"I don't think so," Bartido Ballentyne said. "Sure, it's stupid to risk everything on pure chance, but there's skill involved as well. If you know what you're doing, you can be certain of at least a reasonable payoff."

The three apprentices at the Silver Star Tower were sitting around the table in the lower library. Hiram Menthe had been decrying gambling as a waste of time, a way for bored aristocrats to waste their money foolishly, while Margarita Surprise had been calling it harmless fun, pretty much on the grounds that the Dissenters of her arch-conservative home village had castigated it as one of the devil's sinful baits so therefore it had to be a good thing.

"You mean by cheating," Hiram countered. The silver-haired young man was rather more…rigid…in his outlook on life than Bartido, and the two young men definitely made a friendship of opposites.

"I'm talking about knowing the rules of the game, knowing probabilities—you ought to be good at that, at least, since you like math—and knowing how to read people. That gets you a huge edge over the type who just flings their money at a random outcome and hopes luck is on their side. Look, I'll show you what I mean."

He took a pack of cards out of one of his coat pockets. He then took a buff-colored envelope, the flap at one of its short sides sealed with red wax, and laid it on the table, off to one side.

"This is an experiment, all right? I figure that I know you well enough by now to be able to tell exactly how your mind works."

He took the deck of cards out of the box and spread them out on the table, showing the familiar pattern of black and gold suits. He then gathered them up and shuffled them, mixing them with the hands of a practiced gambler, then cut the cards and fanned them out towards Hiram, face down.

"Go ahead, take any one."

"You're doing conjuring tricks to illustrate gambling principles, now?"

"It's the same exact thing, and I may add that not knowing that is why you play and end up broke and I play and end up buying drinks for pretty girls." He winked saucily at Margarita.

"Actually, I don't play and end up sober. But very well." Hiram reached out and plucked out a card from about a quarter of the way in from his right in the fan.

"Okay, look at it, memorize it, but don't show me."

"All right."

Bartido squared up the rest of the deck and cut the cards.

"Go ahead and put your card on top of the pile."

Hiram did so, then Bartido put the top half of the pack back on top of Hiram's card.

"So, it's buried in the middle, right? But let's go one step further. You take the cards and shuffle them up."

Hiram did, without the swiftness and ease of Bartido's movements but with a strict precision that made sure that the cards were very, very mixed.

"So you agree, the cards are totally mixed up now, there's no way I could tell where your card is, or look through the deck to see it, right?"

"I suppose so."

"Well, I agree, there's no way I could find it…unless, of course, I knew what it was all along, because I knew exactly what you would pick. Go on and pick up that envelope."

Hiram plucked it off the table.

"Now, before you open it, tell us all, what was your card?"

"It was the jack of cudgels."

Bartido snickered.

"Like you'd want to do to me if I messed this up, right? So go ahead and open the envelope."

Hiram broke the seal and spilled out the envelope's contents, one playing card, out onto the table. The club-wielding knave stared up at the apprentices.

"How did you do that?"

"I told you, it's a matter of knowing the player and the game. I was sure which card you'd take if I fanned them for you."

"That's plain nonsense. It's obviously some kind of sleight of hand."

"How? You're the only one who touched the envelope after I put it on the table."

"I don't know, but I'm going to figure it out. There is no way this idea of expecting what I'm going to do makes any sense." He pushed back his seat and got up from the table.

Bartido leaned back lazily and spread his hands.

"Suit yourself. You're just proving my point."

Hiram snorted derisively. "You're going to eat your words, Bartido," he snapped, then stalked out of the library.

"Okay," Margarita said once Hiram had gone. "Tell me how you did that. That was a legitimate shuffle by Hiram, and I can tell that the cards aren't marked, and any one of us would have seen if you'd been using clairvoyance or had a familiar looking over his shoulder."

Bartido grinned. "It wouldn't have mattered if I had. Remember, the envelope was sealed in advance, so I'd have had to know what card it was before he picked it. Gamblers and conjurors call that a 'force.'"

"But you didn't force it, did you? Unless you got fifty-two decks of cards and that deck's all the same card. No, wait, you showed the deck at the beginning."

"Right, I did, just in case he thought that."

"So…?"

Bartido smirked. "I cheated."

"Well, yeah; that's kind of the point with card tricks, isn't it?"

"No, I mean I cheated in the slight of hand. See, there is one slight involved. The edge of one card is shaved down a bit. It's an old gambler's trick; when you cut the deck, it'll naturally break at that point; they use it for cutting aces or kings or making sure a 'loaded' deal goes to the top or bottom of the deck. Anyway, when I cut the deck for Hiram to hide the card in the deck, that meant I knew exactly where he put the card."

"So how did that help you get it into the envelope?"

Bartido picked up the deck and cut the cards, then turned over the one he'd cut to so Margarita could see it. It had the corners of the four of coins, but the central portion instead featured an ornate circular glyph, that shone faintly with green light.

"Is that a Glamour Rune?"

"Yep, it's a short-range portal. I got Professor Chartreuse to do it for me to illustrate a point in the use of that kind of magic. Look inside the envelope."

Margarita picked it up and peeked inside. Sure enough, another Rune was marked on the inside of the envelope.

"That's why I folded it so it would tear open at the short end, so he wouldn't see inside. Whenever I activate the Rune, it moves whatever's just on top of it through the portal to the other one. It's low-powered, though, so it can basically move…one playing card."

"So, it didn't matter what card Hiram chose, so long as he didn't pick the one with the portal on it."

"Yep. Plus, when I cut the cards the first time, I moved that one to the top of the deck, making it really unlikely he'd grab it."

"And you used one type of magic to pull off a conjuring trick faking a different type of magic…why? I mean, if you're going to do conjuring with real magic, then why not do the magic the trick actually says it will?"

Bartido leaned back in his seat, the smirk growing wider.

"Because that's exactly what Hiram's going to think. He'll see if I could have used magic. He'll see if I could have used slight of hand. And he won't think that I used magic to fake the method instead of the result, at least not for a while, which means that while I entertained him for five minutes with the trick, he'll entertain me walking around with that furrowed-brow scowl he gets and smoke coming out of his ears for at least a week. Told you I could score a pretty good payoff if I knew what I was doing."

~X X X~

A/N: The use of the Spanish card suits (cups, coins, cudgels, and swords instead of hearts, diamonds, clubs, and spades) is strictly for local color in this fantasy world.