CHINESE SCRABBLE

They sat, covered in their furs, in a small open area near the summit of the Castle of Bequest.

A few decrepit towers and decaying fractions of floors with rooms and chambers rose into the shining grey sky to one side of them, but most of the apartments were empty and useless, only good for rookeries. Stones, great slabs of slate, lay tumbled all around the small cleared area where they sat. A few stunted trees and bushes, little more than overgrown weeds, poked out from the mass of fallen, fractured masonry. Ruins of arches and columns lay about them, and while they played Chinese Scrabble, it started to snow.

Quiss looked up slowly, in surprise. He couldn't recall it snowing for... a long time. He blew some of the small, dry flakes off the surface of the board. Ajayi hadn't even noticed; she was still studying the two small remaining plastic tiles balanced on the little bit of wood in front of her. They were very nearly finished.

Nearby, perched on a pitted, flaking column, the red crow sat, puffing on the green stump of a fat cigar. It had taken up smoking at about the same time they had started playing Chinese Scrabble. "I can see this is going to take some time," it had said. "I'd better find some other interests. Maybe I can contract lung cancer."

Quiss had asked it, casually, where it got the good cigars from. He should have known better, he told himself later: Tuck off," the red crow had said.

"I liked that other game you played," the red crow announced suddenly, between puffs, from the column. Quiss didn't deign to look at it. The red crow balanced on one leg and took the short stump of the cigar out of its beak with the other foot. It looked pensively at the glowing end of the cigar. A flake of the quietly falling snow landed on it and hissed. The red crow cocked its head, looking up accusingly at the sky, then went on, stuffing the cigar back into its beak (so that its words came out oddly distorted). "Yes, that Open-Plan Go was all right. I liked that board, the way it seemed to stretch for ever in all directions. You two looked proper twats, I can tell you, standing in the middle of an infinite board, cut off at the waist. Real dickheads you looked. Those dominoes were just stupid. Even this is pretty boring. Why don't you just admit defeat? You aren't going to get the answer. Throw yourself off the edge over there. Doesn't take a second. Dammit, at your age you'll probably die of shock before you hit the fucking ground."

"Hmm," Ajayi said, and Quiss wondered if she had been listening to the bird. But she was still frowning deeply at the tiles on her little ledge of wood. Talking to them, or herself.

In a few days, if Quiss had counted correctly, they would have been together in the castle for two thousand days. Of course, he recalled proudly, he had been there longer than she had.

It was good, counting up the days, working out the anniversaries so that they could celebrate them. He had started working them out in different number-bases. Base five, base six, seven, eight, of course, nine, ten, twelve and sixteen. So two thousand days would be a quadruple celebration, as it was divisible by five and eight and ten and sixteen. It was just a pity Ajayi didn't share this enthusiasm.

Quiss wiped his head slowly, dislodging some small cold flakes of snow. He blew some more off the board. Perhaps they would have to go back in soon, if the snow kept up. They had got bored with the games room, and the weather had seemed milder, so, after much cajoling of the seneschal, they did finally get permission to have the small table with the red jewel in it unbolted again from the floor (an apparently simple job which absorbed three - sometimes more - constantly arguing attendants armed with oilcans, screwdrivers, hammers, bolt-cutters, tweezers, wrenches and pliers for all of five days) and transported up through the upper levels of the castle to what was, by default, thanks to the crumbling architecture of previously higher storeys, the castle's roof. In this sort of elevated courtyard, surrounded by stunted trees and fallen stones and distant turrets, they had played the game of Chinese Scrabble for the past fifty-odd days. The weather had been kind; no wind, slightly warmer than before (until today) and the sky still grey, but bright grey. "Maybe it's spring!" Quiss had said brightly. "Maybe this is high summer," Ajayi had muttered dourly, and Quiss had got angry with her for being so pessimistic.

Quiss scratched his scalp. It felt funny since the castle barber had cut his hair. He wasn't sure if the hair was growing back or not. His chin and cheeks, which had been grizzly with mottled stubble for nineteen hundred days in the castle, now felt smooth to the touch, though still lined with age.

Quiss made a funny little laughing noise as he thought of the castle barber, who was neurotic. He was neurotic because he had the job of shaving every man in the castle who didn't shave himself. Quiss had heard of this odd character long before he met him; the seneschal had told him of the barber shortly after Quiss had arrived in the castle, in answer to his inquiry whether there were any other relatively ordinary human people in the place. Quiss hadn't believed the seneschal at first; he thought the grey-skinned man was joking. A barber who shaves everybody who doesn't shave himself? Quiss said he didn't believe such a person existed.

"That is the provisional conclusion," the seneschal had said gravely, "that the barber has arrived at."

Quiss met the barber much later, when he was exploring the middle levels of the castle. The barber had a huge, splendidly equipped, almost totally unused barber's shop with a fine view of the snow-filled plain. The barber was taller and skinnier than the seneschal, and had deep black skin. He had white hair, and was half-bald. He shaved the right side of his scalp, to the skin. The left side had a fine head, or half-head, of curly white locks. He shaved his left eyebrow off, but left the right intact. He had half a moustache, on the left-hand side. His beard was very full and bushy, on the right side only; otherwise he was clean-shaven.

The barber wore thick white spotless overalls, and a white apron. He either didn't speak the same language as Quiss, or had forgotten how to speak, because when Quiss had entered the brass-railed, red-leather-chaired barber shop he just danced around Quiss, pointing at his hair and beard and twittering like a bird, his hands and arms fluttering about as he danced. He flapped a big white dusty towel at Quiss and through pleading, imploring motions tried to get him to sit down in one of the chairs. Quiss, wary and suspicious of people who shook and trembled a lot even at the best of times, but especially so when they wanted to come near him with anything resembling long scissors and a cut-throat razor, had declined. Later, though, he found out that the barber had a steady hand when actually carrying out his duties. The seneschal's hair still grew, and he had it cut by the barber.

A hundred or so days ago, Quiss had sent an attendant to tell the barber Quiss would be coming down soon to have his hair cut. Either the minion got the message wrong or the barber misunderstood it, or couldn't wait, because he arrived in the games room a short time later, carrying a portable barbering kit. Quiss let him cut his hair while Ajayi looked on. The barber had seemed pleased, gibbering away to himself quite happily as he skilfully trimmed Quiss's mottled hair and shaved off his beard.

The red crow had watched, too, which was a pity, because it had kept telling Quiss the barber would cut his throat just as proficiently if he asked him to nicely; after all, what was the alternative? Madness, or a slip on the stairs one day...

Quiss stroked his chin, still finding - after a hundred days - the smoothness novel and pleasing.