Chapter 3 Varrick
VARRICK
Calculated genius hadn’t gotten her attention. So today, I played tired.
I sat down at her table looking exhausted. Let my shoulders slump just enough to suggest defeat. Pushed fifty thousand in credits forward. Same buy-in as yesterday, but this time my hands moved slower, like the money mattered.
“Rough night,” I said to no one in particular. Not to her, that would be too direct. Just a comment to the air, the kind of thing exhausted travelers said.
She dealt my cards. Same efficiency. But I caught her glance at my face for a fraction of a second longer than necessary. Cataloging the deliberate slump in my expression.
I played conservatively for the first three hands. Small bets. Safe choices. The complete opposite of yesterday's deliberate losses. Building a pattern of someone trying not to lose. Someone protecting what little they had.
The sweating ambassador at the next seat noticed. “Finally, someone else playing careful. This table's been eating credits all week.”
I gave him a tired nod. “Can't afford to be reckless.”
A lie wrapped in body language that suggested truth. And Sabine would know it was a lie. She'd seen my buy-in, watched me lose thirty thousand yesterday without flinching. But the contradiction would intrigue her. Why would someone with credits pretend poverty?
She dealt the next hand, and there it was—a near-imperceptible shift in her pattern. My actions had captured her attention. I'd moved from furniture to puzzle.
Good.
Fourth hand, I shifted tactics entirely. Started calculating probabilities aloud, but not showing off. Muttering them like someone trying to convince themselves.
“Six percent chance on the draw. No, wait. Seven-point-three if the deck maintains standard distribution.” I rubbed my temple, a gesture of someone struggling with mental math. “Unless she's tracking the count, then it drops to four-point-eight.”
I said “she” specifically. Acknowledging her skill without directly addressing her. The Nexian merchant beside me laughed. “You think the dealers track? They just deal, friend.”
I placed my bet based on the wrong calculation. Lost exactly what someone following the seven-point-three probability would lose. But Sabine knew I'd identified the real odds—four-point-eight. She'd been tracking, and I'd just told her I knew it.
Her next shuffle was marginally slower. Processing.
By the sixth hand, I abandoned both previous approaches and went completely silent.
Just played. But I played in a specific pattern—every decision took exactly three seconds.
Every bet was a prime number. Every gesture precisely mirrored hers from the previous hand.
If she touched her collar, I touched mine on the next deal.
If she blinked twice before dealing, I blinked twice before betting.
Showing her I was studying her as intently as she studied everyone else.
The ambassador went bust and stumbled away.
The Nexian merchants left for easier tables.
New players filled their seats. A Poraki couple who reeked of fresh-caught fish, a Mondian woman drowning expensive sorrows in worse bets.
Sabine managed them all, but a portion of her focus remained locked on my pattern.
Halfway through the session, I did something that would have been suicide at any other table. I folded a winning hand.
Not obviously. I let my micro-expressions suggest I thought I was losing. A subtle tension at the corners of my eyes, a minor hesitation before pushing the cards back. But the cards were face-up just long enough for her to see. I had the nuts. Perfect hand. And I folded it.
The Poraki couple didn't notice. The sorrowful human was too drunk to care. But Sabine's pupils dilated. Just for an instant. Because folding a winning hand meant one of two things: either I couldn't actually read the cards, or I was playing a completely different game.
She knew which one.
The message was different from yesterday's mathematical sequence. Yesterday, I'd said “I see you.” Today, I was saying “I understand you.”
When I finally gathered my chips—down only ten thousand this time—I stood slowly. That same performed exhaustion from the beginning, but now she'd seen through it. Knew it was costume, not truth.
“Same time tomorrow?” the Poraki woman asked, apparently having decided I was her good luck charm despite my losses.
“Probably,” I said. But I let my eyes flick to Sabine for just a moment when I said it. Not long enough to be obvious. Just enough for her to catch if she was watching.
She was.
I left without another word, without a backward glance. But I could feel her attention on me as I walked away. It wasn’t attraction. Not yet. Just curiosity, sharpened to a point.