Heir of Scars I: Parts 1-8 (19 page)

“Matron Taber.” Adria inclined her head. A lock of her hair had at some point loosed from its braid and now fell before her face. She resisted the urge to tuck it behind her ear, and instead waited, for a long moment.

“Remove your clothing,” Taber commanded.

Adria remembered an earlier moment, now half forgotten. And she remembered the girl who had lost her verdant clothes and the spring of her life before the Matriarch, perhaps never knowing why.

“I shall not,” Adria refused, raising her face again to look upon her adversary. Adria knew she trembled, felt nearly naked before the woman regardless of her layered cloaks, her furs, her leather and her linen.

Robed in violet and seated not upon her father’s throne, but upon the simple wooden chair a step below, Taber seemed as she had always before. Her voice was measured and calm, as strong as Adria remembered.

“I would see how you have matured.”

Adria now tucked her hair behind her ear, but her braid of Holy and Blood beads fell in its place. “Be assured that I am not a child. I have grown well.”

Again the delay in response Taber always observed. Always…
so like an Aesidhe elder,
Adria realized for the first time.

“You appear strong.” Taber nodded slowly. Perhaps tilted her head, only very slightly.

“I am, Matron.” Adria had learned to give the least response possible.

“You wield your bow at last?”

Adria blinked twice, then realized the nock of bone must be visible above her shoulder, or at least the shape. “I have not yet found cause to draw it, though I believe I am well able.”

The Matriarch nodded again, slightly, seemingly in agreement. Adria’s breath had calmed at last, and she now felt another presence, somewhere behind her, a breath of air from the door, though she somehow sensed no danger. Turning back would be only a sign of weakness, and a revelation of senses she would not wish to reveal to Taber. Instead, she spoke again.

“I will see my father, and my brother, if he remains.”

“They both... remain,” Taber hesitated only the slightest calculated instant. “I would expect nothing less of your return.”

“Then by your leave...” Adria inclined her head again.

“You have it.”

Only then did Adria turn, finding the room behind her empty, the doorway closed as it had been left. Adria walked slowly, knowing how well she would be watched. And just before she reached the door, Matron Taber spoke once more.

“Táli, Menisteya zhesaya chóli hewocho nistewela.”

Adria stood transfixed, her hand halfway to the handle, as the words of an Aesidhe funeral prayer echoed across the marble.
Friend, the Hunters will continue to hunt without you.

Her remaining steps were without inflection of emotion. And her hand found the door, somehow, without shaking. But beyond, as she strode between the Sisters and down the corridor, her blood raced, her ears rang, and her heart burned white with dreams of war.

One arrow…
and Adria imagined just such a flight among the columns of stone, from the center of her father’s star to the heart of the Hunters’ hunter.

One arrow might have changed my destiny, and Heiland’s history, forever.

Part Three

Mobility of Pawns

The Game of Kings and Queens

W
hen Adria was rather young, her father taught her chess. In his solar, everything seemed much too large, and the curtains turned even the day into twilight. But the fire was always warm, and he piled pillows on a chair just high enough for her to reach the Violet and gold marble squares embedded in the red wood of the table.

She had been here before, on rare occasions when she was summoned for a reprimand, her father’s voice even and low, his face mostly without expression. Still, Adria’s legs had shaken, her eyes teary and her cheeks burning. At these times, she could only ever nod, or perhaps whisper an occasional “yes, Father.”

Although these shared moments had always borne the weight of punishment, she had always regretted leaving, and in fact had begun to suspect that her only method for seeing her father might be to make mistakes. Still, she had never quite managed to anticipate what would warrant such attention, nor to craft such opportunities for reproach.

The discomfiture of Sisters, it was certain, did nothing to demand her father’s notice, and any incident involving her brother was much more likely to end in his discipline rather than hers.

So it was a wonder when she was brought into his room for nothing more or less than a game — a game for adults, she knew, or at least for older children. She felt at once that she was being given the chance to earn this time with him, to make the earlier incidents, somehow, forgiven.

And Adria took to the game well, and quickly. Once she learned the different ways the pieces moved, she formulated simple strategies readily enough, and her father rewarded her with affirmations.

“Yes…” He clasped his hands together, early into their first game. “You keep all of your pieces protected by the others. That is excellent, but… there are times when you must take risks as well, and advance more quickly. Sometimes you must even make sacrifices, allowing one piece to fall for another to advance.”

“But I don’t want any of them to… to die,” she shrugged, frowning.

“Some of them are meant to die, Adria. In every game, as soon as you make your first moves, some of your pieces are fated for death. They might be saved, but only at a greater cost, by losing those pieces dearer to you.”

He taught her many such lessons, and each game played a little differently, and this excited Adria. Still, she could never anticipate what her lessons might be, or in what way her father might choose to teach her.

Sometimes, when she lost terribly, he would grow angry, and stalk about the room afterward, and dismiss her with a wave of his hand. Often, he would merely frown darkly, grow silent, and feverishly reset the pieces, or even completely replay the entire game, move by move, to show her what mistakes she had made.

Her memory was good, she had proven, to the frustration of more than one tutor, but her father’s own ability amazed her, and she was afraid to admit when she did not follow his motions or understand his logic. He did not always seem to realize that she was a child, and it would sometimes make her forget, as well.

She wondered if she could ever learn everything he knew about the game. And although she did not always have the strength of voice she wished, more and more she spoke her thoughts aloud, hoping to impress him, or at least to convince him to teach her a little more.

Often, she would learn from the game itself, and grow overwhelmed with some new understanding.

“Some of the pieces are stronger than others,” was among the first realizations she voiced aloud. “If I lose the stronger pieces to the weaker, I begin to lose the game. Even… even if the stronger pieces are threatened by the weaker, I have to bring them back out of danger... I... lose squares.”

“Yes,” her father smiled. He always liked it when she used words or phrases he had taught her. Even when punished, she had often left his solar repeating the more unfamiliar words. “Or, you can sacrifice them, to gain time and space.”

“Sacrifice,” she nodded. Those fated for death.

Father continued. “Time, space, power… these are the three key concepts of chess. Once you understand not only what each of these means, but how they relate to one another, your skill will advance quickly.”

They had already played several games, and Adria wasn’t sure she had played any of them better than the first. She had lost very quickly each time, and without yet understanding why. She couldn’t just repeat the games, like she repeated Kaye’s lessons, or her lessons from the Sisters. Still, she brightened at his words. Her father could not be wrong.

“The queen is strongest, of course.” She nodded, and glanced up to see his reaction.

He arched his brow. “What makes the queen strongest?” he smiled. “Her sword?”

“They don’t have weapons, Father,” Adria wrinkled her nose. She loved it when he was in a rare teasing mood. But she already had her answer and was anxious to continue her education. Still, she didn’t quite have the words she needed. “One piece is stronger than another because… she’s faster.”

“Faster?” He frowned doubtfully.

She shrugged. “She can move… around more.”

“Better put.” He nodded. “Some have greater mobility than others. The rook, for instance, can move to every square on the board, while the bishop can only move on its color, and so only reach half of the board.” He used the pieces on the board to show this to her.

“Mobility,” Adria nodded, enjoying the new word. It felt strange in her mouth. It moved her tongue and lips around much more than most words, and was also a bit longer. “…and the queen is like a rook and a bishop together. She can reach any of the squares.”

She showed this with her own queen, though without her father’s grace. The white carved wood — she thought it was wood, anyway — was rather large for her fingers, and she had to reach over the other pieces without upsetting them. Knocking them over upset her father sometimes, especially when she had not remembered which square to replace them on, or when she had hesitated even to try.

He nodded again at her answer, just as another thought occurred to her, from something he had said from an earlier lesson, about how the pieces were all different, like different soldiers in real armies. She had put some thought into this on her own, as they played their recent games, and she had looked from her own rooms out onto the grounds beneath the keep, where knights and squires trained, and where Sisters came and went about their duties in the High Temple. She was eager to put it all together.

“Father,” she began carefully. She had meant to work it all out herself, but it was already sounding like a question as she spoke it. “The rooks are like the castle guards, protecting the king. The queen, knights, and bishops… lead the armies of pawns.”

“That seems reasonable, for the most part,” he agreed, when she did not continue after a moment of pause.

She nodded. “What is a bishop?”

“Think of it as a Sister,” he said.

She nodded, and this helped her to draw her final conclusion. “Then the queen is like Matron Taber...”

“Perhaps…” To her surprise, he hesitated. “Something like that.”

She noticed this hesitation, and it seemed to her like her own thought. “But… why is the queen more mobility than the king?”

“More mobile than the king? That is a good question.” He seemed to think a moment, but she could not tell whether he was just waiting for a reaction from her, or was truly considering the question on his own. “She can certainly go more places more quickly than any other piece, as you’ve said.”

Adria nodded. That was what “mobility” meant, after all.

“Think again about the power of the pieces,” he continued. “You have said that mobility is what makes one stronger, but is that the only thing?”

She thought for awhile, then shrugged. They played a little more, and finally he said, “Are you winning or losing?”

“Losing,” she said, her voice weak in anticipation of his anger. But this time it did not happen.

“How do you know you are losing?” he said instead.

The answer should have been easy, Adria thought, but somehow it wasn’t.

“I don’t have as many men,” she answered, but again it sounded like a question.

He shook his head, but not sternly. “Can the game be won with fewer men?”

She blinked, then brightened as she nodded.

He smiled in response, and asked her again, “How do you know you are losing?”

“Because I’ve almost…” and she brightened. “I only lose when you checkmate my king.”

They smiled at each other a moment, and she bounced a little on the pillows, then felt a bit silly for it. Father did not seem to notice it, and instead only asked the last question of the lesson, a question which she already guessed, because she already knew the answer.

“So which is the most powerful piece?”

There were many other such questions, many lessons, and Adria enjoyed them all, even when Father’s temper flared. More and more she dared to show her weakness, and more and more she asked her thoughts aloud, hoping for new wisdom.

“Why can’t I move my pawns backwards,” Adria asked. “Why can’t I retreat?”

“That is an excellent question,” Father answered, then thought a moment. “The other pieces can do as they like, can’t they?”

She nodded. They were silent for most of the rest of the game. As Adria kept her three last pawns in a huddle, racing as best as they could for the far end of the board, she realized the answer. “The other pieces are as strong as they will ever be, but not the pawns. The pawns keep moving forward, because they all hope to be queen.”

He nodded his agreement, but was frowning as he swept up her hopeful but doomed pieces one by one.