Chapter 7
Rook
Five diurnals later, I have a routine I never want to end. Which is surprising, considering I love my job at the mine. Not being there should be torture. And yet it’s not.
And I suspect my personal crystal feels as comfortable with this new routine as much as I do. Both of us are not nearly as upset to be away from the crew and the mine as we would normally be, because the both of us have Hallie to tend.
The crew leaves for the mine at first light, same as always, gear thumping and crystals glowing and Chief’s let’s go at the door.
This part is always the most difficult for me, not putting on my own gear and instead watching them leave.
But knowing I’m here to confirm Hallie’s safety until we’re certain the beings who are trying to track her and end the loose thread that could take down their conspiracy, is gone, reminds me that I’m still performing a very important job.
The brides scatter to their own work. Leah is at home today in employee housing with Argyl. This means the compound belongs to the ones who stay today—Lila, the three children, Hallie, and me.
I find myself spending more time than ever before with my nieces and nephews.
Rux, Heavy and Jana’s boy, who is growing fast. Zora, Cannibal and Roxy’s daughter, who is currently devoted to feeding her meals to a stuffed creature.
And little Argylia, Claws and Lila’s child, still small enough to need holding most of the day.
“Here,” Lila said this morning, and put a baby in Hallie’s arms before Hallie could think of a reason to say no.
I watch my female go rigid, both arms at careful right angles, holding the infant the way you’d hold something that might detonate. “I don’t…I’ve never…” she sputters. “I don’t know how to do this. I don’t have nieces or nephews or even friends with babies.”
“You’re doing good,” Lila said, unbothered, already turning to catch Zora who is charging away.
Within the hour Hallie had figured out the trick of the bottle, the angle of it, the burping, the particular sway that settles a fussy one. She quickly becomes even better than me at playing with Argylia, who clearly adores Hallie.
By midday she’d changed her first diaper.
“I’m very proud of you,” I told her, and meant every word, and she narrowed her eyes at me looking for the mockery and didn’t find any, because there wasn’t any.
Diaper changing is hard, messy, business.
I’ve already told Lila three different times that her job is harder than what I do at the mine. And she agrees.
I spend a solid portion of my mornings stacking soft blocks into towers that Zora then destroys with great joy, after which I rebuild them, because that’s the game and the game has rules.
Rux falls asleep on my chest most afternoons, one tiny fist curled in my shirt, and I hold very still so as not to wake him.
We have lunch each day with Lila and the children now, all of us together, a chaos of bottles, small spoons and spilled cups. The children go down for their naps after lunch. The compound goes quiet. And that’s when Hallie and I get our daily game time.
We sit down at the board by the window, in the front room.
Each day, Hallie gets better at Karrec. I’ve watched it happen all week, the variant clicking into place for her, the small differences between her chess and my Karrec dissolving until she’s playing the merciless way she must have played back on New Earth.
Yesterday she nearly had me. The day before, closer.
Today, I’m having great difficulty staying ahead of her.
“You’re quiet,” she says, sliding a jumper into a square I didn’t want her anywhere near.
“I’m concentrating.”
“You’re worried.” There’s a gleam in her eye now. “You should be.”
For the first time in more rotations than I can count, I am genuinely fighting for my life across this board.
I reach for an opening and she’s already closed it.
Then I move to wall the Core and she’s two moves ahead of the wall.
Every road I look down, she’s standing at the end of it with that small dangerous smile, waiting.
“Where did you even learn this,” I mutter, watching her dismantle a defense I’ve used to beat grown males for rotations.
She grins. “From a very patient old man who didn’t believe in letting children win.”
I don’t even see the whole shape of it until it’s done, a quiet, vicious little sequence three moves deep, a sacrifice I read as a mistake right up until it closes around my Core like a hand.
I move. She answers. I move again, hunting an escape that isn’t there, and she answers again, and then there’s nowhere left on the board for me to go.
I stare at the position for a long moment.
I’ve lost, cleanly and completely. The colony champion. The best player on Timbur, beaten by a human female with a borrowed set in under a week.
“Wait,” Hallie says. “Is that…did I just…” She looks from the board to my face and back. “Maxon. Did I win?”
“You won,” I confirm.
And then her whole face breaks open. I have seen this female frightened, exhausted, guarded, fierce, sad. I have not, until this exact moment, seen her joyful. She presses both gloved hands to her mouth. Her eyes are shining. “I beat the best player on the whole planet?”
“You did. You beat me.” I’m grinning so wide it hurts.
“You took me apart. It wasn’t even close, at the end.
I never saw the sacrifice coming. Hallie, that was utter perfection.
You just became the best Karrec player on Timbur.
” Then I look down at the board, at the piece she used to finish me, the one that moved anywhere it wanted and took everything in its path. “The Queen.”
“What?”
“That’s the human name for the piece you play like.
” I touch it, the most powerful piece on the board, sitting in the wreckage of my defense.
“Not the king. Everyone spends their whole game protecting the king, hiding it in the corner, keeping it small and safe. That’s not you.
The Queen moves anywhere she wants, as far as she wants.
Takes anything in her path. The most powerful piece on the board.
” I lift my eyes to hers. “That’s what you are, Hallie. My Queen.”
“Careful. A girl could get a big head, around here. You beings hand out compliments like they’re free.”
“I’m not handing out anything,” I say. “You earned it.”
And that gets through. I watch it get through. The lightness falls off her and her eyes go bright and too-full, and when she speaks again her voice has dropped to something small and raw.
“I’ve been the pawn my whole life, Maxon.
” She’s looking at the board, not at me.
“Do you understand that? The little piece you spend without thinking, the one nobody guards. I spent three years on Chronos keeping everyone’s most precious secrets and not one of them would have crossed the room to keep me safe.
I was useful. I was never…” She swallows.
“Nobody has ever called me powerful. Nobody has ever looked at me and seen the Queen.”
“Then everybody before me was a fool.” I lean in over the board, careful, my voice low and certain. “Here, with me, you’re the Queen. The strongest piece on the board, in the whole compound, in my whole…” I catch the word before it escapes.
She looks at me then. Really looks, the way she did in my room full of trophies.
Her lips part.
My pulse is loud in my own ears. I am not enflamed. I can’t be, not yet, my body stays dormant until the clasp, but the pull of her is so strong it’s nearly a physical thing, a current running under my skin toward her, toward the one bare touch that would change everything.
My gloved hand drifts across the board, slow, toward where her own gloved hand rests on the table’s edge.
Her hand moves too, the smallest nanco, toward mine.
Both of us reaching. Our hands hover, a breath apart.
Close enough that I can feel the warmth coming off her gloved fingers through two layers of fabric.
One more small movement and her hand would be under mine, and everything that’s been building all week, all the careful not-touching, would finally have somewhere to go.
And then…
She jerks back. The same instant I do.
Both of us, at once, drawing our hands back to our own sides of the board, as if we’d each reached the same conclusion in the same heartbeat. Not yet. Not like this. Not with everything still hanging over us.
We sit there, a board’s width apart, both our hands fisted in our laps, the almost still ringing in the air between us.