That Game We Played During the War

“I’ll always recognize you,” he said, slowly this time. He switched to Enithi, “I said, this is like the first time I saw you, in a chair near my bed.”

She felt her own smile dawn. “I wasn’t asleep then. I should know better than to fall asleep around you people.”

“They tell me the cease-fire is holding. The treaty is done. It must be, if you’re here.”

“The treaty isn’t done but the peace is holding. My diplomatic pass to see you only took a week to process.”

“Soon we’ll have tourists running back and forth.”

“Then what’ll they do with us?”

His smile was comforting. It meant the bad old days really were done. If he could hope, anyone could hope. And just like that, his smile thinned, or became thoughtful, or something. She couldn’t tell what he was thinking. Never could, and usually it didn’t bother her.

She said, “They—people have been very polite to me here.”

“Good. Then I will not need to have words with anyone. Calla—thank you for coming. I’d have come to find you, if I’d been able.”

“I worried when you told me where you were.”

“I have been rather worried myself.”

His telegram had said only two things: I would like to see you, and Bring the game if you can. A very strange message at a very strange time. Strange to anyone except her, anyway. It made perfect sense to her. She had explained it to the visa people and passport department and military attachés like this: We have a history. He had been her prisoner, then she had been his, and they had made a promise that if peace ever came they would finish the game they had started. If they finished the game it meant the peace would last.

Calla suspected that none of the Enithi officials who reviewed her request knew what to make of it, but it seemed so weird, and they were so curious, they approved it. On the Gaantish side, Valk was enough of a war hero that they didn’t dare deny the request. Out of such happenstances was a peace constructed.

She looked around—there was a bedside table on wheels that could be pulled over for meals and exams and such. Drawing the chess set from her bag, she set it on the table.

“Ah,” Valk said. He started to sit up.

“No.” She touched his shoulder, keeping him in place with as strong a thought as she could manage. This made him grin. “There’s got to be some way to raise the bed.”

She’d moved to the front of the bed to start poking around when one of the nurses came running over. “Here, I’ll do that,” he said quickly.

Calla stepped out of his way with a wry look. Gaantish hospitals didn’t have buzzers for nurses. It had driven her rather mad, back in the day. In short order, the man had the bed propped up and Valk resting upright. He seemed more himself, then.

The chess set opened into the game board, painted in black and white alternating squares, and a little tray that slid out held all the pieces, stylized carvings in stained wood. Valk leaned forward, anticipation in his gaze. “I haven’t even seen anything like this since we played back at Ovorton.”

Gaant did not have chess. They did not have any games at all that required strategy or bluffing. There was no point. Instead, they played games based on chance—dice rolls and drawn cards—or balance, pulling a single wooden block out of a stack of blocks, for example. And they never cheated.

But Calla had taught Valk chess and developed a system for playing against him. Only someone from Enith would have thought of it. The two countries had approached the war much the same way.

“I’m rusty as well. We’ll be on even footing.”

Valk laughed. They’d never been on even footing and they both knew it. But they both compensated, so it all worked out.

“I made a note of where the last game left off. Or would you rather start a new one?”

“Let’s finish the last.” He might have said it because she was thinking it, too.

She arranged the pieces the way they had been, and reminded herself how the game had gone so far. There was a lot to recall. She didn’t remember some of the details, but given the rules and given the pieces, she only had so many choices of what to do next. She considered them all.

r /> “It was your move, I think,” she said.

He studied her rather than the board. The Gaantish didn’t have to see someone to see their thoughts—a blind Gaant was still telepathic. But looking was polite, as in any conversation. And it was intimidating, in an interrogation. This idea that they could see through you. Enithi soldiers told stories about how when a Gaantish person read your mind, it hurt. That they could inflict pain. This wasn’t true. Gaant encouraged the stories anyway, along with the ones about how any one of them could see the thoughts of every person in the world, when they couldn’t see much past the walls of a given room.

Valk was going to decide, by seeing her thoughts, what move he ought to make, what move she hoped he would, based on her knowledge and experience. He would try to deduce for himself the best choice. And then he would know, almost as soon as she did herself, how she would counter. She kept her expression still, as if that mattered. He moved a piece, and she saw her thoughts reflected back at her—it was just what she would have done, if the board had been reversed.

Next came her turn, and it was no good staring at the board, analyzing the rooks and pawns and playing out future moves in her mind. All such planning would betray her here. So, almost without looking, almost without thought, she reached, put her hand on a piece—any piece, it hardly mattered—and moved it. A bishop this time, and she only moved one square, and yet it was as if a bit of chaos had descended on the board and disrupted everything. No sane chess player would have made that move, and she herself had to pause and consider what she’d done, what new lines of play existed, and how she could possibly go forward from here.