“BECAUSE HE GAVE THE MONEY AWAY! THAT’S WHY!!!”
“Yes. That would explain it.” Massha nodded thoughtfully.
“C’mon, Aahz! I didn’t give it away.”
As I’ve discovered before, it’s a lot easier to find your breath when you’re under attack.
“Whoa! Wait!” my apprentice said, stepping between us. “Before you two get started again, talk to Massha. Remember, I’m the one who wasn’t there.”
“Well, the Kid and I got to talking after the game. He’s really a nice guy, and I found out that he had pretty much been betting everything he had …”
“That’s what he claimed,” Aahz snorted. “I think he was making a play for our sympathies.”
“… and I got to thinking. I had worked hard to be sure that both the Kid’s and my reputations would be intact, no matter how the game came out. What I really wanted to do was to retire from the dragon poker circuit and let him take on all the hotshot challengers …”
“That much I’ll agree with.”
“Aahz! Just let him tell it. Okay?”
“… But he couldn’t keep playing if he was broke, which would leave me as the logical target for the up-and-comings, so I let him keep the quarter of a million he had lost…”
“See! SEE!!! What did I tell you?”
“… as a LOAN so he could use it as a stake in future games….”
“That’s when I knew he had… a loan??”
I grinned at my partner.
“Uh-huh. As in ‘put your money to work for you instead of stacking it,’ a concept I believe you found very interesting when it was first broached. Of course, you had already gone off half-cocked and stomped away before we got to that part.”