The eastern shorefront was a profusion of shops, warehouses, and public houses from whose open windows wafted spiced tea and spicier tobaccos. Dante called a stop outside a shop with a carving of a loom above its door and rugs piled in its windows. Mourn hopped down and went inside while Gala watched the street, sword on her back. Mourn emerged a minute later and fed the driver directions to Worring's.
Her shop stood in the middle of a cockeyed street so narrow they had to debark the carriage and continue on foot. The building's squarish design, slightly flared at the top, suggested it had once been a yurt long since plastered over with timber, and its cramped, dark interior only confirmed that. The close air was heavy with the smell of soap and dried linen. Dante seated himself on a bench a few inches too high, where he was joined by Blays and Mourn, and kicked his heels.
Between the three of them, there was scarcely space to turn around. Though Dante had spent little time in Narashtovik in the last few years, and littler time yet attending to the ceremonial and social sides of his post as one of the twelve-person Council there, he'd nonetheless acted as a man-about-town on more than one occasion. Often enough to think Worring's shop was all wrong for her apparent stature. The floors of finest artists and craftsmen were supposed to be open and airy, intentional wastes of space which called all the more attention to the sparse examples of their work on display (and thus how valuable these few pieces must be). By contrast, Worring's main floor was a crush of raw fabric, loose threads, and steel needles, the unfinished materials lumped in piles around the finished work.
Work that more than justified the urgency of Perrigan's vain request. Most of Worring's tapestries showed landscapes and cityscapes: misty hills, dignified white rowhouses, and the primally civilized hill-homes of the norren. A minority displayed the faces of human men and women, most in three-quarter or full profile, but a few straight-on, their gazes so superior and regal they made Dante feel as if he'd loudly farted. Yet there was a softness to their eyes, too, a mitigating light that suggested all was forgiven, that we are, after all, all human, even those of us whose blood runs blue as the sky. This liveliness was shared by the landscapes and cityscapes; when Dante glanced away or an unseen draft ruffled the room, the rivers and lamps and stars twinkled. In short, they were amazing. He had half a mind to hire Worring's services for himself.
After the clearing of a throat or two, a thin norren woman emerged from the back room. At six feet tall, her brown eyes were nearly level with Dante's, or at least as close as he had ever come on a norren. Her bare arms could easily pass for human as well—though one that got plenty of exercise, say a water-carrier or a widow who'd taken charge of her late husband's farm. She indicated her three guests. Her hands were as swift and precise as a professional swordsman's.
"I know why you're here." She seated herself behind her cluttered desk. "You want me to build you an airship."
Dante blinked. "We're here about a tapestry."
"Well, you're obviously not here for the jokes. I can spare five minutes. Please don't waste them."
He launched into an extremely abbreviated version of what had brought them to her. The woman cut him off as soon as he got to Perrigan's name.
"Absolutely not."
"I don't think you understand." Dante glanced toward the closed door, as if spies might have their waggling ears pressed to the other side. "If we do this for him, he will give us the location of an entire clan of slaves. Slaves which, if we have our druthers, won't be slaves for long."
"Then beat it out of him."
"That's what I suggested," Blays said.
"This is true," Dante said. "It's much easier to wrest dozens of unwilling captives from their baronial owner when you're arrested or dead."
Worring's brown eyes didn't sway from his. "You're not going to guilt me into this. You know what Perrigan does. The only work I'll ever do from him will be sewn from his own hide."
Dante sighed inwardly, wishing he had the power to annihilate the entire kingdom of Gask, Norren Territories and himself included, and thus avoid another single moment of this self-defeating nonsense. "I know the perspective must be very skewed from a horse that high, but I'm trying to help."
"And I'd help you if I could. But immortalizing that man would violate every principled bone in my body. Unfortunately for you, that's all of them."
"Well." Dante rose, feeling like he weighed a thousand pounds. "Your work is exceptional."
He left to meet Gala in the crooked alley. Blays glanced back at the shop. "Is it time to go beat a nobleman?"
The idea was tempting as a basement-cooled beer after a long day, but Dante shook his head. "That's our last resort."
"I didn't realize we had any other resorts."
"Mourn, I need you to tell me more about the Nulladoon. Gala, I need you to find out to what extent Worring participates in it."
"It's a little like chess," Mourn said.
Gala shook her head once. "More like hearts. Or plock."
"I was getting to that."
"I thought you said it was like dice," Dante said.
"That too." Mourn tipped back his head and considered the high, patchy clouds. "It also resembles an argument."
"An argument?" Blays said. "How's that?"
"Mostly because it is one."
Dante exhaled audibly. "I think I need to see this. Is there somewhere we can sit down and play a round?"
Mourn shrugged his broad shoulders. "Oh, just anywhere."
The norren man gave Gala the name of a public house and directions to it. She nodded and strode down the alley. Mourn led them toward the docks. Baked vegetables and potatoes steamed from vendors' stalls, tickled with herbs from all over. At a thoroughfare, norren drove mule teams or simply hauled the wagons themselves, leaning into leather straps tied to flatbeds bearing bricks or chopped wood or burlap sacks. About one out of ten women showed brands on their cheek. Mourn led them into a busy tavern with two leaping salmon painted above its door. Inside, norren partook in the standard drinking, laughing, gossiping, and news-chasing, but an unusual number of the crowd were gathered at the back, peering over the shoulders of three men seated at a wide table.
Blays bought pints. Mourn went to speak to the bartender and came back with a set of battered wooden cases. Dante sipped beer, cold as the street and just as bitter.
"Nulladoon," Mourn said, unprompted. "First, you have a board."
"Well, that sounds easy enough," Blays said.
"Most things do when you have no idea what you're talking about." Mourn rubbed the thin strip of bare skin between his brows and hairline. "Sorry, I'm under a lot of stress here. There are classical map arrangements some players specialize in, but you can arrange your tiles freeform, too, with opponents taking turns until the map's complete. Pieces are affected by elevation and water and so forth."
He unsnapped the hasps of one case and fanned out a handful of flat wooden squares, most painted blue or green. From a second case, he drew several wooden figures, worn and chipped but still identifiable as archers and spearmen and scouts.
"Then they are your pieces. Like chess, they all move and attack in their own ways, but they can do other things, too." Mourn pulled the twine from a deck of cards and spread them out. Dante didn't recognize a single one. "Then you have cards. Your opponent does, too. You both have cards. Cards affect units and conditions like weather and you can use them to provoke your opponent into using, losing, or giving you some of his cards. Think of them like ploys. Battlefield gambits."
He stared at the array of equipment. Dante picked up the cards and leafed through them. "Where does the argument come in?"
"Everywhere," Mourn sighed. "Each turn also involves an ongoing philotheosophical debate. Like the maps, they can be classic topics or decided on by the players. The soundness and originality of your argument influence play similarly to the cards."
"You're just making this up, aren't you?" Blays said. "Arguments? So after you've shouted at each oth
er for a bit, the other guy's just going to say 'Oh, good point. Here's my king'?"
"The merits of each player's arguments are decided by one to three arbiters. If the argument's that good—or that bad—the spectators weigh in. A biased arbiter won't stay biased for long. Not unless he enjoys black eyes." Mourn glanced to the back of the room, where men roared with abrupt and unified triumph. Once it quieted, he went on. "Victory is achieved through wiping the other guy out or forcing him to concede. The winner collects his nulla, the terms of which are decided before the match."
Dante looked up from a carving of a fanged, long-nosed beast. "That's the idea. All I have to do is beat Worring in a match. Perrigan gets his tapestry, we get our name."
"Before we get any deeper, I think we should talk about something," Blays said. "Like what the hell this has to do with why we're here."
Mourn clicked the tiles against the table. "It's a good plan. It's also a very bad plan."
"Start with the good."
"If Worring plays—and they all do—she'll abide by her debts."
Blays quirked his mouth with doubt. "She'll break her personal rule about 'No dealing with abominable slavedrivers' to stick by the rules of some game?"
"Yes," Mourn said. "And if that doesn't do it, the threat of fines, beatings, and in extreme cases enslavement should convince her instead."
"So what's the bad?" Dante said.
"You can't possibly win."
"Of course I can."
"How long have you been playing Nulladoon?"
"Well, never."
Mourn gestured to the spread of pieces, cards, and tiles. "Never. You've been playing for never. Which is funny, because most of this city's been playing since always. Since they were kids."
"Big deal," Blays snorted. "We can just cheat."
Mourn went as still as one of the wooden units. "You can't cheat at Nulladoon."
"I can cheat at anything. I'll cheat you right now if you want. What would you like to be cheated at?"
"It's...sacred. It's not something you do."
Dante leaned in, matching the low tones of the norren man, if not his awed disgust. "Mourn, what does it matter? We're talking about saving your cousins' lives. Is that less important than the rules of a game?"
The norren exhaled until his whole body slumped like a discarded shirt. "I don't like this."
"Me neither," Blays said. "It's more tangled up than spiders playing tag."
Dante reached for his beer. "If you can think of a better way, I'm all ears."
"I can think of twenty."
"That doesn't involve punching, stabbing, or us being jailed."
"I can't think of any."
Dante took a long drink to hide his smile. He couldn't think of anything less convoluted, either, but in point of fact, he wanted to play. He'd been allured by the Nulladoon from the moment Mourn mentioned it, and hearing its rough details had hooked him all the harder. It was clearly a game you could get lost in, endlessly variable, with strategies within strategies, all of which might be compromised or annihilated by the wrong stroke of luck, leaving you angry yet determined, obsessed to play again and prove that when the game is fair you cannot be beat. He looked forward to studying its facets and depths with an intellectual eagerness he hadn't felt since discovering the Cycle of Arawn.
After several complaints he was hardly an expert, Mourn relented and agreed to teach him. Mourn arranged the map in one of its simplest variants, led Dante through a quick overview of piece selection (just as customizable as the maps), then proceeded through what he warned was a dumbed-down game. Though it was clearly an expository match, with Mourn constantly pausing to explain a rule and its limitless permutations, exceptions, and contingencies, it nonetheless drew a steady stream of onlookers, many who seemed as interested in the fact a human was learning their game as in the outcome of the halting match itself. Mourn had no trouble enlisting a trio to arbitrate the scoring of their debates.
And those were the stumbling block. Dante grasped the core combat at once—a rock-paper-scissors-style system of engagement with just enough intrinsic complexity to allow for in-depth strategy in every situation. By their second game, several of his gambits drew appreciative nods and chuckles from the crowd. Yet each skirmish—every single godsdamn one—resulted in the loss of a unit, territory, or both, overcome by modifiers from Mourn's cards or his victories in debate. Dante simply didn't know enough. He knew most of the key players, Josun Joh and his host of brothers, cousins, and enemies, and when it came to philosophical concepts, he was easily Mourn's better. Yet he didn't know enough of norren theosophy to marry the general to the specific. It was beyond frustrating.
Gala returned in the middle of their third match. "She plays."
"Finally some good luck," Blays said.
"Not really. They all play."
"Told you," Mourn said. He advanced his swordsman. After a brief exchange of modifiers, Dante removed his ice-drake from the board.
After his third loss, Dante dropped from his oversize seat to go update Orlen on their situation (Gala had arranged a note-drop under one of the piers) and warn him it could be days or even weeks before they moved on. He penned a letter of aid to Perrigan, too, alerting him Dante believed they'd secure his tapestry soon enough but that he'd first need access to as many libraries of norren-lore as Perrigan could get him into.
He resumed play. Mourn's style was plodding and defensive, advancing his pieces with stubborn deliberance until his advantage was too overwhelming to break. His style of debate mirrored it, carefully laying the groundwork and initial conditions (that history showed Josun Joh was in Canwell on the third day of the third year) before unleashing his conclusions in an ironclad case (and thus couldn't have been the father of Kandack, whose mother had, on the day of the boy's conception, been across the land in Merridan). Dante tried a range of guiding strategies before settling on his standard, a deceptive style that appeared cautious yet relied on massive risks taken right under Mourn's oversized nose. These efforts panned out often enough to turn the tables more than once, but by the time the two of them were too tired to go on, Dante still hadn't won a single match.
Letters of recommendation arrived from Perrigan the next day. Dante split time between the two banks of the river, playing Nulladoon in the east and reading norren scripture in the west. On the third day of play, Dante retreated his main force to a steep hill, leaving a contingent of swift, light-hitting drakes trapped behind Mourn's infantry wall, doomed before the next turn.
But during that turn's debate, Dante tricked Mourn into a confession that the traditional sacrifices to stall Ferrow's wrath weren't rams, they were deer. Using that as the hinge for his conclusion that Ferrow's domain was not with herding nomads but instead among wild hunters, Dante racked up enough conditionals to send his lone remaining swordsman into a berserk fury. Mourn lost three units before the berserker fell, along with the center of his line. Peppered by Dante's hilltop archers, harassed and ensnared by the hit-and-run drakes, Mourn removed the last of his pieces from the board four turns later.
The audience applauded and whooped. Significant fun was made of Mourn's loss to a scrawny human outlander. Mourn's smile was as slow as his advance across the battlefield.
"Good move," he said. "Now why don't you play someone who actually knows what the units with the spiky things are called."
Dante slouched back in his chair, heart thudding. "But I don't have any nulla to wager."
"You're so dumb you'd probably forget what food is for," Blays said. "You're the best healer in town. Bet with that."
Despite the potential for humiliation at the hands of a human, when it came to Nulladoon, the standard norren suspicion of outsiders evaporated altogether. Within minutes of announcing he was looking for a match, Dante had enough appointments to fill out the day. It wasn't simply the novelty factor, either. Word had somehow spread that he'd healed several members of the Clan of the Nine Pines after a ferocious battle, an
d that his healing-nulla could cure anything short of death itself. In a city as mean, pestilential, and backbreaking as Dollendun, challengers lined up like he were passing out free wine.
He lost, of course. The first game was a war of attrition; he couldn't keep up with his white-haired foe's subtle modifiers and wily wisdom during disputes. He played his second game against a young woman, but the match collapsed in less than twenty minutes when Dante's opening charge (intending to attain an initial strength advantage he could then leverage murderously through strangulating conservatism) died on enemy spears. The third match lasted right until midnight, however, a back-and-forth tilt that saw him and his rival switch not just tactical but geographic position several times, a game of reversals and re-reversals so captivating that the pub's owner began to complain his patrons had forgotten how to drink. When Dante's final piece—a battered sorcerer—finally dropped, there were as many sighs as cheers. Dante's opponent, a middle-aged potter, immediately bought him three beers.
But it didn't matter that he lost, except for the time he lost when winners cashed in their nulla-writs and called him away to soothe a sister's pneumonia or heal a father's broken wrist. Dante didn't resent the lost time. He didn't need to become the best. Not after he figured out how he could cheat.
While card-play was a single dimension of the game, it could provide a big enough advantage to overcome many slips of tactics and strokes of poor luck. If Dante could see his opponent's hand—through his connection to a dead fly on the wall, say, or better yet, a lizard, something small enough to escape notice but which at least shared his basic senses—he could overwhelm that field of the game, flushing out the opponent's hand while strengthening his own, anticipating their movements and preparing his counters moves in advance. In one private test with Mourn (Blays acting as a hapless arbiter), it worked so well it was nearly too obvious. They tried again, with Dante playing his cards with just enough deliberate mistakes and oversights to pass muster.
The Great Rift Page 11
