the time finally came; the sea merchant was going to show tonight.
Some regular started cackling over his fifth drink. He is going to make a bank tomorrow night. When the sea merchant is going to show for his regular game.
I had to keep my hands still as they were because I wanted to jump up and down, clap, and, fuck yeah, I was itching to talk with the man. Even he was evasive about the details. No one knew a lot about the same merchant, and I mean no one.
Tonight I finally took the night off. I was donning the mask I used to wear with Helena when I was pretending to be someone else. Ever since that night at the masquerade ball, I've gone to meet her dozens of times with that mask, never knowing it was me. She told me all her secrets, and I was not an errant ear.
I executed on every one of her warnings. Every time a lord got a little too handsy, he suddenly seemed to have found himself in the middle of a scandal.
I didn't like to complicate things with stuff like murder, but if the need to revise arose, I always obeyed the call.
That was the only way I was going to get into that game with a false identity and name. And a personality to match it all. I wore plenty of masks, figuratively and literally. So it felt only natural to go back into that courtier persona. Charming, sweet, silver-tongued lover.
It's so much easier to manipulate people if they think your motivation is lust. They let loose and allow themselves to let restrictions they usually would obey be gone.
I waited until the night got heavy and dark and all the riffraff were gone.
Only a few tables were still hosting games. I was playing for a couple of hours now, asking about the game with the much higher stakes being hosted. Suggesting that I have some real money to play with. Letting the arrogance show a little too much, but giving people the impression that I was an idiot that was willing to lose a hell of a lot of money to professional card players.
One of the girls showed a little too much to me when she leaned over, whispering in my ear, "If you like to join the game being hosted behind the red curtain. Join me please."
I was guided to a round table with lush red sofas already occupied by old players with the gut from years of drinking alcohol to prove their experience with the bar.
I was eyeing the door waiting for a certain one of the players to walk in, but he was nowhere in sight. I sat down at the view from the nearest exit. One of the men who seemed way drunker than the others, with red cheeks puffing and a silver mustache that did not match his balding head, swayed towards the table to sit. "Well, where is he?"
He did not need to say who he was, but he said it anyway. "Where is the pirate?"
"I hope he does not come," said one of the finer men, wearing a sleek suit, dripping arrogance.
I could not help myself but ask, "Why? Who is he?"
The men exchanged a look.
I lean over sporting a grin. "Are you so scared of the sea merchant that you are afraid to speak his name?"
"Don't speak of something you do not understand." The man with the mustache's voice turns cold.
I roll my eyes, but I catch the odd shiver going through the room. I stiffened my spine, my back, trying not to let the mood in the room affect mine.
"Do you know why he doesn't speak ever?"
"They say the butcher was a soldier among the butcher's army when they invaded Maples, and that he was the top lieutenant of his navy, and when the trial for the Mad Jester happened in the hazard of the invasion, the Jester escaped, and when he escaped. The sea merchant caught him and killed him, but when he fought back, he managed to slit his throat, cutting off his voice box.
Silence fills the room, and although I know this secret, this story is nothing but gossip and lies, I can't help but feel as if someone has stepped on my grave.
"I bet that psycho keeps the jester's body parts on the ship." The man in the suit chuckles, but there is an edge to his voice.
Do you think he keeps all his he cuts off staring at me or, more correctly, right behind me? I can feel the presence behind me, and I do not have to guess who it is because I can feel the room tensing at the sight of the man behind me. The Sea merchant.