Sente (sehn-tay): In the game of Go, the player whose turn it is, and who can freely decide where on the board to play next, is said to "have sente". A player who has sente controls the flow of the game, and can force the second player to respond to his or her moves or die.

Before

Simon stood with the rope in his hand, on top of the chair. He knew all possible futures, and knew there was no way out of this.

He could go, stand trial, tell the easy lie and die in a cell, bereft of sunlight and his daughter Sandra both. He could tell the truth, and walk away unscathed. And someday a man in a tie-dyed shirt would slide past him on a crowded parkway in Paris, and he would not feel the little prick on the back of his hand, would not see the tiny wound that would look like a mosquito bite by nightfall and leave him dead by morning.

He could run, which would be an admission of guilt, but his superiors would send someone after him. He couldn't be trusted not to give in, to sell the futures he knew for a year's support and safety, or a month's, or even a week's if he was in enough trouble.

Simon didn't blame his superiors for their lack of faith in him. He knew just how reliable he was, and just how unreliable. It was all in his report, after all. His statistical models were less viable for individuals than they were for continents, for countries, or even for voting blocks, but in cases of high stress, they were accurate enough.

He looped the rope through the transom and tied it off. Then, after a moment's consideration, he stepped down from his chair, removed his great-great-grandfather's silver-hilted rapier from its stand above the mantle, and placed it in the old sea chest by the door. The sword would belong to his niece, in the end, and he didn't want it in the police photographs.

His defeat had been artfully wrought - moves within moves accomplished, the funds and generals and CEOs manipulated in silence until at the last the shape of it had become clear, and the edifice of Simon Dane came crashing down. His own student had betrayed him - Cayman, who he had loved as a son and taken into his home, his greatest success. The master lay vanquished at the pupil's hand, and the Calliope Project was dead.

There was something poetic to that, and thus appropriate.

He ascended the chair again, and realized he did not know how to tie the proper knot. But the knot didn't matter. All he needed was a loop, drawn tight enough, and a drop.

They could have forced me to do this, he thought as he slipped the rope around his neck. Slipped a hypnotist in while I slept, used some drugs, primed me to kill myself rather than risk exposure.

They could have done that. Simon might have done the same himself, had he been in their shoes. But why go through all that trouble? They knew he had more to risk than his life. They could count on his silence, could rely on him to do the honorable thing so they would leave his girl unharmed.

Sandra.

This was going to hit her hardest of course. She would break when she realized Cayman had betrayed him, and her; would break when she found her father's body. She would break, but she would be alive, and safe in a hospital for the years it would take her to recover - by which time, if his estimation was correct (and he was certain it was), his superiors would be safely out of office, and the entire affair would be settled.

Simon didn't blame the boy for his betrayal. He was young, idealistic; he'd come around. Life and time would proceed as they must. All manner of things would be well.

Into Thy hands, Simon thought, and stepped off the chair.

Part I

Chapter 1

"Cayman, what's going on?"

In the bathroom, Cayman MacRoche searched his reflection for an answer. He had never been all that precise with Deborah. She hadn't asked him to be.

His tie hung over the towel rack. He picked it up, considered the red with the black stripes against the white of his shirt, decided against it, and draped it over his shoulder.

He turned and saw Deborah standing just outside the bathroom door, wrapped in her blue robe, her mouth drawn thin with concern. "Is there anything wrong?"

"I've got to meet some people. About a job."

"You're leaving."

He stopped. "Yes. Or." He shifted uncomfortably. "I think it's time."

She reached for his face. Her fingers were cool, their tips smooth. "You think you're ready?"

"No."

"Will you be coming back?"

"I hope so." And he did. "I don't know what's going to happen, yet. I'll try to stay in touch." He lifted her hand to his mouth, and kissed it. Her hand tightened around his for a moment, and she let him go. He paused at the threshold, and watched her watching him.

Deborah opened her mouth but didn't say anything.

"Thanks," Cayman said. "For everything."

He slipped out the door.

She stood there after he left, hands limp by the sides of her robe. The muted night chorus of crickets and tree frogs echoed off the walls of her now-empty room, off the headboard of her now-empty bed. She heard the screen door slam.

Something crossed her face, a grin that twisted itself into a frown, and ended up as a weary, bemused smile. She flicked off the lights and slid back into bed. There were a couple hours left before she would have to go to work. It would be best to get some sleep first.

#

Cayman stepped off Deborah's front porch into the cool, early fall night. Trees swayed in the wind, and an orange moon hung in the sky. The moonlight cast shadows on top of one another across the grass and pebbly asphalt, soaking the road in darkness.

He dug inside his jacket pocket, found a quarter, and brought it out. The silver glistened red under the moon. He flipped the quarter, and the particular ting of fingernail on silver-flashed metal pierced the natural scheme of background noise. Counterpoint.

He glanced back at Deborah's house, its light blue paint and green trim rendered shades of gray by the faint starlight and the distant streetlamps. Her room wasn't visible from here, but he fancied her light would be off by now. He wanted to go back into that house, crawl in bed with her, and stay until she went to work the next morning.

He flipped the coin again, watched George Washington's face - heads - meld with the eagle - tails.

He spoke to the insect choir. "Hi, my name is Cayman MacRoche."

The words sounded alien even to him. He flipped the coin again, without checking to see whether his last flip had come up heads or tails.

White headlights peaked over a ridge in the distance. He looked away too late to save his night vision, and smiled as he snatched the quarter out of midair. The headlights topped another hill, the last one, shining straight at him. He couldn't tell anything about the vehicle, save that it was small. It drew nearer, and he shielded his eyes with the fist that held the quarter.

The headlights passed, and he was left in their wake, blinking at the retreating black sleek body of a recent-model low-emission Honda. Out here, miles away from anywhere in particular, it looked like a sheep separated from its herd. About five seconds after passing Cayman, it braked hard, switched to reverse, and sped back to stop even with him.

The Honda's window rolled down. In the driver's seat sat a skinny man with a skinny mouth, dark eyes, and a receding hairline. His voice, too, was skinny. "Cayman MacRoche?" He breezed through to the next sentence without waiting for a reply. "Get in the car." Cayman waited on the curb until the man continued, obviously annoyed: "Please."

Cayman's fingers were still working the silvery disk of the coin in his jacket pocket as he slid into the passenger's seat and said, "Could you introduce me to the woman in the back seat, and tell her to put the revolver away?"

#

Four hours earlier, Roman Stewart leaned back in her chair and looked skeptically at the face on the canvas screen. "Him?"

In the shadows behind the projector, Caspar LeClerc nodded. "His name is Cayman MacRoche. He's-"

"Too young." Roman regarded the boy's picture. Handsome. Slender. Intelligent eyes, of an odd color, brown, green, golden, shifting and warm in the way young eyes could be warm. She knew the type: warm, burned for a while, then died. "He'd be eaten alive."

Resting his ursine form against the bookcases that flanked the projector screen, Caspar cradled his chin in his left hand. He tapped his jaw with his thumb. "Is that your professional opinion?"

"That's the truth. He's, what, twenty-two? No professional training, no experience. So he got good grades in college, so what? He's wet behind the ears, and you're going to give him a job?"

"We offered him the job months ago. He just now accepted."

"You offered him a job straight out of college? That must have been one impressive application."

"There was no application."

"You recruited this kid?"

"Not recruited. Hunted down. Selected."

"Selected? Oh, no, Caspar."

"He's going to be working for you."

The retort formed in her mind - he was too young, her people did dangerous work, sensitive work. They'd turned down men five years older, ex-intelligence men with wetwork credentials, on account of their lack of experience. She should have said all those things, because they were true. But Caspar knew them, too. So instead she said: "What can he do?"

"That's for you to find out. It may be nothing, but I've got my suspicions. He might be the one we've been looking for to fill your position."

"I'll start packing my desk."

"Don't be silly."

"So we train him, if he's as good as you think. And then..." She fixed him with a green-fire stare. "What do I get?"

"Whatever you want, of course."

"And if I want to be a full partner, or a co-owner?"

"You'll have earned it. If this boy is as good as I think he is, and if he works the way we want him to."

"If?"

"There's nothing certain in this life."

And so she found herself here, on this thin dark road, picking up a fresh-faced kid, and swearing she hadn't seemed as naïve at his age. He looked as if he had just crawled out of bed, which, considering the hour, he probably had. Caspar had been wrong. There was no real potential here.

At least that's what she thought until the kid slid into the Civic's passenger seat, and, smooth as onyx, told her to put away the cocked, silver-plated revolver cradled in her right hand. She blinked, straightened in the rear seat, and nodded to Abner, the driver, who said: "Mister MacRoche, may I present Roman Stewart."

"Charmed." Cayman caught a glimpse of red hair and black silk in the rear view mirror. "Now, could you please put the gun away?"

Arching an eyebrow, she opened the revolver's chamber, and emptied the shells into her hand. "It was loaded with blanks, Mister MacRoche." She passed one forward. He accepted it, regarded it mutely, shrugged.

"Congratulations," she added. "You pass the first test."

He rolled the window down and tossed the unspent shell out. It tinged against the pavement as they drove by. She met his eyes again, in the mirror. They were the same color as they had been in his picture: green, or blue, with a starburst of yellow around their pupils. In person, they seemed less warm. "Miss Stewart, could you explain to me what's going on here?"

"You're being recruited."

"I gathered that."

"Mister MacRoche..."

"Call me Cayman, please. Mr. MacRoche was my father."

"Cayman. How did you know I was back here?"

She listened, not so much to the reasons, but to the manner in which he related them, the pauses and quick stutters where he had to invent logic to fill in the gaps intuition had carried him across. "The driver missed the pickup point, but I had been told where to wait. That seemed strange, like someone had told him to drive past me, to make me nervous. And then, when he was backing up, he didn't look over his shoulder. Not like a normal person not looking over his shoulder, either. He was looking straight ahead the entire time, like he was afraid to draw my attention to the back seat. When he rolled down the window, I saw a gleam back there. It was metal, it looked important. If he was worried about not drawing attention to it, it had to be dangerous. Or he had to believe it was. A gun fit the picture. And the back of this car is pretty small for most guys to hide themselves in."

His cadences were right. He didn't sound proud of himself, or surprised. Just certain. Roman started reloading the gun, with real bullets this time. "And how did you know that I wasn't going to shoot you as soon as you noticed me?"

He did not return her gaze. "Would you mind explaining to me why I'm here? What is this job on offer?"

"You mean you don't know?"

"I was given a business card, and a number, and a date. I was told to call before the date, as soon as I felt ready for a job."

Interesting, and not the way Caspar preferred to work. There was a story here. "Perhaps I should explain in a more comfortable setting. Abner, take a right up here, please."

#

The Denny's was sparsely populated at three-thirty in the morning, its worn tiles hosting a coterie of black-clad, chain-smoking kids at table three, a few truckers at the bar bent over their eggs, and an odd party of two at table seven. Hi-My-Name-Is-Daisy, the night shift waitress for the non-smoking section, glanced them over from the coffee machine. The young guy looked normal for someone awake at such an hour: confused, lost, irritated. He'd be better after he had something to drink.

The woman, though. She was short, high-cheekboned and elegant, and didn't look like anyone Daisy could imagine having a reason to come to Denny's. Her hair was bright red, but didn't look dyed, and the dress was the kind of black that wasn't supposed to be within miles of a diner. They were deep in conversation, the young man leaning forward across the table, the woman watching him with a look Daisy didn't like much at all. But they were paying customers, and she still had to make up for the last bastard who didn't leave a tip, so she picked up a full pot and a pair of mugs, and walked over to the table.

Cayman nodded to the waitress as she set the mug down in front of him and filled it with coffee. He picked it up, and savored a quick sip. It was terrible, but it helped him think. A black, bitter security blanket. "Yeah, I know LeClerc Partners, sure. The last time they got sued, the words in the papers were 'investigative litigation'. That must have been a year ago now. So what do you people have to do with me?" He smiled to disarm. "I'm just a normal guy."

Roman's mug clicked on the Formica tabletop. The sharp green of her eyes, the smooth marble of her skin, scared him a little. Powerful, competent. What did she want with him?

"LeClerc Partners is an proactive investigation and litigation firm, Cayman. We gave you a card and a job offer, and you called us."

"But I didn't apply for any jobs with you, and I definitely didn't send in this photo." Taking the picture she had given him from the table, he handed it back to her. "A friend gave me an envelope before I left school. This card was inside it, and a note to call if I wanted a job. Just like I told you." He tapped the card on the table, a thick eggshell-white piece of paper with a phone number and the name 'LeClerc' embossed on it in cursive, and a date - yesterday's date. He'd been late in deciding. "So here I am. What's the offer? And why are you giving it to me?"

The jade of her gaze softened a little, and she leaned back in her chair, one hand draped over her knee, the other supporting her coffee. "Someone else will go into the details of how we found you. And I'll describe your offer in a second. You're being given this opportunity, though, because of your intuition."

He blinked, keeping his face blank. "Excuse me?"

"But you already know exactly what I'm talking about." She took another sip of her coffee. "Back there on the road. You made those conclusions from a vanishingly small amount of information. Your evidence wouldn't stand up under a second-" her right hand cut through the air, "-of cross-examination. But it didn't have to. You knew you were walking into a trap, but you also knew I wasn't going to kill you. That wasn't a logical deduction. It was intuition. Instinct."

He could sense where this was going, but the words were different from those Simon Dane had spoken to him years back. Two people could independently arrive at similar conclusions. He chose, for the moment, to play ignorant. "I don't understand."

"You're not good at chess."

It wasn't a question, but he answered it anyway. "No."

"But you know about it?"

"Yeah."

"There's a reason it's easier to teach humans to play chess than it is to teach computers - why a child can learn how to play chess on his own, more or less, but a computer requires a team of masters and programmers. Computers search through all possible outcomes of their moves, to find the best ones. Good human players don't do that. They just know, from looking at the positions on the board, that some are losing, and some are winning." She paused. "Capablanca was a Cuban Grandmaster early in the last century. Someone once asked him how many moves in advance he saw. He said one. The right one."

He nodded.

"How would you explain that?"

"Instinct."

She straightened, smiling. "Instinct, intuition. Same thing. Some have it, some don't. Some are better at using it than others."

He frowned in thought, staring at his reflection, distant, distorted and black in the coffee swirling in his mug. "So you're hiring me for this intuition, this instinct you think I have. What do you want me to use it for?"

She glanced around the restaurant - probably checking to make sure no one was listening in. "LeClerc Partners' main mission is to protect innocent people from false allegations. To do our job, we need to know what's going on before anyone else. Every year, we hire contractors, ex-intelligence, ex-police, specialists in infiltration and computer fraud, breaking-and-entering, social engineering, to ensure we know more, earlier, about our clients and potential clients than anyone else in the world. We can't use evidence obtained in this manner in court, of course. But we can find ways to get it that make it look legal. Or we can discover the strategies our opponents are going to use against us in advance. A day's, even an hour's warning can make the difference between life and death for a client."

"That doesn't sound like fair play."

"Like anyone else plays fair. We try to save lives and careers, when we can, but even if you cheat you don't always win." She took another sip of her coffee. "Now, this is where you enter the story. Many of LeClerc Partners' cases are intertwined with a relatively small number of remarkably important and, often, wealthy people. Often, they are themselves the defendants or plaintiffs in our cases. But even when they are not directly involved, these plutocrats serve as a weathervane and a rudder for society. Their actions affect millions. Sometimes billions."

Somewhere over the last several sentences, the play had dropped out of her voice. Her pauses sharpened, pointed periods separating phrases and syllables. "We need to know, all the time, what the plutocrats are doing. We need someone who can draw subtle connections, point out tension others wouldn't notice, keep us on the bleeding edge. We think you could be that someone. If you want the job."

Daisy came by and refilled their coffee. Roman thanked her retreating back. Chairs scraped against linoleum in the smoking section, as the leather kids got up to leave.

Cayman took a moment to be sure that his voice was where he left it. "What would this job entail?"

"LeClerc Partners would support you in the city. You'd have a line of credit, a decent apartment. A well-paying position, with enough duties to make it look real and enough down-time to make it look easy, a placeholder for a rich kid on the rise. You'd be a minnow with a camera in the middle of the sharks. And we'd be expecting you to come back to us other minnows every once in a while-"

"And tell you what the sharks are planning."

"Yes."

"And how long would this job last?"

"Indefinitely."

"Forever?"

"For as long as we need you. Or until you screw up, or get caught doing something you shouldn't."

He paused, hands splayed flat on the table. "Can I have some time to think it over?"

"Of course!" Oddly merry, Roman raised her right hand and called for the check. "You can think at the hotel."

Daisy returned, collected their cups and saucers, dropped off the yellow ticket, and left again.

"Hotel?"

"Well, motel actually. But you weren't expecting us to drive all through the night, were you?" She glanced out the window again. Twin Honda headlights bounced into the parking lot. "There's Abner. He'll have found some place passable." She left a ten dollar bill for the two coffees, and was already halfway to the door when she looked back over her shoulder at Cayman, who had not moved. "Are you coming?"

"Sure."

#

Cayman had never slept well in hotel rooms. Lying alone, staring up at an unfamiliar ceiling, felt a lot like how he figured waking up in a strange bed next to a strange woman would feel. There were two questions that had to be asked: how he had come there, and who had been there before him. Hotel rooms were worse in their way. They wouldn't wake up, wouldn't explain. They just left him to sit there and stew and think hotel room thoughts, halfway between koans and commercials.

And when those passed, and all he wanted to do was go to sleep, he would get lost tracing the pattern made by the shadow of the Venetian blinds on the ceiling, waiting for the rush of a car passing on the interstate, and the accompanying burst of light. Waiting for the air conditioner to turn on, for the plumbing to run in the room next door, for the clock numbers to change.

Hotel rooms weren't places for living, or sleeping. They were waiting places, and Cayman had never been able to sleep when he was waiting for things.

What was the game being played here? What was behind the offer? The job was too perfect for comfort. LeClerc Partners must have had their eye on him for some time, starting at least a month before Jamie brought him the envelope containing the business card and the enigmatic note, back at graduation. But he had been careful, hadn't given his name to any agencies or firms. This might be a trap, the Calliope Project's last-gasp revenge against their prodigal Judas. But if it was, why go through all this trouble? Why not kill him outright?

Not that he was complaining, of course. But no, no one associated with the Project would have dragged a hit out like this. The risk of exposure was too great - or the risk he'd suss out what they were doing and beat them. So he could relax on that count at least, and look at the job on its merits alone.

It sounded like everything he could have wanted for as little work as he could have asked. An apartment in the city, good money, exciting work. What was there to worry about?

Everything. His eyes drifted to the mirror hung above the television in place of the usual bad wildlife print. Beneath the alarms and the contemplation, in the dark depths of his subconscious, something yearned for the city. Wanted it. And he knew that thing's name.

That scared him, more than anything else.

He shouldn't have called the number on that card. Shouldn't have left Deborah. He wasn't ready. It was too soon.

But.

He rolled over, and picked up the telephone.

"Hello. How do I place a long distance call on my room bill, if I can- oh. Thanks."

He hung up, waited a second, lifted the receiver, dialed.

The answering machine clicked on. The message, the beep. He spoke. "Hi, Deborah. Just wanted to say sorry that I had to run off. I had a great time tonight"- Was it still tonight? "And I just wanted you to know that. Thanks, so much, for everything."

He didn't know why he was calling. There was no plan. Words raced through his head. His heart beat in his chest. The pause that followed his last sentence was a breath too long.

And he realized that, before he had picked up the receiver, he had known his decision.

"I've been offered a job. It's a good opportunity. I think I'm ready for it," he said. "I don't know how long it's going to last, but I need to leave, tonight. And thank you, again. It was so important for me to... to have someone there. I'll maybe drop by again, some time soon. I'll send you a phone number and an email address when I can"- The machine on the other end beeped, and cut him off.

Collapsing onto his pillows, receiver still in hand, he stared at the oddly-plowed furrows of the ceiling, and waited for sleep or dawn without looking at the bedside clock to see which was likely to come first.

#

Theodore Namaste rose early to survey his domain. Standing on the edge of his balcony, dark skin still glistening and damp from his shower, he was clean and refreshed and absolutely above everything. The fangs of the city rose around him: the Empire State Building there, and off in the distance a shadowy outline of the Statue of Liberty, nearly obscured by morning mist. Shredded remnants of starscape clung to their posts as the sun rose, somewhere off in the clouded east, to banish them.

"Do they look like ants?"

He didn't turn around. The voice was familiar to him, and pleasing. It conjured in his mind visions of the way she had dressed when they first met: wood-brown skin clad in tight black pants and a dark red blouse that covered her body but didn't hide its curves. Meredith was a stunning woman, a knockout with respect to both her power and her beauty. "The people? No. As a matter of fact, they do not." He leaned over the railing and looked down. Still not turning, he extended a hand behind him, fingers beckoning. "Come see."

Footsteps on the bare wood. She had removed her shoes.

"Ants, you see, are dirty, ignorant creatures. They work in groups, yes, accomplish great things for their size, yes. But still we don't want ants crowding around in our kitchen. And when they do, we try to keep them out. Or kill them." He shrugged. "But it is more interesting to think that those black specks down there are people, and that I am still up here."

"Good for you." She reached the railing, leaned over it, looked down. He stole a glance at her then. Auburn hair ran back past the neck of her white coat, the hem of which swayed in the wind. A sapphire ring glinted on her left ring finger. She straightened, and turned to him, smiling a little. She glanced down. "And since when did you start raiding Hugh Hefner's wardrobe?"

"You're lucky I was feeling modest today. Sometimes I come out here without any clothes on at all."

"Really?" Meredith smiled a weighing, playful smile, but he saw through it to the still-ragged edge beneath. She had been up most of the night, although she took pains not to betray it. "And what goes through your mind when you stand naked over everything?"

"I don't think that's any of your business." He turned from his domain to face her completely. "Now, why are you here?"

"We have business to discuss. Or were you talking about some other 6:30 AM, Friday the 22nd?" She met his gaze flatly. "Did you forget?"

He raised an eyebrow. "I never forget, dear. I just wanted to hear you say it for yourself. I must confess I'm pleasantly surprised you've seen the light. Whatever happened to 'You and your damned bargain can go burn in hell'?" He searched the air over her head for the exact phrase. "I believe you called me a son of a bitch, but I can't remember where that bit fits in. Sorry."

Already halfway inside, she turned to glance back over her shoulder at him. Her voice was smooth as her skin, clear as her eyes, and he had no clue what she was thinking. He was, at this moment, disinclined to guess.

"Let's just say I had to change my mind."

#

From the back seat of the Honda, if Cayman craned his neck around the front passenger's side seat and the back of Roman's head, he could glimpse the rising spires in the distance, cast in a muted blue by the surrounding sky. Some said the spires looked like teeth, others, a forest. Cayman preferred to think of them as buildings. Hundreds of vertical feet of concrete, steel, and brick were impressive enough without metaphors to help them out.

They drove beneath an overpass, and Abner began negotiating the series of turns and exits that lead across the river and into the city. Shadows and a tunnel closed out the sky, the fleeting visions of buildings in the distance, everything but the Honda's headlights and the sea of other vehicles that surrounded them.

The car crept forward, inches an hour.

Then they emerged to the light of day, onto the Island, into the City, and Cayman forgot for the moment about the enigmatic LeClerc partners, about this job, about Roman Stewart and even about the last time he had left New York, drunk on the Metro-North railroad, too tired and sick of life to stand. She was like a vicious ex, the city. She made your life living hell for years, but you saw her later on, beautiful in the sunlight, and everything made sense and even though you know you shouldn't you fell in love with her all over again.

Yeah, he thought to himself. All over again.

Coded by Max Gladstone, 2007. Contact me at max.gladstone@gmail.com
©2007, Max Gladstone