Page 82 (1/2)

I thought for a nhild would cry I cannot think why I would ihty face could break into tears, but I did

“I will play,” Ragnhild said quietly, with great dignity—the dignity, one randesture and led her into the courtyard outside the Tower, and my brothers and I carried the vast cereht, where the nuns and athered to watch the greatest game in the history of Al-a-Nur

How can I describe for you the spooling thread of a single gaame played in the annals of the Spheres? Should I tell you that the throng was hushed as grasses on a still summer day? How the Merchants and the Oracles and the Patricides gathered close in, how the Living and the Dead peered over their shoulders for one gli her place at the Board? That the light seenhild’s hair and pool there, so that her head was ablaze in a halo of light? That Yashna was ever Yashna, calray, and never afla, and not like anything that was actually happening before us? Or shall I orate upon the nature of the game, its perfect complexity, the slide of stone pieces on a round stone board? What came first, the City or the Game? Surely it must have been the Gaed in the patterns of the thousand cooda-Towers, and Draghi, and Papesses, and Gods

If the City came first, perhaps the Game is no more than a dulory But if the Gaht of the Drea Towers, then perhaps there is some secret locked within its moves, so, the fate of all these roofs and doors Perhaps the Papesses were made to defeat each other within the Game because one day there would be two Papesses to face each other in the City Perhaps all our lifetimes of study of the Gaht thin as bones

I do not know, little Sigrid, if they have begun to teach you the many formations of Lo Shen yet If not, they will soon We spend half our lives in study of this game; all our internecine disputes are solved with it—for the object is to topple the God of the opposing player: the single piece that rests at the center of the board, nestled within thirteen concentric Spheres, unable to move unless it is to defeat its opposite number It is poetic, and it is political

And so it careat blue board the size of a giant’s shield Their hands flashed over the pieces like croings waving, pale Trirehi eradicated in a blow Intricate colass webs, the Papesses as perfectly -O and T’ien Fei, Pa Na and P’an Niang For a long while, no one could see a clear advantage, the pieces ht in a whirlpool Ragnhild’s hair curled around her hips as a cat’s tail may around its haunches, and her soft smile never faltered, even as Yashna’s exquisitely executed Mang-Chin-I combination swept her third Papess from the board

I watched the sun h the sky The struggle for the city passed without a word, between grandrandchild, and neither I, nor hi with their silver heloda from Sphere to Sphere

It drove usstill at the sidelines In the silence, h it had been set aflame But we are all of us, no matter what our Towers, acc

ustoic

Finally, Yashna brought her Trireonal—just in the way a ship slips between the gusts of wind to stay on course A ripple of caught breath swept through the crowd The glistening piece, carved out of dark blue stone in the shape of a ship at full sail, completed her move: Shun I Fu-Jen All four of her Papesses stood around the center Sphere, with a Pagoda-Tower, sli behind thenhild’s sea-colored eyes flickered in anger, seeing e all did: that her God was trapped, and there was no move she could make to save it

“Sheng Mu, hter I have slain your God”

Yashna sloith pride in her child’s perfors She then stretched out her arm over the embattled Board and plucked the Apostate’s God fro the ends of the featureless blue coluht, in either hand, she bowed in the ritual fashion as she broke the piece in half It takes great strength to end a Game in the old way, the way of the first Nurians, whose honor and shame were measured by the number of broken Gods their altars held

Ragnhild, to her credit, took the severed pieces and bowed in her turn Her face held no expression, but her cheeks burned, in rage, or in humiliation I could not tell, foraround the pieces until blood began to drip, thick and viscous, from her palm

BAGS STOPPED AND STRETCHED IN THE SUN, STROKING his silkyhands The snow of my Toirled lazily around hiht

“Is the army still at the Gate?” I asked breathlessly