《The Glyph Queen》91c. Evaluation: Tan

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"This is your power." Victoria held up her legal pad and pointed out the working glyph among a page of errors.

Tan nodded so slightly that it may have just been his breathing. All during Victoria's sketching, he never asked why he was there or what she was doing, but merely watched, arms crossed.

"You've made progress on your own," said Victoria. "It normally doesn't take me so long to sketch one for the first time. Tell me about your power."

Tan didn't respond.

"I understand you use it by defining games with rules and winning conditions."

Silence.

"Is this the only way you've had success? Do you need to construct games around everything you do? Say... combat. Or does your power assume that the winning condition then is to survive the fight?"

More staring. Eye contact.

"Yes, I can read your mind, but wouldn't you rather have a conversation? No? Is this because I tasered you when we first met? I would have convinced you to come with me if I could, but would any argument have worked? And you realize that you have no one to blame but yourself for being here. It was your game after all. At every intersection, you rolled your die to select which road to take. Your winning condition was to get out of town without falling into the hands of the empire. What you hadn't known was that the empire had mobilized to capture you the moment Josephine accessed that file on Naema. No matter what path you took, they would have caught up to you eventually. If I hadn't caught you, they would. And as it happens, you sent yourself down a road that gave me plenty of time to get in your way. You practically handed yourself over to me."

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No response.

"It's funny, really. All these years I've failed to capture you, I thought it was Josephine that kept eluding me, but it was you, tossing your dice like a seer tossing chicken bones. Not even Josephine realizes how critical you were. All those little dice rolls and maps and solitaire games. You always went to the right place. I caught you now is because your goal was to avoid the empire. Only I'm not the empire anymore. I'm on the run. Just like you."

Still, Tan only stared.

"And it might even have been worth it just to meet you. Because, unlike any other power I've known, you can see the future... in a matter of speaking. My intuition tells me your power does not give you any knowledge, but it guides you. You'll always be forced to let your power act through your unconscious actions, but that might be enough. You've already learned how games can let your power express itself, but you could do so much more. Make your games to play the stock market. Flip a coin to decide long or short. Run a company using a magic eight-ball for corporate decisions. Wage a war. Get more points for clean victories. Go for the high score. You could have been ruling this world just as easily as I have."

Still nothing.

"But not anymore. You've waited too long, and now you're here on a ship surfing the atmosphere, waiting for our enemies to destroy us. Shortly, every person working for Alexander will have a shield, and neither Josephine nor I can do anything to help. But you might turn all of this around. All you need is to expand your power, and I can help you."

He finally moved, only to utter one word. "How?"

Victoria took many item from her case: A pack of cards, coins, her tablet, a sleeping mask, pens and index cards, and set after set of colored dice with varying sides.

Victoria looked at him. "By playing games, of course."

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