“Well,” I said again, fiercer now, trying to sound as grown-up and manly as possible. “This is a tale about a small-town boy living far away from his home. Far, far from the land of his birth, the Riverlands, where the water is always rushing and the boats are on the move and the source of all your food is right there, just outside your door, a whole river of fortune, a treasure chest you drop a line in and pull up who knows what. This is the story of a small-town boy exiled from his beloved pop, forced to coop up with his mom in a land of dirt and gossip and boredom. This is a story about a boy who loved his pop so much he’d do anything to find him back, who would face any kind of dangers, who would stare down death in his one single black beady eye just to gain back what he’d lost, his pop and his river life, every last thing he’d ever held dear.”

I said it just like that, with my voice deeper and fuller and stronger than I knew possible. I said it all and I didn’t crack even once, and that was a fact. It was the story of my life as I saw it, and I told it as true and direct as I could.

It didn’t quite seem to do the trick though. I could tell the crowd heard it, that they could see it too, even old Radegar’s eyes were wide and focused as the pictures flickered in his mind. They heard it, they even saw it, but it didn’t crack them open, not one bit. My story didn’t make it into their hearts.

I wondered why.

Still, I hadn’t fallen flat on my face, and that was a fact. I could do this. I could play Parsnit as well as anybody else, and I had my first round to prove it.

Next came the Home card. Radegar drew his three, and his eyes went wide with big obvious pleasure, like he’d pulled exactly the cards he wanted. He laid down the Wayward River, one of my favorite cards, and one of Pop’s too. You could recognize it, the way the water curved and curled, how rocks jutted out of the blue like the river’s own fangs, like if you didn’t keep rushing by the river would snap its jaws shut and swallow you whole. The Wayward River is the card for bandits and wild folks, for those who live by the cunning of their minds and their skill with a knife, the exact kind of folk my pop was.

But again, Radegar’s card looked a little bit different from Pop’s. It was the Wayward River, sure, except instead of the swirling gray-blue gone on and on, it was the murky green of the swamp, the water rushing by in a slow and steady current, tugging quiet underneath. Instead of rocks jabbing upward like in Pop’s deck, Radegar’s had knotty cypress knees poking out, with gray moss beards dangling down to the water, and in the far background of the card, a great long distance away, there was a figure holding a lantern, standing upright in his boat like he was searching for something long gone and lost. It was a beautiful card when Radegar drew it, just as free and wild as Pop’s, but with a mournful side, like all those good times came at a price.