That Game We Played During the War

“This is a very complicated game,” the nurse observed, and that made Calla smile. That was why Valk told her he wanted to learn—it was very complicated. The thoughts people thought while playing it were methodical, yet rich.

“It is,” Valk said.

“May I watch?” the nurse asked.

Valk looked to Calla to answer, and she said, “Yes, you may.”

* * *

Enithi troops told awful stories about what it must be like in Gaantish prisoner camps. There’d be no privacy, no secrets. The guards would know everything about your fears and weaknesses, they could design tortures to your exact specifications, they could bribe you with the one thing that would make you break. No worse fate than being captured by Gaant and put in one of their camps.

In fact, it worked the other way around. The camps were nightmares for the guards, who spent all day surrounded by a thousand minds who were terrified, furious, hurt, lonely, angry, and depressed.

As a matter of etiquette, Gaantish people learned—the way that small children learned not to take off their pants and run around naked just anywhere—to guard their thoughts. To keep them close. To keep them calm, so they didn’t disrupt those around them. If they often seemed expressionless or unemotional, this was actually politeness, as Calla learned.

To the Gaantish, Enithi prisoners were very, very loud. The guards working the camps got hazard pay. They didn’t, in fact, torture their prisoners at all. First, they didn’t need to. Second, they wouldn’t have been able to stand it.

When her unit had been captured, processed, and sent to the camp, she had been astonished because Lieutenant Valk Larn—now Captain Larn—had been one of the officers in charge. Her shock of recognition caused every telepath in the room to stop and look at her. They would have turned back to their work soon enough—that she and Valk had encountered each other before was coincidental but maybe not remarkable. What made them continue staring: Calla revealed affection for Valk. Not outwardly, so much. She stood with the rest of her unit, stripped down to shirts and trousers, wrists hobbled, hungry and sleep-deprived. No, outwardly she’d been amazed, seeing her former patient upright and in uniform, steely and commanding as any recruitment poster. Her expression looked shocked enough that her sergeant at her side had dared to whisper, “Cal, are you okay?”

The Gaantish never asked each other how they were doing. She’d learned that back in the ward, looking after Valk. During his brief lucid moments she’d ask him how he was feeling, and he’d stare at her like she was playing a joke on him.

The emotion of affection was plain to those who could see it—everyone in a Gaantish uniform. And she was, under all that week’s pain and discomfort and unhappiness and uncertainty, almost happy to see him. She was the kind of nurse who had a favorite patient, even in a prison hospital.

He couldn’t not see her, not with every Gaantish soldier staring at her, then looking at him to see his reaction. She couldn’t hide her astonishment; she didn’t want to and didn’t try. She did realize this likely made the meeting harder for him than it did for her—whatever he thought of her, his staff would all see it. She didn’t know what he thought of her.

He merely nodded and waved the group on to continue processing, and th

ey were washed down, given lumpy brown jumpsuits and assigned quarters. Later, she suspected he’d been the one to arrange the deal that won the rest of her unit’s freedom.

Calla had always thought it strange that people asked if prisoners were treated “well.” “Were you treated well?” No, she thought. The doors were locked. The guards all had guns. Did it matter if they had food and blankets, a roof? The food was strange, the blankets leftover from what the army used. Instead she answered, “We were not treated badly.”They were treated appropriately. War necessitated prisoners, since the alternative was slaughtering everyone on both sides, which both sides agreed was not ideal. You treated prisoners appropriately so that your own people would be treated appropriately in turn. That meant different things.

She was treated appropriately, which made it odd the day, only a week or so into her captivity, that Valk had her brought to his office alone. It wasn’t so odd that the guards hesitated or looked at either of them strangely. But she had been afraid. Helpless, afraid, everything. They left the binders around her wrists. All she could do was stand there before his desk and wonder if he was the kind of man who enjoyed hurting his prisoners, who enjoyed minds in pain. She wouldn’t have thought so, but she’d only ever known him when he was asleep and the brief waking moments when he seemed so lost and confused she couldn’t help but pity him, so what did she know?

“I won’t hurt you,” he said, after a long moment when he simply watched her, and she tried to hide her shaking. “You can believe me.” He asked her to sit. She remained standing, as he must have known she would.

“You were one of the nurses at the hospital. I remember you.”

“Not many remember their stays there.”

“I remember you. You were kind.”

She couldn’t not be. It was why she’d become a nurse. She didn’t have to say anything.

“You were playing a game. I remember—two people. A board. You enjoyed it very much. You had the most interesting thoughts.”

She didn’t have to think long to remember. Those afternoon games with Elio had been a good time. “Chess. It was chess.”

“Can you teach me to play?”

“Sir, I’d lose every single time. I’m not sure you’d enjoy the game. Not much challenge.”

“Nevertheless, I would like to learn it.”

This presented a dilemma. Could it be interpreted as cooperating with the enemy? More than she already was? He couldn’t force her. On the other hand, was this an opportunity? But for what? She was a medic, not a spy. Not that Enith even had spies. Valk gave her plenty of time to think this over, waiting patiently, not revealing if her mental arguments and counterarguments amused or irritated him.

“I don’t have a board or pieces.”

“What would you need to make them?”