Page 23 of Immortal Game

“I didn’t even say anything.”

“You don’t have to. It’s obvious what you want. I’m not going to be the one carrying you to the next round. It was pure luck that got you this far.”

Shea bristled. “Don’t flatter yourself.”

An idea seemed to strike him. Behind his glasses, his eyes shone with malice. “I’m not completely heartless. Admit I’m the better player, and I’ll consider it.”

“Go fu—”

“Can you two act like normal people?”

Both Shea and Daniil startled.

A girl had folded herself against the roots of a tree, her kneestucked into her chest and her nose buried in an almost comically large book. It took Shea a moment to place her: Lily, the girl she’d met just before the opening ceremony. She did not look up at them. She only chewed on her lip ring as she read. Her basket sat beside her, already filled half to the brim with bilberries.

“Normal,” Daniil repeated skeptically. “Coming from the girl who crawled out of a graveyard.”

“Ha, ha.” Lily flipped to the next page in her book.

“Who even are you?” he pressed. “Some depressed international master?”

“He’s not capable of being normal,” Shea interjected. “As you can see, he’s not a normal person.”

“Then can you settle for being civil?” Lily asked. “I can’t focus with you two whispering menacingly at each other.”

“We are being civil,” Shea replied, at the same time Daniil said, “I’m just being honest.”

Shea fixed him with an irritated look. Daniil shrugged. “I don’t run a charity. There’s nothing to gain in working with a player who’s afraid to sit next to a chessboard the moment a game gets difficult.”

I’m not afraid, she wanted to say, but it would only egg him on. “Everyone has off days.”

Daniil scoffed. “Yeah. Not me.”

Lily looked as though she were weighing the benefits of bashing their skulls in with her needlessly large tome. “If you can’t behave, go away.”

An idea struck Shea then. If Daniil wouldn’t cooperate, maybe Lily wasn’t a terrible choice. Shea didn’t know the first thing about her play style, but she could leverage that. Nobodyhad prepared against her, and the element of surprise was an undeniable advantage. “Yeah, Danya. Go away.”

He looked affronted. “What?”

“I want to talk to her. Alone.”

“Right,” he said. “Good luck with that.”

As soon as he left, Shea sidled closer to Lily. “It’s Lily, right?”

Lily’s only response was a very persecuted expression.

An unpromising start. Where to go from here? She tilted her head, trying to make out the title of Lily’s book, but there didn’t seem to be one. The book was old and leather-bound, like a volume of poetry you’d find in a dusty antique shop. “What are you reading?”

“What do you want?”

Shea smiled wryly. She’d never been good at dancing around social niceties, and Lily’s directness was a relief. “What’s your Elo?”

At last, Lily closed her book. She stared Shea down, a challenge in her eyes. “2480.”

“That explains it.” The Elo system measured a player’s relative skill level, spitting out a number that increased or decreased when you won or lost games. To qualify for the grandmaster title, a player needed an official Elo of at least twenty-five hundred. “I knew it was weird that I have no idea who you are. Youarejust a depressed international master, aren’t you?”

“Guilty as charged,” Lily said dryly.