“You did, you know! Don’t you remember the time Pillono and I climbed out a window to visit the fair?”
“Ah, of course! It was climbing back in that gave you away.”
“And the next year you didn’t catch us.”
“So what is the solution to the doge’s problem?”
Cavotti frowned at the old man’s bland smile. “Master, you have had years to work on it and you expect me to solve it at a glance?”
“I had six years to learn you, Hordeleader, and you know the answer.”
Cavotti chuckled to hide annoyance. “True. Yes, I have been shown this problem before. In fact, it is known as Weru’s Device, which is why you are showing it to me now, correct?”
Thin lips smiled. “I may have heard that name applied, yes.”
“The trap is that it makes you think of classic problems like the Speaker’s Dilemma or the Two Elbows Gambit, so you look for subtlety, master. What happens if I degrade this red to a white?”
Dicerno stared at the tiles in horror. “You would be sacrificing this entire branch, destroying all your major positions and leaving your opponent’s intact!”
“But my opponent would have only one possible move-commuting this green to a blue-and I block that with a black. Then he has no legal move at all, so he loses. I do not obtain closure, but I win the game.”
“It is monstrous! An inelegant, barbarous solution!”
“That is why it is called Weru’s Device,” the Mutineer said.
OLIVA ASSICHIE-CELEBRE
sat on her ivory chair alongside the doge’s empty throne and made a valiant effort to attend to city business.
The ancient palace of the doge had been built on a vast scale for comfort in Celebre’s tropical climate. When the noon sun blazed down, its high ceilings and wide concourses offered cool breezes and welcome shade, but such grandiose architecture was less effective against tempests. On that fearsome night, invisible storm giants stalked the galleries, rattling doors, swirling drapes. Even the Hall of Pillars, normally majestic and serene, was clamorous. The spaces between the columns that divided it from the river terrace had been closed off with massive shutters, but even they fluttered in the wind like aspen leaves, continually rattling and creaking. Periodically an especially massive gust would either suck all the air out of the hall and make Oliva’s ears pop, or else push far too much air in and make her ears pop. Water trickled under the shutters to puddle on the polychrome tiles. Thunder rumbled petulantly in the distance.
Oliva’s head throbbed and her ears pop-pop-popped. Her senior scribes, Gienni and Althuse, waited cross-legged at her feet, surrounded by the clutter of their profession-baskets of baked clay tablets, boards with soft clay rolled ready for inscription, pots holding sharpened reed styli. Two tiny oil lamps flickered in the wind, barely illuminating their work, and an apprentice lurked mouselike in the background, ready to attend to the needs of his betters. The rest of the hall was a restless, noisy darkness.
She did not trust either Gienni or Althuse. Gienni had served the doge and his own interests-not necessarily in that order-for many years. He was old and desiccated, a human pinecone wrapped in his official robes, whereas Althuse was newer and much younger, hiding his thoughts behind the compellingly trustworthy eyes of a gazelle. He seemed competent enough, but he had won his promotion to master scribe in Gienni’s bed. They were both in the pay of the great houses, although such disloyalty was traditional and was normally kept within limits by fear of the doge. Regrettably, these two were well aware how little real authority Oliva possessed. She often wondered if some of the letters she dictated were ever sent, and how many other people read them first.
“A letter,” she said wearily. “From our lord doge to Flankleader Jorvark. Usual greetings.”
Althuse started poking the clay with his stylus, but Gienni looked up.
“My lady? Do you wish us to address the Werist that way or give him the state he claims-Governor of Celebre and so on?”
“As I said.” It was absurd to write a letter to a juvenile hooligan who lived on the far side of a narrow street and could not read, but the last time she had sent a runner, the boy had been returned on a litter and had required the services of two healers. Jorvark would have to take the tablet to a public scribe, and they were notorious gossips. Her protest would do no good, but at least it would become public knowledge.
“Begin. ‘The lord doge speaks: Since our last words to you, five sixdays ago, the offenses of which we complained have continued unabated. Hardly a day passes without your men committing rapes, beatings, and thefts, violating guarantees the bloodlord made when we put our city under his mercy, fifteen years ago.’”
She waited for the styli to stop moving. “‘We shall send a full report of your offenses to Bloodlord Stralg and demand-’”
“My lady!” Gienni muttered.
“Write my words! ‘And demand that you be held responsible.’”
She stopped with a sigh. She had no idea where Stralg might currently be, and he rarely acknowledged her letters. It was not impossible that Flank-leader Jorvark would come storming back from the scribe and make her eat her words, clay tablet and all-but even that would shore up her crumbling authority in the city. “Usual ending.”
In a moment the apprentice came to kneel at her feet and proffer the first tablet. She rolled her husband’s seal across the clay just below the writing. Then the archive copy…
At the edge of the shadows, a herald was bowing.
“Yes?”
“Master Preceptor Dicerno, my lady. He craves audience on a matter of extreme urgency.”
Oliva could not recall that most dignified of mummies ever using words like “extreme urgency” before. Whatever had Chies gotten up to this time? It was a good excuse to stop, though.
“Scribes, you may withdraw. We shall seal the covers tomorrow before the letters are sent.” Perhaps a night’s sleep would reveal a better way to deal with the odious Jorvark. “Admit the honorable preceptor.” She sighed again. “And send our son to us.”
They went, leaving her alone on the ivory chair in near darkness, while her ears popped and the storm rattled the great shutters like some monster beast trying to break in. Piero, were he his usual self, would be planning to tour the city on the morrow, viewing damage, giving comfort, and organizing relief. She wondered if she dared try that. She feared that she would be snubbed, or ignored, or mocked.
Fourth daughter of an ancient but decayed mercantile house, Oliva Assichie had seemed fated to wed some prosperous apothecary or master artisan willing to accept noble relations in lieu of dowry. But by the mercy of holy Eriander, or perhaps holy Cienu, at fifteen she had caught the eye of Lord Piero, the widowed and childless doge. Her mother had fainted from joy. Her sisters had never quite recovered.
Four children Oliva had given him, three sons and a daughter, and their life had been an idyll of happiness until the Vigaelians came. Stralg had taken her and the children away. Later he had sent her back to her husband and she had borne a fifth child. Even in her youth she had never been sylphlike, and now she was nothing less than hefty. She was effectively doge of Celebre while her husband wasted away in the torments of the Dark One, but the council put up with her because it was seriously divided on what to do. As soon as it reached a consensus she would be gone.
Even so, running a city was easier than being a mother.
A pale robe shimmered in the shadows. The old man lowered himself carefully to his knees, then folded forward, forehead to floor, just on the edge of the puddle of light the two little oil lamps spilled on the tiles. Everything else under the high ceiling was darkness and the gigantic surging of the storm.
Oliva had several choices. She had once seen Piero leave an unwelcome petitioner crouching like that for half a day until the man must have been near to screaming from cramp. Or she could say, “Approach,” which would mean he had to crawl forward like an insect.