Coin

by Matthew C. Lucas

in Issue 104, September 2020

The clerk considered the copper coin lying before him on the table. The edges were ridged, as they should be. The emblem on its face, a hammer, pick, and sword, had been rubbed smooth from countless grubbing fingers and the passage of time. There was a heavy layer of grime and patina, but the metal still held a faint, jasper gleam that shimmered in the shadow of a guttering candle flame. It was authentic.

The man who brought the coin was eyeing him from the end of the table.

“Whaddya think?” the man prompted.

*That I have you over a barrel—and that you’ll be dead before the year’s out.*
 
The clerk looked up to study the man’s face. A dull, plodding skull with a ruined nose and wet, jaundiced eyes. Oily wisps that passed for hair. Some scars. The very air around him reeked of the Crag, the tunneled realm in the Mountain where the workers lived. If this lout had ever been a clerk (as he claimed), he had long ago fallen out of his position. He said his name was Craigman, which may or may not have been true. Unlike his money, the man’s papers were rather suspect. 

The chair groaned as Craigman shifted his weight forward:

“You’ll want to test the metal,” Craigman machinated his mouth into a smile. “Go on, give it a pinch.”

Ordinarily he would have, but it was better to leave the coin lying there. To connote contempt for the bribe he had been offered. The clerk adjusted his yellow sash, the symbol of his office, and made a bemused expression:

“I’ve no doubt the metal is as honest as its owner. But why are you showing this to me? This isn’t a market stall.”

A thick, hairy hand passed the length of Craigman’s face, hiding whatever curse he had mouthed. His jaw was clenched tight:


“You know why.”

“I’m afraid I don’t.”

“I need a post on the Docks,” Craigman muttered.

The clerk nodded knowingly. Good. Craigman had made the proposal, not he. The illegality would be entirely his. 

As a deputy purser for one of the lowest wards of the Crag, the clerk’s office was little more than a moldy cave cordoned off from a corridor by a set of rusted pipes. A near-bottom supervisor for the bottommost tier of workers. But he enjoyed two perks from his position: tallow candles and a steady supply of jobs on the Docks nearby. The latter he could sell for a modest profit.

“Let me see. . . .” the clerk leaned back and reached for a roll of papers. His office was always littered with files, and reams, and folios of varying unimportance. A broadsheet slid into his grasp. He pretended to study it:

“It doesn’t look like there are any openings just now,” he started to explain. “The Docks are highly sought after—”

“—Docks’re a cesspool,” Craigman cut over him, “and you know it. Clerks are always slipping and cracking their heads open in the ships’ berths, or getting marlin’s pikes dropped on them, or drowning. Ain’t a sash in his right mind wants a job out there. You got an opening.” His eyes drew the clerk’s back to the coin on the table. “And what I’m paying’s a fair price for it.”

It was. Generous, even. Clerical posts on the Docks were unsavory, the kind of jobs that required head-thumping and hustle to ever come out ahead.  

“You set me up with papers,” Craigman continued, “and I’ll collect my fair share of fees.”

The clerk mulled the proposal. A circle of good copper beckoned. It was almost a month’s wages, and it would only cost him a trifle to claim it. But he had to gain all the advantage he could. Such was life in the Mountain where he dwelled.

“I seem to recall,” said the clerk musingly, “a bulletin I read not long ago. It described a clerk of your description. A former clerk, I should say. Apparently he lost his sash. Too many women workers under him winding up pregnant.”

Craigman said nothing. Deep within his pock-marked face, his eyes burned like torches. 

“A quarter of your collections,” the clerk declared, “as my finder’s fee. That will be in addition to the required remit to the Commonwealth.”

A dirty fist came out from beneath the table. The fingers unclenched, started to reach for the coin, but then they held. Slowly they withdrew. 

And the coin slipped into the clerk’s pocket.  

* * *

Ellen wriggled inside the iron chest. It was dark, and stifling, and very cramped in the hidden space between the chest’s false and real bottoms. She was struggling to make her escape from it. 

Outside she could hear the muffled voice of her father, shouting her cue. An impatient hand thumped the lid. Ellen twisted her body just far enough that she could feel the top of the compartment with her fingertips. She fumbled the smooth surface with her fingertips, searching for a narrow, hidden hand hole and its latch in the corner. The heat from her breath rebounded into her face.

*Where are you?*

Another thump. Ellen was beginning to panic that she would have to give the distress signal when her thumb brushed against a sharp metallic hook. She gave it a flick, the latch sprung the false bottom up, and Ellen kicked the chest lid open. 

She burst out into a rush of daylight and applause from a throng of cheering men gathered on a pier. Panting and plastered with sweat, Ellen blinked at them, spread her arms, and dipped her head in a bow.

“There you are!” Her father joked. 

She turned around and smiled up at him and immediately sensed the mild disapproval hidden behind his showman’s expression. Not from her performance. He thought her skirt was too short. 

It was midmorning, but the day was already hot and fetid on the corner of the dock where Ellen and her father had set up to perform. Teetering columns of casks and barrels offered shade, but little respite from the relentless sun and the press of their audience. Ellen closed the chest and put it away, while her father drew himself up and greeted the crowd:

“My fellow workers,” he began, “Welcome to the noontime show on Pier South-242. I am Harold Eaves. My assistant, Ellen—”

A wild, lusty whoop went up followed by a chorus of shrill whistles.

“Yes, yes,” Harold waved, “she’s lovely, isn’t she. Lovely,” he paused meaningfully, “and maybe lucky—if there’s a man willing to make a wager. . . .”  

That was her next cue. Ellen stroked her hair back and beamed at the crowd of faces and eager hands waving for her notice. As she slowly turned and shared her smile, she tried to pick her mark from among the mass of men. Most here were too old, too wary. The sullen ones with their arms crossed would only be trouble. That one looked too cagey. That one too excited. The blonde longshoreman with the harelip might serve, but he seemed on the verge of passing out in a stupor. Poor pickings, Ellen thought, never letting her smile falter.

“You,” she pointed to a sunburnt, beardless deckhand, probably still an apprentice, trying desperately to pass himself off as one of the seasoned shipmates around him. Ellen made her way past her father, straight for the deckhand, locking her eyes with his, holding out her hand.

“What’s your name?”

He gulped so hard, Ellen feared he might choke on his Adam’s apple. Finally he managed to stammer:

“B-Benny.”

Tell me, Benny.” She leaned close enough that one of her strands of hair brushed his cheek. “Do you like *games*?”

“Y-Y-yeah . . . sure. I guess.” 

“I knew you would!” She pulled him over to a table Harold had set up and had him sit on a stool across from her father. One by one, Harold brought out a set of beige tea cups. “Harold’s got the game all set up. And I’ve got a feeling you’ll be a winner at it. It’s really easy. . . .”  

Ellen lifted her voice so that every one of Benny’s mates, every man on the pier could hear how it worked. Five cups were on the table. One had a tinner under it, a coin worth no more than a couple of turnips. Another would have whatever the player chose to bet. The rest were empty.

Once the bet was made, Harold would proceed to shuffle the cups. Follow the cup with your bet, and when the shuffling was done, point to it. Pick the cup that had your wager, and you win triple your bet. Pick the one with the tinner, and you keep that as a consolation. Otherwise, you lose.

Otherwise was the usual outcome, but it was completely up to Harold. Because the game was completely rigged. Harold’s skilled hands would move the wagered coins in and out from under the cups, into his palms, over to another cup, under the table. The bets would disappear and then reappear (under a cup that wasn’t picked, of course) without so much as a glint of metal or a clink of noise. It was a feat Ellen had often watched, had practiced on and off, but she was nowhere near the marvel of her father’s sleight of hand. 

She had her own role to play in this game, though. No one would ever wager on a rigged game. Which was why they always needed to start with a mark. An idiot they could use. Today it was Benny’s turn to show his friends how easy it was to win at this unwinnable game. 

“So how much do you want to bet?” Ellen coaxed. She gave his elbow an encouraging squeeze. “The bigger your play, the more he’ll pay. C’mon, Benny.” 

His mates began to join in, jostling Benny’s shoulders, whistling, shouting for him to be a man. After what looked like a torment of uncertainty, the deckhand’s trembling hand finally brought out four tinners. It was a paltry wager, and the men on the pier groaned their disapproval. But it served Ellen’s purpose.

“I think it’s a fine bet,” she announced, lifting an arm for silence. “What do you think, Dad?”

Harold nodded benignly. “It’ll do. Young fellow, if you’ll take those coins—no, don’t hand them to me—just set them down right in the middle of the table, so everyone can see them. Here’s my tinner here. Now I’ll cover them both up, your bet and my tinner. Set the other cups here next to them. Now . . . keep your eye on the cup that has your coins. . . .”

Benny did about as well as anyone could. Ellen watched his eyes flutter round in circles like two dull, gray moths, chasing after the cup with his four tinners. His mouth gaped dumbly, while Harold made five clay cups leap about the tabletop like acrobats. Round about, over and under, in and out, the cups spun, and shifted, and shimmied. At last, they came to a halt, and it was Benny’s moment to choose. He pointed to the cup farthest to his left. 

“This one?” Harold tapped his finger on the one Benny had pointed to, nudging it close to the table’s edge, and on the second tap, with his free hand, he slipped four tinners underneath it. No one but Ellen knew what had happened. Benny nodded, and slowly Harold lifted the cup, and there were four tin coins.

The pier erupted with applause, Ellen threw her arms around Benny’s shoulders. All the while, the deckhand’s dumbfounded expression never changed. Not even when Harold made a show of angrily plunking down twelve tinners in front of him. 

“I knew you were a winner!” Ellen clapped excitedly. She spun around with a wide, inviting face:

“So who’s next?” 

Next came a coxswain, then a ship’s cook, three more deckhands, and a carpenter’s mate. Only the carpenter won anything, the one-tinner consolation, and in the span of ten minutes, Harold and Ellen had won back ten times what they had “lost” to young Benny. But the line of wagers only grew, wending all the way around the far piling that marked the next pier. As they shuffled forward for their turns, Ellen worked the queue, keeping the waiting men entertained with magic tricks, and gymnastic stunts, and (for the ones who looked like they might have an especially large bet to place) cups of small beer that she served out free of charge. 

It was shaping up to be their best day this month, but as Ellen made her way back to the table to refill her beer jug, she caught a glimpse of something. Her stomach fell. 

A flash of yellow cloth was worming its way towards their table. A clerk. He looked pale and relatively well-fed, which meant he seldom came around the Docks. Which meant trouble.

As if by instinct, the entire line of waiting seamen grew quiet, then slowly, like a fog being swept away in the wind, they began to disperse. By the time the clerk reached the table, no one but Harold remained.

“What have we here?” the clerk inquired.

Harold looked up, his face fixed into the passive and pleasantly surprised expression every worker reserved for sashes. A portrait of innocence, and industriousness.

“Lucre, sir!” Harold sang, to Ellen’s complete shock. The clerk brought his hand to his mouth to stifle a wheezing laughter. 

“Is it, now?” the clerk shook his head. “What kind of lucre?’   

Harold raised one of the cups. “The gambling kind, sir.” 

“I see. . . . You know, the Commonwealth rather frowns on lucre and gambling. You have a permit, of course?”

Ellen shifted uncomfortably at the clerk’s threat. No one ever got a permit for wagering. It was illegal; which was what made it profitable. They ran a rigged game because the very running of the game was a kind of wager—if they were caught, Ellen and Harold could be fined, or beaten, or imprisoned, or simply disappear. Yet her father seemed unconcerned.

“I’m waiting for my application to be approved,” Harold shrugged. “But I run my game according to the Commonwealth’s guidelines.” He paused. “Care to see for yourself, sir?” 

Ellen watched as the clerk scanned their surroundings. Other than the sidelong glances and wide berths of some passing longshoremen, it would have seemed a perfectly ordinary day on one of the Docks’ countless decrepit outer piers. The waves lapped at the boards underneath in a constant rhythm. An albatross shat on a fishing net left out to dry. A skiff shoved off from a nearby piling, the skipper bellowing curses at the vessels in his way. When the clerk finally spoke, he seemed to be musing aloud:

“It’s funny I should come across your little game of chance. I’ve actually had a run of what you might call good luck. Just this morning. Not that I believe in such nonsense. But I find myself wondering whether I shouldn’t press my good fortune. . . .”

Harold smiled ingratiatingly, and now Ellen began to realize what was actually happening between her father and the clerk.

“They say fortune favors the bold,” Harold observed, then arching an eyebrow at Ellen, added: “Right?”

“Oh, yeah,” Ellen agreed. She drew closer to the clerk and pushed the chair in for him. “Yeah, fortune for the bold. All in when all’s well. Set your sails full and square when the wind’s a-blowing fair—”

Harold cleared his throat to indicate she had helped enough and proceeded to explain the rules of the game to the clerk (though Ellen began to suspect he was already familiar with them). Then Harold asked for the gentleman’s wager. The clerk thought for a moment:

“You can cover triple of whatever I should risk?” he asked mildly.

Harold met the clerk’s gaze. “I wouldn’t last very long out here if I couldn’t pay my obligations.”

The clerk chuckled. “No I don’t suppose you would. Alright. . . .”

He reached into his pocket, fished about among a jingle of coins, and produced one which he set quietly on the table before the middle cup. Ellen let out a gasp. She couldn’t help it. The coin looked to be solid copper. 

But Harold said nothing. He showed the clerk the consolation tinner, hid it under the cup next to the clerk’s bet, and began his shuffle. It was a show like any other—shifting and sliding a succession of cups over the weatherworn surface of a tabletop. No different than any of his other performances today. Oddly, though, after the first few movements, the clerk seemed to lose interest in following his cup. At one point, he yawned, and Ellen thought she saw his eyes following a pelican’s dive for a fish. By the time Harold had finished, the clerk had his arms folded across his chest, as if impatient to be finished.

Harold stopped, and without hesitating, the clerk pointed to the cup closest to him.

Her father smiled, a tad stiffly, Ellen thought. As he always did, Harold tapped the cup to confirm that was the one his customer had chosen.

“Yes, yes,” the clerk waved. “Let’s see it.”

Her father’s small, veined hand rested on top of the cup, trembled ever so slightly, and then brought it up in a quick, fluid sweep, a true showman’s flourish.

There was the clerk’s copper coin, shining dully in the afternoon light.

“Congratulations,” Harold said flatly. “Seems like your luck’s holding.”

“Splendid,” the clerk replied with surprisingly little enthusiasm. “Yours should, too. Once your provide my payout. Then I think I can overlook your infractions here.”

The clerk’s attention wandered once more to the goings-on about the pier, so he could not have noticed what Ellen thought she saw. It was a movement so swift, and so hidden, only years of closely studying her father’s craft enabled Ellen to detect what had happened. A needless fluttering in his fingers as Harold gave the clerk his payout.

Harold counted out three copper coins—where he had them hid, Ellen couldn’t begin to guess—and wished the clerk continued good fortune.

The clerk sniffed at Harold, regarded the bribe laid before him, and then scooped up the coins with seeming indifference. He dropped them into his change pocket, and took his leave without another word, a faint, arrogant smirk spreading across his face.

The moment the clerk was gone, Harold began to methodically pack their wares, a bit more hurried than usual. He was disassembling the table and chairs, stowing them into the aft of their rowing boat that was tethered below.

“Can you help me with the chest, dear?” he prompted.

“Sorry,” she said, coming back to her senses. As she hoisted the chest with her father, Ellen dropped her voice:

“Where did you get—?”

“They’re false,” he whispered. “Coated tinners. I always keep a few handy. For that kind of customer.” 

Ellen found herself gaping at her father, but it was clear he wanted them to hurry, so Ellen held the question she most wanted to ask. It was not until she had cast off the boat’s line and clambered aboard, not until she had plied the oars so that they were well beyond sight of the pier and lost in the labyrinth of the Docks’ quays, that she asked him:

“You at least gave him back his bet. Right?”

Harold squinted in the sunlight. His eyes seemed to sparkle. With a practiced flick of his hand, Harold made an old, weathered coin of pure copper appear out of nowhere.

“Like I said,” he murmured quietly as he turned the tiller to point them home, “fortune favors the bold.”

* * *  

The girl was pretty enough, Marcus Craigman decided. Long legs, a full head of straw colored hair. Looked like she had all her teeth. A bit spindly, probably been taken for a few turns already, but she would do. She would do nicely.

That would be her father, tying off the dingy. He was moving slow, keeping his head down, hugging the shadows around the wharf—Craigman’s wharf, now that he got his papers. Craigman smiled to himself. The old man looked as frail as the girl trying to stow that iron chest. 

Craigman hoisted his pants up, straightened the piece of amber-dyed cloth he now wore for a sash, and checked to make sure his truncheon and dagger were hanging in front. So that there would be no mistake about his business. He strode straight towards the stooped worker, who spun about at the sound of his arrival.

Craigman barked at him:

“What were you doin’ on Pier South-242, Harold?”

The old man blinked up at him, then quickly got to his feet as soon as he noticed Craigman’s sash and weapons.

“I’m sorry, sir?”

“I said,” Craigman stepped closer so that he loomed over him, “what were you doin’ over on Pier South-242? That’s a far cry from your home here, ain’t it, Harold?”

Harold’s eyes were darting all around. But he kept his voice level:

“You seem to know me already,” he said slowly, “but I haven’t had the pleasure of meeting you—”

“Craigman. I’ve been assigned to Wharf—” he scanned the place for a sign or a marker, “—to this here wharf.”

“Oh,” Harold replied. “We, uhm . . . we haven’t had a clerk for some time.”

“You do now. So listen close. It’s my job to set things right around here. I saw a note about you and your girl. You two were doing a magic show that turned into a game, of a gambling nature—don’t try to deny it, I got witnesses who’ll turn you out for a tinner.”

The girl was staring at him, too. There was a flash of hatred in those squinting gray eyes. But she kept her mouth shut. 

“Now,” Craigman continued, “the bulletin I read didn’t say so, but I heard you played a game with a clerk. And helped yourself to a copper coin that didn’t belong to you.”

Harold’s face drew tight. 

“Yeah,” Craigman smiled, “you’re caught. I could take you up right now. You and your girl.”

“You could,” Harold said softly. He tied a line off around a cleat and wiped his hands against the side of his pants. “But you’re not going to. Else you would have cracked me on the head already.”

Craigman laughed:

“I might still. It depends. You got the coin?”

“Not on me,” Harold shook his head.

“Figured.”

“But I can get it.”

“You’d better.” Craigman let the threat hang for a while. “Maybe I can ignore that note about you. Maybe I can even let you keep playing your game. But first you gotta  pay your fees.”

“The coin,” Harold nodded.

“The coin. Your take from the pier. And your girl.”

Craigman heard her let out a gasp. The little strumpet was pretending to be offended. He eyed her until she turned away, blushing. This was going to be fun. 

“I’m coming back tonight,” Craigman said, “at three bells. Make sure you got my coin and my take.” He jerked his head toward the girl. “And make sure she’s wearing that skirt.”

The dad kept mum. He was standing at the edge of the dock, the wind blowing his hair in his wrinkled face, looking at Craigman like a whipped dog. 

“The coin, the take . . . and the girl,” Harold bowed.

* * *
    
A fog was beginning to roll in. Harold drew a tattered cloak over his shoulders and walked slowly in a circle around his hovel on the wharf. The moon gave a marbled light. Gray ships at anchor swayed and groaned in silvered waters, while dark figures called out to one another in the night. Harold waited, and listened to a shipyard’s noises, and for a moment held a slender hope that the clerk might have passed out in a stupor, or forgotten where Harold lived, or had an accident. Such things happened to clerks, from time to time. 

But not tonight, not with this clerk.

Out of the mist came a steady thump of footsteps followed by a silhouette. 

“Well?” Craigman’s voice demanded.

“Good evening, sir,” Harold greeted.

The clerk stumbled on a plank as he emerged from the shroud of the fog. His eyes were blinking rapidly, and his cheeks glowed as bright as signal lanterns. From the smell of his breath, Harold could tell the man was stewed with gin.

“Where—where’s m’money?” Craigman slurred. “Where’s my girl?”

“Your payment’s over here. . . .” 

Harold led him past a run of shanties to the end of the wharf where there was a gate that barred a narrow flight of wooden stairs. Harold flipped the lock and up he went. Craigman followed, stumbling, swearing at every other step. 

The top was nothing more than an open floor of wood, five yards square, with no railings, no lines or cleats, no stores. It had a peeling coat of green paint to mark the edge of a shipping channel in the churning waters some twenty feet below. And at its farthest corner, right where Harold had placed it, was the chest. 

Ellen was crouched next to it. She didn’t say a word at their approach, but kept her head low, her shoulders demure. 

“Would you like to count out your coins,” Harold offered, “before I, uhm—clear out for a bit?”

“Eh?” Craigman paused. His voice was thick with spirits, but he still had enough sense to remember that money’s no good until it’s in your pocket. “Yeah . . . yeah, I would.” He brushed past Ellen and tried to tug at the lid. “Locked, too? You’re a careful one, ain’t you.”

Ellen reached into the neckline of her blouse and answered for Harold:

“We workers can’t be too careful. Here, allow me. . . .”

She brought out a key—a cheap, rusted thing—fit it into its hole and creaked the chest lid open. Harold watched as Craigman stooped over to peer inside. 

It was, of course, completely empty. The clerk spun around, his eyes flashing:

“What’s going on?”

“It has a false bottom,” Harold held his hands up to demonstrate. “Ellen, would you show Master Clerk how it works?”

“Sure.” She slipped around the chest and grasped Craigman’s hand in her own and spoke coyly. “You just reach down into that round hole there—you know how to do that, right?” The clerk grunted approvingly. “Right here in the corner. There you go. All the way, right . . . there.”

Craigman was leaning most of his bulk over into the chest, letting Ellen guide him into position. Leering at one desire, reaching shoulder deep for another. His attention completely diverted from the trick that was being played. The sleight on his hand. The release hook and hand hole that Harold had turned into a trap. 

There was a loud iron clank.

Craigman bellowed a curse, as Ellen leaped clear of the chest. 

“Bastard!”

Craigman was pinned: bent over the chest’s ridge, his wrist now manacled to a magic prop’s false bottom. His free arm swung about in wild spasms as he pulled and tugged his body to try to free himself. The chest rattled slightly, but the lock held his hand fast.

“You Craggie bitch!” he shrieked. “I’ll tear you to pieces! Get me out of this, now!”

Ellen bent down near the chest’s corner just beyond Craigman’s reach, and made sure he saw her:

“Oh my goodness,” she said with mock surprise. A wicked grin spread across her face, and Harold felt his heart welling up with pride. “Did that lock get stuck again? Here I thought Dad had fixed that. Good thing I took this out ahead of time.”

She made a gesture with her hand, turned her wrist, and fluttered her fingers into a pinching gesture. When she opened them again, she was holding a copper coin, a real one, right before Craigman’s eyes. A respectable reveal, Harold thought to himself. Her sleight of hand was improving. 

Craigman roared:

“That’s—*mine!*”

Harold feared the clerk might tear his own arm off if only to reach Ellen with the other.

“Ellen,” Harold said, “Time for the finale.”

Craigman swiveled his head: “Wha—?” 

Harold grasped a handle on one side of the chest, while Ellen did the same on the other. Together they heaved the chest up, forcing Craigman up with it.

The clerk was a stout man, burly and heavy limbed, but he was sotted from drink, and off his balance, and hobbled by the fetter that bound his wrist. Still, he put up a fight. His free hand thrashed wildly after Harold, trying to grasp his shirt, his face, his crotch; he took a wild swing at Ellen and almost pummeled her skull. 

“Now!” Harold yelled.

Harold and Ellen rocked the chest once like a pendulum, then let it loose. It went over the side of the platform without a sound. 

Harold Eaves caught only a glimpse of Marcus Craigman’s eyes, bloodshot and roiling in their sockets, as he was whisked away. A trail of snot was running down his nose. The chest plummeted down into the ocean, while the man whose arm was fastened to it went tumbling with it. A flurry of helpless, pointless thrashing in the air, a wisp of yellow sash, a plunk in the waves below, and then the clerk was gone. 

As Craigman disappeared into the depths, Ellen slipped his coin into her pocket.

©September 2020, Matthew C. Lucas

Matthew C. Lucas‘s fantasy fiction publications include a forthcoming novel, The Mountain, from Montag Press, a recently signed historical fantasy novel, Yonder & Far, with Ellysian Press, and shorter fiction appearing in Bards & Sages Quarterly, The Society of Misfit Stories, and Collective Realms. He has also written a legal textbook. This is his first appearance in Swords & Sorcery.