by Claire North
He said, “Why do you want to live at all, being such a wretched little thing?”
I replied, “My wife. The Gameshouse has taken my wife.”
He said, “So?”
I said, “Ask me anything, any service, anything at all, I’ll be yours, I swear it; I’ll be yours for ever…” but he dismissed this offer as insignificant, unwanted, uninteresting, and his people howled with delight and made to cut out my heart, my tongue, peel off my flesh, until an idea struck him that seemed to entertain, and from a bag full of teeth and little ground bones, he pulled out a small Roman coin.
“You like games, do you?” he asked as I lay begging at his feet. “She who runs the house – she likes games. She finds they impose patterns on the world, make order where there is only chaos. Let’s play a game, you and I. I throw this coin, and if it lands on a certain side, you live, and if it doesn’t, you die. You can pick which side gives you life – not that choosing makes a difference.”
So I chose, and tossed the coin.
The coin turns, the coin turns.
Empires rise, empires fall, and only the turning remains.
Chapter 33
He said, “Would you like something to drink? Have a Ritz sidecar. Cointreau, cognac – I usually charge five hundred bucks a glass in the bars downstairs, but for you I’ll do it free, for old time’s sake.”
He didn’t wait for me to answer, but produced a handful of bottles from a drawer, a couple of cocktail glasses and, beaming at his own cleverness, a little purple umbrella. I watched him mix the drink, chuckling as the ingredients combined. He downed his in a single gulp. I didn’t touch mine; it sat on the table between us.
“Ain’t you gonna drink it?” he asked, his accent a thick California drawl, and before I could speak, he grabbed it from in front of me, shrugged, said, “Hell of a waste,” and drained my glass down too, wiping his mouth with the back of his sleeve. This done, he slung himself into his office chair, boots up on the desk, legs crossed, arms folded across his belly, and beamed.
“So,” he said at last. “How long’s it been? You took your sweet time getting round to challenging the bitch.”
“I wasn’t ready before.”
“Looks to me like you ain’t ready now!” he replied brightly. “Getting blood all over my shit, that is.”
“I…didn’t expect to see you here.”
“Where else would you expect to see me? In the fucking mountains, freezing my balls off? The wild tamed civilisation, Silver, the wild got into civilisation’s veins – this is the place; this is where it’s at. You okay to walk? Walk with me.”
I walked with him, hobbling behind as he swept across the thick red carpets, the marble halls, past the mirrors of polished bronze, the bell boys and card sharps, executive hosts and VIP managers, gamblers, tourists, drunks and hopefuls of the hotel. Subordinates shuffled out of his way, middlemen tried to smile, then looked away. He beamed at all who passed him by and they faltered, feeling perhaps the thing that lay behind the smile, the power, the joy. We swept through the backstage corridors above a concert hall where a woman with two stars over her breasts, one over her groin and very little else, suspended by a wire seven feet above the stage, spun and spun in the white light of the follow-spots.
He beat me, he mistreat me, but that’s okay, he’s my guy…
Below, three thousand people stared in wonder, their faces sparkling in reflected light while oiled, muscle-bound dancers pounded and thrust their way through a routine, faces contorted into grimaces of pain, feet stamping, skin bulging, sweat mixing with grease down the sides of their thick, tanned necks.
I want it hot hot, she sang. I want it now now. I want it more more.
Bird let me watch for a moment, then pulled me on, dragging me by the sleeve like a kitten playing with its prey. In the lift, a man and a woman were tangled in a drunken embrace, fingers clawing at each other, pulling at clothes, skin, hair. I turned away; Bird watched, chuckling to himself, and they didn’t care.
Onto the fifth floor, through crystal doors and down corridors of silver and blue, we came to a quieter lounge, a long bar of polished titanium white and black marble floors, where tables were laid out for the greatest and the grandest to play their games. Dice tumbled and cards fell; a hundred thousand dollars were lost and the loser shrugged; stacks of chips dragged into the house’s hand as the high rollers sipped champagne, three hundred dollars a glass, and caressed the thighs of paid-for strangers, and rolled fortunes away like children throwing stones at a bucket.
Down again, down to the bright light where everything beeped, buzzed, banged, twiddled and turned, where the tourists wore Hawaiian shirts and high shorts, and the regulars wore sweat patches which had embedded themselves into stiff crumples of yellow, and the hostesses swayed at the hips as they walked, and bent down to whisper in the ears of familiar faces, buttocks out, breasts down, lips wide and eyes innocent, another roll, sir, your luck will turn…
On a balcony above it all, like an emperor inspecting his troops, we stopped, and Bird threw his arms wide in triumph and pride. “Roulette!” he exclaimed, stacks moving across the green surface of the tables. “Slot machines!” Wheels turned, wheels turned, and the house won. “Blackjack.” The cards fell; the player lost. “Twenty-one, baccarat, the roll of the dice.” The dice rolled, the dice rolled, and the house won. “The turn of the coin and look at them! Just look!”
I looked around a hall plastered with light, a brightness almost too bright to look at, hear the pinging of the machines, the chattering of the tables, the cries of the winners, the sighs of the loser, and as he chuckled again, “Look, look,” I strained my eyes to see what it was that his broad grin and wide arms took in.
“They’re smiling!” hecried. “They’re smiling, they’re laughing, look at them! They’re going to be fucking broken – I’m going to fucking break them, rinse them dry, take their fucking souls and they’re gonna love me for it all the way. Do you see it, Silver? Do you see?”
“Yes,” I said. “I see.”
“Do you see this victory?” he asked, face burning with joy. “The banks bet big and countries fall; the numbers grow and the numbers shrink but people – the clever, clever people, reasonable, rational people – they don’t play the numbers, they don’t play the maths, they just play greed. Lust! Lust and blood, that’s all there is, all there ever was. Behind every smile there’s only sex and need, in every gift there’s a debt that will be paid, power that will be reaped, this world, these people, they are the wild things, the savage things, just like I always said, just like I promised – I was right! There is no reason; there is only the fire and the dark!”
“No,” I breathed, watching the slots turn and turn again on the floor below. “You’re wrong.”
He hit me. The slap, open-handed and hard, was so sudden and unexpected that it pushed me off my feet, sent me falling to the floor, and there he was, stood over me, the king of the mountain, the lord of the wild things. “Stop me,” he breathed, and as I made to stand up, he kicked me, knocking me down. “Stop me,” he repeated louder, and though some people saw, everyone turned away, no help coming, no one who dared to care. I reached up and he stood on my hand, ground his heel into it until I whimpered with pain, then bent down, his face hot next to mine, holding my head up by the hair. “Stop me,” he whispered. “They say you’re the one of the greatest players who ever lived, one of the smartest men alive. Go on. Use your words; use your wisdom and your wit. Reason until I stop.”
I tried to speak, couldn’t, only pain and breath left.
“You play for vengeance,” he breathed. “And now you pant and beg and bleed, and nothing can save you except chance and blood. You’re an animal too.”
So saying, he let me go, turned his back and I hauled myself onto my uncertain feet, leaning across the railing of the balcony to gasp down breath.
A while we stood there, he staring at nothing while I watched the slots. Three cherries in a row; tw
o pineapples and a raspberry; bonus, bonus, bonus! The wheels turned, and the house won. The house always wins, and still the players play.
Then Bird looked back, and he was smiling again, a glitzy cowboy in a millionaire’s suit. He caught my hand, pushed something into it before I could say no, holding me tight by the wrist. I felt a thing, warmed by flesh, which he closed my fingers around, still smiling, still looking into my eyes.
“You’re gonna lose,” he breathed,. “It’s a shame, after all the time you’ve wasted, but you can’t beat her; you ain’t got what it takes.”
“You don’t know that.”
“Sure I do. I’ve watched players for ever – I know when they don’t have the heart for it and, Silver, you lost your heart a long time back. I can help you; I can give you what it takes to bring her down.”
His hand around my wrist, his fingerspressing over my fingers.
“In exchange for what?” I asked.
“If you win, you get the Gameshouse.”
“No: I destroy it.”
He tutted. “And what a waste that would be! You take it, you make it what people really want. No more boards, no more brains, just the joy, just the money, just the blood – you get it? You burn the chess sets and you put in fruit machines. You smash the baduk board and build me a roulette table. And in the higher league, for the ones who get that kinda luck, you make sure when they give the chamber a spin that the ammunition is live; and when the cards fall and the forfeit is the guy’s soul, you see to it that the whole house is there to take a piece, to eat him raw. You promise me that and I’ll help you take the Gameshouse. Or say no and I’ll let the bitch chain you to her fucking wall.”
He pulled his hand away from mine. I looked down. A dice lay in my hands, small, polished, perfectly square, carved from yellowing bone. Bird’s face was open with curiosity, waiting to see what I’d do. I closed my fist tight around it, let my eyes sink shut, feeling its warmth.
I opened my eyes, handed him the dice. “Thank you for your offer,” I said. “But the answer is no.”
Surprise flickered across his features but he took the dice, slipped it back into his jacket pocket. “Your decision,” he said with a shrug. “Stupid for a player.” A flash of a grin across his face. “But then, that kinda just proves my point, don’t it now?”
I turned away, feeling suddenly tired, in pain. He didn’t try to stop me, didn’t move, but as I headed for the door, he called after me.
“Silver!”
I stopped, not looking back.
“Luck is sometimes merciful; the game never is. Remember that when you change your mind.”
I walked away.
Chapter 34
The day my funds dropped to their last hundred million dollars, I crossed the border between the US and Canada on a tour bus of enthusiastic Argentineans who ooohed and aaahhed as we rattled across the Thousand Islands International Bridge, craning their necks to see the waterways wriggling below, the snow-capped forests all around. Our guide, as we entered Canada, stood up and proclaimed:
“Canada is famous for maple syrup and moose!” and everyone applauded.
In Montreal I ate chips with melted cheese, and as the winter snows began to thicken, crunched through knee-high piles to the bus station to catch the coach northeast, following the river to Quebec, then on into timberlands and the north.
The ferry to Tadoussac was delayed by bad weather, but eventually edged its way across the fjord into a town whose already-white houses were now turned whiter by the thick winter. The sun, when it peeped across the bay, was pale and brief, uneasy to be caught rising and fast to set. The main road through the town was silent save for the great lorries, loaded with timber in one direction, petrol in the other, growling past the little houses in the dead of night.
I found her in a little house above the bay, away from the rest of the town in a thicket of pine trees. The light was on in the living room, the stove was hot in the kitchen, but she still wore two woollen jumpers over her dressing-gown and, when she answered the door, she took a moment to recognise me through the hats, scarves, gloves, coats which shrouded my figure.
“Oh,” she said, as realisation dawned. “I wondered when you’d turn up.”
She made omelettes, cracking each egg in the fingers of one hand, no need for knives. I huddled near the stove, while a curious black and white cat rolled around my legs and, finding that I wasn’t hugely interested, jumped into my lap to enforce the need for attention.
“I like it out here,” she explained, pushing a plate across the table. “When the Gameshouse closed its doors, I concluded it wouldn’t be long until we came under pressure, particularly the older players. Remy’s gone over to her side, you know?”
“I know.”
“It surprised me: I thought he was one of yours.”
“The endgame’s coming,” I replied. “I’m losing ground.”
She nodded, without expression, pouring ketchup into a round puddle on the side of her plate. “I thought you might be; figured you’d call.”
I smiled uneasily over my fork, studying her face. Thene, beautiful Thene, she had put on a mask so many centuries ago and, though the mask was gone, its impression remained on her skin, unchanging, unflinching, unreadable. She had survived in the higher league more than most, playing slow, careful games, building her resources, and yet, being so cold in her demeanour, it was as if the rest of the house had lacked the emotional involvement to ever truly challenge her. She provoked no fear, no envy, no dread, no rage, but was merely all that she was – a player. In those words were the be-all and end-all of her existence, and the rest was merely frost on a winter’s morning.
“We struck a bargain, a long, long time ago,” I said. “Before you knew what the game was. I need to invoke that bargain now.”
“I know. I realised a long time ago what our deal would entail. The Gamesmaster plays, plays the players, using us to shape the world, and by our actions we did that – we created kings and destroyed ideas, launched rebellions and pushed society towards change; change of her choosing, that is. But then I looked a little closer and saw another game running behind it all, and you, Silver, were pulling the strings, gathering players into your hand, pieces you were waiting to play. I have only one move I will make for you – our bargain gave you only one move you could play – but I will play the part well and true, otherwise what is the purpose of the game? So.” She laid her knife and fork down carefully at the side of her plate, locked her hands together, elbows below, chin above, leant forward. “What is this lie you need me to tell?”
Chapter 35
Endgame.
I was going to lose, and as losing men sometimes do, I staked my defeat on one final gamble.
I set the board up near Jengish Chokusu, in the snow-capped mountains where no road ran, no tourists wandered, no miner dug, no adventurer came. For days a man could walk in this place and find no sign of life, and yet, in this same ridge of nothing, some forty years ago, the Soviets had built bunkers against invasion in a place where no army would reach, paranoia outweighing strategic sense.
To these bunkers I went, walking for days on end to find them, and in this place I set up my tools: the cameras, explosives, data networking, bugs, traps and locked doors. I play a unit from the Kyrgyz military, deploying three hundred men into the bunker and the mountains around it. A training exercise, my piece told them – nothing more. Then I permitted one of the soldiers to catch me in the edge of his photo frame, as he took a selfie on this tedious exercise to send back to his wife.
The photo I intercepted and enhanced and, after two months of preparation, forwarded it to Thene.
“Contact the Gamesmaster,” I said. “I know you know how. Tell her you found this – make the lie plausible. That’s all.”
“The Gamesmaster is a hard woman to lie to.”
“I know. That’s why I chose you.”
Two days later, a message came from Thene.
It’
s done.
The IP address from which those words were sent disappeared immediately after. She had made her move and I had made mine, and all there was to do now was wait.
Three days later, the invasion began.
She played Russian special forces, sneaking them in via helicopter in the dead of night. They killed seventeen of my men before the alert was issued and the sky lit up with flares, forcing the invaders back.
The next day, she played a larger unit of Russian operatives, backed up by a team of Chinese mercenaries, but my troops were ready, and a small arms battle raged in this nowhere land, snipers on ridges taking potshots at each other as men fell from cliffs and died in valleys.
On the third day, she launched MiGs against my positions, and the commander of the Kyrgyz unit desperately radioed his headquarters, asking what was happening, what was going on – but she’d jammed his kit, the soldier’s phones, and in a frantic meeting in the middle of the mountain, the unit concluded that, alone and isolated, all they could do now was fight.
They dug in, securing positions in and around the bunker, which she could not penetrate.
On the fourth day, she air-dropped in artillery, which took a further eight hours to be manoeuvred into firing positions. They started firing at seven-thirty p.m.. I took them down with a unit of Chinese fighters launched out of Xinjiang, slipped under Kyrgyz radar while my pieces looked the other way.
On the fifth day, she dropped in Russian, Uzbeki, Chinese and Tajik special forces, a groundswell of troops for the first time outnumbering my defenders. For two days, my men held out, but by the end of the week, they were down to a hundred and twenty-seven men and supplies were running low.
Now I unleashed the full force of the Chinese military and government which I had been so carefully nurturing since she chased me through Mongolia. I bombed her positions, sabotaged her planes, assassinated those pieces who she’d played to muster such forces against me, airdropped supplies to my men, unleashed viruses against the satellites and telephones she was using to coordinate this strike and in one bloody night of fire and dust, reduced her forces back down to a mere two hundred men.