Chapter 1411: Checkers and players(1)

She was good. Curse the Five and the hour he’d suggested the game the first time, but the girl was infuriatingly good.

They had started with fourteen painted wooden checkers apiece, and now Basil was down to six battered pieces while Mesea sat behind an army of ten. Even a blind beggar could see the crown prince was being methodically carved to pieces and served in courses.

Basil bit down hard on his thumb, staring at the checkered grain of the board. He could feel her smug, unblinking stare without looking up.

She was gloating. You would hardly believe the girl was rumored to be a mute across the palace; she had a sharp little chuckle whenever they both realized the trap had sprung and Basil was merely prolonging the butchery.

With a heavy sigh, he slid a black piece forward. It wasn’t a brilliant move, but it was the least suicidal of the miserable options left to him.

Just as he knew she would, Mesea snatched up her white counter, shot the heir to the throne of Yarzat a cheeky, mocking little grin, and hopped clean over his piece, scooping it off the board.

“Queen,” she murmured in a voice so soft a breeze might have scattered it like thistle-down, a whisper that still seemed to demand all the courage in her tiny frame.

Basil hardly reacted to the sound; they had spent enough quiet afternoons together for him to know the girl could speak well enough when she deemed the company worthy. Though as far as he knew, she still refused to utter a single syllable to anyone else in the castle.

He picked up a captured piece and stacked it atop hers. “A crown for the queen. Savor it, Mesea, for that’s the only one you’ll ever get.”

She let out a quiet snicker. Four moves later, she took the game, the board, and the last shred of his dignity.

She made sure to push the captured pieces right into his line of sight, her dark eyes sparkling with triumph. Basil had never considered himself a sore loser, but having his ears boxed at strategy by a girl who barely came up to his chest was remarkably irksome.

Biting the inside of his cheek, he began resetting the counters for another round.

Since that morning in the high gardens, she had taken to seeking him out, drifting through the hedges to propose some quiet pastime. Even this game of checkers had been her idea for the day, though he had been the one foolish enough to teach her the rules half a fortnight ago.

It was a welcome change, he thought, watching her slowly venture out of her shell.

He had tried, on more than one occasion, to draw his younger sister into their circle, but some unspoken law of nature seemed to dictate that the two girls could not occupy the same room without the air turning to frost. The Weaver alone knew why, they were of similar age, sheltered within the same high walls, yet their hostility was as pure as winter ice.

Inevitably, an hour spent with Mesea was an hour stolen from his sister, and the princess made her displeasure known with shrieking rages, sharp pinches, and running to their mother, the Queen, with grandly fabricated grievances that had him as the culprit. Sometimes the storm worked; sometimes it did not.

But it was never Basil’s doing, his sister simply loathed sharing him with anyone, least of all by the quiet daughter of the garrison’s captain.

Basil met Mesea’s eyes across the board. Her smile broadened, transforming the aloof, pale expression she usually wore like a mask into something bright and lively.

As the victor, she took the first move, sliding a white disc forward with a dainty finger.

“My father received a raven from yours yesterday,” Basil murmured, matching her move on the opposite flank. “He sent his thanks for the basket of fruit we packed into the baggage train.”

“Did he like them?” she whispered, her hands resting in her lap.

“The oranges especially,” Basil nodded. “They were the last sweet harvest before the frost. The ones left in the cellars now are sour, dry things without a drop of juice, I bit into one yesterday and nearly gagged, felt like chewing on a salted rag.”

Mesea sat still, her gaze drifting between the board and the sky. Basil took the lull to look out at the courtyard, where a fat black crow was perched atop the bare bough of a walnut tree. In most royal courts across the south, ravens and crows were chased from the eaves with stones and arrows, but not in Yarzat. King Alpheo harbored an odd, soft-hearted tolerance for beasts of all kinds, including the scruffy black scavengers.

His mother had been thoroughly wroth when Alpheo forbade the servants from shooting them down with stones, crows were ill omens, carriers of death and bad harvest,though the King rarely paid heed to the others’ pious superstitions.

“When will he come home?” Mesea asked softly, her small hand hovering over her checkers without moving them.

Basil considered the question carefully, keeping the grim realities of war out of his voice. “Last report said Lord Edric has the Vulture Lord penned up in his camp, while your father holds the city of Oizen to keep the peace. I expect they will both ride through the city gates in time for the coronation.”

In truth, Laedio was far more likely to return first. Oizen had largely been brought to heel, and once the local magistrates and a loyal city watch were firmly established, the captain would be relieved. Edric, on the other hand, had a butcher’s work ahead of him; breaking the Vulture was one thing, but hunting down the scattered remnants of outlaws and rebel sellswords across the hills would take weeks of blood and iron.

Vulture might have been the head of all trouble, but cutting it off would not magically solve the problem.

Mesea looked up, her brow furrowing into a quiet, melancholy line. “Why did he have to go at all? Why my father?”

“Because he is the Commander of the Blue Cloaks,” Basil replied gently, resting his forearms against the table. “When a rich city like Oizen falls, you cannot simply leave it to common foot-soldiers, men who would sack the taverns, plunder the shops, and turn the townsfolk into game.

You need proper trained troops. Initially it was the Fourth, though trouble required them outside the gate, so the Blue Cloaks was called instead. The best thing apart from a legion to mantain the peace.”

Basil gave her a reassuring, older-brotherly smile and nudged one of her pieces with a fingertip.

“He holds the peace so that the newly conquered lands don’t catch fire, Mesea. Now take your turn, unless you mean to let me win by forfeit. I shall accept it, mind. I have no pride where this game is concerned.”

She did not touch the board. Her small chin stayed tucked against her collar, her brow gathered tight.

“But why him? Doesn’t your father have a thousand other men?”

Basil considered the question properly, tilting his head as he searched for words that would serve a prince and satisfy a worried daughter at the same time.

“One man is never quite like another. We have thousands under the King’s pay who can march in rank, hold a spear, and swing a blade well enough. But now and again a single man is the key that turns a lock an entire host could not force. Look at my father. He has been the hinge on which whole wars have swung. Would any common captain have managed the same? In the great tally of things, it may yet be that one man who leads who decides whether a realm stands or falls.

History is full of it. One person turning a tide far bigger than himself.”

She blinked. “Like what?”

“Like Balon the Stalwart.”

Basil leaned back, and something of the storyteller came into his voice.

“A Herculeian knight who stood against a storm that meant to lay his whole princedom flat.

Eighty-three years ago, Aeron set out to do what his grandsire had failed to do, and bring the South to its knees. The first of what he hoped would be many was Herculia. He raised an army out of every hill and plain under his command and brought that storm down upon the Herculeian hills.

He won a great many battles and took a great many cities. Some by storm, some by surrender, some simply by arriving. His run of victories did not last as long as he expected, though.

At a small nameless castle, he found himself spurned by a knight who was nameless until that morning.”

He stopped to take a sip from his water skin, pleased to see her attention fully caught.

“The Imperator rode up expecting nothing at all when the portcullis lifted and the banner of parley came out above it. It was, as I said, a small nameless castle, and he had taken cities with larger garrisons and higher walls without missing a meal over it.

But that little castle had one thing none of those cities possessed. It had Balon standing on the wall above him.

And when Balon spat upon the emperor’s terms, Aeron grew wroth.

‘I’ll have your life and your castle both, bastard! Your walls will be worth nothing come sunrise, for my banners shall soar above them, and the eagle will dance upon your high towers over your bones!’

He shouted it from horseback, in front of his whole vanguard. And back down came the answer.

‘You may soar like a bird or shit like a pig in a ditch, boy. It makes no difference whatsoever to the earth. We are rock, and rock does not move for wind. So spread your wings, Prince. Fly as high as your little heart dares. And remember that however high a bird climbs, the mountain is still there when he comes down. Come down, then, and break your beak against our stone.’

And break his beak he did.”

Basil turned a captured piece over in his fingers.

“Two full months he stormed that wall. By the third the castle fell and the garrison was put to the sword to the last man. But his army had gone thin and sick by then, and the fever had done what the walls could not, and Aeron was forced to winter in the very castle he had spent an autumn taking.

With nothing left to do he gave himself to drink and to hunting. And it was drink and hunting and a cliff that finished him, and with him went every hope Romelia had of seeing the South kneel.”

Timid Mesea pulled the reins on her tongue again once the story was done. She said nothing, and her fingers curled tight in the folds of her woollen dress.

Basil softened his tone and leaned across the table toward her.

“In Oizen, your father has been that key. Much as Balon was. Laedio has done remarkable work, running outlaws to ground, bringing order back to streets that had forgotten it, and keeping our own soldiers from turning into looters, which is a harder task than any of the others.

And as if that were not enough, it was his men who found and cut the Vulture Lord’s supply lines. They starved the beast out of his hole and sealed his fate doing it. Do you see now why it had to be him?”

She gave a small reluctant shrug, looking down at the painted wood. “I suppose.”

“Come now.” Basil flashed a bright grin. “He’ll be riding back through the north gate sooner than you think. And he promised you a fat white rabbit out of the river vales, did he not? If he forgets it, I shall write him a formal complaint with the royal seal on it.”

The memory caught her. The gloom in her dark eyes broke just enough for a faint, shy smile to touch her lips.

Before she could make her move, a shadow fell across the sunlit board. ℴℴ𝘮

Someon had approached without making a sound, a quiet, towering ghost in gleaming plate and the pristine white mantle of the royal guard.

Basil turned in his chair, blinking up at the knight. “Ser Dandwil? Is something amiss?”

The white-cloaked knight dipped his crested helm in a stiff, respectful bow. “Forgive the intrusion, my Prince. I regret cutting your match short, but the King has summoned you to his solar .”

“Did he say on what grounds?” Basil asked, rising from the ground

“His Grace did not specify, my Lord,” Dandwil replied evenly, his voice muffled behind the iron grille of his visor. “Only that you were to attend him without delay.”

Basil turned back to the table. Mesea had already shrunk back into herself, her shoulders hunched, clearly uneasy beneath the imposing gaze of the royal guard.

“I have to go,” Basil said, offering her an apologetic look as he gestured to the unfinished board. “Leave the pieces where they stand. I intend to win my queen back when I return.”

Mesea did not speak, but she met his eyes and gave a tiny, understanding nod, her small fingers already resting beside the painted wooden crown.

She would wait. As from what the prince knew, she scarcely had anyone else she would play with.

If only he could manage to wrap his sister around it….