[kaf09]

Normally on these threads we discuss dream matchups, the Seguleh 3rd versus Corporal Blues, Tayschrenn vs Rake etc.; here I’m interested in a gentler manifestation of prowess. In GotM we learn that Fiddler and Hedge were expert gamblers who dared to use the Deck of Dragons in card games whose rules only they understood. Then in MofI Hedge and his new comrades in the 6th squad lose their collective shirts at cards on a large table that Hedge and Fiddler had made (and lost) in the early Genabackan campaign. Apparently, the sappers had laid a whole deck down on a table and covered it with another surface. A sensitive reader of the deck (as Fiddler was) was able to read the card face down on the table due to some magical tension between concealed and face down cards - Paran’s portrait on the other side of the table ruined the trick. Anyway, later on Quick Ben, Murillio, Coll, and co. are skinned by Kruppe at some dice game (does anyone know what it was? It wasn’t craps, maybe some form of poker dice?) played on that very table. Kruppe had apparently worked out the new tensions on the table. No doubt in a later novel, Fiddler will meet with Kruppe. So who’s going to win the inevitable card game? My money’s on Fiddler given his celebrated scorpion coup (HofC)and the fact he might now have some supernatural help (Hedge and the other sporting B’burners?).