X'Rose Gold must be treatin' you right then, that you so loyal,' Hob said as the next round was dealt.
'She run a clean house,' Dee kept his voice down and one eye on the customers to his left. 'You boss, he's the same, from what I hear.'
'A good capitaine worth they weight in gold.' Isidro slid a card from his hand to the table. 'In l'milice, we supposed to take care a our own first, always. But some a the young blood...' He grimaced.
The right side of Dee's mouth turned up. 'An' in l'affaires, we meant to take care a Himself, an' be damned to our own.' He raised his voice. 'Pitch or fold, monsieur?'
'Pitch.' Hob tossed a card to the center of the table. 'The cadres know how to handle Thorn, for the most. An' a good tete can handle they cadre.'
You lucky there -- pitch or fold, madame? -- havin' the Dragonkiller. The Jackal's old school. But the boss know her trade. We maybe don't got the special tarts for the special tastes, but everybody know we don't work our whores to death or keep 'em on the hook.' He raked the pitched cards from the center of the table. 'Don't make us popular with the other houses, but it pay our beef an' keep Jack off our back.
'The other houses don't like you makin' you beef?' Isidro said, eying the card he'd just been dealt with disfavor. Dee gave another slight, crooked grin.
'They don't like us stealin' they moneymakers. But they don't want the talent walkin', they should treat 'em right. Monsieur has a pair; he is out...'
A lesson for all a us.' Isidro glanced sideways at Hob. 'Maybe we'd treated you boss better, we'd have another good capitaine in the young blood, non?
Hob: Maybe. Not throwin' him in the Shark Pit woulda been a start.
'She run a clean house,' Dee kept his voice down and one eye on the customers to his left. 'You boss, he's the same, from what I hear.'
'A good capitaine worth they weight in gold.' Isidro slid a card from his hand to the table. 'In l'milice, we supposed to take care a our own first, always. But some a the young blood...' He grimaced.
The right side of Dee's mouth turned up. 'An' in l'affaires, we meant to take care a Himself, an' be damned to our own.' He raised his voice. 'Pitch or fold, monsieur?'
'Pitch.' Hob tossed a card to the center of the table. 'The cadres know how to handle Thorn, for the most. An' a good tete can handle they cadre.'
You lucky there -- pitch or fold, madame? -- havin' the Dragonkiller. The Jackal's old school. But the boss know her trade. We maybe don't got the special tarts for the special tastes, but everybody know we don't work our whores to death or keep 'em on the hook.' He raked the pitched cards from the center of the table. 'Don't make us popular with the other houses, but it pay our beef an' keep Jack off our back.
'The other houses don't like you makin' you beef?' Isidro said, eying the card he'd just been dealt with disfavor. Dee gave another slight, crooked grin.
'They don't like us stealin' they moneymakers. But they don't want the talent walkin', they should treat 'em right. Monsieur has a pair; he is out...'
A lesson for all a us.' Isidro glanced sideways at Hob. 'Maybe we'd treated you boss better, we'd have another good capitaine in the young blood, non?
Hob: Maybe. Not throwin' him in the Shark Pit woulda been a start.
When last we saw.... Hob - Isidro
stuff kat likes:
The King is dead, but not the war: for honor, for glory, for the relics of the Shattered Plains. Slave and general alike are bound to the war machine. But the king-killer and his long-dead magic will change everything....
June 9, 2026
One reason Fair Ladies is popular is because the ten-card deck lends itself to easy customization; in a house like Rose Gold, it's commonly illustrated with pictures of the house's most popular whores, serving as advertising and guard against certain forms of cheating at the same time.
I feel like I've mentioned the Shark Pit before, but it's not in the glossary, so maybe not: it's St. Louis's combination jail and prison, and considered a pretty nasty place even by prison standards.
(How much will we all regret the new format letting me indulge my taste for worldbuilding even more than usual? Guess we'll find out!)
I apologize for missing a few updates. Thanks to my nephew, who is now in the germ factory known as preschool, I spent most of April and part of May down with one virus or another. All this stuff tends to move into my lungs, so the dry cough that hung on wasn't new or unexpected. Finding out it was possible to cough hard enough to pull the muscles that hold together your ribs, though, that was new. Would you like to know what you use the muscles that hold your ribs together for? Every. Damn. THING.
So yeah, now that I can sit up at a desk without agonizing chest pain, I'm hoping to do a bit better on updates, but I've burned through my buffer and things are kinda... a lot here. I promise not to vanish for years again, but it may be rocky for the summer.
All contents copyright Kat Feete, 2008 and onward. Don't nick my stuff. Cheers.