Page 17 of Immortal Game

Shea studied the lone horse on the battlefield. She didn’t often play against someone whose repertoire she did not know. Normally, she’d have prepared a number of lines to combat an opponent’s typical play. This time, she’d have to rely on solid principles and pure intuition. She placed her own knight on the f6 square. The sand in her hourglass stopped flowing just as his began to fall. She expected an instantaneous reply, but he settled in for a long think.

As Shea watched the minutes slip away, irritation sparked within her. What could he possibly be thinking about this early in the game?

By the sixth move, Shea couldn’t bear it any longer. She needed to stretch her legs before boredom consumed her. She stood up and strolled aimlessly through the tournament hall. Despite the late hour, there was enough light to see by. Wide tiles of moonlight patterned the ground, and golden motes drifted through the room, casting a soft glow on everything they passed.

Shea could hardly believe how many spectators had crowded into the room. Most of them sat on risers and balconies, watching the proceedings with opera glasses perched on their noses.Others lingered a respectful distance away, craning their necks to examine each of the games. Sixteen massive display boards—large-scale re-creations of each game—were mounted on the back wall. A group of harried-looking officials updated them as players made their moves.

Her roaming carried her—very much against her conscious will—to Ciara’s board. Ciara sat perched on the edge of her chair, one leg crossed over the other. She moved her bishop to the center of the board with her delicate, graceful fingers. Shea so rarely had the opportunity to watch Ciara play to her full potential. And watch she did as Ciara worked her strange and brilliant magic over the board.

There was a well-known side effect of playing Ciara in hours-long games: a full psychosomatic collapse some had called the Curse of Bri Leith. Victims reported suffering from nausea, migraines, even full-on bouts of the flu halfway through their games. It required no faerie magic. She simply applied enough pressure, and her opponents crumbled. A single inaccuracy, a too-cautious move, an impulsive overextension… Any misstep, she would make you regret by the end. And when she finally went on the offensive, it was like a wave crashing against the shore or a tornado tearing through a field: something dangerous and unstoppable and awesome.

Shea smothered that line of thought as quickly as it arose. She needed to keep her focus on her own game. Irritated with herself, she stalked back to her own board—just as her opponent made his next move.

The rest of the opening unfolded slowly: the warhorses brought out of their stables; all four bishops fianchettoed, staring down the long diagonals of the board like snipers; theirpawns creeping forward to make way for their heavy artillery. Her opponent touched his pieces with a carefulness that irked her, like he was afraid of toppling them over, and ruminated over positions that required (in her not-so-humble opinion) little to no thought. Whatever. He was entitled to burn his time if he liked.

By the time they played their twentieth move, Shea felt herself sinking into a painfully familiar ennui. She’d seen this exact line too many times. By rote memorization, she knew exactly how to best counter it. When she pushed her c-pawn forward, his reply came instantly—and his move after that, too. It surprised her, this sudden burst of life and clarity. Shea sat up straighter. Had she overlooked something obvious?

Over the next ten moves, he advanced into her territory slowly but surely. He’d begun playing far too well for her liking—and far too quickly. She sensed it, in the forces crisscrossing the board, in their armies bearing down on one another: This game was on the brink of spiraling out of her control.

Her frustration mounted, along with something dangerously close to shame. Too late, she realized her breathing had gone humiliatingly shallow. She felt thirteen years old again, watching all her plans come apart under Midir’s ruthless, perfect play. She shouldn’t have ended up in this position. How had she not seen it coming? How could she—

No.She was not playing Midir. This fae was an ancient being, yes, but not infallible. Not a perfect machine.

For the first time in twenty minutes, Shea considered him across the board. He looked… frankly, unwell. His skin was ashen, and beads of sweat gathered on his upper lip. Had something spooked him?

Shea closed her eyes, projecting the previous moves onto the theater of her mind. She’d made no catastrophic blunders. She’d made one, maybe two, inaccurate moves, and he’d seized upon them with impressive precision and finesse. She wasn’t completely lost, but shewasbeing slowly and methodically outplayed. He’d built a defensive fortress, then mounted cannons on the battlements. Both his rooks pointed directly toward her king. It was like a completely different player had taken over after the first ten moves of the game.

As soon as the thought occurred to her, her gaze landed on the ring glittering on his thumb. There were no chess engines in the Otherworld, obviously, and no phones. She supposed he could be colluding with another player, one who’d worked out the best moves over the course of this game. It was possible. Really, anything was possible; Shea had no idea what the scope of faerie magic was.

At last, her opponent noticed that she’d been staring at his ring. He tucked his hand beneath the table. Shea scoffed. It was as good as a confession, but she had no proof. What would she tell the arbiter? That her opponent had played a shitty opening and inexplicably turned it around? No, they wouldn’t intervene on the basis of such a flimsy accusation.

Her focus drifted to the little remaining sand in his hourglass. If there was one advantage she could press, it was the clock. If she played accurate moves instantaneously, she could keep him off-balance and apply steady pressure. That was the thing about cheaters: They couldn’t think on their own. The moment they did, they started to fall apart. All she needed was for him to make one mistake. One mistake, and she could turn the tide of this game.

She made a noncommittal waiting move. Her opponent hesitated. With trembling fingers, he reached for his dark-squared bishop. As soon as he touched it, his entire body went rigid. His shoulders heaved and contorted as he held in a cough. Shea stared at him with vague concern. Maybe she ought to call the arbiter over after all.

Apparently, he could stifle it no longer. He hacked out a wet mass of golden petals onto the board. The veins in his neck bulged and… spread? No, not his veins, Shea realized with a slow-dawning horror. The fetter at his wrist had sprouted roots that were snaking beneath his skin. She stumbled back from the board so quickly, the pieces toppled over.

“Holy shit.” Her voice sounded small and childish and faraway.

It all happened too fast. Somewhere above the ringing in her ears, she could hear the sound of screaming. She could not look away from the body slumped over the board. Silver branches unfurled from his back like a grotesque set of wings. Blood dripped from his fingertips. It spread over the chessboard, staining all the white pieces a brilliant red, and spilled off the edges. The grass beneath her feet drank it greedily, like parched earth with a long-awaited rain.

Midir’s voice carried over the commotion. “As we agreed, cheating will not be tolerated in this tournament.”

So this was the gruesome fate that awaited anyone who didn’t play by the rules. The fetter around her wrist felt suddenly, impossibly heavy.

Midir approached the board, his face bleak and expressionless. Clearly, neither the carnage nor the betrayal shocked him.It chilled Shea to the bone. If you lived long enough, even death became a matter of course.

Midir’s gaze swept from his cousin’s lifeless body to Shea. With some displeasure, he said, “It seems you’ve won the first round by resignation. Congratulations.”

The audience broke out into thunderous applause. Shea stared out at them, the spectators with their rapturous faces and the competitors sitting wide-eyed at their boards. She’d won. As usual, she felt no happiness—and this time, not even the balm of relief. Just a numb, expanding emptiness. The scope of her world narrowed to the sensation of something dripping down her cheek, hot and tacky but cooling quickly.

“Excuse me,” she muttered.

Shea barely made it out of the tournament hall before she vomited into the bushes.

PART

II