10 Wheel of Fortune (part two) - the alternative tale.
The Wheel turns for everyone. ….the roulette wheel of F****a, a Goddess whose name is carefully not spoken lest she fail to appear. Gambling is a possibility here.
Right. I've bitched elsewhere about other people using elements of my fanfic. Given that what we all do is to pinch other people's ideas and settings – to be specific Terry Pratchett's – I'd have to be a hypocrite to object to this. In a way it's a compliment. But I have been known to get irritated when other authors pinch and use my ideas without crediting it to me or saying "thank you". The two or three of you on FanFic who've done this – well, you know who you are.
And so do I.
A character, in fact a Goddess, appears in this tale who is not my concept. I have borrowed her. She originates with fanfic writer Ulyenov, known on the L-Space wiki as "Doctor Whiteface".
For the use of your character "Janet", Doctor, I therefore humbly thank you. You had the inspired idea. This is merely my take on it.
Thanks also to Cliff Stark, who has told me lots of tales about how bookies make a profit and how betting really works.
An episode from the early life of jobbing priestess Extremelia Mume, before the finger of Fate pointed at her and said "It is you!"
The bookies shop in Cable Street, in fact one of several run by Hergenian betting king Paddy O'Mighty under the Paddy: a Powerful Good Bet! name(1), was doing good business that Saturday afternoon.
Extremelia sat in the cashier's booth behind the thick iron bars, underneath the framed scroll that proclaimed Paddy to be a fully paid-up member of the Gamblers' Guild and that therefore any trade conducted on the premises was strictly under Guild law and custom. Paddy also paid a Thieves' Guild premium and had a cover policy against unlicenced theft with the Guild of Assassins. Even though on a good day thousands of dollars crossed the counter – all of it coming inwards with a carefully calculated and much smaller part of it going out again – it was possibly one of the safest jobs in town. Any unlicenced thief trying to rob the premises would be an unlicenced thief who was tired of life three times over. (Under the shrewd leadership of Scrote Jones, the Gamblers Guild could now afford to hire its own muscle as enforcers: the Dealers and Croupiers(2)were on hand to maintain order and good conduct, and to go round to the homes of those who had defaulted or otherwise welshed on failed bets, to arrange suitable repayment terms as between gentlemen.)
Besides, Paddy was a big man who had worked on building sites for twenty years before having his flash of epiphany. After twenty years of watching fellow labourers and tradesmen trying to beat the odds, largely failing and remaining poor, and witnessing fellow expat Hergenians betting with hope and their hearts and staying poor, he had set about studying the form, going to evening maths classes mainly for lessons in probability theory, and had made the realisation.
The only people to get rich at betting are the bookies.
He had therefore sunk twenty years of meticulous savings into his first bookies' shop. This coincided with Gamblers' Guild president Scrote Jones rising to lead what had hitherto been one of the poorest and most despised Guilds in the City. Perhaps learning from the way Havelock Vetinari ran the City, Scrote too had had an epiphany. He had realised that for gambling to work and for it to have truly mass appeal, it had to be seen to be fair and to run to clearly understood, out-in-the-open rules with no hidden clauses or small print. This was in a city where troll crimelord Chrysophrase ran his own casino, and betting operation to his own rules, which were on clear display, written in red ink on red paper and illuminated by a red lamp, and you cannot make dem more accessible then dat, can you! (3)
Chrysophrase also sponsored the ultra-violent sport of troll-boxing, upon which people were prepared to stake large amounts of money, even though everyone knew Chrysophrase was the bout promoter.(4) Scrote Jones reasoned from this that there was a huge appetite for gambling in the city. And incredibly enough, the Gamblers' Guild, disdaining amateur gamblers, was getting none of the benefits. Scrote changed all this, encouraging men like Paddy to open up under Guild auspices, and opening a public casino of the Guild's own on Guild premises. The result was that the Gamblers were now steadily accumulating licence fees, Guild tax, cash profits and percentages, and were rising up the ladder in terms of both wealth and prestige. They were also very carefully paying over a set percentage of this to the City in tax, a factor which made Vetinari very relaxed about the upsurge in gambling around the City.
Extremalia had left seminary feeling excited about her calling as a Priestess. She was aware that to thrive, she needed not only generalised faith in the Gods as a collective entity, but a Unique Selling Point to draw crowds into her own temple.
Her newly-issued dog collar still sharp and rough around her throat, she had retired with a copy of Koomi of Swale's Liber Ego Video Deorum.(5)
Looking down the lists of Goddesses, she found what she sought near the bottom of the list. Bingo. Everyone has a kitchen? Everyone has kitchen utensils? And everyone's kitchen drawer gets jammed now and again, because that odd-shaped thing that nobody can remember the purpose of, and which doesn't fit however you try, has jammed it all closed. Anoia is as universal as any deity you can find!
She tried the name for size.
"Anoia. Anoia". It felt right. Three sliding syllables. Four vowels and a consonant.
She fancied she could hear an odd echo in the seminary library. In the distance she could hear the librarian muttering because his desk drawer had just jammed closed, the one with all his date stamps in it. She smiled.
Extemelia Mume had found her Goddess.
And now, ten years on, she was still doing four days a week in Paddy's bookies, three to pay the rent on the Temple upstairs and one for some actual cash. She alternated this with evening work pulling pints in the White Swan down the street, a pub known inevitably as The Mucky Duck. She'd never thought it would come to this, but she doggedly worked on, processing bets by day, paying out once the clacks brought the results in (Paddy had paid dearly for a clacks account, but he got the racing results first and this pulled in the punters. If they doubted his word, they could check it in the Times Pink Sporting Final later in the day, which was held to be official, and the final arbiter of all disputes.)
And, cashing up after the shop closed, Paddy would often say
"Tremmie, you're a little bloody wonder, so y'are! The punters come in because they can't believe a priestess works for me, and you bein' there keeps down the bad language and unseemly behaviour in the shop, and the wonder of it is, you get on with them!"
She had smiled. She had started to see the regulars in the shop as her parish, and it was surprisingly easy to be a pastoral priestess from behind the bar or inside the cashier's cage. Some of them even came to her Octeday services, held in the front room of the upstairs flat that had her living space in the room behind. Even Paddy himself, and Mrs O'Mighty, although they were old-time Druidic by persuasion, sometimes attended. Drinkers from the Duck, when they were Octeday-sober and feeling in need of spiritual sustenance, sometimes swelled the numbers. So there was no shortage of a congregation, even if they were all dirt-poor and the collection plate sometimes saw only elims and mites and farthings.
But sometimes… she'd find dollar coins, about the same value as three day's cashiers' pay, in the offertory box. She suspected she knew how they got there, but knew she could never ask. Paddy would always say, once she came downstairs to the bookies, that it was a shame and a pity that he couldn't give her the upstairs for free, but he rented the whole building, you follow, and he had to pay the rent on all of it. So sub-letting was sound business sense, you follow? And Paddy would try to look innocent, and Extremelia would pretend not to notice and say "I appreciate that, Paddy" and get on with the job. And just for a second he would look shifty, and then he'd turn and get on with working out the odds in such a way that they were more favourable to the punter than the competition would dream of offering, while still ensuring his rake would guarantee him a good profit on the day.(6) She would watch, learning about probability maths by default, and storing up ideas for the future.
People go to the bookies religiously. They avoid churches equally religiously. Therefore it follows on that if there was a way to mix religion and gambling, the priestess who got the formula right would be made for life. And for the greater glory of her patron Goddess, obviously.
She held this thought and focused on looking after her flock, dispensing not religious homilies but good advice if ever a drinker or a punter had a tale of woe to tell. As she assured Reg the publican at the Duck, they could see her as a sort of industrial chaplain.
She sighed a deep sigh. People had preconceptions about what a priestess should look like. She should either be thin, tall, greyhaired, rake-thin and austere, a sporty type who was plain as a pancake but hearty, or else a fat jolly woman with an addiction to chocolate, who laughed a lot.(7)
Extremelia was in her early thirties. Single, sandy-hair cut into a respectable mumsy style, looking a little bit mumsy and matronly although she'd never had children. Never had… you know… either, although a lot of the men in the pub and the bookies tell me I've got quite a nice buxom figure. Perhaps the dog collar puts them off. Or I've put it off, for the sake of establishing a career. (8)
Other members of the Council of Churches, Temples, Sacred Groves and Big Ominous Rocks tended to look aghast at a member doing menial jobs to get by. It had been pointed out to Extremelia that there was a charitable trust that had been set up to ensure every bona fide priest could draw some sort of stipend, to prevent their having to do manual labour.
"No." she had said, firmly. "I like what I do." she said, thinking of the bookies' customers and drinkers in the duck with the usual mixture of exasperation and fondness.
The argument had dragged on for months of Council meetings. Then one day, Hughnon Ridcully, the High Priest, had stepped into the shop, in a sober tweed suit rather than the High Priest's vestments, to lay a bet on the Quirm $100. She was surprised. She knew he was a man from an old time huntin', fishin', shootin' and sportin' family. But he usually sent a junior deacon in to lay his bets.
"Wouldn't you feel better if you had enough of an income to save you havin' to do this, m'dear?" he had asked. "Devote all your time to the service of yer Goddess?"
"And become some sort of hermit?" she had asked. "I'm among the people here. If they won't care to go to where the priest is, then the priest has to go to them and listen to them. The place for a pulpit is in the temple on Octeday, your Grace. The rest of the week, I can do my pastoral work from in here or behind the bar at the Duck!"
Ridcully laid his bet and tipped his hat to her. He smiled.
"Well, that's me told, then!" he said. "Good luck to you, m'dear!" He picked up his betting slip, smiled at the sign that said "NO WIZARDS! NO WITCHES! AND NO BLOODY PSYCHICS EITHER!(9)", and left.
In some indefinable way, Extremelia wondered if she'd made an ally.
Life went on like this for some years, with Anoia maintaining a foothold in Ankh-Morpork, neither climbing nor falling, and her priestess just about maintaining a baseline standard of living.
Then Horace started coming into the shop. She took his money as she took the others', with a friendly smile and a thank you. But Horace, in appearance an unprepossessing plump and balding man, was different.
He consistently won, small but not spectacular sums. Paddy watched him closely, wondering if some sort of scam was happening. He'd heard the Thieves' Guild now taught course modules in deception, grift, and bunco studies. But week after week, Horace came in, laid some modest sum like $5, and walked out with four or five times that. Or more.
"It isn't bloody well natural." said Paddy. "But the fellow must be on the level. Or he'd be trying to take me for thousands otherwise. Why waste time with piddling little sums? Ah well, your man's just on a streak of … L-word." (Gamblers and reformed vampires both had an unspeakable word.)
"It'll wear off eventually."
But it didn't. Horace became a regular visitor, and even started to get friendly with Extremelia. Paddy approved of this, hoping she'd wheedle out of him how it was done and whether he was taking Paddy for a ride. He began attending the Temple of Anoia, offering a tithe of his winnings to the Goddess in return for her munificent bounty. She began to feel she was doing something other then just scraping by, but firmly reminded herself not to rely on the money, which was bound to dry up as quickly as it had come.
"Why thank Anoia?" Extremelia asked, playing devil's advocate. "Surely there's another Goddess…"
Horace quickly laid a finger to her lips.
"We don't mention her name, miss!" he said, urgently. "I mean, you're an associate Guild member, you have to be!"
She cursed herself. Mentioning a certain Name was a Gambler's Guild taboo and incurred sanctions. And she'd had to join, as an associate member, to be able to work in gambling.
Horace continued his thought. "So if you can't mention or thank or even think about Her, miss, you still have to honour the Gods in general terms. And your temple's most convenient for the bookies'!"
And so it was for a few more months. Extremelia found herself getting fonder of the absurd, plump little man, who was always fussily dressed and slightly out of breath. He carried on visiting Paddy's three or four times a week, staking modest sums and always winning. He attended Temple and paid to bend small ritual spatulas and fishforks in Anoia's honour. Extremelia even let herself be taken to dinner by him. She also learnt that Paddy's wasn't the only bookies he plagued by continually winning. He also patronised several other turf accountants, seemingly taking scrupulous care not to do any more than lay a single modest bet of five or ten dollars, often on an unlikely prospect or a 33-1 outsider. Extremelia had learnt that a rank outsider on 33-1 or even 50-1 or higher will win a race on average once every day, more often than she would have thought. But with the racing card offering two or three hundred races across nine or ten tracks – not to mention the dogs and the dragons(10) – finding that rare winning outsider was like looking for a needle in a haystack. Yet Horace seemed to have no trouble. He also attended live betting at the tracks.
But he still wouldn't tell her how he did it, preferring to mumble a "perhaps some other time, miss" at her.
She returned to work, vexed by it all.
And then one day, after a successful bet, Horace was ritually bending a votive spatula in homage and thanks to Anoia. Extremelia led him through the Ritual of Distortion, and as the last "Amen!" faded, she sat and looked at him critically.
"Horace" she said. "I really need to know how you're doing it. If nothing else, there are three bookies who would just love to have a reason to get the Dealers and Croupiers onto you, as you must have taken them all for thousands by now. If they've got even the slightest reason to think you're scamming them, you're a dead man walking, and I don't want that."
She paused, and added
"As your spiritual advisor and priestess, I really don't want that. But even Paddy… well, he may be fundamentally a good man, and hard to anger, and in his way a generous man, but I've seen his fists clench whenever you walk into the shop. That reminds you that Paddy O'Mighty is also a big man. You've broken the fundamental rule, Horace. The punter is not meant to win. The punter does not take the bookie for hard cash, time and time and time again. And if the Guild puts the Nine of Swords(11) on you, you know the Watch are going to treat it as a case of suicide twice over?"
Horace sighed and slumped.
"I know, miss. I got the card this morning. In the post. I'm going to be leaving Ankh-Morpork in the next day or two. Billy Slopes and Fred Dunn's have both barred me because I win too often. Paddy's got that look in his eye that says I'm barred from here next. Most of the oncourse bookies at the Racecourse won't take my bets any more and I'm barred from the tote. So there'll be nothing for me in this town no more. Betting is my life!"
Extremelia looked at the little man with sympathy, resigned to losing both him and the regular extra dollars in the offertory. Ah well, it couldn't last for ever.
"Where will you go?" she asked.
"Brindisi, at least first, miss." Horace said. "Work my way out Widdershins to Genua and then take the boat to Fourecks. I hear they race emus and camels there!"
She made them both a cup of tea, and Horace sighed.
"Since I'll be going soon, it won't make no difference if I tell you everything. But this is in confidence, right?"
"Horace" she said, "I'm a priestess. Consider this a confessional."
And Horace told her everything.
A not-very-successful interior decorator and amateur punter, he had got ridiculously drunk the previous Hogswatch after his wife left him, fed up with his betting compulsion. He had woken up unwillingly the next morning, to find a Presence in his room. A thin and unhealthy deity in a soiled tunic, wearing a skewed laurel wreath, was standing by the bed. Horace, by degrees, realised that after an evening in the company of the god Bibulous, he was now paying for it with a personal visit from the god Bilious, patron deity of hangovers. In between bouts of retching and groaning, Bilious had explained that every quality has its opposite, right? And if there is a God of Getting Drunk, then there must be a God of Hangovers. I'm it, the name's Bilious.
"Every God? Every quality?" Horace had groaned through a dry mouth that tasted like a parrot's cage.
"Must be or I wouldn't be here." the God had shrugged. "Anyway, you've got the eyes that feel like red-hot marbles, the pounding headache, the dizziness, the mouth that feels like the cat's crapped in it…. My work here is done, I think."
And he disappeared and Horace fell groaning into his bed.
A few days later, Horace gave his visitation from the God some serious creative thought.
Every God? Every quality?
As a Gambler, he thought of The Lady. If you evoked her by name, she refused to come. Attempts by diehard gamblers to compel her had led to awful appointments with Fate and Destiny, who had turned up to explain it doesn't work that way, gentlemen. If you called her, she refused to attend. Being capricious, of course, she might turn up once in a blue moon, just to keep people hoping and believing, but mainly for her own amusement… but bad luck(there, I've said it!) usually attended those who called on her.
Horace's brain raced on.
Those secretive, furtive, experiments with a roulette wheel that led to the Chapel of the Gamblers' Guild being utterly destroyed . They were attempting to coerce a Goddess of Good Luck, call her Fortuna, to be present and aid them. But all they got was bad luck.
Now let's turn that idea on its head, take it a stage further. You've got Bibulous, God of Alcohol, and his opposite Bilious, the Oh-God! of hangovers. One necessarily entails the other, right?
So what of The Lady of good Luck (that's a given – nobody wants the other sort, but it's all we seem to actually get) also has her opposite. Let's call her… Ydal? Kcul… Kaycull. Anutrof? No, don't call her yet, give her a working name. Call her Janet, for now, that's safe enough.
What happens if you deliberately, cold-bloodedly and knowingly call on the name of Janet, goddess of bad luck?
The idea was giddying and exciting. Horace scraped together his last few coins and raced to a nearby bookies – a branch of Billy Slopes(12) – to lay a multiplier. He fervently addressed silent prayers to Ydal, Kaycull, Anutrof, Janet, the Goddess of bad luck, as he raced through the streets.
He heard a crash from behind him. Turning, he saw a chimney stack had crashed into the icy street a few feet behind him.
"That was lucky, mate!" a passer-by said. "Could have swore it was going to hit you!"
Fired with excitement, Horace ran into the bookies and passed his last few pence over the counter on the first stage of a multiplier. This is a five-step bet where the winnings on one step become the stake on the next. This can sometimes win lunatic sums of money, but generally the bookie cleans up as the odds on five successive bets winning are usually unfeasible.
He stood in an agony of waiting as first one, then the second, then the third, came in as winners. By the fifth he was two thousand dollars richer on a seventy-five pence stake. Billy Slopes himself paid the cash over.
"Reckon you was due a streak of luck, eh, Horace?" he said, benevolently, knowing that in the hands of a gambling addict, he was very soon going to see it back again, so why worry?
"So what happened next?" Extremelia asked, gently and compassionately.
"You've seen it, miss. I started doing the circuit of all the bookies in town, including the racecourse and the Tote, and I was always careful not to lay seriously big money or to draw too much attention to myself. No more than one bet in each shop every day, and that for smallish stakes. I knew it would all build up over time, see, and the bet's the thing.
"Oh, it would have been so easy to lay a thousand dollars down on a fifty-to-one, but that way, you get attention. Thieves Guild, for instance. Besides, I dint want to get greedy. A winning bet like that would have broke Paddy, and he's a good man. 'Sides, it'd have closed his bookies and put people like you out of work, and I dint want that on my conscience. You find it hard to make ends meet as it is."
She nodded. Horace was a good, honest, man. Clever and sensible, too.
"So you went for a nice steady trickle. No more than fifty dollars winnings in each of three or four bookies, so that's a continual two hundred dollars a day…" And I'm holding down two jobs, running a church and keeping myself fed and clothed and housed on twelve dollars a week. And that's in a good week.
"What do you spend it on?"
"Well, when I knew I was onto a good thing, I packed in the decorating. Five dollars a week. Huh. I won't be sorry never to see a roll of wallpaper or a paintbrush again! I splashed out, miss. Better place to live, better clothes, better food…"
He patted his belly ruefully.
"Too much better food and drink. Some in the bank for a rainy day. Give some away. I can afford it. The bet's the thing!"
And six months further on, here you are now. Banned from the bookies for being too successful and about to leave town."
"Change my name and my appearance, miss. There are racecourses everywhere." He perked up and gave her an optimistic smile.
She nodded.
"Write to me, Horace. I'd appreciate that. But.. one last question. Why call the ..goddess… Janet?"
"That was my ex-wife's name, miss. She were nothing more nor bad luck to me!"
Extremelia smiled and they left the Temple together. Paddy was waiting at the foot of the stairs. The big bookie cleared his throat, deferentially.
"Horace? I'm sorry to have to say this, I personally like you and you've been a good customer, but…."
And Extremelia heard nothing more about or from Horace, not even a letter. But she remembered his last cheerful words to her, as he had philosophically walked away:
"Always remember, miss, the bet's the thing. It could be you next time!"
And then, three weeks on, constable Haddock of the Watch had come in, off-duty, to lay a bet on the Pseudopolis Steeplechase. Passing over his stake money, he had remarked
"Shame about Horace Spinnister, wasn't it, miss?"
Something in the tone of his voice alerted her.
"Oh. What happened to him?"
Haddock looked grave.
It happened shortly after his last visit to her. Horace's uncanny ability to win bets had caused certain people to take an interest in him. Coming out of the coach station having paid for a luxury ticket to Brindisi, and intending to leave the next day (nobody ignores the Dealers when they deal you the Nine of Swords), he had been accosted by two henchtrolls.
Troll crimelord Chrysoprase had heard of the man with the uncanny ability to get bets right. He wanted Horace on his payroll. But on hearing the rumbling voice
"Mr Chrysoprase wants to speak to you!"
Horace had panicked and run blindly away. Straight into the path of a laden cart that was rumbling inexorably towards him.
"It's a funny thing, miss. His last words were to the ex-wife who walked out on him at Hogswatch. He called "Janet!" twice, as if he wanted to see her one last time before he died. Then the wagon rolled over him, I'm afraid."
"I see" Extremelia whispered.
Just sometimes, even when you call her, the Lady appears, out of amusement or malice or whim. It's very nearly a million to one chance. But sometimes it happens. For Ydal, Kaycull, Anutrof – or Janet – as much as for her sister. And Haddock had glimpsed the strangeness of a green-haired red-eyed woman on the street where Horace Spinnister died.
Haddock smiled at her. "It's not all bad news, miss. Horace left a will. He spent a lot of cash, but he made it clear that what's left over is yours. For the Church."
Extremelia banked the money: only two or three thousand dollars, but it would go to her dream, of building a Temple fit for Anoia. To do it properly, though, she'd need another ten thousand, probably more. But Horace had allowed her to make a start. Sitting in a coffeeshop after having recited an Anoian funeral service over his grave at Small Gods, she let her eyes slide over a brief note in the Times. It was about Vetinari having appointed an unknown called Moist von Lipwig to be Postmaster General….
(1) In Great Britain, one of the biggest bookies' chains is the Irish-owned Paddy Powers.
(2) The Dealers are dapper men in tuxedos who have amazing manual dexterity and can entertain you with amazing card tricks. Right up until the moment they start breaking your fingers, one by one, as they remind you that you owe the casino ten thousand dollars and climbing, friend. The Croupiers are in the main hard-faced women who, while they can deal the cards for blackjack and set the ball running on the roulette wheel with the best of them, tend to be drawn from the ranks of lady wrestlers, boxers and martial arts experts. Scrote Jones has interviewed and selected them with care, and they handle those tricky moments in the life of any casino, such as the maths teacher suspected of card-counting, the man standing too close to the roulette wheel who, when shaken down, is discovered to have powerful magnets in his pockets, or the man in a game of Cripple Mr Onion who has extra aces up his sleeves and sudden amnesia as to how they got there. They also provide mobile security to Guild members running off-site operations, ie, Paddy's bookies.
(3) Break der bank and I break your legs! Dat only to begin wit'!
(4) For some reason, the sight of two enormous trolls battering each other across a specially reinforced ring was a popular one in Ankh-Morpork.
(5) This indispensable guide, rather like Crockford's Clerical Directory, is re-issued every year as old gods die and dwindle and newer, more ambitious, gods arise and ascend the hierarchy. It is indispensable to priests. The current edition has a cautious farewell to Nuggan, who is missing, presumed Small God, and welcomes Pedestriana to the Dunmanifestin family. It also notes the steady and resolute rise of Anoia, and notes this ties into the related worship of Cephut, God of Cutlery.
(6) Take a six horse race. The probability thatoneof those six horses will win and one will come second is 100%, right? So therefore when you add together the odds quoted on each individual horse they should all sum to 1.0 or 1/1, right?
Well… wrong. It's more likely going to be 0.89. or perhaps 0.92 on a good day. You are still betting on a basis of 1.0 probability. The missing fraction is called the bookie's rake and over time is a nice, steady, little earner that guarantees a consistent profit.
And if all six horses break a leg, fail to finish, or go on strike, the race is voided and all stakes are returned.
(7) . OK. I do mean Dawn French in The Vicar of Dibley. A real lady minister I was at university with (Methodist) is still slim, blonde, and strikingly attractive. She cannot stand that show for professional reasons.
(8)A reader of my earlier Extremelia story told me she could see actress Fay Ripley in the role. Damn it, she was right. Fay's stock-in-trade of respectable but slightly confused women, together with her" not-bad-I-suppose-for-my-age" figure, would fit the character.
(9) Because wizards try to cheat, that's why. Look at that "winning slip" carefully. It is likely to be a piece of toilet paper put under a glamour. In Ankh-Morpork, the regulation barring psychics from betting shops is necessary. They've heard about the idea that a psychic should never try to profit personally from their abilities. They think everyone's entitled to an opinion, they suppose…
(10) Ankh-Morpork has known for a long time about recreational betting on the performance of horses and greyhounds. Racing dragons are a new phenomena, and the bets tend to be on whether the dragon can get to the finishing line before exploding. Lady Sybil Ramkin is on the case, however, and the days of racing dragons may well be numbered.
(11) You know the truism/cliché about Death in the Tarot not meaning literal death? That is true, but it begs the question of which card does. And while the suit card the Nine of Swords has several interpretations (all bad) , one of them is sudden and violent death. The classic picture on the card is unambiguous – a corpse floating face-down in the river with nine blades sticking out of its back. The Dealers and Croupiers, the Gamblers' Guild enforcers, have been known to pass a mark the nine of Swords, as a last warning. Or to leave it nearby the body…
(12) William Hills, in Great Britain, are a well known firm of turf acountants.