Unfettered

by Terry Brooks

  “They were all him anyway!” the knight protested.

  “Well, everyone loves to see the two of you. It wouldn’t be the Merriest Place on Ye Olde Earth if you pair weren’t pretending to try to kill each other at one and four every afternoon.” She leaned over and kissed Blivet’s whiskery cheek. “And just think—no more traveling!”

  After that, Guldhogg decided he wanted to try a funnel cake, so they set off toward the Faerie Food Courte together—the knight, his lady, and his best friend. The sounds of fable being turned into coin rose all around them, a seemingly basic exchange but with an additional dividend of happiness to all parties. Even in the tenth century, that made for a pretty good state of affairs.

  Years and years ago, I joined a writing group and got feedback on the very first novel I wrote. (Never published, this novel lives quite contentedly in my trunk.) One of the critiques insisted that I had written the story from the wrong character’s point of view. Instead of writing about the powerful wizard, the intrepid knight, or the mysterious enchantress (yes, this novel was a pretty standard traditional fantasy adventure quest, which might at least partially explain why it didn’t sell), I had written the novel from the point of view of the farmer’s widow, who inadvertently joins the quest. Why would anyone want to read about her, this person said.

  Well, I did. That was kind of the point, I remember thinking. To tell a standard fantasy adventure story from the point of view of someone who isn’t powerful. I mean, that idea worked pretty well for Tolkien. To me, the farmer’s widow was interesting because she was a fish out of water in this world of magic and adventure, and she had the strongest emotional arc—her beloved husband dies on the first page, and by the end of the book she has to learn to be okay with that while the world is falling to pieces around her.

  I still really like the ideas in that first novel. And I still really like writing about the least obvious characters. “Game of Chance” isn’t a standard fantasy adventure, but it does have a bit of magic, and it’s got another unlikely main character who may not be the most powerful person in the room, but she’s interesting all the same. And she still has the potential to change the world.

  — Carrie Vaughn

  GAME OF CHANCE

  Carrie Vaughn

  Once, they’d tried using sex to bring down a target. It had seemed a likely plan: throw an affair in the man’s path, guide events to a compromising situation, and momentum did the rest. That was the theory—a simple thing, not acting against the person directly, but slantwise. But it turned out it was too direct, almost an attack, touching on such vulnerable sensibilities. They’d lost Benton, who had nudged a certain woman into the path of a certain Republic Loyalist Party councilman and died because of it. He’d been so sure it would work.

  Gerald had proposed trying this strategy again to discredit the RLP candidate in the next executive election. The man couldn’t be allowed to take power if Gerald’s own favored allies hoped to maintain any influence. But there was the problem of directness. His cohort considered ideas of how to subtly convince a man to ruin his life with sex. The problem remained: there were no truly subtle ways to accomplish this. They risked Benton’s fate with no guaranteed outcome. Gathering before the chalkboard in their warehouse lair, mismatched chairs drawn together, they plotted.

  Clare, sitting in back with Major, turned her head to whisper, “I like it better when we stop assassinations rather than instigate them.”

  “It’s like chess,” Major said. “Sometimes you protect a piece, sometimes you sacrifice one.”

  “It’s a bit arrogant, isn’t it, treating the world like our personal chessboard?”

  Major gave a lopsided smile. “Maybe, a bit.”

  “I think I have an idea,” Clare said.

  Gerald glanced their way and frowned.

  Much more of this and he’d start accusing them of insubordination. She nudged Major and made a gesture with her hand: Wait. We’ll tell him later. They sat back and waited, while Gerald held court and entertained opinions, from planting illegal pornography to obtaining compromising photographs. All of it too crass, too mundane. Not credible. Gerald sent them away with orders to “come up with something.” Determined to brood, he turned his back as the others trailed to the corner of the warehouse that served as a parlor to scratch on blank pages and study books.

  Clare and Major remained, seated, watching, until Gerald looked back at them and scowled.

  “Clare has a different proposal,” Major said, nodding for her to tell.

  Clare ducked her gaze, shy, but knew she was right. “You can’t use sex without acting on him, and that won’t work. So don’t act on him. Act on everything around him. A dozen tiny decisions a day can make a man fall.”

  Gerald was their leader because he could see the future. Well, almost. He could see paths, likely directions of events that fell one way instead of another. He used this knowledge and the talents of those he recruited to steer the course of history. Major liked the chess metaphor, but Gerald worked on the canvas of epic battles, of history itself. He scowled at Clare like she was speaking nonsense.

  “Tiny decisions. Like whether he wears a red or blue tie? Like whether he forgets to brush his teeth? You mean to change the world by this?”

  Major, who knew her so well, who knew her thoughts before she did, smiled his hunting smile. “How is the man’s heart?”

  “Yes. Exactly,” she said.

  “It’ll take time,” Major explained to a still frowning Gerald. “The actions will have to be lined up just so.”

  “All right,” he said, because Major had proven himself. His voice held a weight that Clare’s didn’t. “But I want contingencies.”

  “Let the others make contingencies,” Major said, and that made them all scowl.

  Gerald left Clare and Major to work together, which was how she liked it best.

  She’d never worked so hard on a plan. She searched for opportunities, studied all the ways they might encourage the target to harm himself. She found many ways, as it happened. The task left Clare drained, but happy, because it was working. Gerald would see. He’d be pleased. He’d start to listen to her, and she wouldn’t need Major to speak for her.

  “I don’t mind speaking for you,” Major said when she confided in him. “It’s habit that makes him look right through you like he does. It’s hard to get around that. He has to be the leader, the protector. He needs someone to be the weakest, and so doesn’t see you. And the others only see what he sees.”

  “Why don’t you?”

  He shrugged. “I like to see things differently.”

  “Maybe there’s a spell we could work to change him.”

  He smiled at that. The spells didn’t work on them, because they were outside the whole system. Their spells put them outside. Gerald said they could change the world by living outside it like this. Clare kept thinking of it as gambling, and she never had liked games.

  They worked: the target chose the greasiest, unhealthiest meals, always ate dessert, and took a coach everywhere—there always seemed to be one conveniently at hand. Some days, he forgot his medication, the little pills that kept his heart steady—the bottle was not in its place and he couldn’t be bothered to look for it. Nothing to notice from day to day. But one night, in bed with his wife—no lurid affair necessary—their RLP candidate’s weak heart gave out. A physician was summoned quickly enough, but to no avail. And that, Clare observed, was how one brought down a man with sex.

  Gerald called it true. The man’s death threw the election into chaos, and his beloved Populist Tradition Party was able to hold its seats in the Council.

  Clare glowed with pride because her theory had worked. A dozen little changes, so indirect as to be unnoticeable. The perfect expression of their abilities.

  But Gerald scowled. “It’s not very impressive, in the main,” he said and walked away.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” Clare whispered.

  “He�
�s angry he didn’t think of it himself,” Major said.

  “So it wasn’t fireworks. I thought that was the point.”

  “I think you damaged his sensibilities,” he said, and dropped a kind kiss on her forehead.

  She had been a normal, everyday girl, though prone to daydreaming, according to her governess. She was brought up in proper drawing rooms, learning how to embroider, supervise servants, and orchestrate dinner parties. Often, though, she had to be reminded of her duties, of the fact that she would one day marry a fine gentleman, perhaps in the army or in government, and be the envy of society ladies everywhere. Otherwise she might sit in the large wingback armchair all day long, staring at the light coming in through the window, or at sparks in the fireplace, or at the tongue of flame dancing on the wick of the nearest lamp. “What can you possibly be thinking about?” her governess would ask. She’d learned to say, “Nothing.” When she was young, she’d said things like, “I’m wondering, what if fire were alive? What if it traveled, and is all flame part of the same flame? Is a flame like a river, traveling and changing every moment?” This had alarmed the adults around her.

  By the time she was eighteen, she’d learned to make herself presentable in fine gowns, and to arrange the curls of her hair to excite men’s interest, and she’d already had three offers. She hadn’t given any of them answer, but thought to accept the one her father most liked so at least somebody would be happy.

  Then one day she’d stepped out of the house, parasol over her shoulder, intending a short walk to remind herself of her duty before that evening’s dinner party, and there Gerald and Major had stood, at the foot of the stairs, two dashing figures from an adventure tale.

  “What do you think about, when you look at the flame of a candle?” Gerald had asked.

  She stared, parasol clutched in gloved hands, mind tumbling into an honest answer despite her learned poise. “I think of birds playing in sunlight. I wonder if the sun and the fire are the same. I think of how time slows down when you watch the hands of a clock move.”

  Major, the younger and handsomer of the pair, gave her a sly grin and offered his hand. “You’re wasted here. Come with us.”

  At that moment she knew she’d never been in love before, because she lost her heart to Major. She set her parasol against the railing on the stairs, stepped forward, and took his hand. Gerald pulled the theatrical black cape he’d been wearing off his shoulders, turned it with a twist of his wrists, and swept it around himself, Major, and Clare. A second of cold followed, along with a feeling of drowning. Clare shut her eyes and covered her face. When Major murmured a word of comfort, she finally looked around her and saw the warehouse. Gerald introduced himself and the rest of his cohort, and explained that they were masters of the world, which they could manipulate however they liked. It seemed a very fine thing.

  Thus she vanished from her old life as cleanly as if she had never existed. Part of her would always see Gerald and Major as her saviors.

  Gerald’s company, his band of unseen activists, waited in their warehouse headquarters until their next project, which would only happen when Gerald traced lines of influence to the next target. The next chess piece. Clare looked forward to the leisure time until she was in the middle of it, when she just wanted to go out and do something.

  Maybe it was just that she’d realized a long time ago that she wasn’t any good at the wild version of poker the others played to pass time. She sat the games out, tried to read a book, or daydreamed. Watched dust motes and candle flames.

  The other four were the fighters. The competitive ones. She’d joined this company by accident.

  Cards snicked as Major dealt them out. Clean-shaven, with short cropped hair, he was dashing, military. He wore a dark blue uniform jacket without insignia; a white shirt, unbuttoned at the collar; boots that needed polishing, but that only showed how active he was. Always in the thick of it. Clare could watch him deal cards all day.

  “Wait a minute. Are we on Tuesday rules or Wednesday?” Ildie asked.

  Fred looked up from his hand, blinking in a moment of confusion. “Today’s Thursday, isn’t it?”

  “Tuesday rules on Thursday. That’s the fun of it,” Marco said, voice flat, attention on the cards.

  “I hate you all,” Ildie said, scowling. They chuckled, because she always said that.

  Ildie dressed like a man, in an oxford shirt, leather pants, and high boots. This sometimes still shocked Clare, who hadn’t given up long skirts and braided hair when she’d left a proper parlor for this. Ildie had already been a rebel when she joined. At least Clare had learned not to tell Ildie how much nicer she’d look if she grew her hair out. Fred had sideburns, wore a loosened cravat, and out of all of them might be presentable in society with a little polish. Marco never would be. Stubble shadowed his face, and he always wore his duster to hide the pistols on his belt.

  A pair of hurricane lamps on tables lit the scene. The warehouse was lived-in, the walls lined with shelves, which were piled with books, rolled up charts, atlases, sextants, hourglasses, a couple of dusty globes. They’d pushed together chairs and coffee tables for a parlor, and the far corner was curtained off into rooms with cots and washbasins. In the parlor, a freestanding chalkboard was covered with writing and charts, and more sheets of paper lay strewn on the floor, abandoned when the equations scrawled on them went wrong. When they went right, the sheets were pinned to the walls and shelves and became the next plan. At the moment, nothing was pinned up.

  Clare considered: was it a matter of tracing lines of influence to objects rather than personalities? Difficult, when influence was a matter of motivation, which was not possible with inanimate objects. So many times their tasks would have been easier if they could change someone’s mind. But that was like bringing a sledgehammer down on delicate glasswork. So you changed the thing that would change someone’s mind. How small a change could generate the greatest outcome? That was her challenge: could removing a bottle of ink from a room change the world? She believed it could. If it was the right bottle of ink, the right room. Then perhaps a letter wouldn’t be written, an order of execution wouldn’t be signed.

  But the risk—that was Gerald’s argument. The risk of failure was too great. You might take a bolt from the wheel of a cannon, but if it was the wrong bolt, the wrong cannon…The variables became massive. Better to exert the most influence you could without being noticed. That didn’t stop Clare from weaving her thought experiments. For want of a nail…

  “I raise,” Major said, and Clare looked up at the change in his voice. He had a plan; he was about to spring a trap. After the hundreds of games those four had played, couldn’t they see it?

  “You don’t have anything.” Marco looked at his hand, at the cards lying face up on the table, back again. Major gave him a “try me” look.

  “He’s bluffing.” Ildie wore a thin smile, confident because Major had bluffed before. Just enough to keep them guessing. He did it on purpose, they very well knew, and he challenged them to outwit him. They thought they could—that was why they kept falling into his traps. But even Major had a tell, and Clare could see it if no one else could. Easy for her to say, though, sitting outside the game.

  “Fine. Bet’s raised. I see it,” Fred countered.

  Then they saw it coming, because that was part of Major’s plan. Draw them in, spring the trap. He tapped a finger, the air popped, a tiny sound like an insect hitting a window, that was how small the spell was, but they all recognized the working of it, the way the world shifted just a bit, as one of them outside of it nudged a little. Major laid out his cards, which were all exactly the cards he needed, a perfect hand, against unlikely—but not impossible—odds.

  Marco groaned, Ildie threw her cards, Fred laughed. “I should have known.”

  “Tuesday rules,” Major said, spreading his hands in mock apology.

  Major glanced at Clare, smiled. She smiled back. No, she didn’t ever want to play this game agains
t Major.

  Marco gathered up the cards. “Again.”

  “Persistent,” Major said.

  “Have to be. Thursday rules this time. The way it’s meant to be.” They dealt the next hand.

  Gerald came in from the curtained area that was his study, his wild eyes red and sleepless, a driven set to his jaw. They all knew what it meant.

  “I have the next plot,” he said.

  Helping the cause sometimes meant working at cross-purposes with the real world. A PTP splinter group, frustrated and militant, had a plan, too, and Gerald wanted to stop it because it would do more harm than good.

  Easier said than done, on such a scale. Clare preferred the games where they put a man’s pills out of the way.

  She and Major hunched in a doorway as the Council office building fell, brought down by cheap explosives. A wall of dust scoured the streets. People coated in the gray stuff wandered like ghosts. Clare and Major hardly noticed.

  “We couldn’t stop it,” Clare murmured, speaking through a handkerchief.

  Major stared at a playing card, a jack of diamonds. “We’ve done all we can.”

  “What? What did we do? We didn’t stop it!” They were supposed to stop the explosion, stop the destruction. She had wanted so much to stop it, not for Gerald’s sake, but for the sake of doing good.

  Major looked hard at her. “Twenty-nine bureaucrats meant to be in that building overslept this morning. Eighteen stayed home sick. Another ten stayed home with hangovers from overindulging last night. Twenty-four more ran late because either their pets or children were sick. The horses of five coaches came up lame, preventing another fifteen from arriving. That’s ninety-six people who weren’t in that building. We did what we could.” His glare held amazing conviction.

  She said, “We’re losing, aren’t we? Gerald will never get what he wants.”