There's a machine in the back room of this tavern. Small one. Built to catch a particular kind of lie — the kind a silver-tongued storyteller tells when he gets ahead of his own dice.

Everyone said we'd need something bigger. A whole engine of suspicion — expensive, hungry, clever. We built the small honest thing first, mostly expecting to watch it fail.

So we lied to it. Dressed wolves as regulars. Slipped old blood into new sentences. Ran every con we know, and we know a few.

It held. Every latch. The big clever machine never gets built — the small one turned the last trick away at the door and asked, politely, for the dice.

The fire's going. More when there's more.