Chapter 4: ch.4 [Never Lose Your Queen Again]

Seth had had more than a decade to prepare one sentence, and he still got it wrong in the mirror.

"Hello. I’m Seth. I’m a big fan."

He winced.

"Hello. I’m Seth. I’ve been waiting eleven years."

Absolutely not.

"Hello. Nice weather."

The bathroom behind the stage smelled like floor wax and burnt coffee.

The boy in the mirror had flattened hair, crooked glasses, and a shirt that was a little wrinkled.

He looked like someone who had run four kilometers to be humiliated on a livestream.

Which is exactly what I did.

He splashed water on his face.

His hands wouldn’t stop shaking, so he pressed them flat against the sink, and the shaking crept up into his arms instead.

He looked at his palm.

The ink had smeared into a blue cloud, but he could still read it.

Checks. Captures. Threats.

Then he did what he’d been doing all week whenever panic got too loud.

He closed his eyes and ran the video.

"Scandinavian Defense in 10 Minutes! Never Lose Your Queen Again!!!"

A calm coach.

Fat orange arrows swinging across the board like a conductor’s baton.

Seth had watched it forty-one times.

He knew every arrow.

He knew the little cough at 6:14.

He knew the exact moment the coach said

"And now... free pawn!"

in a font so large it had its own weather.

He also knew that the Chapter titled If White Plays Something Else was nine seconds long.

"Don’t worry," the coach said in it, with a bright little smile. "They won’t."

Seth opened his eyes.

One opening.

One line.

One video.

That was his entire chess education.

If the World Champion so much as breathed on a different move, he would be playing chess like a man learning to swim by being thrown off a boat.

His phone buzzed.

Daily puzzle ready!

Nothing else.

No Good luck. No I’m watching. His last message sat on the screen, Thanks, Mom, with one small gray word beneath it.

Delivered.

He put the phone away.

In his other pocket, his fingers found something small and round and a little bent at the edges.

A blue bottle cap.

He had taken it out of the shoebox that morning without really knowing why.

The queen. She wore a faded marker crown, drawn by a boy who thought chess pieces were toys.

Nobody in this building knew about the shoebox.

He held on to the cap.

"Mr. Pawn?" A volunteer with a headset leaned in. "Two minutes."

Seth nodded.

He did not throw up.

He considered it, seriously, for about four seconds.

Then he followed her down the corridor toward the sound of a very large room holding its breath.

? ? ?

Astrid Lind sat at the table and waited.

She always waited.

A decade and more of tournaments, hundreds of halls, and the part she remembered best was this one.

The empty chair across from her, and the silence before someone came to fill it.

The board was set. White pieces on her side.

The cameras were already watching.

Eight hundred and twenty.

Someone had prepared him.

A coach, a second, a friend with a laptop. It was what challengers did.

They brought a line they’d drilled for weeks and hoped she would walk into it.

She never underestimated that.

Rating was only a number.

Every arbiter and every old master had told her the same thing since she was nine.

Play the position, never the name.

The challenger walked onto the stage.

Thin. Black hair stuck flat to his forehead, with one stubborn piece standing up at the back. Glasses sliding down his nose.

His collar was wrinkled on one side and folded under on the other, and he moved the way people move when they are trying very hard not to look like they’re about to faint.

She glanced toward the edge of the stage, where challengers’ coaches usually waited.

There was no one there.

No second. No friend.

No one in the front row with a notebook and a hopeful face.

Nobody had come with him.

Something small tugged in her chest.

She dismissed it.

Seth sat down. For one second he simply looked at her, with the face of a man arriving at a train station after a very long wait.

The look snagged on something.

A name on the tip of her tongue, gone before she could say it.

"Good luck."

The standard greeting.

"Th-thank you. You too. I mean, you don’t need it. I mean, I’m sorry. I’m Seth."

"I know."

His ears went red.

Her fingers twitched on the table.

She had a very odd urge to reach across and fix his collar.

Don’t be absurd.

The arbiter started the clocks.

Astrid pushed her king’s pawn two squares forward.

1. e4.

Seth’s hand shot out and answered so fast it was almost a reflex.

1... d5.

The Scandinavian.

A rare choice. She took the pawn.

2. exd5 Qxd5. 3. Nc3.

Black’s queen slid back, not to the usual square, but to d6.

3... Qd6.

Astrid raised an eyebrow.

The quieter retreat.

It was an old line, solid and patient.

Players who chose it tended to know exactly what they were doing, or exactly nothing at all.

She played on.

4. d4 Nf6. 5. Nf3 c6.

? ? ?

Seth was sweating through his shirt.

Please play the next move. Please play the next move. Please play the next move...

She played it.

6. Ne5.

His heart did a small, private cartwheel.

I KNOW THIS ONE.

It was in the video.

It was in the video.

There was even an arrow. An orange one, fat and cheerful, pointing right at the knight.

He answered instantly.

6... Nbd7.

7. Bf4 Nd5. 8. Nxd5 Qxd5. 9. Be2 Nxe5. 10. Bxe5.

Every reply came out of him like a song he’d heard a hundred times. Every arrow in his head lit up one by one, perfect, glowing, and orange.

And then, on move ten, the arrow pointed at a pawn.

A pawn in the corner of the board.

Alone.

Unprotected.

"FREE PAWN!" said the coach in his head.

Seth’s hand moved before his brain could stop it.

10... Qxg2.

Click.

He sat back, trembling.

On the big screen above the stage, the engine bar, the little black-and-white strip the commentators kept pointing at, ticked a hair toward black.

A commentator in the booth let out a low breath.

"Oh. He’s taken the pawn."

I’m a pawn up against the World Champion, Seth thought dazedly.

I’m a pawn UP.

Across the table, Astrid looked at his queen sitting in the corner of her position.

She didn’t look worried.

She looked, very faintly, like a cat watching a mouse walk into a room.

11. Bf3.

She played it without a pause. The bishop slid out and hit his queen.

Seth blinked.

Right. The video said... the video said...

11... Qg6.

"And Black is fine!" said the coach in his head, cheerfully.

That was the end of the video.

Black is fine.

It had not explained what fine meant.

? ? ?

Astrid played 12. Qe2 without a pause.

It wasn’t a trap.

That was the funny part. She hadn’t set anything.

She had simply wanted her queen on a decent square, behind her bishop, in the middle of the board.

Seth stared at the position.

His queen on g6.

His king on e8.

Her bishop on f3.

Her other bishop sitting on e5, right in the heart of his camp, looking smug.

Out of book.

Out of book, out of book, out of book.

What do I do?

He glanced at his palm.

Checks. Captures. Threats.

Checks? None.

Captures? None.

Threats...

One minute went by. Then two.

He looked at every piece he owned, one at a time, as if one of them might volunteer.

Sweat slid down the side of his nose and fogged the bottom of his glasses. His side of the clock was ticking toward the red. Hers had barely moved.

Five minutes.

A commentator murmured into the booth.

"That’s a long think. Maybe he’s found something deep."

I haven’t found anything, Seth thought.

I haven’t foundANYTHING.

Eight minutes.

His eyes landed on the bishop on e5.

It’s just sitting there.

I could kick it.

A little pawn on f7. One push.

It would attack the bishop.

A threat. A real one, against the World Champion, made by him.

His heart swelled.

Threats!

He pushed the pawn.

12... f6.

Click.

He sat back, proud, a little pink, feeling like a man who had finally learned to ride a bicycle.

Astrid looked at the board.

She didn’t hesitate.

? ? ?

A pin.

She saw it in less than a second.

The queen on g6. The king on e8. And between them, on the long diagonal, a single square that had held a pawn until a moment ago.

She did not look for a trap.

She did not wonder whether he had seen something she hadn’t.

A decade at the top had taught her that a mistake was a gift, and the surest way to waste a gift was to stand there admiring the wrapping.

She lifted her bishop and set it on h5.

Click.

Across the table, the boy went very still.

Oh no...

she thought, and was irritated to find she meant it a little.

? ? ?

Seth looked at the board.

At the bishop.

At the diagonal.

h5. g6. f7. e8.

The bishop.

The queen.

The empty square.

The king.

Oh no.

Oh no, no, no, no, no...

On the big screen, the engine bar slid all the way across the board, like a door slamming.

A commentator spoke softly.

"And there it is. The pin."

How did I miss that?

The pawn on f7 had been the only thing standing between his queen and his king.

He had just moved it.

On purpose.

NEVER LOSE YOUR QUEEN AGAIN, said the coach in his head, in bright orange letters.

The video had lied.

Or he had.

He tried to think, but the thoughts came apart like wet paper.

His clock was bleeding seconds.

His queen couldn’t leave the diagonal.

She could take the bishop, but then Astrid’s queen would take it right back, with check.

Block. Block the diagonal. Block her queen!

He didn’t look for anything better. There wasn’t time.

Bishop. Bishop to g4.

It blocked her queen’s path. It attacked her queen. It was a threat.

A very brave, very desperate threat.

13... Bg4.

Click.

For half a second, he felt clever.

Astrid took the bishop before the half second was over.

14. Qxg4.

Click.

Her queen stood on g4, staring at his queen on g6, and his queen could not move.

She was pinned.

She could see her. She just couldn’t touch her.

Seth’s queen had one legal way out.

One.

She took the bishop on h5.

14... Qxh5.

15. Qxh5+.

The room went very, very quiet.

Her queen. His queen. Gone.

His bishop. Gone.

All of it, in three moves.

He sat there, staring at the board, feeling the specific cold of a man who has watched his own house burn down from the inside.

Check.

His king had nowhere good to go.

He moved it anyway.

15... Kd8.

It wasn’t a plan. It was a reflex.

It was the king, begging.

Please, someone, make this stop.

Nobody did.

? ? ?

Astrid castled.

16. O-O-O.

She did it calmly, almost gently, like someone tidying her desk while the building burned.

Seth looked at the bishop still sitting on e5.

At least I can take something.

16... fxe5.

Click.

She took it back with a pawn.

17. dxe5+.

And the whole d-file opened like a door.

Her rook was looking straight at his king.

Check.

He stared.

Where did that come from?

It was there the whole time.

Her rook had been sitting on d1, behind her own pawn.

He had never even looked at it.

17... Kc7.

18. e6.

A quiet pawn. It didn’t capture anything. It didn’t threaten anything he could see.

Seth’s hands were shaking so badly he almost knocked over his own pieces.

His breath came short and fast.

He played the next move almost without seeing the board, the way you grab at a railing in the dark.

My king needs room.

b7. If I move the pawn, the king gets b7.

It seemed so clear.

18... b6.

Click.

The word flashed across his mind in red letters, the way it had on his phone, a decade and one convenience store ago.

Blunder.

The engine bar was already gone.

Beneath it, in small, plain letters, were two characters.

M2.

Astrid put her rook on d7.

Click.

Check.

It was protected by her pawn.

The king couldn’t take it.

It covered the entire seventh rank, every square, from the pawn on his c-file to the corner, and the one thing that had stood between that rook and the corner was the pawn on b7.

The pawn he had just moved.

Seth stared.

HE SACRIFICED... said the voice in his head, out of habit.

Then it stopped.

No.

Nobody had sacrificed anything.

She had just put a rook on the seventh rank, where it couldn’t be captured.

He moved his king to the only square left.

19... Kb8.

Astrid lifted her queen.

She set it down on e8.

Click.

20. Qe8#.

Check... Mate.

? ? ?

Seth looked at the board.

His king stood on b8, with a wall on every side. The rook on d7 covered a7, b7, and c7. The queen on e8 covered the corner and the back rank.

His rooks sat at home in the corners, as if they had never been introduced to anyone.

His bishop hadn’t moved all game.

Nothing could take the queen. Nothing could block her.

Twenty moves.

The hall was so quiet he could hear the clocks humming. His had a few seconds left. Hers had almost the whole hour.

Nearly every minute of the game had been his. She had barely needed hers.

He kept staring at the mated king, like a kid who has dropped his ice cream and is waiting to be told what happens next.

And across the table, there was a sound he had never heard in any of her recorded victories.

Astrid Lind smiled.

It was small at first, hardly anything, a crack in glass.

She hadn’t planned it. Her eyes, bright and red as candles in a winter window, softened at the corners.

Look at him.

The hair, still standing up at the back.

The glasses, still crooked.

The hands in his lap, still trembling, as if he had run the whole game on foot.

He’s actually kind of adorable.

She pushed that thought away, quickly, and found it came right back.

Seth forgot to breathe.

She’s smiling.

I did it.

I made her smile.

The hall erupted.

Cameras flashed so brightly the room turned white.

Astrid stood and held out her hand, and Seth took it with a trembling, damp palm that still smelled faintly of ink.

She didn’t let go.

She leaned in, just slightly, so that the noise swallowed everything else. Her voice dropped to something quiet, careful, and strangely uncertain.

"Seth Pawn."

"Were you waiting for me?"

Seth stared at her.

His other hand had already closed around the bottle cap in his pocket.

Nobody in this hall knew about the shoebox.

Nobody could.