Suume Elena Yazykova
Eltan looked at his cards and bit the inside of his cheek to keep
from cursing out loud. The three-clawed ice dragon seemed to laugh at him from the glossy surface of the card—paired up with two spirit trees, the blue lizard was a murder to his bet, which wasn’t all that much to begin with. Eltan looked to his right at the burly sheep merchant and realized the Spirits truly hated his guts today. There was an unspoken street rule about hitting the same tavern more than once in two months, and this was why. Glancing at his own hand, the sheep merchant huffed and Eltan hoped it was a good sign. So far, the man seemed not to recognize the scrawny blond youth next to him, but it was a matter of chance if he looked closer. Last week the merchant’s sloppy game cost him a prized sheep, and Eltan was in no hurry to remind him who to blame. Eltan’s scalp still itched from the old spirit leaf he used to change his brown hair to blond, and for the thousandth time he resisted the urge to dig his nails into his head until it bled. “Any last bets?” the dealer called across the table. “Last coins?” The sheep merchant grunted and added three coppers to the pile in the middle of the table. This man was clearly the stupidest man alive, Eltan thought. Well, after himself. “Quarter silver,” Eltan muttered as nonchalantly as he could. Other players murmured, stealing glances at one another. Eltan drew his cards closer to his chest, trying to look smug. This was the last coin he had to his name, after the initial quarter silver he had put down. The last time he won big was two weeks ago, and living in the city wasn’t cheap by anyone’s standard. Especially when one had to buy black market spirit leaves on a regular basis. All the players put down their first cards, and on his turn, Eltan tentatively placed a spirit tree card on top of the pile. The cards were served again, and he snatched his, turning it over. He could’ve moaned. On the white background, the red chimera, wife to fire dragon, grinned her row of pointy teeth. The chimera ate the ice dragon, who in turn ate the spirit trees. Jointly, they amounted to Eltan walking away from the table a very poor man. Giving in to the urge and scratching behind his ear, he decided that would be very bad indeed. Coughing into his fist, he whispered an incantation and wiped the palm on his pants, ignoring a disgusted glance from a barmaid. A Suume spirit leaf was stitched on 97