"...Well, I guess we could gamble for her. Winner takes all. You have been dicing up to now, so I suppose we could roll for her."
Five sets of eyes get a gleam to them as they look at each other and you. Their thoughts are written clearly on their faces, "Yeah... This hick will be easy to clean out, and I can beat my buddies too and have her all to myself."
"OK," offers one, "we'll use my dice."
"No, mine" another objects.
"Mine!" that may be all three of the others.
You let them argue for a second before, "Gentlemen, we can use them all. Each of us will use a set and then pass them to the left. The next fellow, to the right, will do the same and so will the following rollers. So in the 2nd round, we will each have new dice. We continue and eventually each of us will use each of the dice." You hope you have rated these louts correctly. If they think about it, they may realize this is a rather complicated scheme for some ignorant hick to come up with.
"But why do we need to roll more than once?" asks the smartest, or more likely the least stupid, of the guards.
"I am having to put up the girl." you point out, "So you should put up your pay just to be fair. And my dad warned me there are a lot of sharps in the big city." In fact, you suspect you are facing 5 of them. "You wouldn't want to risk everything on just one roll, would you?" Again the guards exchange looks and you can see they are not sure they can out-cheat each other, and so they agree to the terms you suggest. They suggest some of their own, which you act suspicious of, saying you fear they might be unfair, which they are, But since each is lured by the winner takes all rule and so they protect themselves from too biased rules, and protect you as well. You "innocently" allow a few little tricks to slip in.
Now starts the dice rolling, and the dice passing thru your hands. All of them loaded of course, mostly quite grossly so. You had assumed they were cheats of course, but that they had not caught each other? Your low opinion of them takes another drop. More important, you have your great uncle's dice collection on you, and many lessons on how to use them. As each set of the dice reach you, they are replaced by your dice and soon you control exactly who will win and when.
You of course do not win right away. In fact, you are behind a fair amount of the time. These louts would be happy to simply claim you cheated, beat you up and claim the girl as forfeit even if you were completely honest. A quick win would be too suspicious and you would be deprived of your winnings, quite painfully, So you need a trick so you can win by "accident".
You keep the game balanced for a few rounds as you measure the others. then you have picked out you "winner". Even among this obnoxious crowd, he stands out and is hated by all the others, who would shun him if they had somebody else who could stand them. Even better, he is a bad winner, lording it over the lose and getting them even madder at him. Now, you make sure he wins, making sure you barely win enough to stay in the game. One by one, the others are tapped out and the pile of coin in front of the jerk continues to grow, and to your joy, he gets even more overbearing, rubbing his victories in and describing just what he is going to be doing to Nicole soon.
Finally only you and he are still in the game. "Let's get this over with. I want to celebrate with my "apprentice." So put in all your money or forfeit, and I'll match it." You shrug and do as he suggests, acting as if in despair instead of elation. "Now if I roll a seven, it's all mine." He rubs the dice, rather clearly substituting in some more loaded dice. Then he rolls and the two dice come up a six and a one... And a third die falls out of his sleeve, and also rolls a six. [More precisely, you had put the die there, and now had pulled it out, but you are the only one who knows that. The lout might suspect since he probably knows there was not another die up his sleeve, but who is going to believe him when the evidence against him is so obvious?]
"Hey!" one of the losers points out, "Those aren't the dice we were using earlier!"
But you ignore the interruption and say, "13 is a losing roll. So the pot, and my apprentice, is mine. Gentlemen, I can't claim the rest of the coin. I propose you split it since he has presumably been cheating you too." The lout tries to protest, but instead of being 5-1 against you, the guards are now 4-1 against him. Slowly and reluctantly, the jerk surrenders his coin, while you grab Nicole and start to leave.
"Just what makes you think I'm going with you?" is her negative response.
"Because I am going away from both your 'father' and those guards, and from Storkey. No matter how bad I turn out to be, I'm still your best bet."
Nicole looks, or rather glares, at those others present and turns back to you. "The answer's still no." She is not talking about going with you.
"We'll see, but right now I've got a way you could end up rich enough to buy this inn and everybody in it. Come along now and I'll explain it."
"I don't believe a word you are saying." Nicole declares. But she comes along as you leave the inn.