King’s Blood Four

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Gamesmaster Gervaise tapped the stone floor with his iron-tipped staff, impatiently searching our faces for a lifted eye or for a raised hand. “No?” he echoed me.

Of the three Gamesmasters of Mertyn’s House, I liked Gervaise the best.

“When I said ‘no’, I meant the answer wasn’t quite right.” Behind me Karl Pig-face gave a sneaky gasp as he always does when he is about to put me down, but Gamesmaster Gervaise didn’t give him a chance.

“That’s correct,” he agreed. “Correct that it isn’t quite right and might be very wrong. The move is one we haven’t come across before, however, so take your time. Before you decide upon the move, always remember who you are.” He turned away from us, staff tap-tapping across the tower room to the high window which gaped across the dark bulk of Havad’s House down to River Reave where it wound like a tarnished ribbon among all the other School Houses — each as full of students as a dog is of fleas, as Brother Chance, the cook, would say. All the sloped land between the Houses was crowded full of dwellings and shops, all humping their way up the hills to the shuttered Festival Halls, then scattering out among the School Farms which extended to the vacant land of the Edge. I searched over the Gamesmaster’s shoulder for that far, thin line of blue which marked the boundaries of the True Game.

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