The Grandmaster's Gambit

20. Whose Move

[Day-14 (21:00)]

(Aeron's room, Chandler Court, Sector 9, Alexandria)

The pawn stood on the sill with the last of the lamp on one side of it. Kai had been looking at it for an hour. He had also tried the stove and the chair by the window, where Aeron had slept sitting up for fifteen years. Mostly he had watched the sock steaming on the stove-pipe. His foot was warm for the first time since morning, and he didn't want to get up and spoil it.

Oren had gone out at the sixth bell to see a man about some rope. He'd had the rope on his shoulder when he said it. Kai had let him go, and then sat there wondering what you called a lie so bad it was almost polite.

The letter lay on the table with its cracked wafer. Ten days, and a key on a string in his pocket and no idea what it opened.

So. The options.

*Do nothing. Give it a fair go. Haul rubble at four tokens a day, wait for Quarter Day to come round with its chalk men, and then what? Whatever comes through the Line next doesn't even have to hunt me. I'm the bloke standing in the road without any powers whatsoever to protect myself.*

*Or take the Tithe. Except Tobin went quiet when I asked, and Tobin doesn't go quiet. A god looks at you, some come out with a rune and become a contractor - some don't come out. That's all I've got. Half? One in ten? You'd think somebody would have a number.*

*Or another way in. There isn't one. I've looked all evening. I've looked mostly at that sock.*

The pipe in the wall ticked twice and he lost the thread.

*Where was I. Right. Contractors. They're the only people anywhere who've been judged by a god and come back to talk about it. Whatever took me from earth and put me in this room, maybe it's that sort of thing, so if I want to ask it something I start with people who've stood in a room with one. And I'd want it to notice me. Which it probably won't - there's too much I still don't understand about all of this.*

He was halfway through working out which of the five hook-knives would sell first when he heard himself. He had stopped asking if. He was asking which knife.

"Oh," Kai said.

He looked at the chair.

"It's not for you," he told it. "Aeron. I know that's what you were doing. It's not for you." The chair stayed a chair. He tried again, because the first one had been rubbish. "I'm going to take it so I can be someone it looks at. And then I'm going to ask it why."

It sounded worse out loud. It sounded like a boy telling his mother he was running away to sea. He said it a second time anyway, quietly, to hear whether it got any better. It didn't improve. It did stay said.

*Fine. That's the reason, and it's a bad one, and it's mine. Twelve hundred and sixty to find, and I've no idea how. Tomorrow.*

Boots on the stairs. Oren did not knock, because he never did, and then he shut the door behind him with his back, which he never did either. He had a grey sock in one fist with a knot tied in the top, and when he moved it clinked.

"Right," Oren said. "Right. Sit there. No, stay there. Don't say anything until I've counted."

He tipped it out on the table. Tokens ran over the wood, and he caught the one that tried to roll off the edge and slapped it flat. He pushed them into a line. He counted them with his lips moving. Then, because he was Oren, he swept them into a heap and laid them out again and counted a second time.

"Twenty-two."

"Oren..."

"I haven't done the talk yet." He rubbed the back of his neck. "It's for the debt. The old one, the scavenger one. For Dace. If you go in there with nothing in your hand then he's got you, so you go with something. It isn't much. It was twenty-six. There was a thing with a hat." He waved that away. "I've been eating at the Almonry gate. They do a barley thing. It's fine."

He had put on the face he wore for Registry clerks, the one that said *I'm easy, I'm nothing to worry about*. It sat on him badly, like a coat that belonged to his brother.

Kai opened his mouth to say no.

*Ugh. Push them back and he hears "I don't trust you". Take them and the lie's a loan, a real one, with a number on it. Two seconds to pick, and neither's any good. He's been eating barley at a gate for this.*

His own lie, coming back as money. He hadn't expected it to weigh anything.

"Thank you," Kai said. "I'll pay it back."

"You don't have to."

"I'll pay it back."

Oren nodded three times, at the stove, and let him. His ears had gone red. For a second it seemed he might say something else. Then he seemed to decide he'd had enough of saying things.

Kai swept the tokens into his palm. They were still warm from Oren's pocket. *Two forty. Twelve sixty to go.* He put them in his trouser pocket, where they had nothing to clink against.

"Right," Oren said again. He went to do the bolt. It was the last job of every night and had been since the third day. It made the same two sounds every time: the iron going across, the little knock against the staple. Tonight he got as far as putting his hand on it and did not slide it.

"Are you all right?"

"I'm fine," Kai said. It was already out of his mouth. The rest of it was lined up behind, smooth and ready. *Long day. It's the rib.*

"Really, though."

*Say it. He's asked twice. Say the rib.* Kai could hear the tokens in his pocket. He hadn't got a second one in him.

"I'm frightened most of the time," he said. "I'm just good at standing still."

Oren turned round.

"The old Aeron would never say that."

"No."

The pocket coat made its seven different noises as Oren leaned back against the door. He let his shoulders go on the wood and slid down until he was sitting on the boards, knees up, boots crossed, hands hanging between them. He studied his hands. Then he studied the leg of the table, which had never done anything to him.

*He knows something. He doesn't know what, and he hasn't asked. Why hasn't he asked?*

After a while Oren started humming under his breath, something flat and tuneless that might have been a hymn once. He lost the tune and found it again. Kai stayed by the table and listened. Upstairs a man walked to his window and back, and the pipes ticked, and the rib started up its low complaint now that there was nothing else to listen to.

"Your sock's going to catch," Oren said, without looking up.

Kai went and moved the sock. It had a scorch on the heel already, a brown crescent the size of a thumbnail. He turned it over, hung it by the other end, and sat down on the floor where he was, which was nearer the door than he'd meant.