theory, simply listen to her.”
And he moved Andelas to the next empty cell, away from Dersenne . The lord of white , Andelas , was beyond deity, beyond human conception. White completed and went beyond Rainbow. It stood outside the spectrum, and above it. White was even less a thing than a concept. This game piece could be moved as many cells as needed in either direction and was the only one allowed to jump over more than one other Tilirr.
The voice from the kitchen fluctuated in waves of deep-throated anguish, as Jirve Lan would say, a poet flung to the heights of inspired fool fervor. Maertella was equally well suited to lecturing from behind a Lyceum podium, as to supervising the basting of a hen. But then, she was the best cook the inn had ever had.
“ Let us pause then, for a while, and listen to her,” said Nilmet. His voice was surprisingly firm, compared to the softness of his smile.
“ Indeed. Maybe our thoughts will be enriched sufficiently to discover fresh new tracks for our respective arguments, eh, friend?” said the innkeeper, studying the game board, and picking at his teeth with his tongue. One of his front teeth was missing, in a strategic enough place to suggest bizarre infantility.
“ . . . omelet be hung and flayed! How many times must I tell you to watch the skillet, instead of counting the flies up there on the ceiling—I know you do that, don’t try to deny, I see you look up there—goodness, why must you sit like a moronic stuffed bird? Where is your mind, girl?” continued Maertella, while loud pot-clashing was heard. Her voice oscillated from pleading to strength, yet was never unkind. “Don’t you think it’s so much easier to do what you’re told? Why can’t you be responsible—”
“ She does talk too much, actually,” said Jirve Lan. “I wish you did. Then you’d tell me what you really know. All the secrets. And you’d tell me what’s really happening in the City. For example, just today they tell me, there are rumors about these strange dangerous visitors threatening the Regents’ Palace, and even the Guilds are afraid—”
Nilmet reached forward and placed on the board Koerdis , the lord of blue , of Harsh Truth, experience, and knowledge—in the next cell right after Dersenne . There were now three on the board. Koerdis was also the lord of pure effort, a symbol of eternal work, and the Opener of New Ways, and his tiny figurine held a jar of water in one hand, pouring it endlessly into a cup that was in the other hand.
“ I know less than you do,” said Nilmet. “You should ask tomorrow’s inn guests. Every day they pass through here and tell you the latest rumors and gossip. I just sit here with you.”
Jirve Lan snorted.
In the kitchen, Maertella continued her harangue.“. . . Don’t you think I was your age once? I know what it’s like to want to be somewhere else like the big City, somewhere where they have all these fancy monochromes and beautiful rich people, and the wondrous light comes from all directions in all these different impossible colors . . . . But never mind. See, I learned to care whether the omelet burns. Even if it’s not my own. All the wasted food of our good Master Jirve, oh, sweet gods!”
Jirve Lan selected Fiadolmle from her throne cell, and moved the green lady of Birth, Change, and Freedom to block Koerdis ’s path. Fiadolmle was like the harvest—she symbolized a lifelong path of development, and was thus connected to all things of youth and old age. Her figurine was a woman holding a flowering branch.
“ But it’s not even the wasted food that matters—think of the hen who laid the egg, how she fussed over it, how much gentleness she took in warming her hatchling-to-be! How the little dark yolk and the pale outside, so delicious to us, could’ve been a little living creature! Don’t ever forget that! We’re taking a dear thing from these beasts. Sometimes I think we have no right—”
“ Indeed,