A Beautiful Game

T HE NEXT DAY MY meager belongings were moved to rooms the Maer deemed more suitable for someone firmly in his favor. There were five of them in all, three with windows overlooking the garden.

It was a nice gesture, but I couldn’t help but think that these rooms were even farther from the kitchens. My food would be cold as a stone by the time it made its way to me.

I’d barely been there an hour before a runner arrived bearing Bredon’s silver ring and a card that read: “Your glorious new rooms. When?”

I turned the card over, wrote: “As soon as you like,” and sent the boy on his way.

I placed his silver ring on a tray in my sitting room. The bowl next to it now had two silver rings glittering among the iron.

I opened the door to see Bredon’s dark eyes peering owlishly out at me from the halo of his white beard and hair. He smiled and bowed, his walking stick tucked under one arm. I offered him a seat, then excused myself politely and left him alone in the sitting room for a moment, as was the gracious thing to do.

I was barely through the doorway before I heard his rich laugh coming from the other room, “Ho ho!” he said. “Now there’s a thing!”

When I returned, Bredon was sitting by the tak board holding the two rings I had recently received from Stapes. “This is certainly a turn for the books,” he said. “Apparently I misjudged things yesterday when my runner was turned away from your door by an altogether surly guard.”

I grinned at him. “It’s been an exciting couple of days,” I said.

Bredon tucked his chin and chuckled, looking even more owlish than usual. “I daresay,” he said, holding up the silver ring. “This tells quite a story. But this . . .” He gestured to the white ring with his walking stick. “This is something else entirely. . . .”

I pulled up a seat across from him. “I’ll be frank with you,” I said. “I can only guess what it’s made of, let alone what it signifies.”

Bredon raised an eyebrow. “That’s remarkably forthright of you.”

I shrugged. “I feel somewhat more secure in my position here,” I admitted. “Enough that I can be a little less guarded with the people who have been kind to me.”

He chuckled again as he lay the silver ring on the board. “Secure,” he said. “I daresay you are at that.” He picked up the white ring. “Still, it’s not odd that you wouldn’t know about this.”

“I thought there were just three types of rings,” I said.

“That’s true for the most part,” Bredon said. “But the giving of rings goes back quite a ways. The common folk were doing it long before it became a game for the gentry. And while Stapes may breathe the rarified air with the rest of us, his family is undeniably common.”

Bredon set the white ring back onto the board and folded his hands over it. “Those rings were made of things ordinary folk might find easily at hand. A young lover might give a ring of new green grass to someone he was courting. A ring of leather promises service. And so on.”

“And a ring of horn?”

“A ring of horn shows enmity,” Bredon said. “Powerful and lasting enmity.”

“Ah,” I said, somewhat taken aback. “I see.”

Bredon smiled and held the pale ring up to the light. “But this,” he said, “is not horn. The grain is wrong, and Stapes would never give a horn ring alongside a silver one.” He shook his head. “No. Unless I miss my guess, this is a ring of bone.” He handed it to me.

“Wonderful,” I said glumly, turning it over in my hands. “And that means what? That he’ll stab me in the liver and push me down a dry well?”

Bredon gave me his wide, warm smile. “A ring of bone indicates a profound and lasting debt.”

“I see.” I rubbed it between my fingers. “I have to say I prefer being owed a favor.”

“Not just a favor,” Bredon said. “Traditionally, a ring such as this is carved from the bone of a deceased family member.” He raised an eyebrow. “And while I doubt that is currently the case, it does get the point across.”

I looked up, still slightly dazed by it all. “And that is. . . ?”

“That these things are not given lightly. It’s not a part of games the gentry play, and not the sort of ring you should display.” He gave me a look. “If I were you, I’d tuck it safe away.”

I put it carefully into my pocket. “You’ve been such help,” I said. “I wish I could repay—”

He held up a hand, cutting me off midsentence. Then, moving with solemn care, he pointed one finger downward, made a fist, and rapped a knuckle on the surface of the tak board.

I smiled and brought out the stones.

* * *

“I think I’m finally getting my teeth into the game,” I said an hour later after losing by the narrowest of margins.

Bredon pushed his chair away from the table with an expression of distaste. “No,” he said. “Quite the opposite. You have the basics, but you’re missing the whole point.”

I began to sort out the stones. “The point is that I’m finally close to beating you after all this time.”

“No,” Bredon said. “That’s not it at all. Tak is a subtle game. That’s the reason I have such trouble finding people who can play it. Right now you are stomping about like a thug. If anything you’re worse than you were two days ago.”

“Admit it,” I said. “I nearly had you that last time.”

He merely scowled and pointed imperiously to the table.

I set to it with a will, smiling and humming, sure that today I would finally beat him.

But nothing could be further from the truth. Bredon set his stones ruthlessly, not a breath of hesitation between his moves. He tore me apart as easily as you rip a sheet of paper in half.

The game was over so quickly it left me breathless.

“Again,” Bredon said, a note of command in his voice I’d never heard before.

I tried to rally, but the next game was worse. I felt like a puppy fighting a wolf. No. I was a mouse at the mercy of an owl. There was not even the pretence of a fight. All I could do was run.

But I couldn’t run fast enough. This game was over sooner than the last.

“Again,” he demanded.

And we played again. This time, I was not even a living thing. Bredon was calm and dispassionate as a butcher with a boning knife. The game lasted about the length of time it takes to gut and bone a chicken.

At the end of it Bredon frowned and shook his hands briskly to both sides of the board, as if he had just washed them and was trying to flick them dry.

“Fine,” I said, leaning back in my chair. “I take your point. You’ve been going easy on me.”

“No,” Bredon said with a grim look. “That is far gone from the point I am trying to make.”

“What then?”

“I am trying to make you understand the game,” he said. “The entire game, not just the fiddling about with stones. The point is not to play as tight as you can. The point is to be bold. To be dangerous. Be elegant.”

He tapped the board with two fingers. “Any man that’s half awake can spot a trap that’s laid for him. But to stride in boldly with a plan to turn it on its ear, that is a marvelous thing.” He smiled without any of the grimness leaving his face. “To set a trap and know someone will come in wary, ready with a trick of their own, then beat them. That is twice marvelous.”

Bredon’s expression softened, and his voice became almost like an entreaty. “Tak reflects the subtle turning of the world. It is a mirror we hold to life. No one wins a dance, boy. The point of dancing is the motion that a body makes. A well-played game of tak reveals the moving of a mind. There is a beauty to these things for those with eyes to see it.”

He gestured at the brief and brutal lay of stones between us. “Look at that. Why would I ever want to win a game such as this?”

I looked down at the board. “The point isn’t to win?” I asked.

“The point,” Bredon said grandly, “is to play a beautiful game.” He lifted his hands and shrugged, his face breaking into a beatific smile. “Why would I want to win anything other than a beautiful game?”

Date: 2015-02-03; view: 867