A Hand Weaving Chaos (Book 2 of The Fallen Gods Trilogy)

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

The King watched her from where he sat on the floor, eyes wide as a child's. She said nothing for a time, just watched him watch her.

Maybe I should have let the others stay. I don't know how difficult is this is going to be. Still, she had chosen this course. She needed to begin somewhere.

"Well then," she said brightly. "Shall we play?"

She had learned how to play chess as a little girl. Her father taught her and it remained one of her few untarnished memories of him. He would sit in the chair across from her, showing her the finer arts of chess over cookies and milk. Her legs would dangle, unable to reach the floor, and she would always play white. And when he wasn't there, either at the office or out with another woman, she would sit at the chessboard by herself, remembering how he looked and smelled and smiled. And when he walked away from her and her mother for good, she took the black king—for her father—and put it under her pillow while she slept and wished as hard as she could that he would come back and they could all live happily ever after.

After her parents' deaths, she never played again. Grandfather said girls didn't play chess. He said they had neither the intelligence, nor the patience for it. She didn't argue with him. There would have been no purpose once he'd reached his decision. In any case, her reasons for playing no longer existed so it hadn't mattered anyway.

But now...

Treyosh crawled to a nearby chair, using it to help him get back on his feet. It was a torturously awkward feat and Jill watched with a lump in her throat. He moved at a slow, careful pace, with every movement thoughtful and measured as if to cause him the least amount of pain. Near the end, before her death, her grandmother had been like that as well—walking as if the world moved too fast while she was too weary to catch it.

He ambled to the bedroom. Jill took his arm when it appeared he may not make the entire distance on his own. The room was enormous. A huge bay window faced the east and had it been morning, sunlight would have drenched the chamber. A brief look outside showed a sky fading gently from grey to black as the sun finished setting somewhere out of sight. Aside from another small oil lamp and a tiny, dying fire in the hearth, darkness filled the room.

This room was also full of chessboards, all in various stages of play, as if the players had left in mid-game. She and the King wove their way around the boards. The King leaned on her, patting her hand as if she were an obedient child.

"My lord King," she began tentatively, "I'd like to speak with you about—"

"Hush," he whispered. "We're here to play."

He led her to one of the chessboards. This one had been pushed to the side away from the other—nearly hidden out sight and seemingly forgotten. If the King hadn't directed her attention to it, she might never have seen it. It was set in the ready position and even in the darkness, she could tell it had sat that way for quite some time. Dust and cobwebs decorated the board and all its pieces.

They moved closer. She stopped short, taking a breath. The King ignored her, weakly pulling up a chair and sinking into it, his robes billowing about him. Hesitantly, Jill reached out to the board. She picked up her queen. Cobwebs trailed after her and she brushed away dust. Maybe she'd imagined it. Maybe...

The queen was red. Red, the color of the threads.

She went to the fire, held the piece to the flame and cleaned away any remaining dust. This can't be possible! And yet...

She flew back to the board, grabbing a handful of pieces and holding them to the light. They were all that same red. All of them! The King watched her, saying nothing. She grabbed one of his pieces. It was blue: passive, non-magical blue. She trailed her fingers across the board's surface, saw its checkered black and white pattern, and dropped all the pieces she'd been holding.