You found the door the way everyone does — by taking a wrong turn on purpose. Down the stair behind the bookshop that closed in 1931, past the coat-check with no attendant, into a parlour where the clocks have politely stopped.
The Proprietor doesn't take money. Money, he says, is a rumour. Here you wager glim — bottled candlelight, minted from hours you were going to waste anyway. He slides a pouch of one hundred across the felt and taps the machine in the corner: three brass reels, older than the building above it.
Win his glim and he'll tell you what this place is.
He always keeps that bargain. Eventually.
You step out. Upstairs, the bookshop is a laundromat, or a chapel, or a bookshop again — the city has moved on by minutes or years, and it will not say which.
In your pocket: no glim, no trinkets, no brass key. Only the small lantern the Proprietor pressed into your hand at the stair — and it will not go out. When you find the door again (and you do; you always do) the machine warms like an old dog hearing a familiar step on the stair.
| ◆◆◆Three Moons | 50 × wager |
| ◆◆◆Three Ships | 25 × |
| ◆◆◆Three Moths | 15 × |
| ◆◆◆Three Keys | 10 × |
| ◆◆◆Three Hourglasses | 8 × |
| ◆◆◆Three Lanterns | 5 × |
| Any pair (the Moon stands in) | 2 × |
| A lone Moon on the line | wager back |