The Gameshouse

Book 0: Gameshouse

by Claire North

Genres: Literary Fiction; Sci-fi Action & Adventure; Suspense

Synopsis

The World Fantasy Award-winning author of The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August presents a mesmerizing tale of a gambling house whose deadly games of chance and skill control the fate of empires.
Everyone has heard of the Gameshouse. But few know all its secrets...

It is the place where fortunes can be made and lost through chess, backgammon - every game under the sun.
But those whom fortune favors may be invited to compete in the higher league... a league where the games played are of politics and empires, of economics and kings. It is a league where Capture the Castle involves real castles, where hide and seek takes place on the scale of a continent.

Among those worthy of competing in the higher league, three unusually talented contestants play for the highest stakes of all...
This novel was originally published as three digital-only novellas: The Serpent, The Thief, and The Master.
Previous books by Claire North: The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August Touch The Sudden Appearance of Hope The End of the Day 84K
By the same author, writing as Kate Griffin: A Madness of Angels The Midnight Mayor The Neon Court The Minority Council The Glass God Stray Souls

Release date: May 28, 2019

Publisher: Orbit

Print pages: 448

Sample

Come.

Let us watch together, you and I.

We pull back the mists.

We step onto the board, make our entrance with a flourish; we are here, we have arrived; let the musicians fall silent, let those who know turn their faces away at our approach. We are the umpires of this little event; we sit in judgement, outside the game but part of it still, trapped by the flow of the board, the snap of the card, the fall of the pieces. Did you think you were free of it? Do you think yourself something more in the eyes of the player? Do you fancy that it is not you who are moved, but is moving?

How naïve we have become.

Let’s choose a place and call it Venice. Let us say it is 1610, six years since the Pope last declared this place heretic, barred from the blessings of his divine office. And what was this to the people of the city? Why, it was no more than what it was: a piece of paper stamped with wax. No Bishop of Rome could shake this sinking city. Instead the black rats will come, they will come with fleas and plague, and the city will rue its impiety then.

But we run ahead of ourselves. Time, to those of us who play in the Gameshouse, stretches like kneaded dough; fibres split and tear away but we persist, and the game goes on.

She will be called Thene.

She was born at the close of the sixteenth century to a cloth merchant who made a fortune buying from the Egyptians and selling to the Dutch, and her mother was a Jew who married for love, and her father fed her pork from infancy and made her swear never to reveal this terrible secret to the great men of the city.

—What will I be when I am old? she asked her father.—Can I be both my mother’s daughter, and yours?

To which her father answered,—No, neither. I do not know who you will be, but you will be all yourself, and that will be enough.

Later, after her mother dies, her father remembers himself speaking these words and weeps. His brother, who never approved of the match and dislikes the child as a symbol of it, paces up and down, rasping:

—Stop crying! Be a man! I’m ashamed to look at you!

She, the child, eight years old, watches this exchange through the door and swears with her fists clenched and eyes hot that she will never be caught crying again.

And a few years later, Thene, dressed in blue and grey, a silver crucifix about her neck, leather gloves upon her hands, is informed that she shall be married.

Her father sits, silent and ashamed, while her uncle rattles off the details of the match.

Her dowry is greater than her name, and it has purchased Jacamo de Orcelo, of ancient title and new-found poverty.

—He is adequate, potentially a fine husband given your degree, her uncle explains. Thene keeps her fingers spread loose across her lap. The act of keeping them so, of preventing from them locking tight, requires a great deal of concentration, and at fifteen years old, Thene has not cried for seven years, and will not cry now.

—Is this your wish? she asks her father.

He turns his face away, and on the night before her wedding day she sits down with him before the fire, takes his hand in hers and says,—You do not need my forgiveness, for you have done nothing wrong. But as you want it, know that it is yours, and when I am gone I will only remember the best of you; only the very best.

For the first time since her mother died, he cries again, and she does not.

Jacamo de Orcelo was not a fine husband.

For the sake of Thene’s dowry, this thirty-eight-year-old man of the city swore he would endure the snickering of his peers who laughed to see his fifteen-year-old bride, whispering that he had married the merchant’s daughter, and murmuring that beneath her skirts there was only cloth and more cloth, no womanly parts at all for a man to grapple with.

The first night they were alone together, she held his hands, as she had seen her mother do when she was young, and stroked the hair back from behind his ear, but he said this was womanly rot and pushed her down.

His aged mother told her that he loved fresh shrimp cooked over a smoky flame, the spices just so, the sweetness just right, and she learned the secrets of this dish and presented him a platter for his supper, which he ate without thanks, not noticing the efforts she had gone to.

—Did you like the meal? she asked.

—I had better as a boy, he replied.

She sang when first she came to this house, but he said her voice gave him a headache. Then one night, when she was walking alone, she sang one of her mother’s songs, and he came downstairs and hit her, screaming,—Jew! Jew! Whore and Jew! and she did not sing again.

Her wealth bought him some redemption from his debts, but money dwindles, and the laughter persisted. Was it this, we wonder, that made their marriage so cold? Or was it the fumbling of the old man in the sheets with his teenage bride, his love of wine, his affection for cards and, as she failed to produce an heir, his growing fondness for whores? Which piece of all of this, shall we say, was it that most defined their home?

We watch their house, proud and tall in the heart of San Polo, hear the servants whisper behind their hands, see the wife withdraw into her duties, witness the husband spend more on less, see the coffers empty, and as the years roll by and Jacamo grows ever more reckless in the destruction of himself, what do we see in her? Why, nothing at all, for it seems that against the buffets of fortune she is stone, her features carved into a mask of perfect white.

Thene, beautiful Thene, grown to a woman now, manages the accounts when her husband is gone, works with the servants and hides in the lining of her skirts those ducats that she can best secure before he finds them and spends them on whatever—or whoever—it is that today has best taken his fancy. And as he grows loud, so she grows quiet, until even the whispers against her character cease, for it seems to the gossipy wives of Venice that there is nothing there—no merchant’s daughter or gambler’s wife, no woman and no Jew, not even Thene herself—but only ice against which they can whisper, and who has any joy in scheming against winter herself?

All this might persist, but then this is Venice, beloved of plague, reviled by popes, the trading heart of Europe, and even here, all things must change.

There is a house.

You will not find it now—no, not even its gate with the lion-headed knocker that roars silently out at the night, nor its open courtyards hung with silk, or hot kitchens bursting with steam, no, none of it, nothing to see—but then it stood in one of those little streets that have no name near San Pantaleone, just north of a short stone bridge guarded over by three brothers, for there are only two things that Venetians value more than family, and those are their bridges and their wells.

How did we come to be here?

You—why, you have come with Thene, you have followed Jacamo, who is for ever looking for new ways to lose his wealth and heard rumour of a place where he might do so in most extravagant style. You have come with them both to the door, for Jacamo is angry with his wife, angry at her coldness, her constant politeness and failure to scream, and so he takes her with him now, that she might witness all he does and suffer in him. Follow them as they knock on the door and step into a hall hung with silk and velvet, pressed with the smell of incense and the soft sound of music, past two women clad all in white, their faces obscured by nun’s veils though they are of no such order, who whisper,—Welcome, welcome, please—won’t you come in?

Follow them inside to the first courtyard, where torches burnt about the pillars of the walls and the sad faces of martyred saints, mosaicked in the Eastern style, sadly look on from their hollows above the arches of the doors.

Like Jacamo, perhaps you spot the prostitutes, hair pulled up high and dresses hitched about their knees, cooing in darkened corners at their clients. The sound of music, the smell of meat, the soft chatter of voices, the roll of dice, the slap of cards—why, they all call to him, sweetest nectar.

But more.

Perhaps, like Thene, you see too the boys and men who coo at the wealthy ladies gathered here, their faces hidden by long-nosed masks or silver-woven veils. Perhaps you observe the other doors leading to other places, from which different voices and different smells drift like the reflected spread of candlelight. As her gaze falls around this place, and ours follows, we too now perceive that of all the games being played in this courtyard and the halls that surround it, there are more than the mere casual tumblings of chance from the gambler’s cup. For now we see chess, checkers, Nine Men’s Morris and many we alone can now name as toguz kumalak, baduk, shogi, mah-jong, sugoroku and shatranj—all the games of the world, it seems, have come here, and all the people too. Is he not a Mogul prince, a diamond larger than her fist in his hat, who now moves a piece against the Jewish physician, yellow scarf wound about his neck? Is she in red, rosaries slung around her wrist, not a Frenchwoman who now places her bet against a Ragusan pirate freshly come from plunder? And more—more exotic still! For it seems to us, as we inspect the room, that a Muscovite nobleman, who spits and curses at the foulness of Venice, now turns over a card which is beaten by a Bantu prince, who smiles faintly and says,—Another try? Is that not Chinese silk draped across the white sleeve of the veiled woman who brings drinks to the table, and is there not a hint of Mayan gold in the brooch of the man who stands guard before a silver door to a place that is, at this time, to us unknown?

Thene sees it all, and though she cannot so precisely pinpoint the origins of all these sights as we can, she has wisdom enough to perceive its meaning.

We are not the only ones watching.

The umpires, as they shall come to be known stand apart from the servants who bring delicate foods and sweet drinks from some unseen kitchen. They watch, their faces masked, and they guard the silver door.

—Where does this door go? we ask.

—To the higher league.

—What is the higher league?

—It is a place for games.

—So is this place, so is this entire house. What is different about the higher league?

—The games are different.

—Can I join?

—Have you been invited?

—No.

—Then you cannot join.

—How do I get an invitation?

—We watch. You play.

And so the door remains shut. For now.

Thene watches too.

She watches her husband, his fortune steadily obliterated by men of meagre skill and poor strategy. She watches the lucky and the poor, the calculating and the giddy, as they move through the room, daring each other to greater odds. She spots a member of the Council of Seven, and two from the Council of Ten. She sees judges and merchants, lords and priests, and more—she sees women. Wives and daughters, mothers and ladies of the night: some play, some watch and there are some who are let through the silver doors to the unknown place without a whisper, without a sound, their faces hidden by the masks of carnival, their eyes watching her watching them.

Then there is the man.

Let us call him Silver in honour of the tracery of thorns that runs in that colour so softly, a thread wide, along his sleeves. He approaches her, and it is testimony to how innocuous he appears in all other senses that she does not mark him doing so, and as she turns at the sound of breath he says:

—Do you play?

No, she does not.

He smiles, half shaking his head.

—Forgive me, he says.—I misspoke. Will you play?

She looks at her husband’s back, the empty glasses at his side, the coins on the table, and realises that there is anger on her lips, a tempest in her belly and her hands hurt—they burn from not clenching—and with the softness of winter mist in her voice says simply,—Yes.

They play chess.

He wins the first.

She wins the second.

They do not speak more than a few words as they play. The wager is information, for there must be a wager.

—Is it not enough to play for joy? she asks.

At this, terror flickers across his face.—You would wager your happiness? You would gamble with your self-esteem? Good God, don’t play for joy, not yet; not when there are so many lesser things you could invest in!

This sentiment should have felt strange, and yet it settles over her as sure as the altar cloth across cold stone.—For information then, she says.—For answers.

When he wins the first game, he asks her even before the king has hit the deck,—Do you love your husband?

—No, she replies, and is surprised at the candour of her words.

When she wins she thinks a long time, and asks then,—What do you want of me?

And he replies,—One day I shall need a favour from a stranger, and I am curious to learn whether that stranger could be you.

Then Jacamo is up and drunk, and she takes him home.

The next day she dismisses another servant who they cannot afford to pay, and two nights later, they return to the house.

Again, Jacamo, the cards, the drink, the losses.

We are delicate watchers; we do not stare every night, but we have come here enough and seen him in this state before, and can surmise that there have been many more times that we were not privy to when this pattern played out.

We tut, perhaps, but say no more. Who are we to judge?

This night, however, we observe an alteration in events. Tonight he falls asleep after three hands, spittle falling from his lips onto the tabletop. Thene would feel ashamed at her husband’s display, but regret, like the sound of her mother’s songs, was lost a long time ago. Then Silver is by her side and says,—Will you play?

They play.

She moves too quickly on the first game, barely glancing at the board. When her final piece falls, he asks his question, and it is,—What do you fear?

She thinks a long time before answering.

—The things I might do, she says.—The woman I have become.

Their second game is slower, harder, and three moves before he’s checkmated he says,—I should probably resign, but that would sully an otherwise superb win. So he plays through and she wins, and asks even before his king has toppled,—Did you poison my husband tonight?

—Yes, he replies.—How did you know?

—I saw you watch him play, stand close to his elbow. You have never watched him before, nor shown any interest in his playing as it is so poor. You smiled and laughed and sounded like one of them, the men with their cards, but you are not. I can only assume you have some other intention, and now he is asleep and nothing stirs him.

—He will live, I’m afraid. I won a knowledge of alchemy from an Alexandrian once. I wagered my knowledge of gunpowder against his skills. By chance, he played his pikemen badly and I captured the castle.

—You talk in riddles.

—You must learn my language.

—Or you mine.

—But you want a thing I have, my lady.

—And what is that?

—You want to know what is beyond the silver door.

—Perhaps I do.

—Let us not be coy.

—Then I do. I want to know.

—Then we should play.

They play.

On the day she has to take a loan from a moneylender in the ghetto who knew her mother and whispers that for her, he will find a special rate, the umpires come to her.

That night, as with many others, Silver is not to be seen, but she has grown confident now; she plays many people as she moves around the room, and loses some but wins more. Jacamo is too drunk to care, and so carefully she acquires wealth won on board and table, with cards and stones, pieces and dice, building up her own small stash of coin for the day, which must come soon, when he drowns himself and the household in that drink too far.

At first people played her out of pity, and lost. Then they played out of curiosity in the wife of this husband who plays so much better than the man who is meant to be her master. Now they play for the purest cause, and in the purest way, for now the Gameshouse works upon their souls and they play for the only thing which matters—for the win. And certainly, there are some players in some forms who will beat her on a certain day, but a great many more who lose, and still they try and try again.

Then the umpires come.

The voice is female, but beneath her white robes who could tell until the moment in which she spoke?

—Come with me, she says.—We have watched you play.

—Come where?

—You would like to meet the Gamesmaster.

It is not a question, nor does it need to be.

Thene follows to the silver door. Like Thene, perhaps we pause here to inspect the four carved panels which are mounted there. They depict the fall of empires. Proud Rome, overcome by the barbarians of the north. Noble Constantinople, its people screaming as the Ottoman pushes them from the walls. Two cities she cannot name, and as the door opens it occurs to her that, to another pair of eyes, the images carved there are not tragic laments at all, but celebrations of the new empire that slays the old.

Then the doors close and we are alone with Thene in a corridor, too long, the path obscured by silks hung like ancient spider-webs, the sound of music muffled, the smell of wax and candlelight sweet in our senses.

She is briefly afraid, but to go back is impossible, so on, on she goes until a pair of wooden doors opens to a new place, a hall of soft voices, of low couches and bunches of grapes in copper bowls, of the old and the young, the beautiful and the strange. In the courtyard of the lower league, she thought she had seen some great variation in the peoples of the world, but now she looks and sees faces that, to her eyes, seem barely human, and yet now we might name for her as there the high historian of the court of Nanjing; there, the wife of a samurai slain in battle, her obi tight about her waist. Here, the Maori chief who glowers at the fur-clad woman of the steppe, and here is there not some clue to the nature of the house? For even Thene, who knows nothing of the camel-herders of the east or the canoe-builders of the south, can look and know that these people are alien to her world, and that their garb is not fitted for Venice. Not merely is it absurd to think that they could have passed without comment, but the very weather itself is set against them, for surely she who wears such white furs about her throat would swelter in the autumn warmth, while he who wore—and even she turned her face away from the sight—little but animal hides about his midriff, was surely too scantily clad to endure the Venetian night?

How then did all these people come to be here? A great many doors lead in and out, and of a great many different designs, for the one she came through is of a classical Roman bent, but over there are paper panels that slide back and forth, and there a great metal barrier that must be winched back to permit the passage of people through its maw.

All this she considers, and again feels fear, though it is a fear which cannot be named, and is greater for the ignorance which spawns it. Then an umpire is there and says,—Come, please, come.

She follows.

A small black door, tiny next to the vastness of the space, leads up a narrow flight of stairs.

At the top of the stairs is a windowless room.

Cushions have been set on the floor, and three men are gathered there already. Two of the men wear masks. The other she recognises: a player from the courtyard like herself, whose record stood on a par with her own.

Before them all, sitting cross-legged on a heaped mess of cushions, a silver goblet at her side and veiled all in white, is a woman. Like the umpires, her face is hidden, but her robes are greater in volume and length than any other, swathing her entirely so that only where her wrist protrudes from her long winding sleeves, and when she speaks, could any sense of her form or sex be discerned.

For a long while they are silent, the four strangers and this gowned woman, until at last the latter seems to rouse herself from some manner of meditation and, raising her head, says to them,

—You have all been chosen.

She stops a moment and considers this remark, which came so easily to her lips. How many times has she spoken it before, and to how many players? Too many—too many.

—There exists in this house two leagues in which players may compete. The lower league you have all experienced, and there is gold and pride aplenty to be won from those who seek such material things. The higher league I now invite you all to join. Here we do not play for merely earthly things. You can wager diamonds if the glint of those gems amuses you, or rubies, or bodies, or gold, or slaves. These are all objects that others may covet. But here you are invited to wager something more. We invite you to wager some part of yourselves. Your skill with language, perhaps. Your love of colour. Your understanding of mathematics. Your sharp sight. Your excellent hearing. Years of your life—you may wager so much, if you choose, and those who wager unwisely and lose the game will find themselves growing old before their time, and those who play and win may live a thousand years, and become in their playing more than what they were. Nor, with the stakes so high, do we play petty games of chance or symbolic objects. If your objective is to capture a King, then we shall name that King, and to his court you shall go to win your prize. If you wish to compete, as our young boys do, for the ownership of a flag or other symbol of your power, then rest assured it shall be the flag of the mightiest general in the land, and your troops shall be legion, and with cannon and powder shall you make your claim. Our games are played for amusement and the increase of our minds, but they are played with flesh and blood and guts and pain as surely as any monarch of the world.

—You may decry such things as impossible or witchcraft but they are neither, and were you considered of such narrow-minded sort as to reject the veracity of what I am saying, you would not have been invited to participate. A great many people have heard rumours of this league and our house, and many lives have been lost and confidences betrayed in seeking to reach it. You are, in many ways, blessed to have been chosen, but if my words cause you fear, then you may leave now and the game will go on. Be aware that you shall not be invited to return to this league, nor shall you be permitted to speak of it to any other. This is a term inviolable.

She finishes speaking, and waits.

No one rises, no one leaves.

—Very well, she says.—I accept your consent. Yet as this is the Gameshouse, you cannot simply walk into the higher league without some venturing first. Four of you have been judged suitable—one will join the higher league. The rest shall leave this place, never to return. A game is proposed to determine a winner. Please—take the boxes.

We watch now as four boxes, each in silver, are presented by the umpires to the players, whose fingers itch to open but who keep themselves perfectly still, locked perhaps in fear of she who sits before them.

—The game, she continues,—is one of Kings. Within these boxes are pieces that you may deploy. Each piece is a person, somewhere in this city, who has through rash venture, wager, debt or misplaced ambition come to owe a certain something to this house. Their debt we now transfer to you to be deployed as you may. You will also find within these boxes the details of your king. There is a vacancy emerging in the Supreme Tribunal for an inquisitor in black. Four candidates of some equal strength will compete for it. Each one of you has been assigned one of these candidates—one of these Kings. The winner is he or she whose king takes the throne. The rules of the game are also laid down within your boxes. Anyone who violates them will be punished most severely by the umpires and, friends, please do not doubt that the umpires will know. They will know.

So she finishes, and so she rises, and so the players rise too, and for a second all stand, stiff and silent in the room, waiting for something more.

Do we imagine a smile behind the hidden face of the Gamesmaster? Do we think we can hear humour in her voice?

We dare not speculate, not tonight, not with a silver box in our hand and the terror of the unknown beating in our breasts.

She leaves, and so do we, the room dissolving like memory.

We are in a most private place.

Thene and her husband do not share a room, and he, for all he dares, does not dare enter this place, her place, the highest room in the house, a place usually reserved for servants though they are now nearly all gone. In it are some little things, for only in little things will Thene invest, knowing that when they are stolen, destroyed or taken from her, the material loss is nothing, and as for the emotion, the history and the time she has put into them… why, let it go. Let it go.

We are bold, you and I, to be here at all, watching unseen. Yet here we must come, voyeurs to another’s story, for here it is that Thene removes her bodice and her heavy outer skirt, unpins her hair, lights another candle from the stubby end of the first, sets it down beside her bed and, sitting cross-legged on top of the mattress like a child with a secret enthralling book, opens the silver box.

Dawn is rising outside through the streets of Venice, the grey light seeping in over the islands of the lagoon, through the slumbering workshops of Murano, across Piazza San Marco, that proud place built in defiance of Byzantine ambition, along the still waters of the Grand Canal and towards San Polo, where Thene’s treasures are revealed.

A piece of paper outlines the rules.

Do not harm the other players.

The winner is the player whose king is crowned.

There was nothing more.

She turns it over a few times, then laughs out loud and stops herself at once lest the sound be heard in the house.

She looks into her box.

A silver figure, a statuette, showing a man in flowing robes and flat cap. His name, engraved on the bottom, is Angelo Seluda, though she little needs to be told. Everyone knows the Seluda family, who have for these twenty-five years fought running battles with the Belligno family in the streets of Cannaregio. The Seludas wear blue; the Bellignos wear green. The Seludas trade glass; the Bellignos trade fish. Everyone knew why the feud had started, though no one knew the same thing. Some said a woman… others said a boat. It was whispered that Belligno’s favourite son was betrayed to a rival from Milan by a Seluda captain. The boy loved a woman (in as much as a seventeen-year-old boy knows how to love with anything but a blazing passion that dies like candles in rain) but that woman had a brother, and the brother was jealous, and two years ago the child vanished. Belligno is too powerful for any one house to openly murder his kin, but not powerful enough, it seems, that even his mighty word can keep the wandering children alive. Then again, who is to say what really happens in matters of the seas and war? We trust only the uncertain men, for they are the ones who hear everything and believe nothing, reporting rumour as rumour, and in their doubts they stumble on a truth, and the truth is that no one knows anything and people like to talk for a long hour or two in the sun.

In three hours’ time, word will spread through the city that Stephano Barbaro is dead, there will be elections for a new inquisitor to the Supreme Tribunal, and both Angelo Seluda and his arch-rival, Marco Belligno, will leap from their beds to fight for the post.

How, we wonder, did the Gamesmaster know that Barbaro would die?

We wonder, and then we do not. To wonder too deeply seems unwise, and will not aid our goal.

Her king, then, a sixty-one-year-old head of a merchant house, member of the Collegio, rival for the throne. She wonders who the other players have been given as their piece. Venice is a republic, a democracy even, in as much as a great many wealthy men of the city may vote for the Doge in the following manner: thirty members of the Great Council are chosen by lot. Another lot then reduced this thirty to nine. These nine members then chose forty members of their kin, who took another lot, and by this were reduced to twelve. These twelve then chose twenty-five, who were reduced by lot to nine, and these nine then elect forty-five. Of these forty-five, a lot again reduces their number to eleven, and these eleven then elect the forty-one who elect the Doge.

Is this democracy?

Why, certainly, it is democracy, if democracy is the machinations of a small handful of great and powerful men who by bribery and marriage own the others. Chance is not welcome when lots are drawn in Venice; votes are only worthwhile when the electors know that the votes will be cast the proper way. But who would be Doge? A worthless, ceremonial position; a man in a hat, living in a gilded cage. The Supreme Tribunal, to be a Tribune, there is where the power lies! This every Venetian knows. Even the silent; even the women.

A letter unsealed. A ribbon with a ring attached invites her to read, then seal at her own leisure. She opens it.

Dear Sir, the bearer of this note will assist you in your enterprise. Please accord her full courtesies. Your Friend.

She examines the ring with which this note should be sealed. It bears the head of a lion, roaring as do the knockers to the Gameshouse gates. She seals the note with wax and puts it aside.

More objects from the box. A white mask, which, unlike many of the masks made for females, does not require