The Call

The stall where people are laughing

There is no keeper here that you can find. There is a table, and six people around it who did not arrive together, and a deck being dealt by whoever is nearest.

One of them is nine feet tall and made mostly of joints. One is a customs official from a dimension with a lot of forms, still in the hat. They are playing something with almost no rules — match a pair, do not be last — and the room they have made in the middle of a market is unmistakably a room.

Somebody deals you in without asking. It takes about three hands. By the fourth you are arguing with the tall one about whether that counted, and you know two things about the customs official's mother.

In your arms

  • a mapa map of a room nobody has built yet, with the furniture left to you