I tried to scramble out of my own seat, but I was too slow. Wotan would have caught me still sitting if he’d been after me. Fortunately, he wasn’t. He lunged past me, grabbed Gimble by the arm, and jerked him to his feet.
The tin man whipped his free hand back and forth, trying to hit Wotan in the face. The hard, fast sweeps made his body clink. Snarling like a mad dog, Wotan ducked, dodged, and yanked and twisted the arm he had in his grip.
I finished getting up and backpedaled away from the fight. The Pharaoh, Queen, and Leticia did the same.
Gimble’s forearm snapped away from his elbow. Wotan stooped and banged it repeatedly on the floor. On the fourth hit, a hatch above the wrist popped open, and half a dozen aces flew out. I guessed there was probably machinery in there, too, to slide a card into Gimble’s hand when he wanted it.
Wotan roared, stood up straight, and lifted the piece of arm to smash Gimble’s head. The metal man scrambled backward. Wotan started after him.
“Wait!” I said. I’m not sure why. Maybe it just wasn’t my night to mind my own business.
Wotan ignored me like a pit bull that’s decided to maul the neighbor kid no matter what its owner thinks about it. I took a step in his direction, and then he spun around.
His eyes had turned red. Not glowing red, like taillights, but completely bloodshot, like he’d had some kind of hemorrhage. Maybe it meant he couldn’t see, but as I got ready to dodge the first swing of the detached arm, I didn’t think I was going to be that lucky.
Then Leticia said, “Please don’t!” I felt her magic even though she wasn’t aiming it at me, like the breeze of a bullet shooting past my head.
“I agree,” said the Pharaoh. If he was using magic, I couldn’t feel it. Maybe he didn’t think he had to. I’d noticed early on that all the others, even Wotan, showed him respect. “Please don’t drag the game down to that level, especially so early in the proceedings. I came to Florida to play Hold ’Em. Didn’t you?”
“Gimble cheated,” Wotan growled.
“And you caught it,” Leticia said. “You spotted it ahead of any of the rest of us, and now he’ll pay the penalty.”
“All right,” the big man said. “He is a lord. But this one.” His eyes locked on me. “A human. Shouting orders at me. Interfering.” He shuddered.
“At least for the time being,” the mummy said, “punish his impudence at the table.”
Wotan turned on his heel and started prowling around the room. Everyone gave him plenty of room. Periodically he kicked a chair, or picked one up one-handed, swung it over his head, and smashed it down. Since it seemed to be the alternative to smashing me, I had no problem with how he was working out his aggression.
Meanwhile, Gimble called for his servants. They looked like ugly cartoon squirrels walking on two legs, or maybe like crosses between squirrels and chimps. After figuring out that his elbow was trashed, they bolted on a whole new arm at the shoulder. The boss stretched it out, bent it, and twisted it around to get the feel of it.
“Is it satisfactory?” the Pharaoh asked.
“It will do,” said Gimble, nodding, or maybe that was just the usual bobbing of his head.
“And it looks like Wotan is calming down. So let’s all resume our seats.”
When we did, Gimble posted an extra big blind six times in a row, and after that, nobody treated him any differently than before. Which was more forgiving than people would have been in the games where I generally played.
The difference was that cheating was considered legitimate play in the lords’ tournament. It was just that you tried at your own risk, because if somebody caught you, he was free to play back at you however he liked. But, except for having to throw in the extra chips, once the moment was over, it was over.
Or I guessed that was the way it worked. I wasn’t sure. If the lords really didn’t think like humans, how could I be?
What I did know was that, instead of holding a grudge against Gimble, Wotan kept giving me the stink eye. Either I really had pissed him off before, or he’d just decided to intimidate me.
I’d had other players try to stare me down. But generally speaking, they’d hadn’t had eyes that were still mostly red where they should have been white, and they hadn’t warmed up for the staring contest by ripping a guy’s arm off. The next time it was my deal, I fumbled the shuffle, and cards squirted out of my hands. Wotan sneered, and Queen and Gimble laughed.
That made me angry, which was good. It pushed out some of the fear. I pictured the Thunderbird, and that helped a little more, although not as much as it had against Leticia’s power. Maybe that was because she’d used actual magic. Wotan was just giving me a good look at what he really was inside.
A few hands later, I raised on the button with ace-ten suited. Queen folded, and Wotan said, “All in.”
He was still the chip leader, which meant he was really putting me all in. I wasn’t going to bet my whole tournament on ace-ten, so I tossed my hand and didn’t think a whole lot more about it.
But he went on putting me all in whenever the play was such that he could be pretty sure it would just be him and me in the pot. Which got to be more and more often. The session was almost over, and the others were more interested in protecting what they had than playing any more big hands. They didn’t mind getting out of the way and letting the two guys who had issues pound on one another.
I prayed for a premium hand. Pocket aces, kings, or even ace-king. I didn’t get one.
I wouldn’t need a great hand if I could figure out when Wotan really had something and when he was raising with trash. But I’d watched him all night and never picked up a tell. I couldn’t spot one now, either. He just threw off a kind of steady hatred.
I considered simply protecting my own stack by folding the rest of the night away. But what reason was there to think that Wotan wouldn’t play me the same way next time? Hell, if I didn’t make a stand, the others were likely to decide they could bully me, too.
It came to me that maybe I should cheat.
I didn’t like the idea, but I needed to remember that at this table, it was all part of the game. Why, for all I knew, every one of my opponents had been doing it all night, jabbing away at one another with magic, and I just hadn’t noticed because they hadn’t bothered to direct much of it at the human.
Besides, I was pissed off.
So I figured it was time to read Wotan’s mind. Or look through the backs of his cards with X-ray vision. And it was really a shame that I had no idea how to do either of those things.
My first lesson in Timon’s brand of mumbo jumbo had only focused on defense. He said there wasn’t time to teach me anything else, and that I shouldn’t try anything else. Just play cards and block any magical punch that anybody threw at me.
It was probably good advice. But I did have one trick I could try, because I’d taught it to myself. I visualized the Thunderbird and brought a quiver of power up out of my center. And the next time the action folded around to me, I bet. Queen threw away her cards.
Like many experienced players, Wotan never looked at his hand until it was his turn to act. As he reached for it now, I jumped out of my physical body and across the table. I landed behind him and looked over his shoulder as he turned up the corners of king-queen off-suit.
Not a great hand overall, but perfect for kicking the crap out of my king-jack. I flew back into my body, and when he went all in, I mucked.
And studied the others. If any of them had noticed me soul traveling-or whatever it was called-I couldn’t tell it.
Okay, good. Now I just had to hope I’d get a chance to make the trick pay off before the end of the night.
It happened five minutes later. I bet ace-nine. Wotan came over the top with queen-seven.