"However, I have no particular wish to engage in an ugly legal battle with such a dear comrade as you. I would prefer a more informal and mutually satisfactory arrangement."
The mage glared at him for a long moment, thinking hard. Then she shoved her wand back into a holster at her hip and drew up the chair opposite Jack's. "I'll see to it you receive your two shares of the hoard. You give me the magical items you stole. You are bound by that contract, too, and I have a nine-elevenths ownership of the ring and the dagger. Does that meet your requirements?"
Magical items? Clearly, Zandria believed that the ring and the dagger were enchanted, which meant that they were more than mere baubles to be pawned at the first opportunity. In fact, magic rings had a reputation for potentially concealing extraordinary powers. Jack had thought that the gems and coins he'd stuffed into his pockets were the prize for his efforts in Sarbreen, a few hundred crowns of loot quickly converted into cash. But if he had a magic ring and an enchanted dagger in his possession, he might have scored far better than he'd thought.
Of course, there was no point in acknowledging this to Zandria. Jack carefully controlled his reaction and frowned studiously. "I accept two shares for the two items for the sake of argument, as long as we add the value of the ring and dagger to the hoard before calculating my cut, but the Lady Mayor's advertised reward for your Orb is ten thousand gold crowns and a noble title. What value shall we place on that?"
"We cannot split a noble title," Zandria said slowly, as if explaining weighty matters to a child.
Jack smoked and nodded thoughtfully. "I propose this: we place eleven marbles into a bag, two black, nine white. We shake up the bag and hand it to an impartial stranger, asking him to draw one marble from the bag without looking. If he draws a black marble, I win the entire reward due the finder of the Orb. If he draws a white marble, you win."
"I will not settle this question by gambling! Who knows how you might fix such a game?"
"We seem to be stuck," Jack remarked. "Clearly, you want the title. I will settle for cash. I'll give you ring and dagger for two-elevenths of the hoard (including the value of ring and dagger!) You give me the ten thousand crowns for the Orb's reward and keep the title."
The mage winced, but nodded. "Done. Now give me the ring."
"Not so fast," said Jack.
It was a shame to give up a chance at the noble title, but frankly, he preferred cash in hand, and he had too much on his mind to do a proper job of holding the Red Wizard over the barrel. Beside, he had no idea what Zandria might do if he made it too hard for her to deal honestly with him. He looked at Zandria and studied her for a moment, making a great show of thinking things through carefully and slowly.
"While I have no real idea of the value of those two items, your intense interest in them would seem to indicate that they are quite valuable indeed. Therefore, I will hold the ring and the dagger as security against my cut of the treasure and ten thousand gold crowns. I will redeem them when you make good on my agreed-upon share of the loot."
"Security?" asked Zandria incredulously. "Your impudence is beyond compare! I should incinerate you where you sit, and take both ring and dagger from your smoldering corpse!"
"You might do that, of course, but you would be disappointed. You see, dear Zandria, I do not have either ring or dagger on my person at the moment." That, of course, was a bald-faced lie; the ring nestled in Jack's vest pocket, while the dagger was tucked into his left boot. "Why don't we plan on meeting here again in, say, two days? That will give you time to turn in the Orb and collect the reward. Do you agree?"
The mage rolled her eyes, but nodded. "Fine. I agree."
"Excellent! Then let us share a drink to commemorate the agreement."
Jack signaled the waitress, but Zandria waved her hand in disgust. "I have no interest in toasting your health, Jack Ravenwild. I will assemble the money you require. Be warned: if you fail to produce the ring and the dagger, I will not entertain any further negotiations. I shall simply kill you on the spot regardless of repercussions or arrangements. I admit that may cause me some small trouble, which is why I did not end your life tonight, but you will be a smoking corpse, Jack, dead as every slaying-spell at my command can make you. Do not try my patience again."
The Red Wizard stood and turned on her heel, marching out of the room with her fury blazing like a brand in the night. Longshoremen and teamsters twice her size caught one glance of the expression on her face and fell over themselves trying to get out of her path. Jack raised his goblet to her back and smiled.
"Your health!" he called. "I shall see you in two days!"
Jack lingered another hour at the Tankard, enjoying the sense of security engendered by passing time in a room crowded with familiar faces while he planned his next move. Zandria had given him much to think about; he fished the ring out of his pocket and examined it again. It was a single piece of smooth gray stone flecked with red, quite handsome in its own way, although not particularly valuable at first glance. He whispered a few words and worked a minor magic to detect whether or not it was enchanted, and blinked in surprise-the stone ring radiated magical power to any who could sense such things!
"Perhaps you might be worth keeping after all," Jack said. He slid the ring back into his pocket.
The next Game event was three days off. Before then, Jack decided he had three things he needed to do. First, he needed to find his shadow double and take whatever steps were necessary to stop the fiend and discover its origins. Second, he needed to plan a safe and equitable exchange (or a shameless confidence game) to obtain the thousands of gold crowns that were rightfully his. And last, but certainly not least, he needed to stay out of the sight of the various parties who meant him ill, including but not limited to Iphegor the Black, Marcus and Ashwillow, Morgath and Saerk, Tiger and Mantis, and possibly the Warlord Myrkyssa Jelan.
"It is probably a bad sign when one's enemies significantly outnumber one's friends,'' Jack said sadly.
He drained the last of his wine and stood up to leave. Jack was so distracted by the plots at hand that he almost walked right out of the Tankard's front entrance with no regard for who or what might be watching. He paused in the rickety swinging door by the taproom's mossy walls and ducked back inside at once, cursing his carelessness.
"Having just discovered considerable wealth on my own person, it would be unwise to stumble into my enemies' hands again," he told himself.
Instead, he made himself invisible and used the spell of shadow-jumping to whisk himself to an empty rooftop he knew of three blocks away. The tactic seemed to work; he was not followed or accosted on his way to the Ladyrock. By the time he reached the hovel by the paper mill, midnight was hours past.
Jack passed the rest of the evening in a restless, vermin-pestered slumber. He eventually dozed off until well after noon on the following day, when he was awakened by a gang of neighborhood children engaged in a game of throwing stones through the rotting shakes of his cottage roof.
Jack groggily chased off the ragamuffins, ate a cold breakfast of old bread and hard cheese, and considered his schemes and designs. "My appointment with Zandria is not until tomorrow evening, leaving me a day, a night, and a day to occupy myself," he observed to an attentive cockroach who shared his quarters. "I should keep an eye on Zandria to make sure that she doesn't forget the terms of our bargain again. I should take steps to ascertain the current whereabouts of my accursed shadow. And I should also seek to unravel whatever plot Toseiyn Dulkrauth, the esteemed Lord Tiger, is up to. What to do first?"