Games Creatures Play

by Charlaine Harris

  He shrugged. “Not much of one. It does not concern me, if . . .”

  I held my breath. But he would notice that, so I made sure to breathe steadily, quietly, regularly.

  The last rays of the sun slashed across the floor.

  “‘If,’ sir?” I prompted. But there was no one there.

  • • •

  Madeleine was reading under the covers with a flashlight, after lights out. I knew perfectly well she was rereading her dog-eared copy of Angelique et le Roy. I’d had a peek at what lay beneath the cover of the bosomy blonde being leered at by the Sun King, Louis XIV. Shocking stuff: ambitious women hopping in and out of bed with whatever nobleman would do them the most good—leaving their poor husbands to challenge lovers to the death for their nonexistent honor . . . the exploits of the French adventuress made Scarlett O’Hara look like Little Women.

  Her light flickered and died. Good, I thought; I was only waiting for her to go to sleep so I could sneak back to the salon to find Honoré. He needed me. And I had promised to return.

  She said, “Isabelle? Have you any batteries?”

  “No,” I lied. I needed my flashlight for the dark school corridors. “Go to sleep.”

  I got up, pulling my bathrobe on over the fencing clothes I already wore, and stuck my flashlight in my pocket.

  “Where are you going?” she said sleepily.

  “Where do you think? Just down the hall. I’ll be right back. Go to sleep.”

  • • •

  I flipped on the salon’s elderly, flickering wall sconces. Half the fake candle-bulbs were out, but with the mirrors’ reflection, it was enough to practice by. And enough to see him, when he appeared.

  “Cannot you sleep, either?”

  He was wearing a long, heavy brocade dressing gown, over a white nightshirt that looked a lot like one of his daytime ruffled ones.

  “I cannot rest,” he said. “I am tired of waiting. But it is not my fault, you understand?” He was pacing the room, back and forth before the mirrors, which caught him and threw him from one to the next as he passed between them. “I did what any man would do. The woman tempted me, and I did eat.” In a moment, his hair was going to come loose from its ribbon. “I cannot find my sword. I have been looking everywhere, and I cannot find it.”

  Automatically, I held out my foil.

  “I don’t want your toy,” he said. “Your dancing master’s toy. This is a serious business. I must defend my honor—and hers, of course.” He laughed an ugly laugh. “See? I told you: God does not always favor he who is in the right, or my cousin would surely defeat me. The challenge has been issued. I must fight him, and I must win. Or it is all over for me.”

  I turned off the electric lights. With the moon, and the outside gatehouse lamp, it wasn’t too dark to see. I sat slowly down on the floor and laid my weapon aside, so that I was defenseless and lower than him. People will tell you things, then.

  “What are you waiting for?”

  “An end to all this waiting, child. And then, perhaps I can rest, and not be plagued by dreams.” He shook his head. “I dream it, as if it’s already happened. Over and over. I lunge, he parries me with a bind, I kick him away, he is on the ground . . . Feint, parry, it goes on and on . . . But then he springs at me, and pierces me, here—” He touched the soft spot at the base of his throat, and the ruby on his finger glinted there. “And then—and then it all begins again.” His hair fell loose around his shoulders, a fine brown cascade.

  Again I reached out my hand, as if I could stop the pacing, or push back the hair from his face. But those things I could not do.

  “How can I help?” I asked.

  “I grow mad with waiting. Let the fight begin!”

  I looked around the room. All the foils in the rack were just like mine, the buttoned practice weapon in my hand. Nevertheless, I went to the rack, my hands hovering over the pommels as if I could divine one that would have the power that he needed. . . .

  The old floors creak like crazy. I could hear the footsteps in the hall outside. I hushed at once, and listened to the latch being slowly turned, the door creaking open, the muffled whispers and stifled giggles.

  “Is she here?”

  “No, it’s dark.”

  “Good.”

  Their flashlights threw reflections like arrows all over the room.

  “Have you got it?”

  “I don’t want to touch it—Here, you take it!”

  “Don’t be such a baby.”

  Five girls; three flashlights. None of them Madeleine’s.

  “Right, then; which one’s hers?”

  They were looking for my fencing mask in the cabinet where all our equipment was stored. My glove, too, probably, but I had that on.

  I stepped from the shadows.

  “Good evening,” I said, feeling a bit like Honoré. Nicole screamed. Something clattered to the floor—a tin of black pepper. “May I ask what you’re doing here? And don’t say you’ve come to practice fencing; I’m too young to die laughing.”

  “We were looking for you,” Céleste said arrogantly.

  “Well, you’ve found me. Now, scram.”

  “You don’t tell me what to do in this house.” Céleste raised her hand to her throat, where a gold chain hung. “I come and go as I like here.”

  “Unlike the rest of us?”

  “Didn’t you know?” Her fingers twisted the chain, and I saw a flash of red, a jewel hung on it. They closed around it as if it gave her authority. “My great-great-grandfather was Seigneur of Saint-Hilaire.”

  “What happened? Did he gamble the place away?”

  “Oh that’s right,” she sneered, “you were sent here to improve your knowledge of French, weren’t you? So maybe you never heard of the Revolution?”

  I flushed, but parried, “Lucky for you someone kept the old place up, then, so his descendants could come back to remedy their essential stupidity.”

  “Do you really think I’m worried about my Bac?” Céleste’s hand rose to the necklace at her throat again. “In Paris, I’m top of my class at Lycée Henri IV. I’m here for the same thing you are: to study fencing with Mme Gaillac.”

  She brushed a lock of perfect hair back from her sculpted face. “You look very comic when you’re surprised. You think you know everything, don’t you?”

  “Maybe,” I said. “But at least I don’t go sneaking around trying to ruin other people’s property.”

  “Awww,” she crooned, “pauvr’ Americaine! That’s all that concerns you, isn’t it? Your property? All the fast cars and big houses your big skyscraper department store buys. Of course, you Americans think you can do everything, now, with your money—with your Jew money.”

  “Céleste!” Marie-Hélène exclaimed, shocked.

  “Well, it’s true! Everyone knows it.”

  I reached for my mask. “Arm yourself,” I said.

  Céleste lifted her head, like a hound scenting game. But she said dismissively, “Are you mad?”

  “What do you think?” I busied myself with my equipment. “Come on, Mlle de Puysange. For the honor of Saint-Hilaire. Unless you’d rather wait until class, so that La Gaillac can make sure we do it properly, according to the rules?”

  “Hold this.” She handed a can of hair spray to Nicole. Oh, lovely; that’s what they’d been planning to do to the inside of my mask, that and the pepper, so that wearing it would be unbearable. Céleste pulled a spare jacket from the rack, found her own mask and glove, and tested a couple of foils from the rack before choosing one.

  Someone turned on the sconce lights. We took our places on the piste, with the other four girls in the judges’ positions.

  In the mirror, I saw Honoré, quite clearly. He saluted me, and I saluted Céleste, and the bout began.

  “Halt!” cried Nicole, the fir
st time I touched my opponent. But we ignored her. It felt too good, too right, to be dueling at full force, jabbing at each other with long, pointed things; backing off and evaluating, advancing and feinting and returning each other’s blows. Hers hurt when they landed, even through the jacket; I was going to be black and blue tomorrow, but I didn’t care. We were well matched, and we’d been watching each other for weeks. It was as if the entire summer had been one long training for this moment.

  She beat on my blade, throwing my next attack out of line with sheer force: a prise de fer. The sound of the steel was exciting, and threatening, too. I felt the shock of the contact snapping on my own blade, running down my foil and up my arm. In a normal bout my counterattack would have been worth nothing, since I’d lost right-of-way—but I had been trained by Honoré, and that didn’t matter to me now. She made a lovely coupé to get back in line—but I slammed my foot on the floor in balestra and flew directly at her, straight for her throat. And, over her shoulder, saw my master smile.

  These things can happen by accident. We’ve all heard the story of the fencer’s foil that went up his opponent’s arm inside his sleeve, piercing a lung. Nobody’s fault.

  I realized that I was going to hit Céleste up and under the mask bib, just at the soft point of her throat. I could sense it already there, as though there were a line from the tip of my foil extending through the air to where the gold chain rested with the ruby on it, crushing or even piercing her windpipe. In the flash of time remaining before my body carried me there, I did the only thing I could do: I opened my hand.

  My sword clattered on the floor as I skidded forward, toppling awkwardly without any balance, to land at Céleste’s feet. I lay there panting, and I heard her gasps for breath above me. She took off her mask and bent down.

  “You’re crazy, you know that?”

  “Yeah,” I said; “I know.”

  Céleste’s friends surrounded her, cooing and petting her, helping her off with her jacket and glove, drying her off and putting her equipment away.

  I just lay where I was. Breathing. Letting the air go in and out of me.

  They turned off the lights when they left the room.

  I waited for him in the mirror. And heard his voice behind me.

  “I cannot breathe! Oh God, I cannot breathe, I’m drowning—”

  I turned from the mirror, and saw him.

  A young man, white-faced and sweating, clutching at his throat while the blood and the life went from him. The choking, the pallor, the gushes of red on the white shirt—it went on and on, longer than humanly possible . . .

  “Honoré.” I reached out my hand to him. His eyes were staring, shouting for help while his mouth had no breath to speak.

  I turned back the mirror. “Honoré!”

  He was whole, but trembling, there in the glass. “You failed me,” he said, hugging his chest tight, his blue eyes burning bright above the bunched lace at his throat. “You said that you would help me! How can I rest, while he still lives?”

  “He doesn’t live,” I said, as evenly as I could.

  “You killed him, then?” he sneered. “Strange, that is not what I saw. I saw you cast away your blade at the moment of triumph, and spare him to be my torment again and again—”

  “I did not fight your cousin.”

  “It was someone else, then? Someone else who wears my family’s ring around his neck like a victor’s prize?”

  How had I not seen? Not just the ring, but the gesture she made with it, the color of her eyes—

  “That bastard always wanted Saint-Hilaire. He set me up with that whore of a wife of his—I never fancied her, not really, but she got under my guard, you know how women are—my cousin set me up, just to give himself just cause to fight me.”

  “And then,” I said steadily, clear in my understanding, needing to hear it aloud, “he killed you.”

  “I am twice the swordsman he is. He could never kill me. I live, and I will defeat him—”

  “He died long ago, and you died before him.”

  He hissed. “That’s a lie.”

  “Is that a challenge, sir?” I had to speak in words that he could understand. “Shall we duel to prove who lies, and who sees clearly?”

  “I will punish your insolence!”

  “Kiss me, then,” I said, fighting not to cry. “Or kill me. I don’t care.”

  In the mirror, his image shuddered. He must have been trying. A spot of red appeared at the base of his throat, and spread, gently, through his shirt.

  But it was not much of a risk. I was speaking, after all, aloud to an empty room, to nothing but a memory that refused to die.

  “You are my sword,” he gasped. “Next time, you will not fail me. I know you hate him as much as I do. I’ve seen it, in your face.”

  “I am not going to kill his descendant—or possibly yours—no matter how awful she is.”

  His image hardened again. He was wearing black, white lace, and diamonds. “I wait, then.”

  “You’ll wait a long time. Without rest. Please—” I knelt before the mirror. It was all I could think of to do. “Please, believe me. These dreams of yours are real; they are the truth. Believe me, and go in peace. Go away, Honoré.”

  In French the words for mirror and ice are the same.

  “I’ll wait,” the ghost said. “As long as it takes, I’ll wait.”

  What else could he say, true to his nature as he was? The dead do not change.

  I leaned my head against the glass and closed my eyes, blotting out the sight of him, the sight of the dark, mirrored room.

  I thought about the duel, and about the weeks of summer still to come, before I would be free to go home. I thought about New York, about my final year of high school, about applying to Smith and Vassar and Bryn Mawr and Wellesley, about leaving home with a suitcase monogrammed with my initials, for a place that was neither my father’s house nor Grand-mère’s.

  I thought about fencing, and intention, and being thrown into a new line by someone else’s blade. And how to form a new intention and keep on.

  When I opened my eyes, he was gone.

  There was a gentle rap on the door. Madeleine stood there, wrapped in a dressing gown and carrying a candle. Her brown eyes were worried, but she held the candle steadily.

  “It’s late,” she said. “Would you like some cocoa?”

  “Yes,” I said. “I think I would.”

  AUTHOR’S NOTE:

  For their generous help with the niceties of swordplay and French culture, the author thanks Anne Guéro, J. Allen Suddeth, Kat Howard, Maud Perez-Simon, Ken Burnside . . . and a mysterious French fencer named Clément.

  DREAMER

  BRANDON SANDERSON

  Brandon Sanderson has published eight solo novels with Tor—Elantris, the Mistborn books, Warbreaker, The Way of Kings, and the young adult fantasy The Rithmatist—as well as four books in the middle-grade Alcatraz versus the Evil Librarians series from Scholastic. He was chosen to complete Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time series; the final book, A Memory of Light, was released in 2013. His most recent YA novel, Steelheart, was released by Delacorte in September 2013. Currently living in Utah with his wife and children, Brandon teaches creative writing at Brigham Young University.

  “Dreamer” is a blend of what Brandon normally writes—big epic fantasies with interesting styles of magic—with something a bit more weird.

  “I’ve got him!” I yelled into the phone as I scrambled down the street. “Forty-ninth and Broadway!” I shoved my way through an Asian family on the way home from the market. Their bags went flying, oranges spilling onto the street and bouncing in front of honking cabs.

  Accented curses chased me as I lowered the phone and sprinted after my prey, a youth in a green sports jacket and cap. A bright yellow glow surrounded him, my indication of his
true identity.

  I wore the body of a businessman, late thirties, lean and trim. Fortunately for me, this guy hit the gym. I dashed around a corner at speed, my quarry curving and dodging between the theater district’s early-evening crowds. Buildings towered around us, blazing with the lights of fervent advertising.

  Phi glanced over his shoulder at me. I thought I caught a look of surprise on his lean face. He’d know me from my glow, of course—the one visible only to others like us.

  I jumped over a metal construction barrier, landing in the street, where I dashed out around the crowds. A chorus of honks and yells accompanied me as I gained, step by step, on Phi. It’s hard to lose a man in Manhattan. There aren’t alleyways to duck into, and the crowds don’t help hide us from one another.

  Phi ducked right, shoving his way through a glass door and into a diner.

  What the hell? I thought, chasing after, throwing my shoulder against the door and pushing into the restaurant. Was he going to try to get out another way? That—

  Phi stood just inside, arm leveled toward me, a handgun pointed at my head. I pulled to a stop, gaping for a moment, before he shot me point-blank in the head.

  Disorientation.

  I thrashed about, losing sense of location, purpose, even self as I was ejected from the dying body. For a few primal moments, I couldn’t think. I was a rat in the darkness, desperately seeking light.

  Glows all around. The warmth of souls. One rose from the body I’d left, the soul of the man to whom it had really belonged. That was brilliant yellow, and now untouchable. Unsavory, also. I needed warmth.

  I charged for a body, no purpose behind my choice beyond pure instinct. I latched on, a lion on the gazelle, ripping and battering against the consciousness there, forcing it down. It didn’t want to let me in, but I needed that warmth.

  I won. In this primal state, I usually do. Few souls are practiced at fighting off an invasion. Consciousness returned like water seeping underneath a door. Panic, horror—the lingering emotions of the soul who had held this body before me, like the scent of a woman’s perfume after she leaves the room.