I drank deeply, sediment and all. It didn't so much wash the taste away as replace it with something less foul and more earthy. It's the strangest thing but to this day I sometimes miss the taste of Pit water. I think it made me feel connected to the earth somehow in a way that even a Geomancy Source couldn't.
"What's the game?" I could feel sleep tugging at me again, yet I didn't want it. The food bells would ring soon and I was ravenous enough to fight to be near the front of the line. It was a fight I would lose. The scabs of the Pit were beaten into a submissive lot for the most part, but the promise of food could wake a beast from even the deepest slumber.
"It's called Trust," said Isen with a cheeky grin. "And it's a game about trust. I was just explaining the rules to young Josef here, but I can start again for you."
I nodded and looked down at the dice. Each one was crudely made, carved from black rock with symbols scraped into each of the six sides. They were chipped and scratched and uneven, but then the Pit did that to all of us.
"Each player gets three dice," Isen said, "and each player gets a partner. Partners rotate, first you will play with the man on your left, then the man on his left, and so on. When it comes to your turn to play you select a side from either Friendship." Isen held up one of the die and showed me a face with a crude depiction of two men holding hands. They were stick drawings the like of which children were apt to scrawl. "Or Betrayal." The second face Isen showed us had another of the stickmen with an equally crude depiction of a knife in his back. I found I could sympathise with the poor stickman.
"You select your side in secret and keep it covered until your partner has also chosen." Isen placed the die on the ground and covered it with his hand. "If both players choose the side of Friendship then no dice are lost or exchanged, and the next set of players take their turns. If one player chooses Friendship and the other Betrayal, then the player who chose Betrayal takes the die from the player who chose Friendship. If both players choose Betrayal, then both players roll one die to determine the outcome."
I could see both the simplicity and the complexity of the game right away. It started with an illusion of truce, all players on equal footing. The first player to betray another would, of course, get an immediate benefit, but the other players would then know their calibre and be more likely to choose betrayal against them. In a room full of murderers, the second person to die is usually the first person to start the killing.
"The roll?" I asked.
"That is just as simple. If you roll Friendship you keep your die no matter what. If you roll Betrayal you lose your die no matter what. As for the others." Isen held up the die and started turning it to show me all the sides. "War beats Peace. Peace beats Trade. Trade beats Coin. And Coin beats War. If you roll the winning face you take both dice. If neither player rolls a conflict, both players lose a die."
I struggled then, to consider all the possible outcomes of a single game of Trust. Even now, after hundreds of games played, the complexity staggers me. Every game is different whether the players are new or old. Friendships made and broken over a simple game of dice. And believe me, I have lost friends over games of Trust.
"What if everyone chooses Friendship all the time?" I asked, though I already knew the answer.
"Then no one wins, and the game continues," Isen said.
Hardt shook his head. "Someone always picks Betrayal." He sent a pointed look at Isen. I thought, at the time, that Isen won games more often than not because he was the first to betray another. The more I think about that look the more I believe it was something else entirely. Something I was simply too damned naive to understand at the time.
"What happens when you run out of dice?" Josef asked.
I pulled back and stared at him. I would not have used that word. Josef assumed he would, at some time, run out of dice. He was already planning on losing. I never plan to lose or fail. I have always played to win.
"Then you fucking lose," I said, already staring at the dice and deciding who I would betray first. It was foolish. A player might go into a game of Trust with a plan, but those plans needed flexibility above all else. Back then I didn't understand that winning was never about the game.
We played a game then. My first game of Trust. Josef lost his dice first, just as he had planned, even if he hadn't realised it. I was the second to go out, playing far too aggressively, betraying more often than extending an olive branch. I watched Hardt and Isen go head to head, eagerly waiting to see what tactics were involved once the game was reduced to just two players. They played only once, both picking Friendship, and then shook hands declaring the game a draw. I didn't understand at the time, I thought them idiots. A draw seemed like a loss for all players. They didn't see it that way. To them it was a win.
Chapter 3
Long after I stopped trying to keep track of days or time, I could tell a week had passed by my appointment with the overseer. Prig would appear, whip in one hand and a savage grin on his fat fucking mouth. I think he enjoyed parading me to my interrogations, knowing why I kept the attention of the overseer when so many others were forgotten in the depths of the Pit. There were men and women down there who were once mighty. Orran generals, lords of noble houses, legendary brigands of great renown. The Pit made nobodies of us all.
At first, it wasn't just me the overseer sent for. Josef would come back, shaken and cowed, sometimes sobbing and sometimes barely conscious. He never told me what the overseer did to him during those interrogations. Maybe the man used the same tactics to break us both, but I doubt it. My years have taught me that as every person is different from one another, so too are the best methods to break them. Eventually the overseer stopped calling for Josef.
The route Prig led was always the same. We didn't need to go through the main cavern, where food was dished out and new arrivals were inducted into their living hell. But Prig liked the illusion of power it gave him. He was on a mission from the overseer and the overseer was in charge. He liked to think that made him important. What a fucking idiot. Anyone could have done his job, but those of little consequence often mistake convenience for importance.
It took me a while to learn the structure of the Pit. At first it seems like chaos. The Terrelans were in charge, it was true, but there was only a small garrison of soldiers stationed inside the Pit and they took no part in the day to day running of the inmates. They were there so the criminals running things remembered who was really in charge.
The Pit was governed and run by inmates. Deko, the narcissistic psychopath at the very top, ruled over his captains and they, in turn, ruled over the foremen. The rest of the inmates, the scabs as the foremen called us, were the workers. We were the ones who dug the tunnels and fought in the arena. We were the ones who died while Deko and his sycophantic cronies lived a life of relative luxury. I hadn't met Deko yet, but I had seen him from a distance as he toured his little empire of rock and filth. He wasn't particularly tall, but had a girth to him, which is nothing but a nice way of saying he was a fat fucker. The rumours said he would kill another inmate simply for looking at him, and it was one rumour I could well believe was true. There were few people I would agree belonged in the Pit and Deko was one of them.