The Grace of Kings (63 page)

The dockmaster, impressed, gave her some classical books on
cüpa
.

“These books explain the origin of
cüpa
as a simulation of war. If you study them, you will also understand how the game is entwined with military history and military strategy.”

“I can't read,” Gin said, embarrassed.

“Then it's time to learn.” The dockmaster's eyes and voice were gentle. “My sister never learned to read, and she didn't understand that she had been betrayed by the man she married when he had her sign a contract that deprived her of her right to dower. You must learn to read to protect yourself. I'll teach you.”

One day, while Gin was walking about the docks, a large man, a stranger, stopped her.

“I hate the sight of a scrawny little man like you strutting around with a sword. People here tell me you're a fighter, but I don't believe it. Either fight me and I'll bleed you out like a dirty piglet, or crawl between my legs and I'll let you live.”

For a man of Géfica, crawling between another man's legs was a humiliation that could not be borne. Other men on the docks soon surrounded the pair, anticipating a show.

Gin looked at the man: He was tall and broad-shouldered, and he had arrogant eyes that told her he was used to bullying others to make himself feel good. But his face was smooth and his arms scarless, which mean that he hadn't spent much time in the dark alleys of Dimushi. He didn't know how to really fight. She could kill him before he even knew what was happening.

But then she would have to leave behind this life she had just started to build for herself. She would not be able to finish learning how to read from the dockmaster. She could take the insult or kill the man. These were the only choices. There was nothing in between.

Slowly, Gin put her sword on the ground and began to crawl between the man's legs.

The crowd booed, the man laughed, and Gin felt her ears grow red. A darkness rose in her heart, urging her to unsheath her sword and plunge it into the soft belly of the man standing over her. But she forced the darkness down.

If you insist on fighting every fight that comes your way, you're simply letting them push you around in a different way.

Afterward, Gin read the books on
cüpa
and military strategy in every free moment and dreamed impossible dreams.

Then came the rebellion, and all the world was turned upside down. The docks at Dimushi filled with naval ships and profiteers and smugglers, crowding out the regular merchants. There was less and less work.

One day, the dockmaster called Gin to his room.

“I'm too old for this chaos. I'm retiring to my home village.” He paused, and smiled at Gin. Then he handed Gin a small pouch of loose gold. “This should be enough to get yourself a better sword and some armor. Take care of yourself, daughter.”

Gin looked at him.
Daughter
. She tried to speak, but no words came.

“I always knew,” he said. “Your disguise is very good, but I grew up with many sisters. I hope someday you can live in a world where you don't have to be afraid to be a woman.”

Gin got herself a better sword and leather armor. To avoid impressment by the Imperial navy, she left Dimushi to join a roving gang of bandits. They roamed through the countryside and waved whatever flag was convenient. When the Imperial army showed up, they became loyal Xana militias taking arms to support the emperor. When rebels showed up, they became brave Amu or Cocru warriors fighting for freedom.

After a while, she found that she had a knack for leading men. Limited by her small frame, she was not a great fighter on the field, but she was careful and calculating, and men who followed her won many victories in surprising ways.

Yet, because she was so unimposing physically, men attributed the success of her plans to luck rather than skill. She was forever being brushed aside when the bandits struggled for power.

Gin drifted through Haan, through Rima, through Faça, serving briefly in various armies and hoping that she could rise through the ranks. But the officers of the various armies did not take suggestions from this small-statured man seriously. Commanders assumed that she couldn't know anything about military strategy because she didn't kill many men with her own hands.

Even the great Marshal Zyndu, whose gambit at Wolf's Paw she greatly admired, did not give her a chance. She had bribed the guards to give her an audience with him and presented a strategy for how to quickly eliminate the empire's last bits of resistance in Géjira without killing many more people. But Marshal Zyndu had called her ideas dishonorable.

Gin then joined Kuni's ragtag army as they set off for Dasu. She had heard that Lord Garu was a good master who thirsted for men of talent, but she could think of no way to see him. In her frustration she got into a drunken rage at a restaurant in Daye and smashed the tables in that place. This was against the strict discipline that Than Carunoco and Mün Çakri maintained in Kuni's army. Gin was imprisoned and scheduled to be flogged publicly.

Cogo Yelu happened to be walking by the whipping post that morning.

“Does King Kuni want a great warrior?” the man being punished shouted at him.

Cogo Yelu stopped and looked at the man tied to the post. He was in his undershirt only, and the uniform at his feet told Cogo that the man was a lowly corporal. “You do not look like a great warrior.”

“A man who can kill several people with a sword is merely a living weapon. A great warrior can kill thousands of men with just his mind.”

Cogo was intrigued. He ordered the prisoner, a man by the name of Mazoti, released.

A
cüpa
set sat in Cogo Yelu's front hall. The stones on the board were laid out in a famous pattern. It was the final formation of a game concluded two hundred years ago between two great
cüpa
masters: Count Soing, the great Amu strategist, playing with white stones, had conceded the game to Duke Fino, the famed adviser to the Cocru court, playing with black stones.

“Do you play?” Cogo asked.

Mazoti nodded. “I've always thought that Soing should not have given up. There was hope yet.”

Cogo was not a great player, but he was a connoisseur of
cüpa
history and strategy. Mazoti's statement made no sense. Most of the board was occupied by black stones. The white stones, clustered in the center, had few breaths left.

Every student of
cüpa
knew that there was no way for Soing to escape from his hopeless situation.

“Care to show me how?” Cogo asked. They sat down to play.

Cogo immediately sent the black stones on attack.

Mazoti placed a stone far away from his army, in a corner of the board. Cogo evaluated the position. There was no threat. It was a pointless move.

The white stones seemed to retreat before the black stones. Instead of engaging, Mazoti only made the situation more hopeless.

“You're certain?” Cogo asked.

Mazoti nodded again, his face unreadable.

Cogo placed a new column of black stones to cut off Mazoti's retreat. Mazoti's only choice was now a battle of attrition at the center, where Cogo had an overwhelming advantage.

Confidently, Cogo placed another stone.

Mazoti's next stone choked off one of his own breaths. It was a mistake that even a rookie would not have made.

Cogo sighed and shook his head. He struck the final blow and took half of Mazoti's stones prisoner. Where Mazoti's army had been, there was now an empty expanse on the board, testament to Mazoti's blunder.

Cogo prepared to accept Mazoti's surrender. No player could recover from such a large loss.

But Mazoti said nothing and placed another stone in the corner. The two white stones there were like two lonely scouts with no support.

There was nothing else to do but for Cogo to take over the center, and fill in the empty expanse vacated by Mazoti with his own stones.

Mazoti placed one more stone in the corner. The three white stones looked less lonely than two. But it was still hopeless.

As he took over the empty space in the middle, Cogo frowned and hesitated. Somehow, with his old white stones arranged into rigid ranks and columns gone, Mazoti's new white stones achieved a kind of nimble, loose formation that defied analysis. Every time Cogo thought he had figured out a way to choke off Mazoti's new army, the corporal managed to force a new opening. Gradually, the little group of white stones in the corner connected with one another and coalesced into a growing force.

Too late, Cogo realized that he had been too greedy and intent on claiming the middle. Mazoti's army began to thrust into the soft underbelly of Cogo's formations, and whenever Cogo patched up one vulnerability, Mazoti seemed to find two more. Now it was the black stones, locked into unwieldy ranks and rows with no life, that were on the run.

Clink.
Mazoti placed another stone onto the board. Cogo watched helplessly as Mazoti's army completed the march to the other corner of the board, dividing his black stones into isolated groups. Now it would only be a matter of time before the black stones would be driven into even more disarray and eliminated from the board.