An out-of-breath halfling slams through the door to the Crossroads of Fate and nearly collapses against the wall. The usual buzz drops to an excited sussurus as the tavern's attention locks on to the messenger.
"Weber and Panoramia," he gasps. "Judging the pie contest." Silence grips the tavern. "
Holding hands."
Pandemonium.
Priska Wendel, the founder, owner, and chief bookmaker of the Crossroads, immediately begins fighting her way through the melee, heading toward The Board that shows every bet her tavern offers. She circles dwarves thumping tankards on tables, cuts through clusters of halflings singing victory songs, and weaves around knots of unwise gamblers and shippers consoling each other. Her clerks are ready to disburse winnings, but they are well-trained and won't lift a finger until she makes the official call. Nothing less would do for such an important wager.
Up until the preceding Festag the Crossroads had offered only the most general odds on either of them, the same it offered on every eligible bachelor and bachelorette in the Karak: will they or won't they find love? Despite the efforts of not a few of Panoramia's halfling coworkers and some fearless artillerymen, neither had apparently given the topic so much as a fleeting thought.
Then a fieldhand had witnessed Thane Loremaster Dame Mathilde Weber fleeing like a blushing schoolgirl from a short conversation with Journeywoman Panoramia, another had seen them climbing Karagril with a picnic lunch the next morning, and a third had seen them coming back down that afternoon with slightly damp hair. The Karak's gossip networks had caught fire. The book club, the gamblers, the socialites, the nobles, the soldiers,
everyone wanted to hear about the woman who'd killed half a million greenskins in the blink of an Eye and the woman who was feeding half the Karak with staggering quantities of Jade magic.
Her second-in-command makes his way to the messenger to verify his identity and information, and with a gesture conveys the confirmation across to the room. With great ceremony Wendel climbs up the ladder, finds the line reading "Weber and Panoramia: In a relationship", and places the single blue tile. The crowd roars. The clerks open their booths to begin paying the winners. All is well.
She won't make new books until she gets more information, but she does have a number of more specific odds that need to be updated. "Actually a misunderstanding" is now conclusively falsified, for example.
She's moving the ladder over to update "Keeping it a secret" when she feels something off. The room seems strangely bright and a sharp chill seeps into the air. Songs and cheering trail off into uncertain silence as the crowd realizes that something is amiss.
She turns to witness a dragon enter her tavern.
The straight lines of the dwarven stonework bend and stretch like taffy. The end of the room closest the door inflates like bread rising, until the people who were previously clustered near the door are separated not by inches but by feet and then yards. The air in the tavern glows, shadows disappearing as if lit by an impossibly bright overcast day. The door stretches to admit a head-shaped patch of glittering distortion. If it stood still in front of a stained glass window it might have been invisible. In the clean gray chambers of Karag Nar its scintillating visage stands out like a glass statue.
Its eyes flick around the room independently, seemingly casting spotlights that illuminate the subjects of its judgment, until one comes to rest on Wendel herself. "I would speak to the proprietor of this establishment," it says in flawless Khazalid. Its voice is shockingly mundane, only a hint of a hiss and a smooth, deeply-layered timbre betraying its origin.
The crowd begins backing up to the walls, rapidly clearing a line between Wendel and the dragon, and she moves to greet it. The Dragon finishes entering her tavern, distorting the whole tavern to fit itself in. It pours its bulk through the doorframe and, with a surreal one-eyed glance, closes the door behind itself.
Wendel greets dragon in Khazalid, doing her best to imitate its formal mode. "Honored customer, welcome to the Crossroads of Fate. Um. How may we help you?"
It snorts. "You may address me as
Cython. I wish to complete two transactions. The first." The floor between them twists into a coruscating whirl of light, which quickly straightens to reveal an unmarked ingot with perfectly square corners and a flawless mirror finish. "
Azrilazak," Cython says. "How many of your coins would match its worth?"
"We... we will have to weigh it," Wendel says faintly. "Um. Normally we would also assay it, but in this case I believe we will simply accept your statement that this is unadulterated silver."
"Its mass is pure to within one part in one hundred thousand," the dragon rumbles, a hint of pride in its voice. "Of the impurities, nine in ten parts are exotic metals which alchemists would value more highly than gold."
Wendel turns and calls for one of her more reliable clerks, ordering him to fetch the scales. Her clientele huddles in the least-warped parts of the room, and she surveys them looking for support. Luck is with her and the establishment's longest-bearded frequent patron is in attendance; she requests and obtains the honored dwarf's assistance. Taking strength from the longbeard's implacable acceptance of the situation, Wendel and the clerk set up and balance the scales and cross-check the proof masses. The longbeard's most familiar axe is weighed and weighed again to verify the whole. Finally, Wendel wraps a clean cotton dish-towel around her hands and carefully lifts the ingot into the balance pan. Weights are moved until the pans balance. The process is repeated to confirm the measurement.
The longbeard does some math, checks some documents, and declares the result. "The bullion in this ingot would trade for one hundred and nine silver coins," she declares, "plus a few coppers because the weight is not round."
"Perhaps not in your system of weights and measures," Cython says. "One hundred and nine silver coins will suffice. Take the excess as a consideration." It pauses, and one eye turns from its scanning of the room to the Board. "How much of your total revenue is represented by the bets I see here," it asks, "And are your odds
mutuel or
status?"
Wendel blinks. "I don't know what you mean precisely. At a guess, the Crossroads offers exclusively fixed odds. The
Dawi distrust pools even more than they do traditional
dumitkronar." She grimaces. "As for the other question..." She thinks for a second, and decides that possibly revealing general information about her books would incur less damage from her competition than refusal would incur damage from the dragon in her tavern. "All odds that we offer are visible on the board. Our odds on Greenskin hunting and stocks see the most action, together accounting for approximately thirty percent of our revenue."
Cython hisses and both eyes turn to the Board, each flickering across one of the relevant sections. "A fatter tail than I expected. The second transaction, then," it says. "Mathilde Weber and Panoramia's romance as of the first of Ulriczeit." It returns one eye to transfix her. "I wager seven parts in eight of that ingot," it points with a giant claw, "that the wizards will both be in a relationship with Me."
Thanks again to
@BoneyM for omake review and worldbuilding! The Khazalid for this one was particularly satisfying.
I can never get these disappearing/re-appearing holds straight.
