Chapter 28 #4
‘Do not stare long at the board,’ No-Name snaps from my shoulder before she leans her head forward, parallel to me, studying the Sepāhbad coldly. ‘He will read your intention.’
Strategies beat through my head like a chant.
‘You may go first.’ The Sepāhbad splays his hand toward the pieces.
I roll a marble between my fingers before placing it.
Without hesitation, he drives his own. At every turn, we increase speed.
We pause only twice, attempting to interpret strategies.
The furore begins when I surround his first three pieces.
In saktab, one must capture territory around the patterned grains of sand.
He does not react when I place the marble on the outside of his net formation.
The Sepāhbad plays inside, instilling two separate interiors. The domain stops me from capturing his territory.
No-Name paces impatiently around us. The Sepāhbad bends low, studies my fingers grazing pieces before I set a screen. A bead of sweat trickles down my neck when the Sepāhbad places his brass away from liberty. Why, when he could have threatened to capture five of my squares?
On the left, he captures more, but I’ve the tact to stall on the right. I check his territory, finishing a conquer. I look up to see his gaze studying my face, perhaps to find a crack in the smooth surface, anything to give me away. I hope he enjoys trying.
His fingers drum the kilim like a warning. The board becomes muddier and the air shifts, the end nearing. All I must do is fake my final move.
A sudden light flashes the courtyard and warriors gasp, pointing up. My surroundings surrender to a glow of silver as if enclosed in smoke from a pipe, obscuring all but the spectacle above.
The sky blazes in the Simorgh’s constellation.
Celestials scorch through golden hour, the Sepāhbad’s eyes reflecting the thousands of shooting stars streaking their wills like convictions yearning to be seen.
For a moment, it’s as if the sky is water to him – a thirsted man deprived of light and only able to drink his fill under the cosmic phenomenon.
For that unnerving second, he reminds me of the shadows whirring in the corners of my vision.
His raven caws to Heaven, but the Sepāhbad no longer bothers to look to the sky, as if something in the board game intrigues him more. ‘How ironic. The Simorgh and its nūr, in a shower of stars.’
I return to the board. ‘Indeed.’
‘In the scriptures, angels cause the running stars by dipping celestial rock in fire before throwing it across the cosmos against eavesdropping jinn.’
Now I look up coldly.
‘Still, it’s Heaven’s beautiful light thwarting darkness.’ And though he speaks of the skies, he stares at me.
‘Then take the omen before you. The Simorgh and her nūr promise a new era.’ I recite this like an ode but with none of the voice that should inspire it.
Then my fingers push a marble piece, cementing my loss in the game.
The Sepāhbad’s thumb traces his brass before he switches tactics, shifting to the right. In my peripheral vision, his lips tease up.
‘My vizier, you could have taken my territory.’
‘And you, my lesser, could have connected around my last row of brass. It seems we both made incongruous errors.’
But a master tactician would never make an offhanded mistake like that.
Testing him, I leave an opening for capture, but he does not take it.
I watch his expression as he leans forward, sliding another brass, before again, our gazes lock closer.
This whole game, my strategy was to seem like I wanted to win, because naturally, it’s what any opponent in a board game would expect.
I stalled long enough, curious about his strategy in saktab.
But this is the Sepāhbad that I face; trying to win would expose my tactics.
All along, I have been staging my own loss.
If he realises it – well, the game would be concluded.
Winning in saktab is not how you best the Sepāhbad; victory lies in throwing him off his own predictions.
My brother once used this stratagem to prove a point to me, before his betrayal, saying he’d rather bite a loss to win the greater battle.
It was working, but something has changed.
There are three territories on the board, I realise.
I decide to speak plainly to provoke him. ‘You wish to read something from our game.’
He does not so much as blink.
‘You came here, regarded my gameboard and did not take my opening. I then left three as a test for you to have the win, and you rejected it.’ As if to prove this, I take. Then his brass takes. I take. Three more moves and it becomes clear what has happened.
I inhale sharply. ‘This is a loop.’
He does not look alarmed nor apologetic, which is worse.
His answer echoes from afar. ‘Pieces are sacrificed to set larger strategies in motion, because some concessions must be made to obtain the bigger victory. Victory for some is unpredictability. You sought to lose.’ He smiles.
‘As always, your masochism is breathtaking to witness.’
I blink twice. Somehow the Sepāhbad read my intent and contrived a stalemate by devising an infinite loop with no established winner.
We both straighten from the board. ‘A stalemate, how good.’
Bemused, he stands. ‘Flattery. It seems unlike you.’
I crunch the dirt, which stings beneath my nail beds. ‘Sepāhbad, what did you require from me? I submit to my masters.’
The Sepāhbad only tosses his brass to the board, the stars dimming in his eyes. ‘Shepherd girl, did we not establish an understanding? Having choice makes the difference. And, I think I have learnt what I wished to know.’ He bows and retreats toward the inner courtyard.
Did he defeat me after all?
The question remains with me until the pazktab students arrive with the scholars.
My eyes rake over their new garments, donated from some noblewomen.
Red and emerald robes to their ankles, belted by amber hemp cords, the hems clinking with bone-shells, and hair woven with headdresses of animal bones.
Sohrab wears a well-stitched robe over a dark tunic.
Yahya trips over his long crimson robe. I straighten it.
‘You all look . . .’ But there is no word to describe them because I have never used such words to describe anyone – the closest emotion that stirs is how I feel seeing fledgling birds.
I think I would offend them if I called them baby buzzards.
After I arrange another saktab and explain the rules, Sohrab and I dive into a game.
‘Master, I cannot play when you are so cruel! You are cheating.’
‘There is no cheating, only clever travellers seeking the shortest paths.’
‘Which parable did you find that from?’ Arezu deadpans.
I look up. ‘A text you clearly refused to study.’
‘Dramatic woman,’ she mutters and my lips twitch but I raise my hand to hide it.
‘Snivelling pig,’ I counter and Arezu clamps Yahya’s ears.
‘Khamilla.’
With a sigh, I move from the board while Sohrab shakes his head. ‘It’s tradition to join the other warriors and listen to their folktales.’
‘And poetry,’ Yasaman adds, holding up a stack of papyrus scrolls.
‘You are free to join them,’ I say. ‘But I do not desire the other warriors’ company.’
‘Master can tell us a story.’ Arezu’s eyes alight in challenge.
‘I have no stories for midwinter.’
‘You liar,’ she says. ‘Don’t forget what you told me after the Marka. You come from a tribe of them.’ Then her eyes pinch bitterly. ‘I suppose with your assignment tomorrow, your mind is on other things. In truth, it’s hardly fair.’
‘What’s not fair?’
‘We fought alongside you in that Marka, yet you were promoted.’
I almost laugh. ‘Because you are a pazktab girl. You are not ranked.’
‘So?’ she demands. ‘I’m only a few years younger than you. Your lessons always preached to never let youth withhold our ambitions.’
They did do that. I am realising much of my advice to these students follows a cosmic loop, coming back to bite me. ‘You, child, are far from Za’skar’s ordeals.’ She flinches and I straighten, aware that my words carry weight.
Her bitterness stretches into a smile. ‘I suppose to you we are never worthy, most of all me?’ Her fingers dig into the kilim, nails pale.
That confusion stirs again – no – a strangling inside my chest. It takes a moment to understand: Arezu is not upset; she is frustrated at something beyond her control. Because of me.
‘Of course, I think you’re worthy,’ I say thickly. ‘Just not of this.’
‘And now you admit it.’
‘What would you have me say?’
‘You are leaving tomorrow,’ she repeats, with the same expectation held in Sohrab’s gaze, but where he looked hopeful, her eyes are red.
My heart begins burning; the stab, like pricking needles, fractures through the denial I’ve built, giving way to the urge to tell her she is worth more. ‘You are leaving,’ she repeats again.
‘I am leaving . . .’
You. It hits me. What is this strange ache?
Not a pain I have chosen or walked into, but unwanted pain. Invisible pain. The numb blanket that has cocooned my entire life, the reliable comfort I chose to slip under, was nothing but a cage at the border of agony.
This child, who I called my student for my own selfish purposes, is in pain and so are the rest of them and I continue to be blind to it.
And I am not sure why, but tonight I feel it as keenly as she does.
With it, an emotion I think everyone is familiar with, but to me so foreign – a deep worry, hoping to always guard them from harm.
Like how one feels when they sight a wounded bird.
But the emotions are stifling; how does one bear this many?
I could do something, then. I could do one thing right. I cannot discourage her hunger, it wouldn’t work. Instead, I could mould it into something better. A pang squeezes my chest. Masters do not comfort their pupils like this.
Then who does?