Letting things go has never been my strong point. I would be a terrible King because I have never been able to let a small injustice go to prevent a larger one. It sticks in me like a splinter deep down in your foot, one that starts to fester, to swell until the offending sliver of wood is excised. It was part of the reason I kept to myself in the library, embracing my loner facade as Desert. As long as I was not involved in the tangle of other lives, I could not be drawn into making choices and the guilt that comes along with choice. Febril never approved of my stance.
“Don’t you think you should have friends other than this old man?” he said.
We sat in stools on the street outside his stall, our usual perch in his kitchen occupied by a gathering of his wife’s friends drinking tea and gossiping.
“Are you not good enough for me?”
“It’s not about good enough, Ori. Don’t be so defensive. I think it would be good for you. Challenge yourself some. You spend all your time in those books.”
“You don’t want me to come visit anymore?”
Febril let out a colossal breath of air before kicking me in the shin. I fell off my stool and into the cobblestone street, interrupting a few passersby. They kept their heads down, unwilling to get caught up in this stranger’s fight.
“Stop being stupid,” Febril said, once I had stood up my toppled stool and sat back down. “How dare you. After all I’ve done for you. I’m trying to help you and you say that to me.”
“I’m sorry, Feb.”
“You ought to be.”
“The books are my life, you know.”
His sigh was different then. Different from the huge breath of air he took before ruining my shin for a week. It was long and drawn out, and he looked across the street and not at me. He rubbed his hand through his coiled beard.
“Ori,” he said. “Your father loved books. But he loved you more.”
“What’s your point?”
“They weren’t his whole life. He had dreams. Aspirations. Friends. He was a planner, your father. You two were going to conquer the world. I’m not saying he wouldn’t be proud of the man you’ve become. You’re a good man, Origio. But there’s more out there than your library.”
“There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy,” I rejoined under my breath.
“True enough,” Febril said. “Perhaps take some of those books you like to quote at their word some time. If you never go anywhere Ori, you never have to make difficult choices. Those are what move you in life. Even the ones you regret. At least you made the choice.”
I could not look at or speak to Edouard. I did not have a better answer to what we should have done for Elisha, but the splinter was in me and I could not let it go. For his part, my prince continued the pace, keeping us on a Southeastern course waiting for we knew not what. I think we both expected that whatever we were meant to find would find us first, as the Ba-hali had. We had started at the beginning, the rest was up to the twenty eighth floor. I stayed five to ten steps behind him all that day after we left Elisha behind to make her way in the world on her own, navigating her new reality as an old woman, so recently a seventeen year old. It was coming on dusk when Edouard stopped and turned around to face me. His face was contorted in anger and he stopped inches from me. His breath was hot on my face. We stood there for a moment, eye to eye, until he broke the silence, shouting at me.
“What would you have me do, Origio? How would you have handled it differently then? Let’s hear from the great scholar what the solution to that one was! I’m sure you have something much better in mind since you’re so outraged over my decision.”
“I don’t–”
“That’s right. How could I have forgotten,” he said, stepping back and putting his hand to his forehead in mockery. “You’re not a scholar at all. Just a duster.”
“How dare you. I didn’t ask to be here. You dragged me here. You and your royal prerogative never thought about what I wanted did you? Never considered I might have been happier staying right where I was. I didn’t need any of this!”
“I did you a favor,” he said.
“Oh, mighty Prince, how will I ever repay you for getting me tortured by a Rodanian hating lunatic in a dungeon? Truly, how could I make that up to you?”
Edouard stepped back from me and put one hand against a tree. He was laughing. He laughed so hard he lost his breath and when he looked up at me his eyes were flint.
“You don’t know, then.”
“Know what?”
He stepped back towards me and poked me hard in the chest with his middle finger, punctuating each word he spoke.
“They. Were. Going. To. Fire. You.”
“Liar.”
He screeched a laugh again.
“Your times were numbered before I showed an interest in you. There were complaints. Don’t you pay attention to anything outside of that place? Have you seen how things are going? Lots of citizens are hungry. They would like a cushy job that some Rodanian has been sitting his ass on for years. They were going to toss you out and be done with you. All those years for nothing. Until I showed up asking questions about you, being interested, wanting to talk to you. If we get back, the only reason you’ll still have a place to call your own is me, so why don’t you try some gratitude instead of your constant whinging?”
“At least,” I muttered. “My family isn’t trying to kill me.”
“You don’t have a family.”
I launched myself at him, taking him out around the waist, and wrapping my arms. I slammed him to the forest floor and heard the crunch of a branch beneath him. The air was knocked out of him, but he wasted no time in boxing my ears from beneath me. I shrieked and fell off sideways, rolling over some tree roots which crunched my still sore bones. I used the trunk to pull myself up and prepare for an assault that was not coming. Edouard was standing with his hands up, panting. There were leaves in his hair and dirt in his beard. The only noise in the small clearing was our panting for a few moments.
“I’m sorry,” Edouard said. “I…I shouldn’t have said any of that.”
“I’m also sorry, my Prince. I forget myself.”
“No,” he said. “That’s not it at all. You’ve kept me alive. And at no small cost to yourself. I am the one who should be grateful.”
“She saved me.”
“I know.”
We crossed the space between us and embraced. The stress of the last few days was immense and each of us was dealing with it in our own way. It was near enough time to stop for midday food and we did so without discussion. We sat on a downed log and ate dried meat, watching the squirrels fight over late season nuts in pile of leaves nearby. We watched with the concentration of those who need to focus on anything but the present. Finishing his jerky, Edouard wiped his hands on his cloak and pulled his knife out. He picked up a nearby stick, whittled it down to a sharper point, and started drawing a cross hatch pattern in the hard earth. He needed his sharpened point to scratch through the surface. I watched him with interest, and after a few minutes his intention became clear. Inside the seventeen by seventeen board, he started to scratch in seven symbols on each of the four sides.
If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.
“Fancy a game?” he asked.
I pocketed the remainder of my jerky and looked at his board. It was decent work.
“Shouldn’t we get going?”
“Perhaps. But wouldn’t you rather play Chani?”
As it turned out, I preferred playing Chani. It was the Empire’s favorite game. At one point, much earlier in the Empire’s history, not long after the game was discovered, many were thrown in jail over fights and riots because of Chani games. Citizens were gathered in masses to watch the best players play, cheering with abandon for their chosen side and wishing they too could play the game so well. Edouard’s ancestor, King Pascal IV had been forced to ban the game for a time while the fever abated. Of course, as he knew it would, this fueled illicit underground games, but kept the mass streetfights to a minimum. While public games had long since been allowed again, the basic structure of the underground system was still in place in Quinze and most major Empire cities. Febril and I had gone to a few ourselves. To many citizens, the best Chani players were bigger personages than the royals who they never saw but on coins. They could not walk through the street without being stopped by fans wanting to talk to them, have them sign a scrap of paper, or recount for them one of their famous matches.
It was, at its core, a war game. Each player had a side with seven pieces. Each piece had its own movement. A Plebeian could move one space forward. It could not move diagonally or backwards. Once it reached the end of the board, it was good for nothing but taking up that space. A Smith could move either three or seven spaces diagonally. There were also Cavalry, Swordsmen, Archer, Chariot, and Scribe. The scribe could not move, but at the end of each turn was rotated in one of the four cardinal directions. The reason for the Scribe was the blinds. The reason Edouard had inscribed seven pieces on all four sides of the board, was the blinds. In addition to the pieces in front of us, each of us was in control of the seven pieces to our right. Those pieces never appeared to move on the main board. The final act of each turn, was to mark your blind on your scroll and turn your Scribe. The Scribe indicated only a direction a blind piece had moved. The Blinds were as involved in the game as any other piece, but only came into play when they caused a blockage or a death. In an official game, the third party watcher confirmed each player’s Blind moves and informed the opponent of a death or a blockage by blind. For Edouard and myself, and many casual players of the Empire, the honor system would have to do. The game was won in one of two ways. The first and most obvious was the elimination of all of your opponent’s pieces. It was, after all, a war game. The second way to win was called The Blind Scribe. This was much more difficult, and required the player to surround his opponent’s Blind Scribe with his own, only Core (meaning not Blind) pieces. It required utilizing three of your seven Core pieces, taking them deep into Blind territory, surviving, and surround the Blind Scribe. It was a rare and gutsy ending to the game.
So we played. It was not a surprise to me that Edouard was good at the game. It was common knowledge that royals were tutored in the game by some of the best Chani players. They were sworn to silence, but they were always spotted coming and going. For myself, I played enough to keep up with him, but it was clear he was taking slow, but certain control of the board. We scratched our blind moves in the dirt behind us and to my surprise, the game narrowed. I was able to capture two of his core pieces and my Blinds were making progress into his territory, limiting his means of attack. Or so I imagined that’s how the game was going. Edouard was calm the entire time, never evincing the slightest worry at the loss of his core pieces or my ill hidden pleasure at being able to move my Blind pieces where I wanted. I soon learned why. After an hour and a quarter of playing, I finally saw what was about to happen, and there was nothing I could do about it. He had drawn my Blind pieces away from my Blind scribe, and three of his remaining five pieces were in position to surround my Blind Scribe and there was nothing I could do about it.
Two turns later, he moved his chariot its customary three spaces and the game was over. He cracked a grin for the first time since we had started playing.
“You played well,” he said, offering his hand over our makeshift board in the dirt.
I took his hand and his firm shake. I was still staring at the board and trying to work backwards to how he had done it.
“I’m not sure I did.”
“You did. My first time playing my father, he did that exact maneuver to me in ten moves. I’d come running into the throne room, excited after beating my tutor for the first time, insisting he play me in a game. He was not pleased, as several of his advisors were there and they were discussing important matters. At that moment, I could not imagine something more important than showing my father how skilled I had become at Chani. His face was stony, but he acquiesced, dismissing his advisors and walking with me to his study. He has this cloak that is meant to look very imposing that he wears on days when he hears petitions from citizens as he had that day. It has an enormous sash and is trimmed in fur. Only, when you get close, you realize the whole thing is a skilled illusion. It’s all made of the lightest silk. ‘Appearances are important to a King. I can’t very well go in front of my citizens in my pyjamas, but do you think wearing a heavy and trimmed cloak all day long in that sweltering room would lead to me making the best and most measured decisions for the people? I appear regal so that my decisions carry the appropriate weight, but I remain cool and comfortable so that the decisions are not tainted by my own discomfort.’ As we walked up the stairs to his study, this cloak of illusions swished with each step. He has a simple board with carved wooden pieces. It is skillfully done, but no better than the set that most well to do citizens might have. My grandfather carved the pieces when he was a boy. He set up the board and granted me the first move. I played a good game, much as you did just now. But in very short order, he had surrounded my Blind scribe and stood up from the playing board. He left me there, going back to his advisors to finish what I had interrupted. ‘Come talk to me after you have looked at the board,’ he said, and handed me his game scroll so I could see his Blind moves. It was a thing of beauty, but it would only work if he correctly guessed how I would play the game. And he had. Most players, wisely, try to eliminate pieces, and if surrounding the Blind Scribe becomes an option after they have eliminated enough pieces, they will start to consider it. But you’ll never capture the Blind Scribe of a skilled player that way. With two blundering players, it happens all the time, but no one who is planning their moves effectively will be hurt by that strategy. I waited until I was certain my father was no longer talking to his advisors and found him in the King’s Garden. You may not know about that. It’s on the roof of the palace. He was pruning his roses when I found him. You knew what moves I was going to make, I said. ‘Of course I did, Edouard. I know you. We share a name.’ He pricked his thumb on a thorn and stuck it into his mouth. I never heard my father utter a curse, though I know that must have hurt. ‘You beat Mino today, I understand?’ I told him I had, and gave him a blow by blow breakdown of the game. He listened as he worked, moving from bush to bush and looking closely before deciding where to cut back his prize roses. He nodded as my story finished. ‘That’s well done, son. It’s also exactly why I was able to beat you so easily.’ I didn’t understand. He stood up from his work and turned to face me. He held his knife in his left hand and wiped it on his working cloak. ‘Who do you think taught Mino to play?’ It’s the most important lesson about Chani I could have learned. Know thy enemy. It’s why the best Chani players so rarely play against each other and it’s such a grand event. If they played and practiced against each other, the games would follow a pattern and end up in stalemates more often than not. Most great players play very few games against other people. They play against themselves, using both sides of the board and working through the options.”
It was the most I had ever heard Edouard say about his father or their relationship. I was quiet for a moment, my eyes still resting on the board scratched into the dirt.
“So you know me well?”
He shrugged.
“Well enough,” he said. “It was clear you had played some but not as much as I had. So I played the game I play against that type of person. If we played another dozen games, I could probably whittle down the number of moves.”
We packed up our things to continue our way Southeast and Edouard went to erase the board with his foot, but I stopped him.
“No,” I said. “Leave it.”
“Why?”
“I’m not sure.”
He did not argue with me. I was still looking at the board when he was ready to go. He put a hand on my shoulder and looked at it with me.
“I can teach you,” he said.
I kept my eyes on the ground but appreciated the weight of his hand on my shoulder, our friendship returning after our blowout earlier.
“Did you ever beat your father?” I asked.
His hand left my shoulder and I heard him starting to walk away, and the crunch of leaves beneath his feet.
“We should head out.”
True to his word, as he walked, he talked me through the basics of the game I already knew, but he was giving them only as a preliminary. Febril had taught me these basics and that was the extent of what the baker knew. For Edouard, it was a preamble to actually talking about the game. The basics were a way of thinking about how other people were going to play. In order to really play, you needed to have an ironclad understanding of the basics, so you knew how to best break those rules.
“But you don’t want your opponent to know you’re breaking the basic principles they have been taught. Did you suspect?”
“No,” I had to admit. “I didn’t see it until it was too late.”
“Good.”
He explained that top level games followed paths that most Chani players would never see again. The best could play a game following the first principles in their sleep, and each of them would follow those rules so well, that there would be no game.
“So it becomes a cat and mouse. What way is my opponent breaking from principle, and how best to counter with my own break from principle. It’s what I learned from my father that day. All I had succeeded in doing was mastering first principles. The reason I was able to beat my tutor is that he made a principal mistake and I didn’t. Against most players, that’s good enough. Eventually, I could have beaten you in the military style by taking your pieces. You’ve played, so you know the ways well enough, but you would have made a mistake at some point, and I could have beaten you how I beat my tutor. My father never intended to play me in a game based on first principles. And I had not even considered that. Nor, I assume, did you.”
I confirmed his suspicion. I noticed as I walked behind him, that there was a relaxed set to his shoulders and a lightness in his step that I had not seen before. Talking about the game was a safe territory for him. It gave him comfort much like the thoughts of my father reading to me, or sitting with Feb in his kitchen did for me. He even kicked a desiccated cone from an evergreen up in the air with his toes and kept it up with his heel and then, spinning around, kicked it to me. I was unprepared and managed one wild kick that sent the seed cone flying away from us.
“Where do you suppose we are?” he asked.
“It’s hard to say, but we should be getting towards–”
How had I not thought about this before? We had been occupied with pressing matters since we stumbled into Singhal, it was true, but I had not once considered what came next in line for the twenty eighth floor on the Northwest to Southeast path. In my mind, I could visualize the stacks, see myself picking a volume off the shelf and heading to my lion’s throne chair. The book was dusty and I blew it off before crossing my left leg over my right, and resting the volume there.
“The lion,” I said.
“Do you mean–”
“The lion.” I repeated. “King Alexander. That’s where we’re headed.”