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Authors: Sharon Shinn

Fortune and Fate (Twelve Houses) (19 page)

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She grinned. “Soldiers are more likely to play cards or throw dice. They tend to pick games they don’t have to think about too hard. They don’t want to be focusing too much on something else in case there’s a sudden call for troops.” She gestured at the box. “Anyway, no one wants to pack something like that in a saddlebag. You’d never take it on the road.”

“Do you play well enough to indulge me with a round or two?”

She was surprised. “If you want. I won’t be much of a challenge for you, though, if you’re any good.”

He opened the box and then unfolded its sides so that it made a rather large playing board with a deeply grooved surface. The counters and game pieces lay inside a purple velvet bag that he tossed to Wen.

“You know how to parcel out the pieces, don’t you? I’ll deal the cards.”

So she divided the swords, the shields, the castles, the horses, the crowns, and the coins. This was a particularly fine set, with some pieces made of silver, some of gold, and small jewels inset on the hilts and tiaras. Most cruxanno games she’d seen had been made of wood, though sometimes the crowns were pewter.

“You realize we could be playing straight through till dawn and not be done,” she said. “I’ve seen cruxanno games that lasted a month.”

“I thought we’d play a few hours a night and keep the game going for as long as it takes,” he said. “I have a pair of friends who played a single game that endured through a solid year. They still talk about that.”

Privately, Wen thought those had to be the dullest men in Gillengaria, but of course she didn’t say so. But who would spend so much time on a war game when they could have been practicing with real weapons instead?

“Ours better not take that long,” she said. “I won’t be here a year.”

He held out a hand and she poured his counters into his palm. “Indeed, no. We’ll have our own game wrapped up long before you go.”

They were quiet for a few moments while they deployed their troops and chose their fortifications. Wen was usually pretty haphazard at cruxanno, but she felt some pressure to defend the honor of her profession against a man whose knowledge of warfare was entirely theoretical. So she chose her bases and her targets a little more carefully than she usually might, and frowned over the disposition of her shields.

“I claim the oaks,” Jasper Paladar said.

“I yield the oaks, but I claim the southern mountains,” she replied, and the game was on.

They played for nearly two hours, Wen growing more absorbed than she expected. The opening stages of cruxanno were the least interesting to watch, if you were a spectator, because most of the heavy work went on inside the opponents’ heads as they worked out the strategy that would guide them for the rest of the game. Wen could tell that Jasper Paladar had his first couple dozen moves pretty well thought out, with backup maneuvers in mind to counter any threat her men might offer. She rarely planned that far ahead; she was more used to reacting than plotting an attack at the beginning.

“I see your strength is defense, not offense,” he said after they had passed most of that time in silence. “Which actually makes you a tricky opponent, because you don’t offer many vulnerabilities. But if I can draw you out—”

“If you want to have any hope of defeating me, you can’t be telling me how you have analyzed my strategy,” she said in some exasperation.

He looked up in surprise and then broke into a surprisingly sweet smile. “Perhaps that’s why I frequently lose at cruxanno,” he said. He pushed himself away from the table and leaned back in his chair. “I think we should pause right here for the night and think over our plans for tomorrow.”

She looked doubtfully at the board. “Will anyone move our pieces? I hate to lose all my work so far.”

“I will inform the housekeeper that the room is not to be entered unless I’m here to guard it.” He stretched his long legs out before him. “You’re better than you led me to expect, by the way, and I’m relieved to see it.”

She laughed. “Why? What does it matter?”

“I have a visitor arriving in two weeks, and he is an inveterate player. I don’t expect to beat him, but I do think if I can offer him a challenging game, it will impress him. And I want to introduce him to the idea that I can be dangerous.”

She surveyed him in silence. Thin, a little tired, with that bemused scholar’s face and those smooth hands, Jasper Paladar looked anything but dangerous. “It might be hard to convince him, even so,” she answered.

He was amused again. “Actually, more accurately, I want him to be surprised at the notion that I might be more dangerous than he thinks.”

“Well, that might be easier, I suppose. Who is this fellow?”

“Zellin Banlish.” When her expression merely showed polite interest, he added, “Serlord Zellin. The father of the man who abducted Karryn.”

The words made Wen scramble upright in her chair. “You’ve invited the serlord here? To play
games
? I’ve been wondering why there hasn’t been some kind of retribution for what that wretched devvaser did! You should be threatening to storm his house and burn it to the ground, not having him over for tea and cruxanno!”

He laid his arms along the armrests of the chair and watched her. “Violence is not always the right response to violence, no matter what you might think,” he said. “Sometimes, despite the most fervent desire a person might have, the cost of meeting brutality with brutality is simply too high.”

“If someone hits me, I’m going to hit him back,” she said with heat. “And anyone who goes around hitting other people should expect to be punched in the face.”

“I can’t prove that Tover took Karryn.”

“She told you he did!”

“But I didn’t see him do it. In fact, there were no witnesses at all. Tover is likely to say Karryn went with him willingly. He could say he was surprised when she chose to leave his protection—and worried for her safety once he realized she was alone on a back road of Fortunalt.”

“Well,
I
saw her with him and there was no question in my mind that she was there against her will.”

“But serlord Zellin is not the sort of man who would believe the protestations of an unknown soldier if they contradict the testimony of his son.”

Wen’s hands made tight little fists. There had been a day that anything she said would have been believed by the king himself, no questions asked, so it was doubly infuriating to hear that someone could doubt her word.

“You see the problem,” Lord Jasper continued. “I want to convey the story to him in such a way that he realizes I know his son is guilty of offering harm to my ward and that I will not tolerate such actions in the future. I also want the serlord to believe I am capable of ruthless justice—and to warn his son away from ever incurring my wrath.”

“I don’t see how a game of cruxanno is going to prove any of that to him.”

He smiled. “It will be the conversation as well as the game that will convince him.” He glanced around the room. “And the setting, perhaps. Something intimidating. This room seems more imposing than my little study.”

“Have a couple guards standing watch,” she suggested. “Not just to make sure he doesn’t try to strangle you over the game, though that’s a reason, too! But to show that you’re well defended.”

He nodded. “Yes. You and someone else you choose.”

She made a gesture. “People don’t always look at me and realize they should be afraid.”

“Yes, but if he really does try to choke the life out of me, I want you in the room to save me.”

She grinned. “Now who’s relying on brute force over strategy?”

He tilted his head, as if considering. “You’re the soldier,” he said. “Which would you say wins the most encounters?”

“Depends on the circumstances.”

“What are the factors?”

“Terrain, fortifications, the relative size of the opposing troops, the general’s skill, and luck.”

“So a smaller army can defeat a larger one if enough factors swing in its favor.”

“Sure,” Wen said. “But if I could, I’d opt for the larger force every time.”

He motioned at the cruxanno board. “Here we begin with equal forces, so strategy and skill are paramount. Strength doesn’t even enter into the equation.”

“It
always
enters into the equation,” she said. She was laughing. “With one swipe of my hand, I could send the whole board to the floor. Brute force wins again.”

“But that’s not part of the game!”

“It is if it keeps you from winning.”

“What about honor?” he asked.

“In a cruxanno game?” Her tone was derisive.

“In general. Surely there are tactics you would not use even in war.”

“War is about killing people,” she said grimly. “Surely there is nothing honorable about that.”

He narrowed his eyes. “I feel like you are arguing in circles.”

She spread her hands in a gesture of defeat. “Would I stab a man in the back? No. Would I harm an unarmed man? Only if he was threatening me with his bare hands. Would I take desperate measures to protect someone in my charge? I would if the threat was grave enough. I believe in the kind of honor that says I don’t try to start fights. But if I am under attack, I’ll be ruthless in response. And sometimes that response isn’t as pretty as you’d like.”

“Well, now, that seems as honest as anything you’ve ever said to me,” he replied softly.

Why was he always trying to poke beneath her hard surface? Why was he so interested in what she thought and how she felt? All he should care about was that she was good at the service he had hired her to perform. “Do you have such conversations with your butler and your valet?” she asked shortly. “Do you always try to force them to expose the darker side of their natures?”

“Not so far,” he replied in a cheerful voice. “I can’t imagine anything they’d have to say would be quite as colorful as your observations, however.”

She had been waiting for him to dismiss her, but now she pushed herself to her feet and prepared to take her leave. “You might meet a hundred soldiers and find all of them think exactly as I do,” she said. “I’m not as unusual as you think.”

“Really?” he said as she walked to the door. “I must take more time to acquaint myself with the members of my guard if they are all as interesting as you. Goodnight, Willa. I will see you tomorrow.”

Chapter 11