by Simon Archer
“What is your request?”
“If you are not too tired, I would like to invite you to my study for a game of chess,” Atlus offered. He clasped his hands behind himself formally, more like a butler than a king.
I paused for a moment and fully digested what he was saying. I eyed him up and down and decided that his tense shoulders and nervous tone conveyed a sense of sincerity. We were supposed to start lessons at some point, and Atlus must have finally carved out a bit of time in his busy, kingly schedule.
Still, I had no desire to go to the king’s study and be alone with him there. There were going to be enough unknowns. I figured I could at least try to control the environment we played in.
“Sure,” I agreed, “but we play in my chambers.”
“I…” Atlus stuttered. He seemed taken aback and uncomfortable at the very idea.
“Or we can wait until tomorrow and play somewhere in the courtyard,” I offered. “But if you wish to play this evening, we will play in my room.”
“I do not know if that would be proper,” Atlus muttered.
“I swear upon the life of my mother and father,” I said as I held up my right hand, “I have no intention of attacking you while we are alone in my chambers. Does that make it more proper?”
“You cannot make something ‘more proper,’” the king protested.
“Sure you can,” I said more casually than I felt.
“Proper is dictated by society,” the king began, and I could tell he was about to go on a rant I didn’t feel like hearing, so I cut him off.
“Tell me this.” I leaned forward slightly, like I was sharing a secret. “Are you not the king of Insomier?”
“Yes,” he answered.
“And are you not the ruler of this entire kingdom?”
“Yes,” he said again, but in a more doubtful tone. “Where are you going with--”
“And are you not able to do pretty much whatever the hell you want? Regardless of what is proper or decent or accepted by other people?”
“Is this a trick question?” Atlus asked.
“Oh my God, Atlus, just answer the damn question!” I exclaimed, exasperated.
“Yes, I suppose so,” the king concluded.
“Therefore,” I continued, “should you want to, you could come into my chambers for an innocent enough game of chess, and no one would do anything about it, yes?”
“There might be rumors,” Atlus considered, taking the entire hypothetical conversation too seriously.
“Okay, great,” I laid it all out for him. “Worse comes to worst, there are rumors. Big, scary rumors. But if they hurt your feelings too much, you can sentence anyone spreading rumors to death.”
“I would never!” Atlus said, appalled.
“It’s not a real scenario, Atlus,” I appealed. “My point is that you can do damn well whatever you want, and it shouldn’t matter.”
“I could order you to my chambers in order to play chess,” Atlus countered.
“Yes, you could,” I relented, giving him that point. “But then I will make the entire experience as miserable as possible.”
“Then I could have you arrested,” Atlus continued, catching on.
“Yes, you could,” I repeated in the same bland tone as before. “And then you could kill me, but you won’t because you need me to save your kingdom.”
“Actually, you need me,” Atlus countered.
I hadn’t expected this next line. He was supposed to concede. Then I would win, and we would step through the door. Instead, his words struck me dumb, and we were still standing outside my room, playing a very different game of strategy.
“What?” I babbled, still unable to catch on to his meaning.
“You cannot heal anyone unless you beat Hennar at chess,” Atlus explained slowly as if speaking to a child. “You do not know how to play chess very well--”
“I know perfectly well how to play chess!” I interjected.
“Not well enough,” Atlus said with a smirk.
I closed my mouth and swallowed my next argument. I waited for him to proceed.
“I am the best chess player in the kingdom, and not just because I am the king. I really am that good,” Atlus said with confidence. “And I can make you just as good, or damn close. So, you need me to teach you chess so you can beat Hennar again the next time you play him and heal the kingdom.”
“Okay,” I said, dragging the word into three syllables. “Does that mean you’re going to make me play chess in your chambers?”
“It was my study I offered and no,” King Atlus said unexpectedly.
“What?” I put a hand to my forehead and stared blankly at the king. “Wasn’t that the whole point of this disagreement?”
“Not entirely,” Atlus said with a shrug. “I am happy to play in your chambers if that makes you more comfortable, for now. However, we will eventually have to move to an environment that you are not comfortable in. But we can start here if you wish.”
“Everything from the last six minutes makes no sense to me,” I admitted, with a dramatic finger wave to accompany the statement.
“You lost the argument when you thought you had already secured the win,” Atlus pointed out, more lecture than explanation. “You were too focused on your own moves to consider everything I was doing or could do.”
I eyed the king through slits that made him blurry around the edges of my vision. “Atlus. Did you just Miyagi me with some tactical chess knowledge shit?”
“I do not know what that means, but if it translates to that I schooled you in that disagreement on purpose and then turned it into a teachable moment about chess, then yes, I did.” King Atlus grinned with pride, but it quickly vanished when he bowed slightly and gestured towards my door. “After you, my lord.”
I kept my eyes trained on Atlus the whole time while I opened my door and invited him in. I cleared off some space at the table I normally took breakfast at and secretly wished I’d thought to clean up this morning. Or at least remembered the sorry state of my chambers before I welcomed the king into them.
The maroon room was a magnificent place that I had grown to call my own over the last several months since I’d arrived in Insomier. While I kept the original color on the walls, many of them were tattooed with rough paintings, including a couple of nudes of both men and women. Clothes were strewn about the floor, and my bed was unmade. The curtains were always drawn closed and lived with a layer of dust on them.
I quickly lit a couple of lamps and scurried about, picking up random items, gloves, riding boots, and a couple of books, and shoving them out of the way. The king watched and waited patiently as I pushed stuff into corners and under the four-poster bed.
“Did you draw these?” Atlus asked, pointing to one of the more intimate nudes on the wall by the door.
“Uh…” I muttered, distracted by a navy blue sock I had been missing for weeks and just uncovered. “Yeah, I did.”
“It is beautiful work,” Atlus admired.
“Thanks,” I said absently, not really digesting the full weight of what was happening.
The king was complimenting my art, which he had never seen before. He didn’t even know I painted. Most people in Insomier still didn’t. While they all knew about the dragons, my standoff with the king, my healing ability, and the rumors about my foreign origins, I managed to keep my painting a secret.
Come to think of it, no one had been in my room and seen these particular pieces except for Diana and my chambermaid, Mora. As if he read my mind, King Atlus asked about the woman.
“Do you not have a chambermaid? I thought we assigned one to you,” Atlus recalled.
“You did,” I answered with a violent kick to a growing pile of dirty laundry. “Mora. She’s great, but I don’t let her do a lot of stuff.”
“It is her job to serve you,” Atlus informed me as if I didn’t already know that.
“Yes,” I said slowly, not wanting to seem ungrateful. “I’m just u
ncomfortable with having people serve me like that. She tried to do everything for me, and I couldn’t let her. I just couldn’t.”
“Why not?”
I paused and looked at the king. His tone seemed genuine enough, with a curious undertone to it. I decided to appease him with an honest answer because maybe someone who had grown up in such luxury would find it interesting.
“I used to be homeless,” I began, keeping my body still as I spoke. “After my parents died, I couldn’t keep everything together. It was too much. So I sold what I could and struck out on my own. I’m not used to having a lot so this amount of stuff,” I gestured about the room, indicating the entirety of it. “It’s overwhelming. I’m used to doing everything myself because there wasn’t anyone else to do it.”
“I would think that it would be a relief,” Atlus responded with sincere interest. “To finally get some help.”
“Yeah, well,” I struggled to get the words out. “I’m not too good at asking for help.”
“Which is why you didn’t ask for my help with chess lessons,” Atlus deduced. “You had Diana do it.”
“Diana did it of her own accord actually,” I said with one finger raised as if to prove a point. “She does that. Helps when I don’t ask for it.”
“Because she must see that you need it,” Atlus concluded with a furrowed brow. He was thinking as he spoke, reaching the conclusion in real-time. “She knows you well enough to know that you won’t ask for help even when you need it, so she tries to preemptively get you help.”
“I guess,” I said. “I haven’t ever thought of it that way before.”
“She must care for you a great deal,” the king mentioned offhandedly.
I stopped in my tracks. We were reaching dangerous territory, something akin to feelings and secret relationships. Basically, all the things I was not prepared to talk to anyone about, let alone the king.
Though, if I thought about it, this was the longest King Atlus and I had gone without fighting. Sure, it was easy enough to count the spat in the hallway as an argument, but that was nowhere near as bad as it could have been. We’ve been in way worse situations, like threatening to destroy one another, quite literally.
On second thought, it was refreshing to speak to him like this, like a fellow human being.
“I think the table’s clean enough to sit at now,” I said as I pulled out a chair for him.
“Is the room to your standards for guests now?” Atlus said with a teasing tone and a half-smile.
“I don’t get that many guests,” I admitted. “Honestly, I don’t even spend a lot of time in this room.”
“Clearly,” Atlus said sarcastically.
I rolled my eyes at him. “I know. It looks like I live in here. It’s mainly that I don’t get enough time to actually clean it.”
“Maybe, then, you should ask for some help. From someone like, oh, I don’t know, your chambermaid?” King Atlus teased.
He delighted in jesting with me. I could see it in his eyes. I was amused by his efforts, so I didn’t say anything. I only scoffed and changed the subject.
“So, how are we going to play chess without a chess set?” I indicated the bare table in front of us.
“When you were busy tidying up, I sent for one to be brought over.”
Sure enough, the king revealed a travel chess board from beneath the table. It was made of lighter wood with hand-painted squares. The board folded in half, presumably containing the pieces inside. I heard them rattle about when Atlus put the box on the table between the two of us.
He clicked open the latch and lifted the lid. The box was lined with green felt, protecting the pieces from smashing into the walls. It was a handy set, and sturdily made, perfect for its mobile purposes.
Carefully, King Atlus dumped out the pieces onto the table. The black and white wood figures scattered about the surfaces and threatened to fall off, but between the pair of us, we managed to keep them afloat. Atlus flipped the flattened box over, revealing the chessboard. Even grids spread out before us, welcoming and intimidating all at the same time.
We set up each side in silence. I had black in front of me, and Atlus assembled white in front of him. When I placed my final pawn, Atlus was looking at me with a serious and narrow gaze.
“You know the rules, you said,” Atlus checked.
“Yeah,” I confirmed. “My dad taught me how to play.”
“Mine as well,” Atlus said. “I would like to just play a game with you, if I may, and get a sense of your skills.”
“I can tell you that I have some skills when it comes to chess. I did beat Hennar after all.” I smugly told him.
“I will be the judge of that, though I suspect you are right,” the king said. He plucked a white pawn and a black one from the board and mixed them in his hands beneath the table. He held them out for me to choose.
I selected his right, my left, and Atlus revealed a black pawn.
We returned the pieces to their place, and right away, Atlus began by moving his queen’s pawn two spaces forward.
The match continued like this. The room stayed quiet, and we played by the flickering light of the lamps. It went on for a bit, mainly because I kept taking a long time to plot out my next move. Atlus always seemed to know where to move next, immediately making a move after I made mine. It was as though he could read my mind and knew what I was going to do before I did it. I tried not to let his speed intimidate me, but any attempts turned into an utter failure. No more so than when he backed my king into a corner and trapped him there with a queen and a rook.
“Checkmate,” Atlus announced.
I tipped my king over, as was the mark of a loser. “I guess I do have some things to learn from you regarding chess.”
“You are better than you think you are,” Atlus said while resetting the board. His hands moved of their own accord, while his mouth reported his assessment of my gameplay. “You obviously know some of the basic strategies and notice opportune moments to snag pieces. You just don’t protect yourself well and thus leave your army open for attack. Instead of defending, you attack back, and that doesn’t always work well.”
“In other types of combat, it does,” I argued.
Atlus paused his hands and shot me an exasperated glare.
“Sorry, continue,” I said.
“Like most less skilled players, you focus on the short game instead of the long game,” Atlus went on as if he were reading a report card. “You have to start thinking beyond your next move and think of the next eight.”
“Eight?” I said, baffled.
“Well, maybe not eight to start,” Atlus corrected. “But something beyond the next two or three.”
“I wish I could go back to fighting Hennar,” I huffed. “This feels like so much to learn in the next couple of weeks.”
“We will continue to play every day and hope for a late winter,” Atlus said as he pushed his chair back and rose to his feet.
I looked up at him, a little surprised. “You don’t want to play again?”
“Not tonight,” Atlus admitted, “but I will be back tomorrow night?”
“Uh…” I hesitated. Diana was supposed to come over tomorrow night, and it had been a while since we were together. I was looking forward to the time with her, but I couldn’t exactly tell the king, “Sorry, I can’t play chess with you because my secret lover is coming over so I could ride her senseless.”
“Do you have another obligation?” King Atlus asked with a raised eyebrow, as if he knew the dirty thoughts running through my mind right then.
“Not exactly,” I stalled, while I tried to steer my brain back to coming up with a better excuse than the one that I had.
“Need I remind you that we have a finite amount of time until another citizen is corrupted, and you will have to face Hennar again?” Atlus said. I knew he made sense, and I should focus on learning the game, but the thought of Diana’s strong body beneath mine made chess seem more boring than it
already was.
“No,” I said as I steeled myself to focus on what was important. “I will get out of it.”
“Good,” the king said. “I will leave this set with you for practice.”
“Thanks,” I said dully.
“Until tomorrow, Martin,” King Atlus bid me goodnight.
“See you then,” I waved him off.
He left my room, and I slumped my head down onto the table with an audible groan. I hit my forehead against the wood a couple of times until my skin stung. I didn’t want to give myself a welt, but the pain was enough of a distraction from the chess moves running through my mind in tandem with the sex moves I wanted to try on Diana.
Fed up with the whole thing, I pushed the pieces off the board. I flipped it over so that the hollow part was right side up, and I could dump the little knights, bishops, and pawns into the box. I slammed it unnecessarily and closed the clasp with a satisfying click, successfully ridding myself of the sight of the game but unsuccessfully alleviating the cycling thoughts of it.
23
Before too long, the day of the Tournament approached. During the week, I trained with the rest of the inductees and Madame Lilysmyth in the morning. Later I would work in the Zoo and then visit the forest if I could for some painting. In the evenings, I would play chess with King Atlus. We had reached a compromise on location, now meeting in the court library to play every night.
Regardless of our location change, I conceded and asked Mora to clean my room the morning after King Atlus had visited that first time. It was like I had told her she’d won the lottery, she was so excited to help me. When I got back that afternoon, my room was so clean it was like walking into a different dimension. And I would know, considering I had actually done that.
The dust was gone, as well as all the clutter. Clothes were washed and ironed, folded or hung in the fancy boudoir. The bed was made, and the sheets smelled like roses. She has set the chess set up, all the pieces on their appropriate squares, at the center of my eating table. It felt like a cruel joke. Mostly, I took any meals I ate in my room at my desk now, just to avoid the judgment of the two armies.
