The Master

Book 3: Gameshouse

by Claire North, Claire North

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

Synopsis

From Claire North comes the final of three novellas set in the ingenious and thrilling world of the Gameshouse.

The Gameshouse is an unusual institution. Many know it as the place where fortunes can be made and lost through games of chess, backgammon—every game under the sun.

But a select few, who are picked to compete in the higher league, know that some games are played for higher stakes—those of politics and empires, of economics and kings...and now the ultimate player is about to step forward.

A Blackstone Audio production.

Release date: November 3, 2015

Publisher: Orbit

Print pages: 100

Sample

New York in summer. A city of two climates. Indoors, airconditioning lowers the temperatures to an Arctic chill; outside, the extraction fans add to the already shimmering heat until the air seems to melt in sweat-soaked, skin-slithering despair. I remember when New York was a colony on an island of mud, not deserving of even a few rolls of a lower league dice let alone a door to the Gameshouse. Yet there it stands, silver doors in a street where they do not belong. Lions’ faces, teeth bared, snarling at all who dare knock. Red brick above, a fire escape pushed awkwardly to one side as if the Gameshouse has transplanted itself into the architecture of this place, shuffling pre-established buildings a little to the left, a little to the right, to the confusion of the mortar around. Which, of course, it has.

The corridor inside hung with silk, feels old, smells old, and the closing door cuts off all the sounds of the city as if time had frozen upon a single second when no birds sang, no engines roared, no delivery boy shouted at the taxi that cut across his path, no siren soared, no door slammed in the city. Three weeks ago, this old place did not exist, and soon it will not exist again, and no one will remark on it, save those few players new enough to care.

The Gameshouse often comes to New York. It likes to be where the power is.

Come; follow me.

We move through corridors hung with white silk, smell the incense, hear the music, descend a flight of stairs to the club room where the newest players play, UV lights and champagne, cocktails with olives in, a fountain of ice, chess sets, backgammon and baduk, cards and counters, the usual paraphernalia of the lower league. New games too: Cluedo, Settlers of Catan, Age of Empires, Mario Kart, Mortal Kombat Whatever fought between a shrieking bishop and a deputy mayor. A judge, a police commissioner, a gangster, a congressman, a chief of staff, a general, a consulting doctor, a research fellow, a professor, a hit-man, a pharmaceutical king, an oil magnate, a seller of used cars and cheap cocaine – all the men and women who think they are someone, could be something more – they all come here as they have come through the centuries, across the world. They dream of passing through the doors which now open for me, and how many, I mused, will be played, rather than players? Most – perhaps all. That is one of the truths of the Gameshouse.

So much for the lower league; I do not slow my step for it. Next, the higher league: another hall, larger, where the ancient and the learned, the oldest players of the game, now gathered over TV screens and digital maps, plotting their next game. Why, there, one who wagered her good health on the price of gold and won – after some market manipulation – the excellent eyesight of the now-blind man who limps away. There, another who played battleships against an air force and lost his carrier in the first wave, now growing old and shrivelled as his life is forfeit. Why, she won a court case, he won a city; she won a state, he lost an oil rig and on, on the game winds, the game that covers the world, the game we tell ourselves we have played all these years for joy, all these centuries for joy, and which has, by our playing, changed the world in the Gamesmaster’s form for she…

She.

She is waiting for me.

I climb the stairs at the back of the hall, and no one bars my way. Usually two umpires – all in white, their faces veiled, their fingers gloved – stop trespassers, but not tonight, not me. She is waiting upstairs, as she has been waiting for so long.

She sits, her face covered, her arms in white, on a curved cream sofa beneath a shroud of silk. I have not seen her eat or drink or smile since she took the white, but she is still her, still after all this time.

She says, “Is it that time already?”

I find I do not speak.

She offers me water.

I find I cannot drink.

She says, “You look tired, Silver. You look old.”

“Not as old as I feel.”

“It doesn’t have to be this way,” she murmurs. “As long as the house endures, so can you.”

“Thank you; I have had my share of eternity.”

The gloved fingers of her left hand ripple along her thigh, just once, a pianist warming up with a scale. “So,” she says, “shall we?”

“Yes.” My voice is not my own; I speak again, louder, claiming the sound. “Yes.”

“You do not have to. Once you make this move, there is no going back, and I know you are not ignorant of what will come when you fail.”

“I will not fail.”

“Will you not? You have spent centuries preparing for this, but the house is mine, the players are mine and of the two of us, I was always the stronger.”

“I will not fail.”

“The house will have you if you lose. It will have your soul. I would be…saddened…to see that become your fate.”

“The house has me already, ma’am,” I reply. “I have been the house’s slave for almost as long as you.”

I imagine a smile behind her veil, and that imagination perhaps leads me to hear it in her voice. “Very well,” she says. “Then make your move.”

I draw in breath.

I speak the words.

“My lady of the veil,” I say, “my lady Gamesmaster, mistress of this house – I challenge you.”

What is this?

Are these…

…tears?

I walk away from the Gameshouse and there is a hotness in my eyes.

What is this?

I taste the moisture on my lips and it is salty.

It cannot be sorrow, nor is it a useful response to fear. For so many centuries I have waited for this day, and grief faded with time.

Or did it? Perhaps grief never leaves us but is merely drowned out by a flood of life overwhelming it. Perhaps the wound that bled once is bleeding still, and I did not notice it until now.

I find the thought unhelpful, and walk away a little faster.

There have been only three challenges that I know of against the Gamesmaster.

The first was before my time and exists only in allegory and myth. I will not bother with its telling.

The most recent was in 1774, and none of us expected the challenger to win. Nevertheless, for nearly forty years the Gameshouse closed its doors, and the Gamesmaster and her rival fought the Great Game, setting assassins, spies, kings, diplomats, armies and faiths against each other until finally, in 1817, the challenger was defeated, his princes dead, his armies smashed, and he vanished into the white. Who he is now, no one knows. Death is simple and the Gameshouse does not grant it easily – rather, it eats its victims whole, and somewhere beneath the white veils that are worn by the servants of the house, I do not doubt that he lives still, slave to the bricks and stones of that endless place.

And the other?

Why, the greatest challenge was made before, in 1208, and the woman who challenged the Gamesmaster was…

…a player greater than any I have ever known.

For twenty years they fought each other, the Gamesmaster and the player, and by the end of it no one could say for certain who had lost and who had won. All that was known was that the player vanished, some said into the service of the house, lost to the white, others said no, no, not at all! She vanished into victory, she conquered the Gameshouse, but who can really conquer that place? She is not the player any more, they said, but rather the Gamesmaster. In victory she become her enemy, and perhaps in this manner, her success was her ultimate defeat, for she is no longer herself but only the Gamesmaster again.

Did she see it so? Could she see anything greater than the game? Could she see me?

The coin turns, the coin turns.

Let the game begin.

We agreed terms long before I issued the formal challenge.

She said, “Assassins? No – too crude. Hide-and-seek? Too juvenile, perhaps. Risk – it’s been a while since I played Risk.”

I replied, “Risk lost its appeal with the onset of the nuclear age.”

The Gamesmaster sighed. “Very well: chess it is.”

Four weeks later, a player by the name of Remy Burke, a man who owed me a favour, sat down next to me in a bar in Taipei, put his elbow on the table, his chin in his hand and said, “Tell me you didn’t agree to play chess with the Gamesmaster.”

“I can tell you a hard truth, or a comforting lie,” I replied.

Remy let out a long, low puff of breath. “Silver,” he breathed, “the Great Game is one thing, but letting her play chess under Great Game rules is a death sentence.”

“It’s still only chess,” I replied. “We eliminate each other’s pieces and position our own until we are in a position to capture the king; there is nothing remarkable in this.”

“Except that you are the king.”

“And so is she.”

“And your pieces are going to be the fucking World Bank!” he hissed. “For bishop, read pope or ayatollah, summoning the faithful to crusade or jihad. For knight, read Mossad; for pawn, read the government of Pakistan, Silver! It’s not your death that troubles me here, though I am certain that you will die – it’s the death of every pawn, rook and queen the pair of you throw at each other as part of your game. Great Game rules mean you bring your own pieces to the table, and how long do you think it will be until she breaks out the big guns? Are you going to let countries fall, people die, economies crumble just to move a little closer to finding and capturing her for this game?”

I thought about the question a while, rolling the cold stem of the glass between my fingers. “Yes,” I said at last. “To win the Great Game: yes.”

He rolled back in his chair as if pushed in the heart, and for a moment he looked disgusted. I met his eyes and attempted to see my face in their reflection, my condition. Was there shame there? Did I feel a . . .