Chapter 20: ch.20 [Ten Chairs]

The first one up was Wei Cheng, and he had brought buns.

A paper bag, grease-spotted at the bottom.

He carried it in both hands, the way you carry something alive.

"Forgive the smell," he said, to the entire seventh floor.

He was shorter than his photograph and rounder, in a tweed jacket that had been good once and had decided to stay.

He looked at the white tuxedo.

He looked at the gray one.

His face did something so warm that Seth nearly stepped back from it.

"Astrid."

He took her hand in both of his.

She allowed it.

Seth had never seen her allow it.

"Wei."

"You are not eating."

"I am eating."

"Liar. You have the face."

He turned.

"And this is the boy."

"Seth. Sir."

"Wei. Not sir. Never sir."

The bag landed in Seth’s hands.

It was warm through the paper.

"Pork. Take two. My wife says a hungry man resigns early."

Seth took one.

He had not eaten since six.

He had not known.

"I’m nervous," he said, and could not think why he had told a stranger.

"Of course."

Wei nodded, as if confirming the weather.

"My first broadcast, forty seconds in, I knocked my own king off the board with my sleeve."

"You didn’t."

"It rolled under the table. Three hundred people watched an arbiter crawl after it."

He chuckled.

"I picked it up. I put it back. I won in thirty-one moves."

"Did anyone remember?"

"Nobody remembers who I played."

He patted Seth’s arm twice.

"Everyone remembers the king."

He drifted toward the window, humming, and unwrapped a second bun for Ingrid.

She accepted it without comment.

She ate it.

Seth noted that, and filed it.

? ? ?

00:41:12

Two men came in together, and the room looked twice.

Gray suits.

Same height.

Same dark hair, cut by the same hand.

One was talking into his phone at a volume meant for the next building.

The other walked a half step behind, saying nothing, with the stillness of a man carrying a full glass.

I have a system.

Seth crossed the carpet with it held out in front of him like a lit match.

Blue on the left. Timur.

Blue on the right. Yusuf.

He looked at the nearer face.

Blue eye, on his left.

Timur.

"Mr. Rahimov."

Hand out.

"It’s an honor, I’m a huge..."

The man he had addressed said nothing at all.

Behind him, the loud twin stopped mid-sentence.

"And you must be Yusuf," said Seth, to the loud one, with great warmth.

The phone came down slowly.

"Oh no," said the loud twin, in a tone of pure delight.

"Oh, no. Yusuf. Did you hear that?"

"I heard."

"I am Timur!"

"I know. I’m so sorry, I used the..."

"Look at his face, Yusuf! Look at his face!"

"I am looking at it."

"Tradition..." said Ingrid, from behind her bun.

Seth’s ears went red in two stages.

The quiet twin spoke at last, in a voice like a door being closed carefully.

"It is a good system."

"It is?"

"You read it from your side." Yusuf touched his own right temple. "Everyone does. The blue that is on your left is on my right."

"The Twin Mirrors!" said Timur, to the ceiling.

"That’s us! That’s the whole point!"

"You also trusted the eyes," said Yusuf, mildly.

"Nobody trusts the volume."

"I am NOT that loud."

"You are."

"...Fair."

Seth looked at the card in his pocket.

There was no room left on it.

Across the green room, Astrid was studying a fruit bowl with great intensity.

Her mouth was not entirely under control.

She had not said one word.

She knew.

She let me.

? ? ?

00:37:40

Mateo Rivas came in alone, carrying his own jacket on a hanger.

A woman in a green coat had walked him to the lift and straightened his collar there.

Seth had seen it through the glass.

She had kissed his forehead and gone.

He was small, a head shorter than Seth.

Soft dark hair.

Enormous dark eyes, set in a face that belonged on the cover of a book you read to someone at bedtime.

He went to Astrid first.

"Se?orita Lind."

"Mateo."

"You are in white."

"I am told it is a decision."

"It is a good one."

He said it quietly and with complete sincerity, the way you tell someone their handwriting is lovely.

Astrid looked down at him.

It was a very odd look.

Seth would think about it later.

It was not the look she gave a position.

It was the look of someone at the top of a staircase, finding a child one step below her on the way up.

"You have grown," she said.

"Two centimeters."

"Congratulations."

"Thank you."

Neither of them smiled.

Both of them clearly wished to.

Then the dark eyes found Seth.

The boy hesitated, and took one step forward as if the carpet might not hold him.

"Se?or Pawn."

"Seth. Please."

"Then Mateo."

He cleared his throat.

"My mother says I must not stare."

"Okay."

"I am staring."

"That’s okay."

"I am very sorry."

"I’m sorry too," said Seth, automatically.

Then both of them stopped, and looked at each other.

Something small and shared passed between two people who apologized for a living.

Mateo glanced down.

He was holding the hanger with both hands, white at the knuckles.

"I am glad," he said, very low.

"That there is someone else in this room who does not know where to put his hands."

Seth looked down.

His left hand was flat against the card in his pocket.

His right hand was hovering at his hip.

He put them both at his sides.

For a few seconds he and a seventeen-year-old stood side by side in the middle of the carpet, hands at their sides, saying nothing.

It was the most relaxed he had been all day.

? ? ?

00:33:05

She was simply there.

Seth had not heard the door.

Hair the color of a candle flame behind glass.

A black dress that made the copper look like the only thing in the room with a pulse.

Skin so pale it seemed to have been put away somewhere dark for safekeeping.

Her eyes were purple.

Not lilac.

Not a trick of the light.

Purple.

"élise Moreau," said élise, softly.

She did not offer a hand.

She looked at his instead, as though reading the lines on it.

"Mr. Pawn."

"Seth."

"Seth."

"Hello. It’s... your hair is..."

"Yes."

A small, polite pause.

"People say it."

"Sorry."

"Don’t be."

Her gaze drifted down, to his side, and stayed.

"You keep reaching for your right hip."

The room made a small, careful sound.

"Do I?"

"Every forty seconds. I counted from the door."

No apology in it, and no edge.

"Something used to live there."

He could not feel his hands.

"It’s at home," said Seth.

"Ah."

She nodded, as if he had told her a name.

"That is harder than bringing it. Or easier. I can never remember which, the first time."

She turned away.

She had said nothing about loneliness.

She had said nothing at all about anything he could have defended.

She saw it before she saw me.

He stood there with his right hand at his side.

It was the first time all day that he had been seen without being looked at.

Astrid had not moved.

Her eyes had gone, very briefly, to the same place.

"élise," she said.

"Astrid."

"Thank you for coming."

"It is a pleasure. You came in white."

The purple eyes were quiet.

"I thought you would. I am glad."

She moved on to the window and stood very still.

Nobody spoke to her.

She did not seem to mind.

? ? ?

00:28:30

Arjun Voss arrived the way weather arrives.

First the laugh, coming down the hall.

Then the shoulders.

Then six feet two of red hair and rolled sleeves in the doorway, hand already out.

"Seth Pawn."

He had both hands around Seth’s before Seth knew he’d been reached.

"The man who made her smile! I have been wanting to shake the hand that did it for weeks."

"May I? I’m shaking it. It’s done."

"I didn’t really..."

"No, no. Don’t be modest. Modest is for people who haven’t done anything."

The grip was warm and dry.

The smile was real.

"You have a face people trust. It’s unfair. I’ve been working at mine for years."

"Your face is fine."

"You see? We’re friends already."

Seth blinked.

We are?

He felt it like a coat being put around his shoulders.

Warm. Easy.

In two sentences, the tallest man in the room had made him feel as if he’d been invited to this party, and not merely let in.

"Arjun." said Astrid.

"Astrid!"

His whole face lit.

"In white. Fourteen coats, and she walks in white. Ladies and gentlemen, fetch a priest."

"Arjun."

"I come in peace. I will not mention the game."

"You are mentioning the game."

"I am mentioning that I am not mentioning it. It’s different."

"It is the same."

"Twice, in my heart."

"Once." said Ingrid, from the sofa, without looking up.

"Once," Arjun conceded, gracefully.

His eyes came back to Seth.

"Now. Your first broadcast."

"Yes?"

"Listen. I hung a rook to a pawn. On the live feed. Two hundred thousand people. I wanted to die."

"Really?"

Arjun looked at him for a long, kind second.

"No," he said. "But you believed me."

Seth’s mouth opened.

"That is the whole job, Seth. Making them believe the next thing you say."

He winked.

"Remember it when you’re sitting there. It’s the only trick I have."

He let go.

Seth stood with his hand still warm and a distinct, belated sense of having been very skillfully handled.

That was a lesson.

He gave it to me while I was still smiling.

He did not know yet whether that made Arjun a friend or a danger.

Astrid’s eyes followed him across the room.

Level. Exact.

The faint, resigned attention of someone watching an opening she has never quite solved.

? ? ?

00:22:48

Click.

Somewhere behind them, a pen cap went on.

It was a very small sound.

Astrid’s spine, which had not bent for anyone all day,

went one degree straighter.

Seth turned.

Lina von Schach stood in the doorway in a dress the dark blue of the sky just after the lights come on.

Her curls were pinned up with the pen through them.

She did not come in.

She looked at the room, one end to the other, as if reading a table of contents.

Then she looked at Astrid.

"You wore white."

"Abelard."

"It suits you."

She said it simply, like someone setting a thing down gently on a table.

"I think it always would have."

Astrid said nothing.

Her pulse was visible above the black bow tie, quick and bright.

Lina turned.

"Mr. Pawn."

"Hello."

"Have you decided what to ask?"

The room had gone politely quiet around them.

"I wrote it," said Seth. "I didn’t send it."

"Good."

"It’s still in the box."

"Questions go bad when you send them early."

Her blue eyes warmed.

"Take your time. Not too much. But take it."

She said it lightly.

She did not look at Astrid when she said it.

Astrid heard every word.

"Also," said Lina, to the air in general.

"It’s a pity about the wig."

Seth’s stomach dropped.

Astrid’s face did not change.

"I have no wig," said Astrid.

"Then I’ve made a mistake."

The blue eyes danced.

"I watched a clip nine times. A lady in a copper wig played a pawn in a way nobody else plays it. I’d know it anywhere."

"Lina."

"I’ve told no one."

"You did not have to."

"No," Lina agreed. "That is why I didn’t."

Nobody breathed.

Then she smiled.

A real one.

Seth saw there was no triumph in it.

It was something nearer to relief.

"Table One," said Lina. "I’ll save you the chair."

She walked to the window.

Click.

She had put her pen back through her curls.

Astrid stood in the middle of the room in a white jacket with eleven gold badges and a great many more beneath.

She was not counting her pulse.

Seth looked at her.

He did not say anything.

It was not his to say.

But she turned her head, very slightly, and found his eyes,

and held them for one second.

She had been seen by someone she had not chosen.

She was checking that he was still there.

He was.

? ? ?

00:17:20

Ethan Vale did not shake hands.

He stopped a meter from Seth, hands in his pockets, and looked him over the way a man looks over a suspicious horse.

Dirty-blond hair.

Pale blue eyes.

A face cut for stone.

"So you’re the one."

"The one what?"

"Everyone says you’re the one."

No heat in it, only flat attention.

"I’m trying to work out what for."

"I don’t know either."

"Hm."

A pause.

"When you’re losing," said Ethan. "Do you fight?"

Seth thought about it.

He thought about a convenience store at 3:40 in the morning.

A rook he had sacrificed because a man on a throne had screamed at him from a phone.

He thought about a game on an app, years ago, and a button he had pressed one move too early.

"I resigned once," he said, "when I was one move from winning."

Silence.

Ethan Vale’s pale eyes went very slightly wide.

"That," he said slowly.

"Is the worst thing anyone has said to me in this building."

"Sorry."

"Stop apologizing. It’s a tic."

"Okay."

"It grates."

"Okay."

Ethan breathed in through his nose.

Somewhere under the severity, something was struggling to be irritated and failing.

"Don’t do it today," he said.

"I’ll be watching. I’d rather watch someone fight."

He turned away.

Then the door at the end of the room opened, and Ethan’s jaw changed.

It was a tiny thing.

A muscle at the hinge.

He had seen who was coming.

? ? ?

00:11:02

Kirill Volkov did not come through the door.

He was already standing in it.

Tall.

Taller than Astrid by a few centimeters.

Lean as a hanging coat.

Black jacket, charcoal shirt, no tie.

His hair was dark and cut close, and under the lights his skin had gone the color of old paper.

The bags under his eyes looked as though they had been put on with a thumb.

He looked at nobody.

He looked at the whole room, the way a man looks at the sea.

"Miss Lind."

"Kirill."

"Congratulations on the jacket."

"Thank you."

Not a muscle moved in either face.

Then he turned.

"So. The student."

"Don’t," said Ingrid, very quietly, from the sofa.

Seth did not hear her.

He was already looking up.

"I’m so..."

He stopped.

It sat in his mouth like a coin.

Do not apologize to him. He will take it as an opening.

Kirill waited.

He had the patience of a man who had waited for apologies all his life and never once been disappointed.

Seth closed his mouth.

He swallowed the coin.

"I watched the exhibition," said Kirill, in a soft and perfectly civil voice.

"Four times."

"The queen lasted exactly as long as a queen should against the Champion."

"That is not an insult. It is a measurement."

"Yes."

"Today you will play a child. Fourteen-fifty. Do you expect to win?"

"I’d like to."

"Wanting is for children."

"He’s sixteen."

"And you are nineteen, which is not an argument."

Kirill looked at the tuxedo.

The hair.

The right hand hovering at the hip.

"The Federation has made a show of you. Three hundred thousand people. A jacket."

"They want a story. They will keep it until it stops selling."

"I know."

"You do not. You will not be allowed to be bad quietly."

Seth’s ears were on fire.

His hands were cold.

He looked at the grey man in front of him, at the thumbprints under his eyes, and he did the only thing he had ever been any good at.

What does he want?

Not a fight.

Not an apology.

He wanted something he was not allowed to want.

"You watched it four times," said Seth.

The room tilted.

"That’s a lot," he went on, carefully. "For a bad game."

Kirill’s face did not move.

It did not move so completely that it was louder than movement.

"Research," said Kirill.

"Okay."

"It is a defect. I watch everything four times."

"Okay."

The silence stretched, very long and very thin.

Kirill’s eyes slid, for the first time, to Astrid.

"She does not defend you."

It was almost kind.

Astrid had not moved.

Her hands were folded in front of her.

In the white sleeve, her right thumbnail had gone the color of paper against the knuckle.

"He is not asking me to." said Astrid.

Flat. Exact.

A fact set down on a table.

Kirill held her eyes for a moment.

Then, very slightly, he inclined his head.

He did not say anything to Seth.

He went to the window and stood at the opposite end from élise, grey against the light.

Nothing in his posture suggested that anything had happened at all.

Ethan watched him go.

"Eight years," he said, to no one.

"Of that man being polite to me. I would prefer a knife."

Nobody laughed.

Seth had stopped being able to feel his knees.

? ? ?

00:05:41

The Federation Junior Champion arrived with a soda and an entourage of one.

The one was a gray-faced man in a windbreaker who looked as if he had already lost three of the games.

Dmitri Wren was sixteen.

Sharp jaw.

Slicked hair.

A grin that had never once been told no, and had no plans to start.

He took in the room, the table, and the ten elders of the sport in a single sweep.

He looked entirely delighted to have been invited.

"Pawn!"

His hand shot out.

Seth took it.

It was too fast.

It let go too fast, too.

"Love the jacket. Love the hair."

His eyes went to the back of Seth’s head.

"Is that going to stay?"

"It’s already lifting."

"Cool. Cool. It’s a vibe."

Dmitri popped the tab on his soda.

"I’ll go easy."

"On what?"

"Dunno yet."

The grin widened.

"Ask me at move ten."

The coach in the windbreaker put one hand over his eyes.

Dmitri looked past Seth, past Ingrid, to the white tuxedo by the window.

His grin did a small, quick thing.

The face under it went completely innocent.

"Ms. Lind,"

"Mr. Wren."

"Big fan."

"I am aware."

He grinned again, and sipped his soda, and settled his weight onto his heels like a boy about to be let outside.

A volunteer in a headset leaned through the door.

"Mr. Pawn. Mr. Wren. We’re ready for you."

? ? ?

The Meridian Suite was colder than the green room.

A dais.

Two chairs.

A single board on a plain wooden table, with a clock between the pieces that looked old enough to have an opinion.

Overhead, a ring of light.

Three cameras on rails.

A fourth on a long boom, hanging above the board like a heron.

And across the room, on the far side of a rope of glass, one long table.

Ten chairs.

Brass name cards at every place.

Seth saw them.

LINA VON SCHACH.

éLISE MOREAU.

KIRILL VOLKOV.

One by one, as he walked, they filled.

They did not look at him.

They talked among themselves in low voices.

Wei Cheng offered something from a paper bag.

Arjun laughed at something Timur said.

Mateo sat with his hands folded in his lap and his feet not quite touching the floor.

They’re so cool.

He had watched every one of them at four a.m.

With a cold hot dog and a phone propped against a cigarette cabinet.

Now they were fifteen feet away.

They were people who knew his mistakes by name.

His fingers moved on his knee.

Small taps.

Eight of them.

A rook. A knight. A bishop.

A board that was not there, laid out on a pair of gray trousers.

I wish I could sit at that table.

Someday.

He did not say it.

He did not say it so carefully that it left a mark.

"Seth."

She was at his shoulder.

She had not touched him.

She had stopped, exactly, at the length of an arm.

Close enough for the lights to catch the badges.

Close enough that he could see the nail on her right thumb, still white.

"You did not apologize," said Astrid.

"No."

"He expected it."

"I know."

"I..."

Her hand, at her side, closed on a fold of white sleeve.

"I wished to say something."

"I saw."

"It does not matter."

The words were careful.

"You did not need it."

It was not praise.

It was not comfort.

It was the plainest thing she had ever said to him, and it went through him like a pin.

"There is a chair," she said, and looked at the long table, "that will be mine."

"I know."

"I will be there."

"I know."

"I will not look at the clock."

"What will you look at?"

She did not answer.

She took one step back, and then another.

Then she turned and walked across the suite in a white jacket with a column of gold down her chest.

Nine heads turned as she went.

One of them was the grey one.

He did not look at her face.

He looked at her hands.

She sat at the center of the table, in the chair with the brass card that read ASTRID LIND, and folded them on the wood.

Seth sat.

His chair was cold.

Across the board, Dmitri Wren crunched an ice cube and grinned at the ring of light.

? ? ?

The lights went from white to gold.

It was nothing.

A switch, a click.

Somewhere above the dais, a red lamp came on.

The quiet in the suite did not break.

It changed grain, like paper going from smooth to rough.

In a glass booth, high over the room, a man with a headset and the eyes of someone on his fourth espresso opened his mouth.

"And we are live from the Meridian Suite with three hundred thousand of you already in the building."

"The Champion’s Student just walked in wearing a tuxedo that fits... and the chat is already arguing about whether he deserves it."

Not one word reached the board.

The glass was very thick.

[CHAT]

TomatoTactician: waiter energy is strong with this one

LarpDetector: classic larp jacket

NextGM_2031: bro walked in like he’s delivering the pizza

BoardGremlin: that hair is already escaping

BadgeCounter: LOOK AT THE BADGES

KnightFork99: is that actually a latte-colored suit

GothChessFan: sir this is a Federation broadcast, not a prom

Marcus Hale was not, strictly speaking, impressed.

"Marcus Hale. Twenty-two hundred. Four espressos."

"Let’s meet the table, chat. Ten chairs. Nine of them contain people who could end my career by looking at me. The tenth..."

The camera swung.

"...oh. Oh, hello."

On the screen, in white, with gold climbing her chest in a slow tiny staircase of suns, the World Champion looked directly into the lens.

For a quarter of a second she did not look like a queen.

She looked like a person who had been caught.

[CHAT]

AstridSimp99: SHE WORE WHITE

IceQueenStan: MOMMYYYYYY

OsloOrBust: ??????

SnowfallSimp: protect her at all costs

FrostbiteFiancee: the badges. THE BADGES. GOAT

NorthernLightsNerd: she looks nervous?? is she nervous

TomatoTactician: she is never nervous.

Donation from IceQueenStan:

Mommy walked in WHITE. I am deceased. 1000 bits.

Marcus did not give them time.

"Wei Cheng, thirty-six, China. The Steady Hand. Kindest man in chess. Ladies and gentlemen, he has brought snacks to a bloodbath."

"Mateo Rivas, seventeen, Spain. El Principito. He is seventeen. Chat, at seventeen I was arguing with a vending machine."

"élise Moreau, twenty-one. La Flamme. Do not look into the eyes. I have been told it is not safe."

"Ethan Vale. The Lone Fire. American. Dislikes small talk, politics, and me."

"Kirill Volkov. The Grey Blade. He has the eyes of a man who watched all of Lost and then read the wiki."

"The Rahimov twins. Yes. There are two. Yes, the eyes are real. No, I can’t tell either."

"Arjun Voss. The Walking Fortress. The only man alive who has beaten the Queen. Don’t tell him I said it. He’ll mention it."

The camera slid left.

"And..."

Marcus paused.

Not a long pause.

But a man like Marcus Hale does not pause by accident.

"...Lina von Schach. The Cataloguer. Thirty-one. Third in the world for ten years."

"I’ve been third at my family dinner for ten years, chat. I take it personally."

On the screen, a woman with golden curls looked at the lens, smiled once, and put a pen through her hair.

Click.

The chat stopped for one single heartbeat.

Then it blew.

[CHAT]

LinaNumber1: THERE SHE IS

PenClickSupremacy: CATALOGUER SUPREMACY

LondonSystemPriest: she has the entire London System memorised and my entire heart

ArchivistForLina: the Cataloguer does not miss. the Cataloguer archives.

CataloguerWife: she’s not just a shadow, she’s BREATHTAKING

FinalBossEnjoyer: Lina has been preparing for Astrid since 2017 and it shows

GermanBishop: Lina could step on me and I would thank her in German

TheoryGoblin: oh no, the factions are forming

TomatoTactician: SHUT UP all of you, please

Marcus allowed himself a very small, very tired breath.

"Chat is currently moving faster than a bullet game."

"Three hundred thousand of you, and somehow you all typed the same thing at once."

"We have not started."

"Am I right, chat?"

On the dais, Seth Pawn sat very straight in a gray jacket with a degree, and heard none of it.

He heard the clock.

It was a very old clock.

Brass hands.

A face the color of tea.

It made a sound that was not a tick.

Ticks go on.

This sound ended.

Across the board, the Junior Champion rolled his shoulders and laid his soda down.

At the edge of the dais, an arbiter lifted one hand.

Seth’s right hand went to his hip.

Nothing.

He stopped it halfway.

He looked at it.

Then, deliberately, in full view of three cameras and three hundred thousand people, he laid it flat on the table beside the board.

It was shaking.

He let it.