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A-Yao pulled a high card and everyone groaned.
“I’m the banker then,” he said over his siblings protestations. “Stakes are standard. A-Su, shuffle.”
“You’re always the banker first,” Jin Zixuan complained as he waited for the deck of thin ivory cards to come his way. “It throws the rest of us off our game.”
“You don’t have a game, A-Xuan.” Jin Guangyao said sweetly. “Deal.”
Grumbling, he distributed the cards.
For the next few minutes there was frowning and muttering. To Jin Guangyao’s left Qin Su was mouthing words to herself. To his right Jin Zixuan was admirably stone faced which gave the game away more than any confusion would; he only got distressed when he thought he had some combination of cards that might win but couldn’t remember the rules. Across the table Mo Xuanyu, the youngest member of their club, was eating grapes and staring out the window.
“Can we begin?”
Cautiously, Qin Su laid a card down on the table. It was a sensible play, a 3 Strings, getting her lowest cards out of the way first. She had the second greatest skill at games, after Jin Guangyao who grew up in a house of gambling as well as disputable affections. Next to prostitutes, old ladies were the keenest players and her mother’s friends loved apparently loved Tien Gow.
Mo Xuanyu went next, putting down the lowest card in the suit. As Jin Zixuan frowned at his hand, Jin Guangyao piped up.
“Did you hear that the Ouyang family had a boy? A good thing too, otherwise the inheritance would have gone to the cadet branch.”
Zixuan’s eyes briefly flicked to him then back to his hand. “You can’t distract me that easily.”
“I heard that Sect Leader Ouyang invited a doctor from Jintan to attend to the baby,” Qin Su added, pouring everyone at the table more tea.
“That’s a long way to travel. I wonder if he’d have gone to the same trouble if his wife had another girl? Oh, I’ve won the trick.” Jin Guangyao soaked in Mo Xuanyu’s distracted applause and Jin Zixuan’s fond disapproval. The circumstances under which he’d gotten these siblings was subpar, however they’d proven tolerable.
It helped that they were hopeless in their own ways (A-Su excluded). It was hard to feel threatened by Zixuan whose six month old had thrown up on him last week, or Mo Xuanyu with his dreamy gaze. The qualities that made them an acceptable family just so happened to make them horrible card players.
The secret to Madiao was cooperation. Everyone had to play together against the banker. It was, in theory why they’d chosen it over other games, but in practice Jin Guangyao’s siblings seemed to forget the point every time they played. He didn’t mind when he was the banker but it was hard to wrangle them when he was on the other side.
“Next hand,” Qin Su said, laying down her card. Another safe play. Mo Xuanyu, poor dear, followed it with another one of the lowest valued cards. “All I have are the bad ones,” he complained.
With anyone else, this could be disregarded as idle chatter, or even bluffing, but the three of them had developed a keen sense for things that tended to slip their little brother’s mind.
“How many bad cards?” Qin Su asked.
Mo Xuanyu shamelessly showed her his hand and she sighed. “Oh, A-Yu. If you have the four lowest you have to tell us, it means you automatically win the round.”
“Now, an argument could be made that since the point is strategy, not noticing disqualifies him from reaping the rewards,” Jin Guangyao pointed out.
“You could make that argument but we won’t,” Qin Su said firmly.
“Does this mean we have to start the round over?” Jin Zixuan asked, looking pained. “I promised A-Li I’d be back by xu shi.”
Jin Guangyao started gathering up hands and reshuffling them. “We’d be done faster if you could make up your mind about which card you want to play.” It was nice to finally be secure enough in his position that he could be impolite to his half-brother.
“We’d also be done faster if you stopped cheating and then lying about it,” snapped Qin Su, taking the cards from his hands.
Mo Xuanyu raised his hand and then when no one seemed likely to call on him, spoke out over the squabbling. “We could just not play cards and talk for an hour?”
The four of them looked at each other.
“I would have won though,” Jin Guangyao said.
“We know.”