Game On!

By Ed Greenwood, Stephen Kotowych, Tony Pi and 16 more

What if future criminals played games of skill for their freedom? Would spellcasters dare use magic to skew chance in their favor? What if aliens judged us based on the games we play? Can a dying woman literally cheat Death?

Games are about more than winning and losing. They’re about risk and reward, strategy and blind fortune, our need to win and our fear of being outplayed. And when magic and science infuse a game, the stakes can be of cosmic importance. Each move could decide life or death. Are you ready to play?

In this anthology, seventeen of today’s leading fantasy and science fiction authors explore the role games play in worlds both seen and unseen. Join Aliette de Bodard, Jennifer R Povey, Ed Greenwood, Cory Swanson, David Hankins, Cat Rambo, Wulf Moon, Jo Miles, James Alan Gardner, Karen Aria Lin, Mike Rimar, Eric Choi, Tris Lawrence, Mark Silcox, Melissa Yi, Michael Picco, and Sean Williams as they share with us games played for unimaginable stakes.

The board is set, the cards are dealt—now it’s GAME ON!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Zombies Need Brains, LLC
• Release date: Aug 1, 2023
• ISBN: 9781940709598

Ed Greenwood

Ed Greenwood is known for his role in creating the Forgotten Realms setting, part of the world-famous Dungeons and Dragons® franchise. His writings have sold millions of copies worldwide, in more than a dozen languages. Greenwood resides in the Canadian province of Ontario.

Book preview

GAME ON!

Other Anthologies Edited by:

Patricia Bray & Joshua Palmatier

After Hours: Tales from the Ur-bar

The Modern Fae’s Guide to Surviving Humanity

Temporally Out of Order * Alien Artifacts * Were-

All Hail Our Robot Conquerors!

Second Round: A Return to the Ur-bar

The Modern Deity’s Guide to Surviving Humanity

Solar Flare

S.C. Butler & Joshua Palmatier

Submerged * Guilds & Glaives * Apocalyptic

When Worlds Collide * Brave New Worlds * Dragonesque

Laura Anne Gilman & Kat Richardson

The Death of All Things

Troy Carrol Bucher & Joshua Palmatier

The Razor’s Edge

Patricia Bray & S.C. Butler

Portals

David B. Coe & Joshua Palmatier

Temporally Deactivated * Galactic Stew

Derelict

Steven H Silver & Joshua Palmatier

Alternate Peace

Crystal Sarakas & Joshua Palmatier

My Battery Is Low and It Is Getting Dark

David B. Coe & John Zakour

Noir

Crystal Sarakas & Rhondi Salsitz

Shattering the Glass Slipper

David B. Coe & Edmund R. Schubert

Artifice & Craft

Steven Kotowych & Tony Pi

Game On!

GAME ON!

Edited by

Stephen Kotowych

&

Tony Pi

Zombies Need Brains LLC

www.zombiesneedbrains.com

Copyright © 2023 Stephen Kotowych, Tony Pi, and

Zombies Need Brains LLC

All Rights Reserved

Interior Design (ebook): ZNB Design

Interior Design (print): ZNB Design

Cover Design by ZNB Design

Cover Art Game On!

by Justin Adams of Varia Studios

ZNB Book Collectors #30

All characters and events in this book are fictitious.

All resemblance to persons living or dead is coincidental.

The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions of this book, and do not participate or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted material.

Kickstarter Edition Printing, June 2023

First Printing, July 2023

Print ISBN-13: 978-1940709581

Ebook ISBN-13: 978-1940709598

Printed in the U.S.A.

COPYRIGHTS

Turtle Cliffs copyright © 2023 by Aliette de Bodard

Machines copyright © 2023 by Jennifer R. Povey

Not His Best Feint copyright © 2023 by Ed Greenwood

Persistence of Memory copyright © 2023 by Cory Swanson

The Grim Reaper’s Game copyright © 2023 by David Hankins

The Cards as They Were Dealt copyright © 2023 by Cat Rambo

The Saltmarsh copyright © 2023 by Wulf Moon Enterprises

Guilty Until Proven Victorious copyright © 2023 by Jo Miles

Solitaire for Three copyright © 2023 by James Alan Gardner

Connection copyright © 2023 by Karen Lin

Dead Man’s Hand copyright © 2023 by Mike Rimar

Random Access Memory copyright © 2023 by Eric Choi

Worldplay copyright © 2023 by Tris Lawrence

Mythbot copyright © 2023 by Mark Silcox

Beat the Haunted House copyright © 2023 by Melissa Yuan-Innes

The Prescience Game copyright © 2023 by Michael J. Picco

The Long Game copyright © 2023 by Sean Williams

TURTLE CLIFFS

by Aliette de Bodard

Khê came back to the Turtle Cliffs in the wake of the fall of Thăng Hổ.

There were bandits in the countryside—bandits, armed militia thrown on the road with the death of the officials, soldiers whose tattered uniforms and banners made it hard to see whose army they belonged to—if there were even steady sides anymore.

Khê would never have passed for a harmless refugee: the years in Thăng Hổ had taught her to stand tall and proud, to advocate fiercely for what she believed in. More importantly, the magic she'd won at the Cliffs' tournament had changed her too, infusing the network of meridians within her body with its energy—and when she moved without thinking, she was a little too fast, a little too abrupt, things that would betray her to anyone observant enough.

So Khê moved sideways to avoid company: tinkering with the laws of chance by drawing on her own power and making sure all the possible encounters never came to pass. As she changed events, she'd feel the weight of the mạt chược tile in her sleeve. It had since long gone blank: once, it had been a piece of bone engraved with the colonizer character for middle, given to her by the monks of Turtle Cliffs at the completion of the tournament. She'd never been sure why this particular one, perhaps in the hopes she'd be the steady center of some administration—some kind of bleak joke when her only job had been the census of the dead. Now its ink and engraving—and the power they contained—had moved within Khê's body. But she'd kept it, even when it made no sense, and most of her classmates from the Cliffs had done the same. Again, Khê wasn't sure why. A safeguard. A reminder of how they'd come there.

A reminder of all they'd lost.

As Khê neared the Cliffs, it became harder to change chance. Tile magic worked by tinkering with the laws of probability—making things more or less likely to happen. There were limits to how much Khê could change things and too many people were on the road: the probabilities she was trying to modify suddenly became too high to be made negligible.

A scant measure from the beach below the Cliffs, tile magic failed her.

Halt!

Khê turned. The nearest group of refugees was a speck of colors on the dust of the road. The person who'd spoken was a wild-eyed young girl holding a spear—a long, wicked thing. But, more than that, she had a mark on her single glove: a stylized letter that marked her as one of the warlords' own.

Khê's heart sank. The warlords were already there, already at the Turtle Cliffs. She was too late.

She raised her hands, trying to speak slowly and placatingly—to sound less like a metropolitan official and more like a craftsperson or a peasant. I mean no harm. I'm just trying to get back to my village.

The girl's eyes narrowed. Your village? Her accent was from a province Khê couldn't quite place, but it was pure commoner. She'd learnt to hold a spear and held it well, but she hadn't always been a soldier.

Đông Ánh Sao in the province of Đại Nhân, Khê said, smoothly and easily. She dared not use tile magic to improve her odds of being believed: the girl would see it. And she'd used a lot of it to get this far, and her heart was already syncopating wildly, a familiar and unpleasant sensation. Soon, she'd be short of breath and need to lie down.

Hmmmm, the girl said. She held the spear for a moment more, staring at Khê. Maybe Khê should have used tile magic, but it was too late—if the girl was suspicious, the difficulty of getting her to dismiss Khê had just increased too much. And if Khê tried and failed to affect chance, then the girl would see the spell and know she was a former official.

The warlords—and one warlord in particular—were looking for former officials, and the best that would happen to Khê would be to be pressed into service to them and used until her heart gave out. The other options were too horrible to contemplate, and not altogether improbable. That one warlord knew Khê, and they had not parted on good terms.

Where are you coming from?

Khê sighed. Thăng Hổ. Like most everyone.

What were you doing, back there? Dust swirled in the air between them, choking Khê like the ashes of the burning archives buildings in Thăng Hổ.

Counting, tracking, and naming the dead.

But only one type of person would have that job: an official. A high official like Khê: a tile magician.

Khê sighed. I was a coffin-maker.

The girl held her position—which was impressively brave, considering that Khê had just admitted to a profession tainted by the contact of corpses and relegated to the outskirts of town. You?

Khê shrugged and said something utterly true of her real position. Someone has to do it, she said. To make sure the dead are honored properly. That people can mourn as the First Teacher intended.

The girl's mouth set. The First Teacher's teachings starved us and set corrupt officials on us like hungry sharks. I have no respect for them. She moved her spear forward—the tip of it resting on Khê's chest. One push and she'd drive it home. Don't move. Khê needed to not move. But it was hard.

The girl reminded Khê, for some reason, of who she'd been once. The daughter of impoverished scholars from a village on the edge of the empire, heading to the Cliffs tournament because she'd wanted more from life than being at the mercy of famine, corrupt officials, or war.

She said, finally, I can understand that. Teachings that fail should be discarded.

The girl snorted. The tip of the spear wavered against Khê's chest. The world that failed us should change.

Had Khê been that way, once? She'd forgotten, she guessed. A lifetime of being at court, of people bowing their heads whenever she passed. A lifetime of using magic to alter paths until she forgot the beginning of hers.

Khê felt the girl's rage and resolve and wasn't quite sure what to say that would mean anything. She could lie, she guessed—but for some reason it'd have felt unfair. I think I was like you, when I was younger.

You? The girl scoffed, and then looked more closely at Khê.

I remember what it was like to feel that anyone could cut the threads of your fate. How utterly infuriating. Unfair.

The girl stared at her for a while. She wasn't speaking. And so you made coffins, she said.

Khê sighed. Yes, she said. She wanted to say something about the empire, about being an official. What stopped her wasn't the danger to herself, but the acute awareness that most officials were dead—that the empress was on the run and that Khê herself had no power to stop even this single encounter. I thought I was going to make a difference, and in the end nothing I did mattered. I don't think I have an answer for you.

The girl's gaze met hers, held it. No, she said. It didn't sound angry anymore. Almost disappointed. You don't. Don't think you ever had.

It stung.

At length—after what felt like an eternity, the girl withdrew the spear and made a gesture for Khê to leave. Move along.

Thank you.

The girl's gaze was sharp. Don't thank me. I'm not going to be the one bringing a corpse-touched to Teacher Tú.

Teacher Tú. Warlord Tú. Cẩm Tú, Khê's former tournament-mate and bitter enemy. That was not good, if Tú was there. And even less good if that girl was her apprentice.

Khê hurried along the road. The girl had turned away, focusing on the refugees—but all the same, Khê felt her burning gaze on her all the way to the beach.

* * *

There were no soldiers on the beach, and Khê couldn't see warlord armies anywhere. She rubbed the mạt chược tile in her sleeve. It felt smooth, cold. Bone. Khê had seen enough bones, in her time working in Thăng Hổ.

She raised her gaze to look at the top of the cliff, where the monastery was. The buildings looked to be still there, shimmering in the noonday sun. The ascent was going to be brutal, under the heart of the hottest time of the day in the dry season. But the girl had been there, which meant chances were running out. Which meant that even Khê's magic wasn't going to help her for much longer.

Khê needed to find the monks again. To ask them for help. No one would be able to bring Thăng Hổ back, but there were other events they could help along. They could make sure the empress in flight regained her throne. That she could defeat the warlords. Something. Anything to stop the chaos that was now engulfing the empire.

It wasn't much of a plan, but Khê didn't have a whole lot of plans left.

She took a deep breath and started climbing.

The path up the cliff was narrow and winding. Rocks tumbled under her feet, and as Khê walked she remembered what it had felt like to come down the cliffs with the magic in her sleeve—the way she and Tú and Ðào had laughed, challenging each other to throw rocks and use tile magic to alter their trajectory. Ðào had made a rock split into five even fragments, each of which had fallen into the lake beneath. Khê remembered the splashes—but more than that, she remembered Ðào's laughter, the way she'd thrown her head back, carefree and drunk on more than rice wine. She remembered the way the light had shimmered and danced, the way they'd glanced down at the villages below, strewn among rice fields like pearls—feeling like invincible immortals, puffed up with the sense of their own importance. The promise they'd made to each other: to make the world a better place.

Now the villages were ablaze, and among the rice fields Khê could see the tents of warlord armies—somewhere among them would be Tú. Waiting. Watching. Hoping to seize the power bestowed by the monks for herself and her troops.

Khê thought, briefly, of Tú. Of that last encirclement chess game they'd played together, where Tú had swept the board clean and laid, simply, her own tournament tile. The Emperor. The one who could replace any tile.

The other memories were too painful, so she didn't touch them.

Upwards. Rocks scattered under her feet. She looked down—and saw, behind her, the shadows of pursuers. Warlord soldiers. She'd been noticed, or they'd already been on their way beforehand.

She needed to hurry up.

Khê turned back to the narrow path. Scree gave way under her feet—for a heart-rending moment she hung, suspended, about to fall—before she reached for tile magic, feeling it stretch within the meridians of her body, feeling the frantic beat of her heart—driving itself into a frenzy that felt like the entire world contracting around her. She needed—she needed to find the place where she didn't fall. Where something caught her—

She—she was exhausted and she didn't have much left in her.

Rocks scattered underfoot—she landed on the path, but something crunched in her ankle. She struggled to breathe, tears in her eyes. To have come so far, and to fail now…

Come on come on come on.

Khê gritted her teeth and stood up. The world spun and wobbled—the faded tile in her sleeve feeling heavier and heavier, the magic further and further from her grasp.

I can do this.

Out of all their class, she had been the most minor of officials, doing a job no one wanted to do. She'd taken dead bodies with no identification and tried to track who they were so that the census of the empire could be updated. She'd used magic to bring about coincidences and revelations—to tease the shape of teeth, the shape of hands out of burnt-out husks—to find bloodlines and resemblances in ancient, faded books.

Khê had liked the census. It had been just obscure enough to shelter her, and the difference she'd made whenever she'd been able to finally bring dead people's relatives closure had been palpable.

She told the girl she was a coffin-maker, and in a way that hadn't been untrue.

Khê took a deep, shaking breath. She set a foot down, ignoring the pain that shot up her ankle. The soldiers below her weren't going to wait for things to stop hurting.

Then she moved again, towards the distant shape of the monastery.

* * *

The monastery hadn't changed since Khê had come for the tournament, except that back then it had been a riot of color and people: food stalls in the outer courtyard, tables in the inner one, every shrine garlanded with paper ornaments, the air in front of every bodhisattva statue thick with incense—and monks everywhere, directing the candidates to a set of smaller tables where they would be asked questions and sorted into different pools.

Now there was nothing of that. The doors were open, and the outer courtyard was empty, with just scraps of paper flying in the breeze. The air felt thick, not with incense, but with the faint remnants of magic. Khê stepped through the empty buildings, between chipped pillars and dead-eyed statues.

Is anyone there? she asked. The pain in her ankle was a constant, high-intensity feeling—every time she set her foot down it traveled up her leg. Her heart was beating too fast, her breath too labored. She'd taken it too far. She had to rest, except she couldn't afford to rest. She needed—

She needed everything to be back to normal, except she didn't know what normal was anymore.

Is anyone there?

In the inner courtyard, where they'd once played for days—where the tiles had chittered and sang as they put them down, when the magic rose, consuming them—where the monks had once announced the winners of the tournament—there was no one, either.

Except—

There.

A hint of movement, at the back, where the monks' refectory and living quarters would be. Khê tried to run towards it. The pain from her ankle spiked, stopping her. She couldn't—

She walked, instead, gritting her teeth.

It had been a good life. Khê had been safe, sheltered. She'd sent money back home until her parents died. She’d gone on drinking binges with other officials and tournament-mates. She'd tried to ignore the warning signs that it couldn't go on forever: the plagues and famine victims that clogged up the mortuaries of the empire, the way everyone ran increasingly scared and resentful of her when she showed them her official's insignia. And then…one moment she was tallying up war and famine victims, and the next one the warlords' army was at the gate and the entire system fell to pieces like a celadon bowl misfired in the oven.

In the refectory, a single monk was setting up a mạt chược game: he was carefully placing the tiles to complete the fourth wall, the fourth side of the large square that marked the playing space—the dead wall, the forbidden one. He looked up when she came in.

Trung, he said. The name of her tile.

Where is everyone? she said.

The monk shrugged. Who knows where people go?

No, Khê said. That's not an answer.

He spread a hand, pointing to the game in front of him. Will you play?

Khê's first instinct was to point out mạt chược was a game for four. She bit her lip, and said instead, What happens if I win? Her heart—her weak, treacherous heart, already damaged from too much magic—thundered in her ears.

He stared at her for a while. She couldn't read his face—round, smooth under the shiny smoothness of a shaved head. His arms were skeleton-thin: she could guess at the shape of his bones. What would you like? he asked.

Khê opened her mouth again, closed it. The old order back. The armies of the warlords scattered. The empress back on the throne of Thăng Hổ. Even as she thought it, she realized how impossible it all sounded. No tile magic was ever going to yield anything so huge, with so many variables, so far away in the future. She said instead, Can you bring back the dead?

Laughter from the monk. Who would you bring back?

Her former friends. An Emperor tile on a blank table. Ðào's blank face on a slab in the mortuary, a corpse Khê didn't need to worry about because it had been an execution and everything was clear, everything was named. A traitor, the empress had said. A dissident. Do you not think so?

And Khê, standing mute, bowing her head—knowing people had been executed for far less than defending a condemned traitor. That, as they spoke, entire villages were burning for failing to be sufficiently loyal. Finding no words, just as she'd found no words to defend Ðào when the intrigues of the court had betrayed her.

No, that wasn't going to happen either. You can't do that.

Who's to say what I can and cannot do?

Khê had had enough. She'd fled in the dark of the night, looking for answers she wasn't sure she'd ever find—looking for a safety and clarity she'd last felt here, except that there was nothing but dust, and cracked stones, and cryptic pronouncements. Why do you play? Khê asked.

Because the game is everything.

The voice wasn't the monk's.

It came from behind her, and she knew it all too well.

Khê turned, slowly, to stare at Tú.

Her former tournament mate and friend wore armor: woven threads of metal painted with her personal insignia—not Tú but her banner name, the Tigerlord. By her side, where a student would be, was the girl with the spear, who looked at Khê with anger. And behind her were two soldiers with swords.

Too late, too late.

Fear spiked in Khê—a sense of profound panic, a tightening ball of ice in her innards.

Too late.

She'd run all this way from the ruin of Thăng Hổ, burning magic like there was no tomorrow, and she was still too late—and worse, it wasn't just any warlord, it was Tú.

Khê tried to change fate—never mind the noise her heart made when she did that, the weird shaking that took hold of her when she gripped the magic. Possibilities appeared and wavered: the soldiers moved, slightly, from flanking the monk with their swords at his throat to standing by Tú's side—and then to Khê's side, and the swords were at her own throat, and through it all Tú—wreathed in magic—hadn't moved.

Too little, too late. Too many certainties.

The monk had barely moved either: he was busy aligning the mạt chược tiles on the table, as if he were a player making sure everything was right.

She said she was a coffin-maker, the girl said, sullenly.

Tú laughed. Did she? Putting people in their proper place among the dead. That's an apt description for what she did, once. Hello, lil'sib. She used the pronoun for intimates, but her voice was tight with anger. I should have known I'd find you here. Doing the empire's dirty work once again.

Khê forced herself to breathe. The soldiers had moved away slightly, which meant death wasn't as immediate a possibility. Which meant servitude, which terrified her. She'd become a magician to choose her own path, and now she was on the edge of having that freedom taken away from her. No, she said. That's not what I'm doing.

She's a magician, the girl said.

She was, once, Tú said. Her face was unreadable again.

Khê said, Aren't you going to ask me to prostrate myself? You who once said you'd become empress?

A raised eyebrow. You're doing enough prostrating already. What did the empire ever do for you that they'd fall, finally freeing you from imperial work, and you run here trying to do what?

To change things, Khê said. To— It sounded foolish, now that Tú put it. A child's dream.

Like Ðào did?

Khê's fists clenched. Don't bring her up here. You have no right.

"All right, I won't. Not for now. You wanted to change things? I changed things. Tú's voice was low and angry. There is no empress in Thăng Hổ anymore."

There's nothing in Thăng Hổ anymore! Khê clenched her fists. Her clothes still smelled of ashes and blood. She'd run away from soldiers killing officials in the corridors of the secretariat—from bodies flung into ponds, that tight feeling in the air of magicians using tile magic again and again, and finding no escape from certain death.

A necessary price to pay. Did you think the empress and the corrupt officials were going to step aside because I nicely asked? Tú shook her head. Never mind. I have unfinished business here.

The monk was staring at her, with no fear whatsoever on his face. Will you play? he asked, as the monks had asked back then.

Tú laughed. I've already played. But Ánh Trang here— she gestured to the girl—she will play. For safety. For power. That's the rule, isn't it? Win the game; win magic.

That's not why I'm playing, Ánh Trang said, sharply.

Tú's smile was bitter. To change the world? You'll find you need to keep other people from trampling your own destiny first.

Ánh Trang grimaced, an expression Khê knew all too well: she wanted to disagree with an elder but didn't dare to. Perhaps there was something to be done there, but Khê didn't know what.

Ánh Trang reached out, towards the walls of tiles on the table.

The world that failed us should change.

The monk nodded. He gestured to the soldiers. The meaning was clear. Mạt chược was a game for four. But even with the soldiers, they were missing a player.

Sit, Tú said, to Khê.

Khê stared at her. I'm not playing, she said, sharply.

You can die here, Tú said. Her voice was cold. Or you can play.

And die later, Khê guessed. The game itself, if she lost, would have no consequences for her. But she was their prisoner now.

Is this what you came back for? she asked. To train your own apprentice?

Tú's face didn't move. I came back for power, she said. For anything that gives us an edge to topple the empire.

"You've won, Khê said. The capital fell. The empress ran. There's nothing left."

You came here, Tú said, simply. That means that there's still hope for some that the empire isn't dead. She moved, drawing her sword in a fluid gesture—holding it at the monk's throat.

The monk looked unfazed. You know the rules, he said. You cannot use tile magic during the tournament.

A tournament. Four people and a single game in a deserted monastery. Where are the others? Khê asked, as the soldiers sat on either side of her. She was facing Ánh Trang and dared not look into her eyes.

A serene gaze from the monk. Dead, he said. Your colleagues killed them because they thought we were working for the empire.

But you stayed here. Khê fought a wave of nausea.

The games must go on, the monk said. And, to the others: There are too few of you for anything long. A single game. A single round. A single hand.

Almost entirely to luck, in other words. No time to do anything more elaborate than trust the hand dealt to you.

I thought, Khê said, slowly, carefully—pleadingly—that you worked for the empire.

Tú said, You heard him, she said. Her voice was gentle, almost pitying. Play the game, win power. They don't care about who has it.

Ánh Trang had thrown the dice. East Wind, she said to one of the soldiers, who broke one of the walls and started to hand out neat piles of tiles. The clatter of them