The tight player calls; the wide player mucks his cards.

Shiro deals an eight of spades on the river.

She's so far ahead, the only thing that matters is extracting more value. One more raise, another 300 chips into the pot.

The tight player is nervous. He's not quite sweating, but he looks distinctly uncomfortable and he's fidgeting like he wants to stand up and pace. After twenty seconds of thinking about it, he calls and shows his hand.

"Two pair, threes and nines," Shiro murmurs, sweeping the chips into her stack once more. It would be crass to comment on her ace-king prediction coming true.

"It's like playing poker with a statue," the wide player jokes. "You could sit out in the garden and birds would land on you."

The tight player looks like he wants to cry.

"I like birds," Shiro says inanely, passing the deal to the tight player. All she can think is that Sora would know what to say to make him feel better.

(She would try, but she doesn't want to risk making him more upset. If he leaves the table, she can't keep taking his chips.)

Stephanie is lurking, incognito.

After officiating the start of the tournament she retreated to the stairwell and swapped out her dress for a servant's uniform. A completely different hairstyle beneath an old scarf, some grease smudged across her face, a pair of half-moon spectacles, and she's suddenly hard to recognize as the princess if you're not looking for her. She's written herself into the catering org chart under a different name, where her role is to take down the rate at which the guests are eating through the castle's pantries so the kitchens can adjust their output.

This is entirely superfluous – the staff are more than capable of tracking that on their own – but it gives her an excuse to stand around taking notes anywhere in the great hall while no one gives her a second thought.

The first page in her notebook is filled with numbers describing food consumption. It's superfluous, but why not double-check her kitchen's work while she's at it? It's also what observers expect to see, should anyone catch a glimpse of her handwriting.

The other pages are more interesting. Sora and Shiro have given her instructions on how to identify strong players – in practice, that designation only appears to apply to Chloe Zell, but there are some warning signs she's on the lookout for between hands, just in case. Right now, she's standing behind Zell and observing.

Her notebook has a separate row of tallies for how often Zell has raised, called or folded, and in what order. The last pages of the notebook list various showdowns, including Zell's final hand and whether she won. It works out to nine different numbers, plus a tenth one for hands where she wasn't able to record all the information. They're labelled as different types of appetizers rather than poker statistics, just in case. She'll reconstitute the original meanings for Shiro later.

Zell has been playing for one and three-quarter hours, which works out to 197 hands at her table. 129 of them were folded instantly, while the remaining 68 were played out to varying conclusions. The main thing Stephanie has learned from this exercise is that Chloe Zell is extremely good at poker, but Sora clearly expects this information to be useful so she's doing her best to keep that tenth tally short.

A servant emerges from the kitchen armed with a plate of water glasses. With the amount of alcohol they've been serving, the butlers have decided to remind the guests that other beverages exist ahead of schedule.

She'll have one of those. Keeping score is thirsty work.

"Don't mind if I do," says a nearby woman, taking a glass for herself.

Stephanie thinks she's seen this woman before. Recently, in fact. Her face is familiar, somehow. And her voice… oh no, now she's staring at her.

"Begging your pardon, miss," she says deferentially, looking away.

"Worry not."

:We have a problem. The princess has been watching you play poker for at least thirty minutes. I mistook her for one of the maids until just now.:

:Yes? How is this a problem?:

:She's tallying something. If it's data on the hands you've been playing—:

:—she's looking for proof that I'm winning too much. Blast. What are my options?:

:Princess Stephanie hasn't spoken to anyone since I first noticed her. No one is using magic to read her mind or look over her shoulder. I don't think she's passed anything on yet.:

:You think she has confederates?:

:This is an unusually sophisticated analysis, by human standards, and you have forbidden her from playing. My guess is that she plans to shore up her argument and induce one of your opponents into accusing you of cheating. Possibly one of the people you're playing with right now.:

:Can't you read their minds to confirm?:

:It would take too long to uncover traces of the conspiracy if they aren't actively thinking about it, which they are not.:

What to do, what to do…

:Continue as planned until I give the signal, then get up to take a break and rotate tables. Pick one with new players. At the next table, play unaided. If Princess Stephanie introduces an accusation at that point, it won't stick. We resume once I've confirmed that the princess does not suspect my involvement.:

:Got it. ❤️: