The nurses looked at her, then glanced at each other, and the loser of that particular silent debate came toward Calla. She waited while the man studied her badge.
“I’m here to see Major Larn,” Calla said carefully, politely, no matter that the nurse would already know. By now, Calla was thinking of nothing else.
“Yes,” the nurse said, still startled. “He’s here.”
“He’s well?” Calla couldn’t help but ask.
“He will be. He—he will be glad to see you, when he wakes up. But you should let him sleep for now.” Between Calla and Valk, how much was the nurse seeing that couldn’t be put into words?
“Oh, yes, of course. May I wait?”
The nurse nodded and gestured to a stray chair, waiting by the wall for just such a purpose.
“Thank you,” Calla said, happy to display her gratitude, though she was afraid this only confused them. They could see that Valk was more important to her than other considerations, even patriotism. They could not see why, because Calla was confused about that herself. Calla fetched the chair and looked for Valk.
And there he was, in the last bed in the row, a curtain partially pulled around him for privacy. He’d been like this the first time she’d seen him, lying on a thin hospital mattress, well-muscled arms at his sides, his face lined with the worries of a dream. More lines now, perhaps, but he was one of those men who was aging into a rather heart-stopping rough handsomeness. At least she thought so. He would laugh at her thought, then wrinkle his brow and ask her if she was thinking true.
An IV fed into his arm, a blanket lay pulled over his stomach, but it didn’t completely hide the bandage. He’d had abdominal surgery. Before settling in, she checked the chart hanging on a clipboard at the foot of the bed. She’d never really learned to read Gaantish, but could read medical charts from when she was at Ovorton and they’d put her to work. Injuries: Internal bleeding, repaired. Shrapnel in the gut. He’d been cleaned and patched up, but a touch of septicemia had set in. He was recovering well, but had been restricted to bed rest in the ward, under observation, because past experience showed that he could not be trusted to rest without close supervision. He was under mild sedation to assist in keeping him still. So yes, this was Valk.
She settled in to wait for him to wake up.
“Calla. Calla. Hey.”
She woke at her name, shook dreams and worries away, and opened her eyes to see Valk looking back. He must have been terribly weak—he only turned his head. Didn’t even try to sit up.
He was smiling. He said something too quickly and softly for her to catch.
“My Gaantish is rusty, Major.” She was surprised at the relief she felt. In her worst imaginings, he didn’t recognize her.
“I’ll always recognize you,” he said, slowly this time. He switched to Enithi, “I said, this is like the first time I saw you, in a chair near my bed.”
She felt her own smile dawn. “I wasn’t asleep then. I should know better than to fall asleep around you people.”
“They tell me the cease-fire is holding. The treaty is done. It must be, if you’re here.”
“The treaty isn’t done but the peace is holding. My diplomatic pass to see you only took a week to process.”
“Soon we’ll have tourists running back and forth.”
“Then what’ll they do with us?”
His smile was comforting. It meant the bad old days really were done. If he could hope, anyone could hope. And just like that, his smile thinned, or became thoughtful, or something. She couldn’t tell what he was thinking. Never could, and usually it didn’t bother her.
She said, “They—people have been very polite to me here.”
“Good. Then I will not need to have words with anyone. Calla—thank you for coming. I’d have come to find you, if I’d been able.”
“I worried when you told me where you were.”
“I have been rather worried myself.”
His telegram had said only two things: I would like to see you, and Bring the game if you can. A very strange message at a very strange time. Strange to anyone except her, anyway. It made perfect sense to her. She had explained it to the visa people and passport department and military attachés like this: We have a history. He had been her prisoner, then she had been his, and they had made a promise that if peace ever came they would finish the game they had started. If they finished the game it meant the peace would last.
Calla suspected that none of the Enithi officials who reviewed her request knew what to make of it, but it seemed so weird, and they were so curious, they approved it. On the Gaantish side, Valk was enough of a war hero that they didn’t dare deny the request. Out of such happenstances was a peace constructed.
She looked around—there was a bedside table on wheels that could be pulled over for meals and exams and such. Drawing the chess set from her bag, she set it on the table.
“Ah,” Valk said. He started to sit up.
“No.” She touched his shoulder, keeping him in place with as strong a thought as she could manage. This made him grin. “There’s got to be some way to raise the bed.”
She’d moved to the front of the bed to start poking around when one of the nurses came running over. “Here, I’ll do that,” he said quickly.
Calla stepped out of his way with a wry look. Gaantish hospitals didn’t have buzzers for nurses. It had driven her rather mad, back in the day. In short order, the man had the bed propped up and Valk resting upright. He seemed more himself, then.
The chess set opened into the game board, painted in black and white alternating squares, and a little tray that slid out held all the pieces, stylized carvings in stained wood. Valk leaned forward, anticipation in his gaze. “I haven’t even seen anything like this since we played back at Ovorton.”
Gaant did not have chess. They did not have any games at all that required strategy or bluffing. There was no point. Instead, they played games based on chance—dice rolls and drawn cards—or balance, pulling a single wooden block out of a stack of blocks, for example. And they never cheated.
But Calla had taught Valk chess and developed a system for playing against him. Only someone from Enith would have thought of it. The two countries had approached the war much the same way.
“I’m rusty as well. We’ll be on even footing.”
Valk laughed. They’d never been on even footing and they both knew it. But they both compensated, so it all worked out.
“I made a note of where the last game left off. Or would you rather start a new one?”
“Let’s finish the last.” He might have said it because she was thinking it, too.
She arranged the pieces the way they had been, and reminded herself how the game had gone so far. There was a lot to recall. She didn’t remember some of the details, but given the rules and given the pieces, she only had so many choices of what to do next. She considered them all.
“It was your move, I think,” she said.
He studied her rather than the board. The Gaantish didn’t have to see someone to see their thoughts—a blind Gaant was still telepathic. But looking was polite, as in any conversation. And it was intimidating, in an interrogation. This idea that they could see through you. Enithi soldiers told stories about how when a Gaantish person read your mind, it hurt. That they could inflict pain. This wasn’t true. Gaant encouraged the stories anyway, along with the ones about how any one of them could see the thoughts of every person in the world, when they couldn’t see much past the walls of a given room.