Dodge Tanner and the Heated Hand

In the blaze-washed heart of Cinderhold, where tempers burn hotter than the black-glass forges and grudges are carried like treasured heirlooms passed down from generation to generation, there are things you just don’t do: insult someone’s lineage, complain about the incessant heat, or, gods help you, cheat at their favored game of cards, Red Rock Flow.

Dodge Tanner had done precisely all of those that day.

The Dust Barrel tavern groaned with smoke, brass music, and the clink of ceramic mugs. The evening’s game had started innocently enough: a few hands of Flow to pass the time while Dodge asked idle questions about local curios as he 'learned' to play "For the very first time. Ember's honest truth!". But then, as the stakes continued to climb, and honor demanded they teach this too lucky traveler a lesson, a burly coal-merchant with a voice like a cave-in and coin pouch emptying like a sieve with every hand, slapped down the real wager, The Embertongue Compendium, leather-bound and glinting with warded ink. Exactly the kind of obscure tome a certain Great Library archivist had insisted Dodge retrieve with that little phrase: “by almost any means necessary, Dodge... ALMOST... Any... Means!”

The round turned tense. Eyes narrowed. A vein throbbed in someone’s temple as player after player folded until it was just Dodge and the Tome owner remaining. Dodge sweated just a little, muttering about the sweltering heat, but not from guilt. He'd slipped three extra cards under his hat during a particularly rowdy cheer, and by the flick of his wrist and a cough to cover the snap of card against card as he mopped his sweating brow, he suddenly held the winning hand. Again.

First came the dead silence. Then the scrape of chairs being shoved back as people rose to their feet. Then came the accusation. A sharp voice from across the table, as the now dangerously red faced, (Dangerous for Dodge, but also quite possibly for the merchant!), tome owner threw down his losing hand, glaring at Dodge's splayed out hand:

"Triple Volcanoes AND a magma burst pair? Impossible! That rat-faced wanderer’s got the luck that can only come of a loaded deck!"

Mugs hit the table. Someone pulled a blade. (And, by 'someone', we mean everyone within earshot!) Even the old barkeep reached under the counter for something made of banded wood, treated iron, and lethal intent.

Dodge stood slowly, both hands up and empty. “Friends,” he said with a grin that had survived countless accusations, (Some more accurate than others), assassination attempts, naked hag bathing, and an oddly romantic entanglement with a sentient Feywild hill, “I assure you, gentlemen. I couldn’t possibly have cheated.” He gestured to the table. “I don’t even know the rules. I thought I was losing!”, he finished with his damn near trademarked 'innocent' smile.

Laughter wavered in the air, uncertain, like heat mirage. Someone muttered about outsiders and dumb luck. Dodge wove in a few self-deprecating lines about mistaking a Burn Trump for a Flow Stone, offered to buy the next round, and by the time the third mug clinked, the crowd's focus had moved on to a shouting match over who’d last cleaned the lava pool causeways.

Not twenty minutes later, Dodge strolled out of the Dust Barrel, whistling a tune only slightly out of key as he acted nonchalant AND tried to look in every direction for danger at the same time. Once the tavern faded behind him and the shadows deepened along the basalt alleys, he ducked behind a shuttered kiln and tipped his wide-brimmed hat.

Three cards slid out, fanned between nimble fingers.

“The real trick? Bluff so good they accuse you of cheating. Then cheat so smooth they believe you were just bluffing." he murmured to no one in particular as he slid his 'lucky' cards back into their travel case.

Then he drew the Embertongue Compendium from inside his coat, still warm from the hearth-glow and adrenaline, and tucked it reverently into his handy little haversack. The Library would be pleased. And, as Dodge was coming to learn, a happy Library seemed to always make for a much more comfortable stay in the Great Tree.

He flipped his hat back onto his head with a practiced spinning toss, kicked a coal pebble down the alley into one of a dozen ever present puddles of quietly burbling lava, and vanished into the Cinderhold haze with a whistle and a far-too-pleased-with-himself grin.