“They were all him anyway!” the knight protested.
“Well, everyone loves to see the two of you. It wouldn’t be the Merriest Place on Ye Olde Earth if you pair weren’t pretending to try to kill each other at one and four every afternoon.” She leaned over and kissed Blivet’s whiskery cheek. “And just think—no more traveling!”
After that, Guldhogg decided he wanted to try a funnel cake, so they set off toward the Faerie Food Courte together—the knight, his lady, and his best friend. The sounds of fable being turned into coin rose all around them, a seemingly basic exchange but with an additional dividend of happiness to all parties. Even in the tenth century, that made for a pretty good state of affairs.
Years and years ago, I joined a writing group and got feedback on the very first novel I wrote. (Never published, this novel lives quite contentedly in my trunk.) One of the critiques insisted that I had written the story from the wrong character’s point of view. Instead of writing about the powerful wizard, the intrepid knight, or the mysterious enchantress (yes, this novel was a pretty standard traditional fantasy adventure quest, which might at least partially explain why it didn’t sell), I had written the novel from the point of view of the farmer’s widow, who inadvertently joins the quest. Why would anyone want to read about her, this person said.
Well, I did. That was kind of the point, I remember thinking. To tell a standard fantasy adventure story from the point of view of someone who isn’t powerful. I mean, that idea worked pretty well for Tolkien. To me, the farmer’s widow was interesting because she was a fish out of water in this world of magic and adventure, and she had the strongest emotional arc—her beloved husband dies on the first page, and by the end of the book she has to learn to be okay with that while the world is falling to pieces around her.
I still really like the ideas in that first novel. And I still really like writing about the least obvious characters. “Game of Chance” isn’t a standard fantasy adventure, but it does have a bit of magic, and it’s got another unlikely main character who may not be the most powerful person in the room, but she’s interesting all the same. And she still has the potential to change the world.
— Carrie Vaughn
GAME OF CHANCE
Carrie Vaughn
Once, they’d tried using sex to bring down a target. It had seemed a likely plan: throw an affair in the man’s path, guide events to a compromising situation, and momentum did the rest. That was the theory—a simple thing, not acting against the person directly, but slantwise. But it turned out it was too direct, almost an attack, touching on such vulnerable sensibilities. They’d lost Benton, who had nudged a certain woman into the path of a certain Republic Loyalist Party councilman and died because of it. He’d been so sure it would work.
Gerald had proposed trying this strategy again to discredit the RLP candidate in the next executive election. The man couldn’t be allowed to take power if Gerald’s own favored allies hoped to maintain any influence. But there was the problem of directness. His cohort considered ideas of how to subtly convince a man to ruin his life with sex. The problem remained: there were no truly subtle ways to accomplish this. They risked Benton’s fate with no guaranteed outcome. Gathering before the chalkboard in their warehouse lair, mismatched chairs drawn together, they plotted.
Clare, sitting in back with Major, turned her head to whisper, “I like it better when we stop assassinations rather than instigate them.”
“It’s like chess,” Major said. “Sometimes you protect a piece, sometimes you sacrifice one.”
“It’s a bit arrogant, isn’t it, treating the world like our personal chessboard?”
Major gave a lopsided smile. “Maybe, a bit.”
“I think I have an idea,” Clare said.
Gerald glanced their way and frowned.
Much more of this and he’d start accusing them of insubordination. She nudged Major and made a gesture with her hand: Wait. We’ll tell him later. They sat back and waited, while Gerald held court and entertained opinions, from planting illegal pornography to obtaining compromising photographs. All of it too crass, too mundane. Not credible. Gerald sent them away with orders to “come up with something.” Determined to brood, he turned his back as the others trailed to the corner of the warehouse that served as a parlor to scratch on blank pages and study books.
Clare and Major remained, seated, watching, until Gerald looked back at them and scowled.
“Clare has a different proposal,” Major said, nodding for her to tell.