“Oh? You didn’t have much luck last time.” She remembered how to flirt like Hu. That lopsided smile, that gaze which did not break. It caught him and held him an instant. He laughed, surprised and charmed. He really must be like Ulyu Xe, drawn to men and women both.

“Come, look. This is Purge.…”

With an efficient and supremely unpatronizing manner, he showed Baru how to play. The players took the parts of rivals in Falcrest: the cards were ministers, admirals, parliamentaries, and polymaths who each contributed some political capability, whether moneymaking or law-writing or gossip-mongering or the creation of influence. To win, one first spent their influence (the dry beans) to recruit a cabal of allies (the cards). Some would help you get more influence. Some would let you alter the rules. Some would let you strike at your opponent’s cabal. “Strip away my support,” Iraji explained, “until you can have me convicted, or exiled, or murdered without much chance of anyone caring. But be careful not to run out of influence-beans. Each member of your cabal requires constant favors and protection, and if a tile is not satisfied with its allocation of beans, it may flip.…”

“The Tyrant’s Qualm,” Baru said. “You must divide your power to gain allies, but not too far?”

“Precisely.”

They sat under her tied-up hammock and played as the deck above them drummed with busy feet and the ship creaked with speed. Occasionally Iraji smiled, or laughed in delight. Baru lost twice, quickly and purposefully, not because she could have won but because she needed to see all the rules in operation to grasp the game-behind-the-game. The rules might say you could buy any minister you wanted at the beginning, but Baru knew that only a few ministers would be correct choices, opening paths toward a strategy that would defeat most other strategies. It was better, for example, to recruit people of influence early on, so you could use their influence to get even more people of influence. But later in the game, you would have to begin spending all your influence aggressively to complete your plots, and it was a waste of time to cultivate more patronage. This seemed to be the key to victory: choosing when to transition from growth for growth’s sake into the actual execution of your endgame.

“The metagame,” Iraji said, and this time his grin was joyful and spontaneous. “That’s what you’re talking about. The game-of-winning-the-game is called the metagame.”

“I don’t see how that’s different from the game itself. Isn’t the goal of the game to win the game?”

“Yes. The game is the set of rules I’ve taught you. But the metagame is the game of knowing how others tend to play the game, and choosing a strategy that will defeat the common strategies.”

“Like yomi?”

“Yomi is a part of it, yes, knowing what I’m likely to do.”