Page 17 of Rook Takes Queen
I can’t breathe right.
I have spent my entire life being the one who watches the board. The one who guards her own king in the corner because there’s no one else who’ll do it. Three years on Chronos being trusted with everyone’s secrets and trusted with nobody’s care. And this enormous, gentle, overlooked male is standing in a room full of the trophies he never told anyone about, telling me — plainly, like it’s already settled, like it’s the most obvious fact in the universe — that he’s going to stand between me and the dark. That my safety ishis job. No one has ever told me that before.
“Okay,” I whisper, because it’s all I have, and because I don’t trust myself to say anything else, because all my feels I have for him might come tumbling out, much too early.
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’slet’s goat 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, whois 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.
