Round One - Red

斌

Little Mouse stops crying. It's very abrupt. He's hiccuping one second, and then he isn't.

Bin pulls away and his sword is red, his hands are red, his jumpsuit is red - he's stained like a sunset but it's only paint. Nothing more. It's all an illusion, and the way that the little boy's throat gapes is just a trick of the light.

Smoke and mirrors and beautiful costumes; there's a danger to devoting yourself to something so fully. Bin walks across sand and it becomes a stage. The crowd screams but he hears applause. There's the body of a child at his feet and all he does is look at it.

"How kind of me." He agrees softly, and there is no feeling in it.

The sand shifts again and there is Ines, eyes clear, hands bare and empty. She moves and the whole world clicks into focus, the edges of her become more and more solid until she's as real as she was that night at the party. But now, Bin thinks that it's the lacking that makes him step back. She seems so plain standing here in the breeze. The light makes her glow and there is sand in her hair.

She seems more dangerous without a weapon than with one.

Bin's sword raises between them and it gleams like molten bronze in the sun. It hangs there, steady and then dipping. He just watches her, he can feel the blood on his face like grease paint, like lian pu, it pulls at a point of his cheek when his face twitches.

Ines tends to his ego like a child tends a hearth.

"A game." He repeats, turning the sound over between his teeth, testing it.

Except he knows what she's doing; she pulls at the tenderest parts of him and braces herself for the snap. She is more clever and less daring than he gave her credit for.

He grins.

"What kind of game?"

斌

Ines speaks and Bin listens and the fighting continues around them.

It's more like an intricate dance than anything, Bin shifts to keep the others in his line of sight, moving with Ines like a mirror. The sword stays in his hand.

If the crowd is displeased, they don't show it. They only scream louder, a whole wave of crimson rising up, someone leans over the seating barrier to get a better look at the two tributes who do nothing but look at each other.

"A game of words!" Bin repeats, loud and boisterous for the people watching. He raises a finger to his chin, pretending to think, grips the spindly thread of the crowd's attention and yanks it hard enough to make them sprawl at his feet.

The ones not watching the other fight, the smart ones, have fallen into a sort of hush. A battle of wits holding up a battle of blades - they must be intrigued. A voice heckles for them to get on with it and Bin almost scoffs at it.

A stage is a stage is a stage.

But there is something that stays Bin's hand. The sword his heavy and his hands are soft and the metal glints. Ines has proven herself to be worth knowing. Bin inclines his head in acknowledgement, they are close enough to speak quietly but there's no point in whispering their lines.

Ines has shown her mind once already, it's as dangerous as an adder, but it's Bin's pride that makes the ultimate decision.

At the very least, it is a clever way to delay her death.

"Okay." And then again, "Okay then, I will play your game."

The audience goes quiet again, baited, and Bin brushes his palm out; language of the orchid in his fingers. His throat rises through speech, his voice rests at the home of a performance, ebbing and flowing and crashing.

Ines and Bin, Turandot and Calaf - he cannot tell who is who.

"Here it is - more valued than gold, more precious than silk. Pouring like wine, flowing like milk."

He steps through a routine in great strides, jumpsuit twinkling.

"Freeing it can bring war and strife, but it is there for the beginning and end of life."

"Those who lose it-" His hand flutters, palm to chest, "-lose themselves."

斌

Bin has weaver's hands. He turns them this way and that as Ines thinks through the question. He creates his own script of gestures and he has just begun to plan his gloating when Ines answers, quick and clever and Bin stops his movements rather abruptly.

She was not supposed to guess so quickly.

Bin glares as she speaks, the smile doesn't reach his eyes. Ines teases and puts on her own show and Bin wonders if the spotlight is warm for her or if it burns.

"Very good." He says, like salt under molasses, so acidly fake that even the crowd murmurs at it.

"I'll give you an easy one." Ines tells him, and Bin feels the sting of it, derision, it's a caress that lands in a slap.

He gestures outwards to give her the floor and then naturally, immediately regrets it.

Two armies. A battle.

His grin falters.

"They sleep in a single bed." Bin says, mockingly, distractingly, playing it off, "Scandalous."

The panic doesn't seep through his voice yet, he's buying time.

He thinks of teeth first, of eyes and ears and all the standard things that riddles seem to be made of. Turandot's riddles were abstract things like hope. Lanyan ended up changing them all in one of the updated scripts because he thought that the new audiences in Nine were too stupid to understand them.

Maybe they were.

Bin remembers laughing about it. Tao brought Lanyan books and encyclopedias from all sorts of places, trying to find something that would keep his attention but none of them ever worked. Lanyan would shove them on a shelf and sometimes Bin would read them when his feet were sore and his voice was gone and there was nothing better to do.

Sometimes Lanyan would shut the spine on whatever Bin was holding, he'd throw the book down onto a chaise and replace it with the wine bottle. Bin would pour and Lanyan would sit, puffing smoke and pulling out a board; sometimes it was go but sometimes it was chess, which was always harder because Lanyan liked to change the rules every time they played. He liked to switch roles; the bishop, the rook, the queen, the-

"Chess pieces."

The pounding in the stands, in his head, gets louder.

"The armies," He's breathless, "They're chess pieces."

Bin shakes his head. "The chess pieces, the chess board, chess."

It doesn't matter which one is the right answer, he's figured it out, he's done it. His posture changes all at once, the tension fades but the rigidity doesn't, that smirk is back. It's easy again but heart is still skipping, his palm sweats against the sword hilt. His words are clipped, eager.

"My turn again."

He's so close to Ines that he could reach out and touch where Little Mouse's blood splattered onto her cheek.

"I have a silver head and a silver tail. But I have no body." It feels less performative now. A certain hush has fallen over the area, even with the fighting around them. "What am I?"