What is pending

A letter passes from hand to hand, on a moonless night, on the docks of Fergris. The one who gives it does not raise his eyes; the one who takes it will not open it until she is aboard. Two quays away, Nera is asleep: she is to cast off in the morning.

A game does not hold together by what has happened: it holds by what is not finished. The people you have raised want things. Questions you have asked have no answer. And on some of them, somebody else is making progress while you look elsewhere.

◆ Waits and stakes

A solo game does not move forward on its own: it needs something to follow. That something is the thread: the tension running from one sceneScenethe unit of play: you open it, you play it, you close it.part 3 to the next, what stays open when a scene closes and calls up the following one.

It is made of everything that is pending: the desiresDesirewhat your character wants. No mechanism, no count: it orients what you play.part 11 of the actorsActora presence that wants: someone who will come back and weigh, where the Backdrop is forgotten. You anchor him on the standing page in one line.part 7 on the standing page, a threat rising, and above all the waits and the stakes. Whenever a question comes to you, as a player or inside your character, note it down.

Not every question calls for an answer. Note them as they are: they are live gaps. What remains is knowing whether the world is working at them too, and for that ask yourself: is somebody else in the world looking for the answer?

• If not, it is a wait. It belongs to you, it ripens at its own pace, it has the right never to close: why do I always leave, and what am I fleeing?
• If so (a man you promised, a debt, a report you signed), it is a stake. Others are making progress on it while you look elsewhere, and it does not forget itself.

The question	Is somebody else looking?
Astore’s barque, seen again in the distance after his death	No — it is mine alone: a wait
Why do I always leave, and what am I fleeing?	No — nobody digs at it in my place: a wait
Who commands Parilia, and why keep the parcel from its carrier?	Yes — someone is paying for me to know nothing: a stake
The debt promised before winter	Yes — he is counting the days: a stake

And when you know something your character does not, set it aside as a meta note (“I am being followed — she does not know it yet”): it is often that which strings the story tight.

◆ Creating a wait, played

Regiord, on the deck of a great starship, early evening. Astore died months ago. I thought that circle was closed.

The sky is turning orange, the deck is quiet. I decide nothing. I ask. Is something happening, far off?

Headssomething, far off

Tailsthe sky is empty

Asking the horizon — the evening is not empty.

Off to port, right at the horizon, a glint catches the last of the sun. Something, yes.

A barque? — coin: heads, yes. I take out the spyglass.

I turn the focus wheel. A small hull, alone, running quietly toward the horizon.

And there, without asking the coin anything, the idea falls on me, too strong for me to refuse it: that outline, I know it. The line of the hull, the gash on the fin. It is Astore’s barque. In every detail. No toss told me so; it came on its own, and that is what makes the moment burn, so it is true, and I keep it. Fun is the engine: an idea like that, you seize it, you do not put it to the vote.

She is heading for the same place as always. As though he had never come down from her.

My thumb finds the coin all the same. Is he at the helm, alive, come back? One toss, and I would know: heads he is there; tails his barque without him, sold, stolen, drifting alone.

And I do not toss.

That one does not want an answer. It is worth more open than closed. If I settle it, I have a fact, and the fact kills the unease. If I leave it, I have a live gap: something the world will keep digging at beneath the surface, without my knowing. A man like that, dead, and his barque still running toward his destination… no. I do not want to know. Not now. Perhaps never. I close the spyglass and I note it in the notebook, without answering it:

Wait: Astore’s barque, seen again in the distance, after his death. So his route was not finished?

The world works underneath. It will tell me when it wants to — or never. That is quite all right.

◆ What is left open

A scene closes badly when it closes on nothing. Before you turn the page, ask: what is left open? Three kinds of thing come out of it, and you do not keep as much of each.

The bridging question: one only, and it does not go to the standing page. Where am I going to wake up? It does not pend: the next scene answers it, and it is even what frames that scene. It is the question you will put at your next openingOpening (the)the gesture that begins every scene: three cards, you keep one, you give up the other two. The only draw where choosing costs, and the only door of fate.part 3.

Waits and stakes: what really pends. Who is the Mender? What is this business of fateFatewhat comes in when you keep a major at the opening, and by no other door: the moment stops being ordinary. It resolves with the coin, never with cards, and what it closes, only it can open.part 6 on the three skyfarers? They go to the standing page, and they gain by ripening.

And all the rest, which you let die. That is the important part. A scene raises ten things; if you note them all, your standing page becomes a shopping list and nothing on it weighs any more. Choose what you carry away: what you do not note has not existed. A question you do not feel like writing down was not one.

◆ Opening a lead

Opening a lead is playing a scene under the angle of a wait or a stake.

Your character searches, and it is in playing that he finds. Nothing obliges him to search himself, moreover: the same lead can also be pushed in a world sceneWorld scenea declared scene in which your character is not present: the world advances behind his back. After three scenes played at his side the floor is the world’s; never two in a row, and fate does not come into it. It moves forward what pends, or it merely lives — a breather.part 9, behind his back (part 9).

One scene is sometimes enough. If not, declare another with the same aim, as many as it takes. But you do end up deciding: when a scene touches the answer (or leaves you only one last silence, a face that knows and will not say), write it in one line; the question will not pass to the next standing page. Resolving is not finishing: an answer often uncovers others; note behind it the new question, if one is born.

◆ A lead, played

A question has been sleeping on Nera’s standing page since the North Gate: who handed the parcel to Parilia — and did he know what it carried? Tonight I stop letting it sleep: I make a scene of it.

I do not read a card in Nera’s place — I send her digging. I open on a draw and I keep the Three of Pentacles. Earth, several hands, a commissioned work: writings, registers, an object passed from one to another. This is not the answer: it is the ground of the search. Nera does not charge at a revelation; she goes looking where things are recorded. A number, not a court card: the search can turn up something, not only someone.

kept

left

left

The opening of the lead — a number kept, a court card left.

The freight office of the upper port smells of wax and old paper. I set down before the clerk the only name I have. “The cargo they had me carry south, last month. I want to know where it starts from.” He sighs, pulls out a register, follows the lines with his finger. “Order placed, parcel handed over, carrier assigned.” Three entries, three hands — just as the card announced.

And there, it happens.

I read over his shoulder. The parcel did not begin at Parilia’s: she is only a line in the middle. Above her, another hand ordered the shipment and paid in advance, and in the margin, an instruction I make out upside down: “carrier not to be informed of the contents.”

I close the register without a word. The clerk has not seen what he has just shown me. I have.

This time it is Nera who knows — not only me. She read the line, she leaves changed. The question closes; I write the answer; on the next standing page, the question will not be there:

Answer: the parcel comes from a commissioner above Parilia, paid in advance, with orders to keep the carrier in ignorance. I am the last link, chosen to know nothing.

A court card would have given me a face rather than a written line: someone to make talk, probably one more scene. Here, a number: the search gives back a thing, and the thing is enough. One scene closed that lead; sometimes it takes two or three — you declare again, you play again, until you decide.

But arriving is not finishing. In closing the old question, the answer uncovers a new one: that name above Parilia, who is it? I do not move the old one, it is closed for good; this one was born of what I have just learned. I note it beside the other, struck out:

Stake: who commands Parilia — and why keep the parcel from its carrier?

A lead that closes does not close a story; it moves it forward by a notch. That is all that is asked of it.

◆ The author’s hand — questioning the story between scenes

MinorsMinor Arcanumone of the fifty-six cards of the four suits, from Ace to King: the matter of the everyday.parts 2, 4 answer you too, not only your character. Between two scenes, when you want to know where a plot is going, what a faction is scheming, what is waiting in the next chapter: put an open player’s question and draw. It is no longer your hero perceiving: it is you sounding your own story, like a game master consulting the oracle before preparing what comes next.

Here, outside the played fiction, you can draw several cards and read their progression: the order of the elements (Fire giving way to Water, Earth climbing toward Air), the rise or fall of the numbers, a symbol that returns. These richer readings, which would weigh too much inside a scene, find their place here: you are not playing, you are building.

◆ The standing page — the page that keeps what is pending

Everything pending has to survive the scene that gave rise to it, and the one after. That is the work of a single page.

◆ Keeping your notebook

Everything is written in the same place: the scenes, and what has to survive them. There is no reserved page, nothing to prepare before starting: a blank notebook is enough. Only two things are written otherwise than the play: the standing page, and the portraitsPortraitwhat you write about someone, actor or character: a name, what he wants, his suits, and what he carries when that says who he is. Without any count, and never corrected — you write a fresh one, further on.parts 7, 11.

A portrait is not reserved for people: a place you keep coming back to deserves one too (part 10).

Mark their page: a colored corner, a tab, as you like.

◆ What lives on it

The standing page says what, at this hour, is still waiting for something from you:

• the living actors, one line each (that they exist, what they want, what you do not know about them);
• the waits and the stakes, the latter marked as such;
• the desires under way, with the trace of the road (door closed, side route, condition burned) and never a count of scenes;
• and fate’s marksFate’s markwhat fate has closed, noted on the standing page in one line: you can slip free of it in the fiction, it stands otherwise, and only a new wager under a major wipes it out.part 6, one line each, the only trace that says what it closed and that it will take a majorMajor Arcanumone of the twenty-two named cards, from The Fool to The World. It does not answer: it names, and it weighs.parts 2, 4, 6 to open it again (part 6).

There is only one at a time, and it replaces the previous one. The day you rewrite it, copy across what is still alive. A question that no longer intrigues you dies out there, without ceremony; an actor you no longer play fades of his own accord.