I am what I am, and I do what I do [Closed to Camille]
Quote:
Rated Drunk. Take that as you want.
Shinsou Vaan Osiris loved two things in life. He loved his work, despite the dangers and the drama it brought him, and he loved distractions. Distractions made him forget about some of the choices he had made recently. They washed away a little bit of the loneliness, tempered the edge that leadership of the country's most hated revolutionary band had given him. They made him feel more human, when his day to day business dealt mostly in trying to make him less so.
One of his favourite distractions was cards, when he could find a tavern friendly enough towards him to allow it. His closest friend, a certain electromancer and self-proclaimed connoisseur of whisky and women alike, had taught the Telgradian how to play on their travels. Of course, he had been careful not to teach Shinsou every trick in the book, for self preservation, but the wily Osiris had watched Storm Veritas play long enough to pick up his best habits whilst having the nounce required to avoid his worst ones.
It was Saturday evening in Whitevale's favourite watering hole, the Silver Wolf inn. Though now mostly pro-Brotherhood, so good was the home crafted ale and so comfortable and clean the board that the tavern tended to lend itself as a rest stop to travellers and traders who journeyed the route between Radasanth and Tylmerande. More importantly, it was one of a handful of taverns who hadn't bought into the guff surrounding the Brotherhood after the siege of Radasanth, presumably because the inn was situated smack bang in the centre of Brotherhood stomping grounds and could do without the trouble. Tonight, it was the venue for a hastily called brag tournament.
There were five players, including the infamous Shinsou Vaan Osiris, seated around the table. The Telgradian had been following them carefully with those hawkish eyes and predatory instincts, but it was clear that each person had experience in either the game or deception in general. Some of them simply stared down at their hands, consciously giving nothing away, not even a twitch of the fingers or a fluttering of the eyes. Storm Veritas would usually have been seated to the Telgradian’s left, but as the wizard had more carnal matters to attend to upstairs with one of the waitresses, the position was instead filled by a rather charming blonde woman this evening, curiously. She smiled at him before calmly gazing down at the cards in her hand, and as he sipped his honey malt whiskey in the deliberately confident way he always did, Shinsou contemplated his next move.
His hand, this time, was strong. A straight, but of mixed suite. Unfortunately, his pot was weaker than normal, and the woman to his left had just raised two hundred gold in an instant. The inevitable round of folds followed until the onus was on Shinsou to respond.
"You've put me in a bit of an awkward position here, my dear," Osiris glanced casually at the mound of silver the curvaceous lady had just pushed to the centre of the table, and then to his own, slightly more anaemic pile. "I'm afraid I'm going to have to ask you a question. Do you have better than a straight?"
Nonchalantly, the woman, her baby blues set firmly on her cards, folded her arms after taking another sip of her drink from behind her own sizeable portion of the coins. "Who knows? Why don't you take a chance and find out. Maybe you'll get lucky tonight."
Background chatter mixed with the thumping of footsteps pounding the floor. Those seated around the table exchanged glances behind their discarded cards as a few more patrons gathered to spectate and speculate on what Shinsou would do next. His ever calm expression never wavered for a moment as he decided to he throw in his lot, pushing his silver towards the pile to match her ludicrous raise.
“Two hundred. I'll take my chances with these.â€
Shinsou tapped his cards, upending them to reveal the straight. It was almost the strongest hand in the game.
Almost.
The woman, unfazed, flicked a strand of blonde hair from her face and flashed him a smile as she laid her parting shot to him out in sequence. A royal flush, suited.
"Looks like your luck's just a little short this time, Mr. Osiris.â€
“Yeah, that seems to be a bit of a theme at the moment.†Shinsou started, folding his cards inside his palm before sliding them towards the grinning woman. "Thanks for the game. Enjoy the winnings - keep them warm for me."
It was then he got up from the table, folding his somewhat depleted coin sack into his pocket, and unfolded a note between his finger and thumb. It was a treasury bill from the Brotherhood's vault, one that he carried with him to such events in the unlikely situation that he got cleaned out. Though tonight his purse may have been emptied at the table, the man was not short of coin by any stretch and the paper at the very least guaranteed his meals, board and drinks for the weekend, if he needed it.
Money, however, wasn't the be all and end all of his life. As he leaned on the bar and ordered another honey whisky, Shinsou felt just a little bit of that social isolation creeping back in. He turned to look back at the table he had left, watching as the woman who had beaten him entertained a new player in his place. For the few hours he had been there, it had been home for him. A warm, familiar place that he could be himself in, if only for a short while. Now, even just stood a few feet away, it was like a door had been closed.
Shinsou sighed, turning back around to the bar, and sat. He didn't want to go back to headquarters today; not to that depressing, militant place, and especially not whilst they were still trying to extract Drexel's carcass from the wall. For now, he was content to sit and drink until he couldn't feel his thumbs anymore.
Or anything else, for that matter.
