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“Clearly Mal’s as good at trash-talking as I was at playing against Sierra Leone.”
“She has other talents,” Nolan says, locking eyes with mine. “Like drawing guinea pigs.”
I hide my smile in my hand, but I’m feeling more comfortable with these three. Nolan is more approachable when consumed through the Brita filter of his friends, even if there’s still something intimidating about his unignorable, often quiet presence. Something that keeps me on edge.
As our opponents get stronger, we accumulate more losses and draws, mostly from Tanu and Emil. I like to win— Iloveto win— but my teammates’ defeats don’t bother me as much, and Nolan seems to be the same. On the second match of the third day, Jakub Szymanski from Poland blunders ten moves in, and I pull off a victory in record time. I blink away the soupy feelingof emerging from a game, stretch a little, then come to stand right behind Nolan.
It’s the first time I’ve finished before him— the first time I get to watch him play. It’s his turn to move, and he sits back in the chair, neck slightly bent, arms on his chest. Then he moves his rook, large hands incongruously graceful, and presses the clock.
I have yet to study his games. Defne chooses what plays I analyze, and I’ve found none of Nolan’s in my list. Still, it’s impossible to know anything about chess without having some theoretical notions about him as a player: he is famously cunning, aggressive, versatile. Active. Always doing something risky to raise the pressure. His strategies might seem impulsive, spontaneous, but they are long- sighted and convoluted, nearly impossible to thwart. He relentlessly exploits every advantage, position, distraction. I remember reading about a quality of chess players callednettlesomeness: the ability to not just play well but alsotrickothers into playing poorly. Nolan, by all accounts, has it in heaps. And when the adversary has blundered their way into the middle game, he sinks his teeth into them and draws blood.
The Kingkiller, indeed.
I watch him at work as he advances, surrounds the center, moves his knight and bishop in tandem, takes everything on his path, and . . .
I feel breathless. Light-headed. Confused. That’s how beautiful his moves are. Cruel and unstoppable. I won against him once, but I also know I might not win again—he’sthatgood. And there’s more: I’m a practical player, always focused on finishing off my opponent as quickly as possible rather than on the artand elegance of the game. But Nolan’s play is stunning. In five thousand years archaeologists will cry at its grace. Though if we don’t stop carbon emissions, the world will just be a pile of ashes, so maybe we should put it in a time capsule. Send it into space on an alien probe. Share with the rest of the universe—
“You okay?” Tanu asks.
“I— yes.” I hadn’t noticed her. Even though she’s right beside me.
“You looked . . . entranced.”
“No. I was just . . .”
“Yeah, Nolan’s play will do that. Nolan, in general.” She laughs softly. “I used to be so in love with him, I’d thought I’d die if we didn’t get married and have four chubby kids named after opening gambits no one uses anymore.” My eyes widen. “Oh, don’t worry. I was, like, twelve? And he couldn’t have cared less about that stuff.” She shrugs. “I thought he was incapable of caring at all before . . . well. On paper, he should havetonsof game, but in reality he has very little.” She smiles reassuringly. I want to ask her why she assumes that I’d worry, or whatbeforemeans, but Nolan buries his fangs into the Polish king and Tanu is too busy cheering.
I’m in a good mood until the last match of the day— Serbia. Because some chess divinity hates me, their second board is someone I remember from Koch’s crew back at Philly Open— Dordevic, the name tag informs me, and I suddenly recall what he asked me that night.
What did you do before the game? I need that kind of luck.
“Greenleaf,” he says, his sneer a clear sign of Koch affiliation.
I vow to myself to destroy him. And I’m true to my word for the first forty minutes or so, easily blocking his attacks andgaining control of the center. Until he takes a page from Koch’s Little Bitch Manual, and accuses me of making an illegal move.
“It’s not,” I tell him.
“If you previously moved the rook— ”
“But I didn’t.”
“Arbiter!”
I roll my eyes but let him flag the closest official— a blond woman who nods and walks over to us.
I recognize her immediately. My stomach flips, then freezes into a block of concrete that should drag me through the floor. Instead, snippets of a four- year- old conversation swarm my head.
Who was she?
No one.
But you were—
No one, Mal.
“Yes?” she asks Dordevic, and there’s a pounding roar in my ears. I know everything about her— name, age, even her address. Or at least, a few years ago’s. It’s possible that she moved. That she doesn’t work at the bank anymore, that she doesn’t exercise at Pure Barre, that—
“It’s not illegal,” she tells Dordevic, who starts gesticulating his disagreement. My entire body is shaking, and I can’t tune in.
