Ninefox Gambit by Yoon Ha Lee Read Free Book Online Page A

the names to memory, as she had done that long ago, but she wanted to make sure she remembered what every intent face looked like, what every rough voice sounded like, so she could warm herself by them in the days to come.
    She spoke her name last, as was proper. The hall was otherwise silent. And then, breaking the ritual: “Thank you,” she said. “I wish you well.”
    For all that she was leaving them, she couldn’t help feeling a guilty twinge of anticipation for the challenge to come; but it would not do to let on.
    “Eat, sir,” Ankat said then, and she ate, not too fast and not too slow, making sure to finish with the two tangerines Verab had set aside for her.

CHAPTER THREE
     
     
    C HERIS HAD HOPED for more specific orders, but no such luck. She slept uneasily and woke in the middle of the night, four hours and sixty-two minutes before she would ordinarily rise. The room was dark, with only a single candlevine glowing.
    The Burning Leaf had shuffled itself into a new configuration. More importantly, a message on the terminal alerted her that they had already separated her from her company. She wished she had been awake for it, but they had undoubtedly done it this way on purpose. If anyone had a sense of mercy, her soldiers would be allowed some rest before they were hauled off for an examination by Doctrine, and those needing further medical care would receive it before they, too, went to their fate.
    When she paused by her desk, she noticed a new presence: a servitor in the open doorway. It hadn’t knocked, and she didn’t recognize it. “Hello,” Cheris said, looking at it quizzically.
    It was a foxform rather than the moth’s more usual spiderforms and birdforms. It had eyes of faceted glass, and they lit up yellow. A Shuos servitor. Of course.
    The servitor didn’t answer. Kel servitors never spoke human languages and Shuos servitors rarely did, although Andan and Vidona servitors usually could if they cared to. The foxform skittered in, moving in furtive zigzags. Then it stepped up into the air until it was level with the surface of Cheris’s desk.
    The servitor disgorged a roll of cloth from a side compartment. The cloth was closed with a slender chain that Cheris could have scattered with her hands. Instead, murmuring her thanks, she turned the cloth around until she found the catches.
    It wasn’t blank fabric. It was a gamecloth sewn with a square grid in lines of variegated silk. The entire boundary glittered with tiny beads of bronze and rich orange. She ran her thumb over the beads, taking pleasure in their pebbled texture.
    The most notable thing about the gamecloth was that it was more of a record than a playing surface. Pieces had been embroidered at the intersections of lines, capturing the positions of an incomplete match. Cheris’s eyes went immediately to the web piece in the corner, and she smiled crookedly.
    The one time she had played the game had been against a pretty female communications technician she was dating, Shuos Alaia. Cheris remembered Alaia’s wry laugh and stories about growing up in a dysfunctional mining community. They had even had the same taste in dramas (ridiculous melodrama, the more duels the better). Alaia had had light brown eyes and skin half a shade darker, and hands that never stopped moving. A nervous tic in a Shuos was usually a sign of a training incident, but Cheris had known better than to inquire. She should have expected that some higher-ranking Shuos had logged their interaction, though.
    Cheris considered the positions of the game’s towers and the single remaining cannon. She had a good memory, but not an eidetic one, and since she had been on leave, she hadn’t stored the memory in her allotment on the company’s grid. This could have been a recreation of that match – she had been losing at this point, and it was difficult to recover from the loss of a cannon – but if there was some small divergence, some subtle message, she