The two players hadn’t acknowledged any of this. One was a small, thin man with a shaved head save for the wide stripe of red hair that hung from the back of his skull. He would have been the most striking member of the group were it not for the second player, who had the long-snouted head of an animal, completely white, and who sat beneath a strange ball of light. Fist-sized, it floated just above his head. Diverus touched Leodora’s shoulder, his eyes wide. She understood his startlement, and whispered to him, “Kitsune. A foxtrickster.”
The kitsune gazed intently at the crosshatched board and the array of small stones dotting it, as if the stones might change position if he looked away. If there was a pattern there, neither Diverus nor Leodora could fathom it.
The stones—some light and some dark—looked as if they’d been polished by the sea, like the little stones and shells that washed up on the beaches of Bouyan all the time; in fact, some of the white “stones” proved to be small shells. The aggregate of dark and light remained obscure to Leodora even as two more stones were laid, one by each of the players.
With the kitsune’s placement of the next dark stone, some of the watchers exchanged knowing glances as if something significant had occurred. The fox-player picked up a group of the lighter stones from the board, placing them in the lid to a small clay pot at his side, and she gleaned that he had surrounded them somehow, and thus won them. Even as he collected the “dead” stones, she noted, his black eyes remained locked on the board, his expression hard and his whiskers bristling. She had the sense that he was not certain he’d made the best move. The excitement wasn’t necessarily in his favor.
The other player picked a white shell from his pot and held it a moment while he pointedly assessed the arrangement of the remaining stones. As if following his thoughts, the fox’s seemingly permanent smile fell with resignation. He muttered something that sounded like shimata. The light stone was placed. The fox nodded. Then he and his opponent eyed each other. The dark-stone kitsune waved a furry hand once—he would not take his turn. The other placed another stone, and the fox waved away his turn again. The group relaxed and began to talk to one another as if picking up from an earlier conversation that had been suspended by the game.
The two opponents clasped hands across the board.
Diverus leaned forward and asked, “What just happened? I couldn’t see why they stopped—there are still lots of open lines.”
“I don’t know, either. Let’s find out.” She moved around some of the observers and approached the white fox. He stood now, stretching cat-like, his orange-furred arms above his head, the loose sleeves of his gown falling down around his skinny arms to his shoulders. In that position he turned to them as they approached. Leodora repeated Diverus’s question to him.
He gestured to the board, where three of the observers were bent over and discussing, apparently, earlier moves in the game. “I arrived at the point where I could see the outcome. The battle is engaged where I removed his stones, and that and this other are the only two open areas remaining. But the most I will be able to do from this moment forward is expend more stones before he deprives me of them. If this were truly war, what a foolish general I would be to send more and more soldiers into a place where I know in advance they cannot prevail. Those already taken are lost, and I cannot have them back.” He reached into his pot, raised a handful of black stones, opened his palm. “Should I not preserve these soldiers for another day and a better game? Only an idiot would do otherwise.”
Leodora met his eye and smiled.
Diverus asked, “And you both knew this?”
“We both—” He sprinkled the stones back into his pot. “—both concurred.” He looked at them critically. “This is your first game, then,” he said as he stepped away from the board.
“We’ve just arrived.”
“Then you’ve made good use of your time. And if you stay for another, you will discern how one arrives at such a crossroads.” He gestured behind himself where two other audience members were seating themselves and removing the stones, which they returned to their respective bowls.