She told him she would have to think about it, which would have been hilarious if she hadn’t been so tired and confused. The guards took her back to her cell, where she talked to the ranking Enithi officer prisoner about it. “Might not be a bad thing to have a friend here,” he advised.
“But he’ll know I’m faking it!” she answered.
“So?” he’d said, and he was right. Calla was what she was and it wouldn’t do any good to think differently. She asked for a square of cardboard and a black marker and did up a board, and drew rudimentary pieces on other little squares of cardboard. She’d rather have cut them out but didn’t bother asking for scissors, and no one offered, so that was that. It was the ugliest chess set that had ever existed.
Valk learned very quickly because she already knew the rules and all she had to do was think them and he learned. The strategy of it was rather more difficult to teach. He’d get this screwed-up look of concentration, and she might have understood a little bit of what attracted him to the game: There was a lot to think about, and Valk liked the challenge of so much thought coming out of one person. And yes, he always knew what moves she was planning. Which was when she started playing at random. If she could surprise herself, she could surprise him. Then she agreed to the deal to get her people released, she worked in their hospital, they played chess, and she got sick.
She could not learn to marshal her thoughts and emotions the way these people learned to as children. She tried, as a matter of survival, and only managed to stop feeling anything at all.
The diagnosis was depression—Gaant’s mental health people were very good. She, who had been so generally high-spirited for most of her life, had had no idea what was happening or how to cope and had grown very ill indeed, until it wasn’t that she didn’t want to play chess against Valk. She couldn’t. She couldn’t keep her mind on the game, couldn’t recognize the pieces by looking at them, couldn’t even think of how they moved. One day, walking in a haze between one ward and another at the hospital, she sank to the floor and stayed there. Valk was summoned. He held her hand and tried to see into her, to see what was wrong.
She didn’t remember thinking anything at the time. Only seeing the image of her hand in his and not understanding it.
He arranged for her to be part of another prisoner swap, and she went home. Before the transfer he took her aside and spoke softly. “I forget that this is all opaque to you, that you don’t know most of what’s going on around you. So, since I didn’t say it before: Thank you.”
“For what?” she’d replied. He’d looked at her blankly, because he didn’t seem to know himself. Not enough to be able to explain it, and she couldn’t see.
* * *
Others came to watch the game—drawn, Calla presumed, by the tangle of thoughts she and Valk were producing. He was getting frustrated. She was playing with the giddy abandon of the six-year-old she had been when her mother taught her the game. And now the whole room shared her fond memories, and the fact that her mother had died in one of the famines that wracked Enith when food production had been disrupted by the war. Ten years ago now. Everyone on both sides had stories like that. Let us share our stories, she thought.
“You won’t win, playing like that,” one of the observing doctors said. After half an hour of watching they probably all understood the rules completely and could play themselves. They’d have no idea how the game was really supposed to be played, however. She wasn’t playing properly at all, which was rather a lot of fun.
“No, but I may not lose,” she said.
“I’m still not sure what the point of this game is,” said a nurse, her confusion plain.
“This game, right now? The point is to annoy Major Larn,” Calla said. This got a chuckle from them—those who’d been looking after him knew him well. Valk, however, smiled at her. She had not spoken the truth, precisely. Everyone else was too polite to say anything.
“The point,” Valk said, addressing the nurse, “is to fight little wars without hurting anyone.”
And there was silence then, because yes, they all had stories.
He made his next move and took his hand away. Her gaze lit, her heart opening. Even the way she played with him, all messy and at random, a moment like this could still happen, where the board opened up as if by magic and her way was clear. Because it was her turn it didn’t matter if he knew what she was thinking, because he couldn’t do anything about it. She moved the rook, and his king was cornered.
“Check.”
It wasn’t mate. He could still get out of it. But he really was backed into a corner, because his next moves and hers would all lead back to check, and they could chase each other around the board, and it would be splendid. Neither could have planned for this.
He threw up his hands and settled back against his pillow. “I’m exhausted. You’ve exhausted me.” She laughed a gleeful, satisfied laugh.
The observers looked on. “This is how you won,” one of them said, amazed. He wasn’t talking about the game.
“No,” Calla said. “This is how we failed to lose.”
“I learned the difference from her,” Valk said, and was that a bit of pride
in his tone? She might never know for certain.
Calla started resetting the board for the next game, not even realizing that meant she was having a good time. The nurse interrupted her.
“Technician Belan, the major really must rest now,” he said kindly, recognizing Calla’s eagerness when she herself didn’t.
“Oh. Of course.”
“I promise I’ll rest in just a moment,” Valk said. He was speaking to the doctors and attendants, who’d expressed a concern she couldn’t see. They drifted away because he wanted them to.
That left them studying each other; he who could see everything, and she who could only muddle through, being herself, proudly and unabashedly.