Carom on Call

Felix Lawrence has a wife, a quiet life and no standing anyone can see, until two men turn up with a billiards challenge and an audience for it. His master had turned on him three years before, and the memory of everything up to that point went with it, so he does not know what he is walking into. The memory comes back during the match, and with it the fact that he was the masked champion of the game. He beats them. The setup behind the challenge comes apart in public once he starts naming the parts of it. The Sovereign holds a banquet for his return and puts him across the table from the Aravian side's billiards champion, and he takes that one as well. Aravian forces have been assembling quietly through all of it, and what he picks up at the banquet goes to the people who need to know about it.