First things first:
Copyright
J.B. Norman
“Are you teaching my sister to gamble?” Kat exclaims.
“Actually,” one of the Baron’s guards says, looking up from their card game. “I think she’s teaching us!”
“She’s won every single hand,” the other guard moans.
“Not every hand,” Annie notes, standing at Dunstana’s side. “They had to redo a hand that was improperly shuffled.”
“A hand, by the way, that I would have won,” the first guard adds petulantly.
“Hi, Kat!” Dunstana exclaims happily from the table. “Look at all the stuff I won!” She gestures to heaped-up spoils of victory that surround her in a pile not unlike a magpie’s nest.
Kat stares.
“I won a new hat!” Dunstana says. “And some boots! And most of a sandwich!” And Jeff here says he’ll buy me dessert for a week,” Dunstana says, pointing to the guard.
“Greg,” the guard interjects. “My name is Greg. It’s short for Gregmundfordximander.”
“Did you parents hate you?” Kat asks.
The guard puffs himself up indignantly. “I’ll have you know I was named for my grandmother!”
Kat assumes that’s a yes.
“I’ve got you this time, you little mongrel,” the other guard says, placing his cards down on the table.
“Hey!” Kat yells. “Don’t talk to my sister like that!”
That’s her job.
“Read ‘em and weep, kid: I’ve got a full Gallicantu Sunset,” the guard declares.
“Um,” Dunstana says, laying down her cards one by one. “I’ve got the Twelve of Livers, the Nine-and-a-Half’s of Cubic Zirconia and Rakes, and the two Kings I have both have swords in their faces.”
“I don’t believe it!” the guard exclaims.
Dunstana looks down at her cards then up at her opponents. “What? Is that good? Did I win?”
“‘Stana,” Annie says, “that’s a Theobald’s Run. That’s the best hand in the game!”
“Ugh,” Kat groans.
Her new job as Baron Westfordnorthwestshire’s special Trouble Consultant has gotten off to an inauspicious start so far.
First, Dunstana had come down the Baron’s chimney haphazardly dressed as Uncle Wintermorn and asked if she could come too. Then, a weird-looking guy in a trench coat had barged into the room, demanding to the see the Baron, whereupon the Baron had profusely apologised for the behaviour of his doorman.
All the while, Kat had been standing there wondering if any of that could be considered the sort of Trouble the Baron should have Consulted her about.
Ultimately, Kat had been hustled out of the room by the Baron, saying that he was more than happy to hire on Dunstana as Kat’s assistant special Trouble Consultant, leaving Kat standing outside the Baron’s closed door as Dunstana hurried to the front door to let Annie into the manor while Kat was able to catch a few snippets of the Baron and Dude Manguy’s hours-long discussion about the study of butterflies and moths.
All in all, Kat still isn’t quite sure what a special Trouble Consultant actually does.
“Oh,” Kat says to the figure passing down the hall. “Hey, Dude Manguy.”
Dude Manguy strikes again!
The rest of my writing exercises are here. This scene is from August 2022.
Follow me here:
If you’ve enjoyed my content, please consider supporting me through Ko-fi or Patreon, or through Paypal by scanning the QR code below:
Follow Realmgard and other publications of Emona Literary Services™ below:
Subscribe to the Emona Literary Services™ Substack newsletter here.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
The author prohibits the use of content published on this website for the purposes of training Artificial Intelligence technologies, including but not limited to Large Language Models, without express written permission.
All stories published on this website are works of fiction. Characters are products of the author’s imagination and do not represent any individual, living or dead.
The realmgard.com Privacy Policy can be viewed here.
Realmgard is published by Emona Literary ServicesTM
