Chapter 3: ch.3 [Loose Pieces]

(Day 1)

Seth bought a book called Chess for Absolute Beginners.

It was the only one under ten dollars. The cover had a cartoon knight on it.

The knight looked as confused as he did.

He also learned that his games on the app were fast. Three minutes. Five minutes. Panic with a clock on it.

So he switched to ten minutes a side.

For the first time, he had time to look at the board.

It was horrifying.

(Day 2)

He learned the word hanging.

A hanging piece was a piece nobody was protecting.

He had been doing it for over a decade. Nobody had ever told him it had a name.

He opened a puzzle trainer and solved twenty puzzles.

He failed twelve.

Rating: 466.

(Day 3)

Seth stared at the screen.

"That’s illegal."

"That is completely illegal."

The screen showed him the rule.

En passant.

"Well..."

"That’s a stupid rule."

Six days later, he used it to capture a pawn and felt like a criminal mastermind.

(Day 4)

He could finally see a fork.

Then he saw forks everywhere.

A man ordering two coffees.

A cat staring at two birds.

Two pigeons and one bread crumb.

"Fork."

The pigeons did not care.

Rating: 553.

(Day 5)

He tried to castle while his king was in check.

The app refused.

He tried again.

The app refused again, more firmly.

He read the rule, whispered "Oh..." and decided he would never speak of it.

(Day 6)

After every game, he reviewed it.

It hurt.

Not because he lost, but because of how.

He didn’t blunder fourteen times.

He blundered once.

One piece, one move, one second when he stopped looking.

And that was enough.

He took a pen and wrote on his palm, in small neat letters.

Checks. Captures. Threats.

Before every move. Every single move. What can they check? What can they capture? What are they threatening?

It was the most boring habit in the world.

It felt like putting a seatbelt on a rocket.

Rating: 640.

(Day 7)

Seth announced it to the man who bought one banana.

"Six hundred and forty."

"Okay?" said the man.

"Six hundred and forty."

"...Congratulations?"

It was the nicest thing anyone had said to him all week.

(Day 8)

Rating: 786.

He walked around the dorm with his chin up, glasses sliding down his nose, quietly convinced he was unstoppable.

He was, in fact, just on a hot streak against other beginners.

Ratings below 800 jump around like weather.

He didn’t know that yet.

(Day 9)

He lost.

The first loss was his own fault.

He moved a knight, looked away, and a pawn forked it against his bishop.

Checks. Captures. Threats.

He had checked everything but the pawn.

The second loss hurt more.

He had a queen and a king against a lone king.

It was winning. A child could win it.

He moved his queen to a square that looked very strong, very close to the enemy king, and the game ended instantly.

Draw by stalemate.

Seth stared at it.

Then he realized he had, in fact, not won.

"That’s not... how can that be a draw?" he said aloud. "I had a queen..."

The third loss was a decision.

At 3:40 in the morning, behind the counter, still bruised from the draw, he saw a rook sitting on a perfect-looking square, and a voice in his head said HE SACRIFICED THE ROOOOKKKKK.

So he sacrificed the rook.

His opponent took it.

Then took another piece.

Then, slowly and politely, took the game.

Rating: 751.

The store hummed around him.

The roller grill turned.

Seth put the phone down on the counter.

He didn’t cry.

He didn’t punch anything.

He just sat there with the specific silence of someone who had been working very hard and was beginning to wonder whether hard work made any difference.

Eleven days isn’t enough.

Eleven years wasn’t enough.

He didn’t delete the app.

He didn’t open it, either.

He just stared at the little icon, like a door he was afraid to knock on.

? ? ?

The next day, at noon, he couldn’t sleep.

So he walked.

He passed the bakery, the bus stop, and the long gray wall of the university, until he ended up in a small park with crooked benches and a few stone tables, each with a chessboard carved into the top.

Only one was in use.

An old man in a flat cap and a worn brown cardigan sat on one side of it, a thermos at his elbow, playing against himself. He set down a white piece. Walked around the table. Sat. Set down a black piece.

Seth stopped.

The old man didn’t look up.

"You’re hovering."

"Sorry."

"Don’t be sorry. Sit."

Seth sat.

He took white. They didn’t talk.

The game lasted fourteen moves.

Seth’s queen was gone by move nine, a bishop by move eleven, and by move fourteen the old man set down his last piece with a small, quiet click.

"Loose pieces drop off."

"...What?"

"Every piece you leave alone, somebody eventually eats." He tapped the board with one crooked finger.

"You check your own pieces. Good habit. But what’s the other fellow’s last move doing? What’s it aiming at?"

Seth blinked.

He looked at his palm, at the faded pen marks.

Checks. Captures. Threats.

He had been so busy looking at what he could do that he’d stopped looking at what they could.

"Huh..." he said quietly.

The old man poured something steaming into the thermos lid and nodded at the empty bench beside the table.

"My wife used to sit there."

"Habit."

"I’m sorry."

"Don’t be. She hated chess." He chuckled.

"She only came for the pastries."

Seth laughed, a short, startled sound, as if it had been waiting a long time to come out.

The old man looked at him over the lid of the thermos.

"What’s the rush, kid? You play like somebody’s chasing you."

Seth turned a captured pawn over in his fingers.

"I’m playing someone on Saturday."

"Good player?"

"The best."

The old man whistled. "Lot of pressure."

"It’s not that." Seth shook his head.

"I made her a promise. A long time ago."

"To her?"

"To a chair."

The old man didn’t laugh.

He looked at the empty bench for a moment.

Then at Seth. And he said it very simply.

"Then you’d better look after your pieces."

? ? ?

That night, before he opened the app, he opened a video.

Old footage. Seventeen years old.

White hair. Red eyes.

A crowd pressing around her, cameras flashing, a hundred questions shouted in a dozen languages.

And then the look.

Straight into the lens. Tired. A little lost.

Still completely alone.

He paused on that frame.

He didn’t say anything.

He didn’t have to.

Then he opened the app and played.

Slowly.

Before every move, he stopped.

What did they just move? What does it attack?

It was annoying. It felt like walking through water.

It also worked.

Rating: 764.

Rating: 779.

Rating: 801.

On the last night, at 5:49 a.m., Seth sat on the edge of his bed, sunlight creeping in around the curtains, and watched the number change.

820.

It wasn’t a master’s rating. It wasn’t even a club player’s.

But it was the best he had ever been.

He smiled at it like a boy who had just been handed the moon.

? ? ?

The hotel executive suite on the thirty-first floor had a view of the entire city.

Astrid Lind had not looked at it once.

Her tea sat on the table, gone cold an hour ago.

Her breakfast tray held one boiled egg, untouched.

Her phone lay face-up beside it, with one notification from the federation, reminding her of a schedule.

It had been that way for years.

Ingrid scrolled through a tablet.

"Forty-one challengers."

Ingrid had been her assistant for six years.

Astrid knew how she took her coffee, and nothing else.

She couldn’t remember when that had happened.

"Go on."

"Mikhail Orlov. Two thousand three hundred ten. International Master."

"He lost to me in thirty-one moves and has asked for a rematch in every interview since."

"Priya Raman. Two thousand one hundred fifty."

"She wrote a thesis on my endgames." A pause. "It was accurate."

"Did you tell her?"

"No."

Ingrid waited. Astrid didn’t add anything.

"Tomas Beck. Nineteen eighty. A teenager from Lagos, eighteen sixty, with a sponsor. A woman who has played every Sunday for forty years..."

Ingrid scrolled.

"And this one."

Astrid’s eyes moved to the screen.

Seth Pawn. Rating: 820.

"Pawn..." she said.

"Apparently it’s his real name."

"Is it."

"Registered at 2:51 in the morning."

Astrid looked at the small graph beside his name. A staircase. A long, uneven, stubborn climb, starting at 412 and stopping, barely, at 820. There was a dip in the middle, three losses in a row, and then it climbed again.

"Eleven days."

"It’s not unusual for new players to jump fast at that level. It usually doesn’t last."

"Mm."

Astrid kept looking at the dip.

Most people’s graphs went down after three losses and stayed there.

His didn’t.

She waited to feel something.

She always did.

Before every match, she waited, and every time, there was nothing there, only the quiet, like standing in an empty church.

Forty-one challengers.

Forty-one ways the evening could end.

All of them the same.

She set the tablet down.

"Draw them at random."

"All of them?"

"All of them."

Ingrid nodded and turned to leave.

"Even him."

She didn’t know why she’d said it.

The city glittered beyond the window.

She didn’t look at it.

? ? ?

Saturday, 11:48 a.m.

Seth stood at the bus stop in his only collared shirt, which he had ironed with a frying pan from the dorm kitchen.

It had worked, mostly.

He checked his phone for the fortieth time.

Two days ago, he had sent his mother a message.

Mom, I’m playing the World Chess Champion on Saturday at 2. There’s a livestream. I know you’re busy, but if you want to watch...

No reply for two days.

At 11:52, the phone buzzed.

M.

Seth’s heart jumped.

Congratulations. Tuition has been paid. Don’t wait up. - M.

He read it once.

Twice.

Three times.

The message wasn’t cruel.

That was the worst part.

It was perfectly polite, and neat, and cold, just like the handwriting on the fridge.

Tuition has been paid.

She hadn’t asked who the Champion was.

He typed Thanks, Mom.

He deleted it.

He typed I’ll call you tonight.

He deleted that too.

Then he typed Thanks, Mom again and sent it, and put the phone in his pocket, and smiled the way you smile when you are trying very hard to.

He had not waited up in a long time.

The bus was due at 12:05.

At 12:20, a sign on the digital board flickered.

SERVICE SUSPENDED.

Seth stared at it.

"No..."

The sign did not care.

He ran.

Four kilometers.

Past the bakery.

Past the park, where the old man glanced up from his board and lifted one hand.

Past a man selling pretzels, who yelled something Seth couldn’t hear.

His lungs burned.

His glasses slid down his nose.

The frying-pan crease in his shirt gave up somewhere around the second intersection.

12:51.

12:55.

12:58.

He burst through the doors of Meridian Hall, soaked in sweat, hair flattened to his forehead, smelling distinctly of onions.

A guard stepped in front of him.

"Name?"

"S-Seth. Pawn."

The guard looked at the list.

Looked at Seth.

Looked at the list again.

"One minute."

"You’re the last one."

He handed over a lanyard.

CHALLENGER #41.

? ? ?

The ballroom was enormous.

A stage at the far end.

A towering screen overhead.

Rows of cameras, and chairs, and forty people sitting very straight, with the quiet, steady faces of people who knew exactly what they were doing.

Seth sat down at the back, still breathing hard.

His hands were shaking.

He looked at his palm.

The pen had smeared in the sweat, but he could still read it.

Checks. Captures. Threats.

The lights dimmed.

A man in a dark suit stepped to the microphone.

"Ladies and gentlemen, thank you all for coming. Today, the World Champion will face one open challenger in a full exhibition match. That challenger will be chosen entirely at random."

A ripple ran through the room.

On the big screen, forty-one names began to spin.

Please not me, Seth thought.

Please me.

Please not me.

Please me.

The names blurred. Slowed.

A woman near the front gripped the arms of her chair. Seth stopped breathing.

The screen ticked once.

Twice.

It stopped.

CHALLENGER #41 - SETH PAWN

Silence.

Then a small laugh from somewhere in the crowd.

"Pawn?" someone whispered. "Is that real?"

Seth couldn’t move.

Everyone in the room was staring at the screen.

Everyone but one person.

On the stage, in a dark tailored coat, with her white hair tied back neatly and her red eyes calm and sharp as winter glass, Astrid Lind was not looking at the screen.

She was looking at him.

Not at a camera.

Not at the crowd.

At him.

And for the first time in eleven years, Seth Pawn was seen.