The Best of World SF by Lavie Tidhar (children's ebooks free online .txt) 📕

Grandmaster Didecus Avnette Valentino Lucochin and I would speak to my fellow Grandmasters regarding the failure of their annexes and their inability to access and feed the Coretrees.’

The Valencia’s eyes narrowed, the smallest movement. ‘You are no longer a Grandmaster of Valencia.’

‘And yet I am the only Grandmaster who can tell you what has happened and why, and how you can save our people.’ His fingers quested against the underside of the fountain, found the rough imprint they were searching for and pushed.

‘Traitor!’ came a voice behind him.

‘You are exiled,’ came another. ‘You should have been executed the moment you arrived.’

‘The Grandmaster Valencia brought me here,’ he answered without turning as he withdrew his hand. ‘Ask yourselves why.’

He sensed someone draw closer and tensed, even though none of the Knights in front of him had moved.

‘He is a Grandmaster of Valencia until the Greatwood calls him home,’ said a familiar voice. He turned to face a tiny man in an orange mask who sat in a mobile chair. The Grandmaster Yuta, oldest of their number, gave him a deferential nod. ‘He is entitled to speak at any gathering if he has not yet been executed. This is the law.’

The Valencia let her gaze rise above the crowded room. ‘Very well. I brought the Lucochin here to repair the damage he caused to the Greatwood. It was an error on my part. One I will remedy once this gathering has ended.’

‘Before we get to my imminent demise,’ he interrupted. ‘Allow me to tell you a story.’

Whispers spread behind him.

The Grandmaster hissed out a breath and shook her head, her braids swishing against the thin silk of her robe. ‘My predecessor died without uttering a word, not even a plea for his life. This delay does not become you.’

Sorrow and anger swept through him. ‘Your actions do not become you. Why order the clearing of Lucochin’s board?’

‘Because you corrupted it. You Septed all families of Pawns. Increased the rations for the un-Septed. Visited them to hear their concerns. What you did – it was Deviation.’ The Valencia’s voice was filled with disgust despite her tranquil expression. ‘You had no respect for the governance of the Grandmasters. You corrupted Alexandar as you tried to corrupt me. I only regret you escaped to exile instead of facing your due for your crimes. Sept Lucochin was an abomination under you. Clearing the board of it was my duty to the Great Game and my Sept. I did what was best for Valencia.’

He laughed, a sad, resigned sound that echoed in the cavernous room. ‘You are as wrong about that as you are about the un-Septed.’

He faced the sea of colourful masks. His back felt naked, vulnerable, but he would let them see the truth of his words, the emotions he’d learned to express over time.

They had to know emotions were possible, even for a Grandmaster.

‘Once,’ he said, ‘an orphan of un-Septed Valencians whose township was cleared from the board, a descendant of the First Gardeners, made his Presentation and was taken into a new Sept. He rose through the ranks, from servant to Grandmaster, over many tempi of the Great Game.

‘He found allies and a wife and more enemies than he ever knew possible, but he didn’t forget what it was to be un-Septed. How it felt to have no control over whether he ate or starved, whether he had a life of purpose or not. He knew this to be wrong. He knew Valencia to be unfair. And he wanted, more than anything, to change that, and to protect the people under his care for as long as he could.

‘This orphan knew he held strange views. That the Great Game was not played for the benefit of the un-Septed, but to feed the Greatwood. So, imagine his shock to find another who believed as he did. The Grandmaster Alexandar Gordon Millefleur Valencia.’

There were gasps and a whisper of, ‘Impossible.’

‘Together, they searched for a secret told to the orphan by his grandmother, and those Gardeners before her. A secret buried in the Coretrees. That there was intelligence within the Greatwood, which Gardeners had encountered.’

Silence fell as all in attendance hung on his every word.

‘One of those Gardeners told an officer, and once the Captains of the colony ships learned of this intelligence, they determined ordinary colonists could not be allowed to control something so important as the Coretrees. They took over the care of the Greatwood. Gardeners were stripped of their duties and demoted. But some remembered what their comrades had spoken of and tried to find ways to contact it again.

‘The orphan believed this entity might be the key to controlling the Greatwood without constant input from the Games. It had lain dormant despite the logic and puzzles of the Grandmasters who came after the Gardeners. But once both Grandmasters entered the Coretrees to investigate, they realized they were wrong, and everything changed.’

‘We know what changed. There was a trial, Lucochin,’ came the Valencia’s icy voice. ‘All here remember it.’

‘You know part of the story,’ he replied. ‘This is what I never spoke of. There is no single intelligence in the Coretrees. The Coretrees are intelligent, and they are nature itself – the centre of Valencia’s ecosystem – a key part of a great whole we’ve injected ourselves into. They don’t respond only to logic. They respond to stimulation. Water, sunlight, nutrients – the Greatwood produces what it needs, in the amount it needs. Then we came, demanding more and more, and willing to stimulate the Greatwood in whatever way we could to get it.

‘The Coretrees took what we gave it, logic as a form of cultivation, but when Alexandar and I entered together, it sensed what any good gardener will tell you is the secret to growing thriving plants. Care. Affection. It fed on our emotions. The more it did, the more we opened to it – and to our connection. With each other. With the Coretrees. With every Coretree, everywhere.’ He stopped,