It wasn’t a question, but I nodded for the benefit of those who spied on us.
White pieces rained down onto the carpet, accompanied by only a few black. “You’re losing,” she said.
“But I haven’t lost.”
“Not yet.” Her voice was cool, eyes unreadable as the players settled into their places. The black players were thick on the board—not representing her, but my father. Only a handful of white remained. The king, four warriors, and one human. I stepped closer to look at them, recognizing my own face carved onto the king, and those of Marc, Anaïs, Victoria, Vincent, and Cécile. I touched the piece representing my wife, marble curls hanging down her back and an amused smile on her face. Instead of the cudgel usually wielded by a human piece, she held an open book out in front of her.
“Is the game laid correctly?”
“No,” I said quietly. “I lost her.” I pointed to the female warrior, hair blown back in an imagined wind, sword raised in defiance. The piece floated off and settled gently on the table, her onyx twin rising to settle itself amongst my father’s players. “No.” I snatched the piece off, my eyes searching until I found a female spy on the carpet. “Her.” I set the piece next to the black king.
“Are you certain?”
“Yes. There is no doubt.”
Crystal clinked, and two glasses of pale wine made their way over. I accepted mine, holding it absently with a filament of magic while I considered the board. Plucking a male half-blood off the carpet, I set it next to Vincent’s piece. Tips.
“But you lost this one, no?” She lifted Marc’s hooded warrior and started to set it aside.
“Not yet!” My voice was too loud, too heated. I forced myself to relax. “His fate is yet uncertain.”
“Hmm.” She sipped at her wine. “I will have to take your word on that.”
Ice ran through me. Had something more happened to Marc that I didn’t know about? If she knew for certain that he was lost, she wouldn’t have let me keep the piece, but I did not like the doubt in her voice.
“We are in agreement?”
“We are.” It all looked so hopeless, laid out like this. My father stood next to his queen and a tiny crowned prince, surrounded by all his other key players. I had only four allies, all of which were in some sort of jeopardy.
“A bleak position you are in, Your Highness,” she said. “What are the options for the white?” Her tone was lecturing, as though she were still teaching me the game. But she wasn’t. The question was legitimate.
“Political positioning.” In the game, it was a risky move that involved maneuvering your king into a specific position among your opponent’s players. If done correctly, you could replace every one of the players within range with your own pieces. But if you executed your strategy poorly, you could lose your most powerful player.
“Do you see a strategy that would have them in the position to listen?”
“Some of them.” I moved Tips’s piece to the second board.
“Only the weaker players would be in position to hear. It isn’t enough to win.”
I no longer saw the half-bloods as weak, especially as a group, but she was right. “Agreed.” I cracked my neck from side to side. “Assassination.”
“You have no assassin.”
“True.” I nudged my own piece. “But I have a player who could manage the task.”
She sniffed. “Risky, and even if the black king fell, the crowned prince is still in play. You would not have won.”
I looked at the tiny representation of Roland, half-imagining I could see the madness in his onyx gaze. “I know. It would take more than one assassination.”
“Perhaps.”
I turned my attention from the pieces to my aunt. She obviously thought there was another option, but nothing on her face told me what it was.
“You should enjoy your wine while we still have it,” she said, sipping hers. “It will become a dear thing if circumstances continue as they have.”
“A fair point.” And an obvious one. What was she getting at? Even though it was tasteless to do so, I lifted the glass to my lips using my magic and took a long swallow. My wrists hurt like the fire of the damned after my scuffle with Marc, and even the weight of a wine glass was enough strain to make me feel sick. I did not care to admit it, but the manacles were starting to have a marked impact on me. The tips of my fingers had turned slightly blue and my hands grew stiffer by the day. If they remained on much longer, the damage might be permanent.
Taking another mouthful, I lowered the glass.
My aunt’s lip curled and she clucked loudly. “The next thing will be elbows on the table at dinner. Your father would have a fit if he knew you were behaving so.”
As if my father cared about my manners. What was she implying? That he’d be upset that the torture devices I wore under his orders were harming me? Surely not. If anything, he would be glad that they were finally having their desired effect. “I think it might please him.”
“Do you now?” Her eyes flicked to the board, where all the answers lay. I walked in a circle around the four boards, examining my father’s pieces instead of my own. Familiar and expected faces graced the players; expected at least, until I encountered my own. In onyx, I was still a prince, but the piece sat on a square rimmed with steel, which meant that it was not lost, but unplayable. There were several other pieces set up in a strategy to free it, but they were still many moves away from their goal. Leaning closer, I saw tiny grooves on the black prince’s brow where a crown had once sat.
And might sit again.
If I was interpreting the game correctly, my father still considered me one of his players. He had strategies in place to return me to my rank as crown prince and heir, but only on his terms. The piece was onyx—it was his. To regain my position, I would have to be his puppet.
I stepped back to my place across from her. “That piece will not come back into play. I still maintain that the only strategy the white has left is to regain those players”—I gestured at the half-bloods—“with politics, and then maneuver to assassinate the black king.”
“And it might work,” she said, “if it did not play in so well to the third player’s strategy.”
Third player?
Two more boards lifted from the racks off to the side and came over to join our four. With them came another case of players, of which she selected several pieces to set on the boards, none of which were half-blood or human. The pieces were made of garnet, the red jewel glittering in the light.
Angoulême.
“Your new Guerre set is well made,” I said, stalling. It was perfectly made for the purposes of this conversation, but it would have taken months for an artist to craft. How had she known it would be needed?
Setting my wine glass down on the table, I lifted the onyx spy representing Lessa-as-Anaïs, and set it down next to the garnet duke. My aunt nodded slightly, and Roland’s onyx piece floated over to join them, garnet warriors lining up around him to show the piece as captured.
“Correct?” she asked.
“Yes,” I said, but the memory of Roland walking with Lessa and Angoulême troubled me. He had certainly not been under guard, and he had not looked discontented with his position. Quite the opposite, in fact.