Songweaver's Awakening

Chapter 18 - Anestan

Anestan pushed the white stone forward with a hesitant hand.  She could feel Tuco's green eyes on her, watching her movements.  His fingers, laced together beneath his jaw, twitched with impatience each time she reconsidered.  He grinned as soon as she took her hand away from the board, and without waiting, he moved a black stone forward a space.

It was like suddenly understanding a foreign language.  She saw, almost immediately, the trap he’d wedged her into.  Her one remaining piece sat neatly between a red and a black.  Without the backup of another white stone, moving toward the red one would cause her to lose the game.  Likewise, if she moved toward the black one, Tuco would move it into the white stone's space, and she would again lose.

“I hate the red stones,” Anestan said.

Tuco laughed and brushed the pieces from the board.  “That was likely the effect my ancestors intended when they invented sucama.”  He wore traditional Malachan clothes—brightly patterned, heavy woven robe, open at the sides, over an equally bright pair of high-waisted pants.  Anestan thought his robe looked too hot for comfort in Hajinn's deserts, and had said as much, but Tuco insisted that he felt most comfortable in the clothes of his homeland.  She'd only seen him wear Hajinni clothing at the most formal of occasions, but even then he insisted on wearing tunics and pants dyed in daring colors.

Anestan's curiosity pricked at Tuco's words.  “Why would they wish for someone to hate the red stones?”  This was only her third game of sucama, and although she suspected that Tuco was not playing to his full abilities, he had soundly trounced her each time.

Tuco began to sort the pieces into their respective piles and Anestan reached out to help.  “Sucama was created a long time ago, not long after my people came to these shores.  We were not as peaceful then as we are now.  We came from an archipelago of islands way out in the eastern sea, and we came seeking more land.  The natives of Malacho were already experiencing the end of their civilization, and we pushed them back.”

There were other people in Malacho?”

“Yes.  If you ever come to Malacho, I will show you.  There are vast ruins by the ocean, stretching across the coastline.  It must have been a sight to see when they were still whole.  But before I forget what I started out telling you, let me finish.  Soon after we had established ourselves, war broke out between Malacho and Talia.  My grandmother said it began over a minor trade dispute, which escalated into a suspected assassination, and then into men marching across borders.  Sucama is a representation of that war—a sort of history lesson.”  He picked up one playing piece of each color.  “The black stones represent the Malachans.  The white stones are, of course, the Talians.”

“The red stones?”

“The third factor in the war.  The Sendasian slavers.  They picked the weak and injured from the battlefields before we could reach them.  The smaller groups of us, on both sides, they ambushed and took back with them.  Neither the Talians nor the Malachans are overly fond of our Sendasian neighbors.  They still take some of our men, once in a while—which is how I came to be in Sendasi—but such occasions are overlooked in the interests of peace.”

Tuco's rough brown hands nudged the stone piles off the edge of the table and into three separate pouches.  They were playing in the same room where Umacha had died, and Anestan could see from Tuco's face that the death of his friend still haunted his thoughts from time to time.

“But you like Nessor,” Anestan said.  “He's Sendasian.”

The frown on Tuco's face dissolved, and he smiled at her, white teeth flashing.   “Yes, I like Nessor, but Nessor is not a slave trader—not anymore.  He gave up everything he had to help us regain our freedom—his wealth, his position, and his family.  Most people will never understand how I could trust a man who once beat me, but I was there when he saw his wife and children for the last time.  I know what it cost him.  We all gave something up to follow Farahd.  Some of us gave up more than others.  We would...”  He stopped, his gaze dropping to the sucama board.  “We would have given our lives for one another.  We were very close, the four of us.  Now it is only Nessor and I.  I cannot help but think your deserts hold some curse for foreigners.  Two of us dead, and in so short a time.”  His hand stopped at the edge of the table.  Half the red stones still lay on the table's surface, teetering toward the open mouth of the bag.  Anestan found her gaze focusing on Tuco's dark brown knuckles, ringed with white swirls of dry and chapped skin.