Not Technically Cheating (Part 2)

When Ethan unlocked the smartphone with the passcode, Mia may have only been smiling slightly on the outside, but she was beaming on the inside. She had of course been trying to unlock the phone on her own since she had come into possession of it, but had never been able to do it. The fingerprint scanner only reacted to Ethan's fingerprints. She, of course had over time noticed the number pad, and suspected that pressing the correct combination of numbers would unlock the smartphone, but up until now, she did not know that correct combination. When she saw Ethan absentmindedly pressing a combination of four numbers, and then the phone unlocked, she was thrilled, and immediately set about memorizing those four numbers. Judging by the look on Ethan's face a few seconds later, he realized his mistake, but it was too late.

Mia then walked over to the Kartenmerken area, where a line had formed around Frank Von Weizen of young audacious gamblers waiting patiently to lose their money to this national minister.

Mia waited in line, while practicing typing the four digit code into the smartphone that used to belong to Ethan. By the time Mia had reached the front of the line almost 45 minutes later, she had basically memorized the four numbers to unlock the smartphone.

"Well, I didn't expect to see you here young Lady Von Ritter. What is that in your hands, if I may ask" Said The Minister of Agriculture, Frank Von Weizen, mostly sober.

"Good to see you, Lord Von Weizen. This is just a new type of parchment from out east. I thought I'd try my luck against you at this game, if I may. How does a 250 gold coin wager sound to start off with?" Said Mia while pulling out a bag with 250 gold coins in it.

At this point, with Mia taking out that much money, there was a slight commotion. Von Weizen himself was shocked at this amount. Although Frank Von Weizen was a very wealthy noble, and a national minister, he was not one who kept 250 gold coins on him at any given time. He had much more than that in all of his property and land holdings, but even for high ranking noble families, this was no small amount of money to have in cash. In fact, the only reason that Mia had this much on her is because she brought it with her from the Castle Von Ritter with the intention of using it to bet against Von Weizen here tonight. To bet this much i a single game was almost unheard of, of course, but Mia was expecting him to agree to it. After all, if he refused to play against her, it may look like he was scared, and then he would never hear the end of it. Not many people would want to play against him in the future if he refused this bet now, and then his easy source of income would greatly decrease. His real incentive for acceptance was a lot more simple than that however: He was a gambling man. He couldn't see stakes that high and turn it down.

"I don't have that much in cash on me, but..." Frank said.

"That's okay. You can owe me when I beat you." Said Mia.

Frank Von Weizen could not stand for this last subtle taunt. He was planning on showing this silly girl her place and exactly why he was known as the 'World Champion of Kartemmerken'.

"I accept. 250 gold sounds like a perfect amount for me." Said the old gambler.

They told the moderator the amount that they were betting. They then sat down down in front of their 16 rectangle grids, and the curtain was drawn between them.

The moderator then said "Go." and he drew back the curtain from in front of his table, and Mia snapped a photo of it, while Von Weizen desperately tried to memorize the pattern and onlookers looked on intently. Sixteen seconds later the curtain was drawn in front of the moderator's table and the game began.

Mia quickly got all sixteen cards correct with the photo as her reference. 160 seconds later, the moderator said "Stop." and all of the curtains were pulled back.

The crowd was shocked to see fourteen cards correct by Von Weizen, but were even more shocked to see a perfect score of sixteen from Mia.

"Rematch! I demand a rematch! Double or nothing!" Said Von Weizen.

"You can't just demand-" The moderator started to say

"No. It's fine. We can play as many times as Lord Von Weizen would like to." Said Mia while smiling.

Over the next half of an hour they played many more games of Kartenmerken at varying amounts of money wagered. Slowly, the net worth of the Von Weizen family went from about 1200 gold coins before Frank started playing with Mia to -400 gold coins after a half of an hour. That meant that he now owed Mia an amount equal to 1600 gold coins. Von Weizen was now technically more than 400 gold coins poorer than the average commoner.

"...I'm ruined..." Von Weizen blurted out.

Mia smiled at this, because for her plan to succeed, she needed him to owe her an amount of money that he had no hope of repaying.

"Maybe we can go to a secluded area and talk about the possibility of my forgetting this debt." whispered Mia.

Frank then reluctantly followed her to an empty room usually reserved for private card games, not knowing what ridiculous favor she might ask of him in order to forgive such a huge debt.

"What do you want?" He asked.

"I just want you to vote to remove Otto Von Geld from his position as Treasury Minister tomorrow when a vote is called, and then your debt is forgiven." Said Mia.

"That's it?! I'll do it! I don't care about Von Geld, I'll vote against him in a heartbeat to get this debt forgiven, but is that really all that you're going to ask of me?" Said Frank.

"Yep. That's it." Mia confirmed.

"Then I guess I'll go home. That's enough for me tonight. I'll be sure to vote against him tomorrow though." Said Frank.

"I hope to see you then." Said Mia.

Mia then went to tell Ethan who had been winning a fair bit himself that it was time to leave.

"So, how did Kartenmerken go?" Ethan asked after they got into the carriage.

"I accomplished what I came for." Mia said.

"Well that's good." Ethan said as they made their way back to the inn.