Caleb and Teo were sharing dinner in her apartment over a game of chess. Sam lay supine on the couch. A glass of cold white wine dangled from her fingers. Every year, when spring evaporated into the punishing heat of desert summer, Teo stole a few bottles of old wine from her family’s cellar and held a private bacchanal. Caleb was a usual guest on these occasions, but this year he had not expected to attend—Sam harbored sharp, serrated feelings toward him after his interruption the night of the Bright Mirror disaster. She caved to Teo’s pressure at the last moment, though, and Caleb received an invitation the day before the event. Sam was friendlier in person than Caleb expected—which was to say, cold and gratingly radical, but she had not yet opened outright hostilities. Their games proceeded in triangular fashion—Caleb lost to Teo, who loved chess though she did not study it, and Teo lost to Sam, who was too busy railing against the hierarchical relationships encoded in the rules to notice how blatantly Teo let her win.
