by Simon Archer
“Allow me, my lord,” Hennar offered with a slimy voice.
Once I was upright, he released me, and I visibly wiped my hand on my pants. If Hennar saw or was insulted by the gesture, he didn’t show it.
“It is a pleasure to see you again, Martin,” Hennar said. “Though, I do hope you don’t intend to blast me. I assure you, it will not go as well this time as it did the last.”
“No,” I answered honestly. “I intend to play you, just like you want.”
“And have you been practicing?” Hennar said with bouncing eyebrows.
“Yes,” I admitted through gritted teeth.
Hennar clapped his hands, rather similar to Madame Lilysmyth. “Oh, good. Shall we then?”
The false king held out his hand, offering me the table. When he looked over at it, however, his expression grew grave.
“Oh dear, you have caused quite a mess.” Hennar tsked. “This will not do.”
He bent down to pick up the pieces, one by one. I was content to watch and sneer, letting him do it all by himself. The older gentlemen crouched low, bent in half as he scoured the ground. He navigated about until he stood in front of me and then looked up.
“The white king is under your chair,” Hennar said with a point. “Would you permit me to retrieve it?”
The thought of Hennar underneath me and putting me in a vulnerable position had me prickling like a porcupine. “I got it,” I assured him.
I stood up and bent over to try to see the piece. There he was, the white king with his carved crown and stoic, unbendable shape. I got to my knees and plucked the piece from the floor.
When he entered my hand, he shifted. It was subtle, but I saw the crown shift to mimic the one that I’d retrieved from King Atlus right before the corruption struck. While the piece remained white, the carving shifted until there were the same amount of points and indents to represent the jewels.
I stared at it incredulously. Had I done that? Had I changed the piece to resemble something I knew? My gaze shifted up to the white space. I recalled the first time I had been in this space. It was with Ffamran when we had to decide whether or not to bond. I convinced him by painting his homeland, though I hadn’t known it at the time.
I remember manipulating the space to my will, with my paint and my creativity. It had felt so natural and easy then, as freeing as any of my other paintings. The idea crawled up the back of my spine and lodged itself in my brain like a parasite. It ate its way through the unease I felt until it reached the anger and hatred I felt for this man. It mixed with my fierce determination and formed into a plan.
“Martin?” Hennar asked, breaking through my thoughts. “Did you find him?”
I wrapped my hand around the king, letting his sharp edges bite into my skin, more comforting than painful.
“Yes,” I answered.
I sat in the seat opposite of Hennar and placed the king in his spot on the board. Hennar held out two hands to me, indicating that I should pick one. I selected his left, and he revealed the white pawn. I hid my smile of delight and instead plucked it from his hand and set it back where it should go.
Hennar, finally, sat down. “Might I also say that you look quite dapper tonight?”
“You may say it, I guess,” I countered, that slimy feeling dripping from me again.
“You begin,” Hennar said with a nod.
I moved my king’s pawn forward, and the game began. It was difficult to play for the first couple of rounds. I had to wait for the right time. I needed to pretend that I actually gave a damn about this game and didn’t have the winning move up my sleeve. It wasn’t until we were eighteen moves in that I decided to act.
I picked up a knight and moved it in its perfect L shape. However, while the piece was in my hand, I pictured one of my bishops, the long slender piece with his circular point at the top. The knight transformed into the new piece before I placed him back on the board.
“Check,” I announced.
Hennar eyed the bishop suspiciously. “I thought you picked up your knight.”
“No,” I said with a blink of innocent eyes. “My knight is here.”
Then I pointed to the knight who had appeared in the bishop’s former spot. Hennar looked back and forth between the two pieces and then up to me.
“I see,” Hennar muttered. “My mistake.”
The false king moved his own king out of the way of the threat from the bishop.
I only got to do this manipulation twice more before Hennar snapped.
“Something is wrong,” Hennar said, more to the piece than to me.
“Other than the fact that you tricked me into playing a game of chess over a man’s life that you infected in the first place, I don’t see anything else wrong,” I admitted with fake ease to my voice.
“It is your pieces,” Hennar concluded. “Are you changing your pieces?”
“I don’t know what you are talking about,” I said as I moved my ‘queen’ into a position. “Check.”
“You are!” Hennar said, astonished. “Your queen was over there before. There is no way she can be checking my king right now.”
“But there she is,” I reasoned, holding out my hand to put my queen on display.
“You are a cheat,” Hennar accused with a stiff finger in my face.
“Not any worse than you,” I threw back at him. “You are a liar, murderer, and despicable person. It’s easy to believe you came from my world.”
“Ah,” Hennar said as he sat back in his seat. “You found out.”
“Yeah,” I said. “Not like it matters much, but it makes sense how everyone here thought Garham invented chess and that you play it so well.”
“You would be correct,” Hennar said, absently moving a pawn to block my attack on his king. “But you are also a cheater, and I refuse to play with cheaters.”
“I will do whatever it takes to defeat you,” I said as I took the pawn with my rook and declared, “Checkmate.”
“It is not real,” Hennar countered.
“Yes, it is,” I argued. “You never said that I had to win fairly. You just said I had to win.”
Hennar swallowed. I watched his Adam’s apple bob uncomfortably. “You would not be wrong.”
With a flick of his finger, Hennar knocked over his king, and it clattered against the wooden board.
“Exactly.” I put both of my hands on the edge of the table and leaned forward with a sinister sneer. “Now, heal the king.”
“I will heal him,” Hennar said as he rubbed his thumb and pointer finger together like he was rubbing off a speck of paint. “But I cannot guarantee he won’t get sick again.”
“Oh, didn’t you hear?” I said, full of triumph and smugness. “We found your traitor. All of her sources of corruption are being burned as we speak. Your time in court has come to an end.”
“You say that,” Hennar said with a shrug, “but there will be more corruption. Mark my words, Martin Anthony, my time in court will have a long reign.”
“And I’ll be waiting here to stop you, Hennar,” I retorted with a smile.
The faint growl in the back of Hennar’s throat betrayed a hint of distress under his careful mask, but before I could say more, he dismissed me with a wave of his wrist. The table dissolved from between us, and he faded into black smoke. My vision returned me back to the king’s chambers, back to kneeling beside the sickly king.
Rebekah had her hand on the king’s forehead and paid me no mind as I reappeared, shaken and stirred by Hennar’s challenge.
“His fever broke,” Rebekah said excitedly. “Martin, you did it. You healed him!”
Yeah, for now, I thought ominously as Hennar’s threat still rang in my ears.
43
I should have felt better than I did. The king was healed and recovering, the traitor was in jail to await her sentencing day, and I was able to heal the others without confronting Hennar again. It was slow going since I had to recover after each healing. However, I m
ade my rounds throughout the court, and the mending began. Everyone welcomed me into their homes without judgment or criticism.
I should feel accomplished. Elated. On cloud nine. Instead, the brief recompense I felt after healing the king dissolved and left me with harried, confused, and in a daze. If I wasn’t out and about appeasing the court, I stayed in my room. It had only been forty-eight hours since Atlus came back to life. Yet I secluded myself, leaving me alone with my thoughts.
My mind was consumed with the last conversation Hennar and I had. Since beating him at chess and throwing his own stipulations and rules in his face, it appeared as though I scared him off. When I went to heal someone else, ready for another tricky match, nothing happened. I was never transported to the white space. I stayed with the light and pieced apart the darkness within the noble until it dissipated.
It still took the wind out of me to pull enough light into the corruption, but it was refreshing to not have to compete with Hennar. Nevertheless, the false king had a lasting impact on me, like a temporary tattoo that still left flakes of ink no matter how hard you scrubbed. I couldn’t decipher the conversation, find the root of it.
Additionally, the fear of future corruptions plagued me like an illness itself. I laid in my bed, staring at the maroon canopy as if the subtext of his words would appear in the tapestry. Hennar warned me that there would be more infections to come. Not just within the kingdom, but specifically within the court. His reign was just beginning…
What on Earth did that cocky son of bitch mean?
Sometimes, I wanted to tell Alona, Diana, Rebekah, or any of the dragons. They tried to check on me from time to time, but I always made up some excuse about needing to visit another family in the court. Part of me wanted to confess everything to them, but after discovering Maria’s betrayal, I wanted to keep my information close to the chest. I wanted to have some sort of plan before I came to them.
However, surprisingly, it wasn’t any of them that I confessed my sins to. No, it was to Vanna Dyers, who I visited immediately after I discovered Hennar had abandoned our chess match. Her son deserved my full attention, and I wanted to alleviate any additional worry.
I stood at Miji’s bedside, having finished dissecting the corruption, while Vanna stroked his hair. My breathing labored, and my legs struggled to stand. I wanted to support Vanna, but I could barely stand upright. My energy drained from my limbs like steam from hot water, and I leaned against a nearby wall.
Vanna looked up at me and reached out for me. “Martin, take a seat. Please.”
“No, I’m okay,” I tried to protest, but the natural mother in Vanna wouldn’t hear another word.
“Sit,” she commanded. “You have done your job. Miji is healed, and now it is your time to let yourself do the same. Let me get you some water.”
Vanna did as she promised and poured me a mug of clean water. We sat at their large family table while the other children played in a nearby room, and Styu worked out in the shop. Muffled cries of delight and giggles faded in through the thin walls, and my soul felt at ease, knowing that young Miji would soon be joining them again.
“I’m sorry I couldn’t get here sooner,” I apologized, not for the first time.
“I knew you would come when you could,” Vanna assured me. “It was difficult, seeing my son so unlike himself. These weeks were some of the hardest we’ve lived through.”
I opened my mouth to apologize again, but Vanna cut me off by putting a hand on mine. “But we had faith in you, Martin. We have always had faith in you. It helps, too, that we have a child who can see the future and reassures that Miji will live to get married one day.”
“I’m terrified for the day when Maji tells me I won’t succeed,” I muttered, revealing more of myself than I had in a while.
“She hasn’t seen anything of the sort,” Vanna said defensively.
“And yet...” I replied grimly, my voice trailing off into a sigh.
“What has got you so down?” Vanna asked with the knowing stare of a mother. “I know healing exhausted you, but this,” she pointed her fingers and used it to circle my face, “is not that. This comes from too much mental exhaustion. What is worrying you?”
So I laid it out for Vanna. I told her about the change in the noble’s attitudes towards me and how Maria’s betrayal still bothered me. She wounded me after we had shared an intimate moment, so the betrayal stung deeper. I talked about Bailey-Sue and how she visited her friend every day, convinced of her innocence, and how that felt knowing that I loved the caretaker as more than a friend. Now, she would just see me as Maria’s jailer. How I wanted to be able to be with Rebekah, Alona, Bailey-Sue, Maria, and Diana without any of these complications. I finished by reciting Hennar’s ominous promise.
During the whole conversation, Vanna simply listened. The woman refilled my glass and stoked the fire, but her attention never faltered.
“Do you know why Maria did what she did?” Vanna wondered after I ended my venting session with a viable collapse of my head into my hands.
I looked up at Vanna but kept my arms flat on the table. “No.”
“Something is missing there,” Vanna said with a wag of her finger. “I understand that all signs point to her, but what’s bothering you is the why.”
“Why?” I repeated, not really understanding.
“Why she did it,” Vanna clarified. “Not the how, you figured that part out, but what is eating at you is why she did it. You cannot make sense of it, and that is bothering you.”
“I definitely would have thought it was the evil guy telling me he wasn’t finished,” I said, only half-joking.
“That too,” Vanna said with a shrug, “but Hennar will not stop until he himself is defeated. There is no other way to handle that kind of insanity.”
“Yeah, but I don’t even know how to do that!” I argued. “All I can do right now is keep trying to clean up his mess.”
“Maybe you can ask Maria,” Vanna suggested.
“Oh, that will go over well.” I rolled my eyes. “Hey, Maria, you know how you decided to corrupt the entire court? Yeah, do you know where Hennar is and how to defeat him?”
“Maybe with a little more tact,” Vanna said as she nudged my shoulder, “you might have a chance. At the very least, talking to her might take one or two things off your plate.” She had a slight twinkle in her eye when she spoke, and I fought a smirk down. With that done, she beckoned me forward, pulled me into a tight hug, and whispered into my ear. “Thank you for saving my son.”
“Thank you for all you and your family do for me,” I replied, growing teary-eyed. “I couldn’t stand the thought of losing any of them.”
“We do not want to lose you either, yes?” Vanna pulled away from me and held my head in both of her hands. “Go home, get some rest, so that you can help more people tomorrow.”
When I left Vanna’s house, I had intended to listen to her about resting. However, my feet guided me down into the bowels of the court, rather than up to my room. Empowered by my conversation with Vanna, I thought I might follow through on her other piece of advice. Therefore, I weaved my way through a series of staircases to head to the dungeons.
I approached the guards at the top of the landing. It was a dark and dank hallway that led to the prison. While there was a smattering of lit torches, it was difficult to see more than ten feet in front of me. The shadow of the flame flicked over the stone and blinked into my eye.
I lowered my head and acknowledged the guards with a bow. “Lord Anthony here to see the prisoner Maria Poulis.”
“Of course, Lord Anthony,” the guards said. He unlocked the door for me and handed me a lit torch. “She is in the farthest cell down the first hall.”
“Thank you,” I said with another small bow. I took his offering of the torch and descended into the dungeons.
After I saved King Atlus’s life, Rebekah asked me how I had gotten in the chambers. It didn’t seem to matter at the time, but she was
concerned about how I got past her guards. In response, I simply opened the door to the chambers where Korey stood on the other side. The guards were tied up to the balcony edges, dangling with their heads over the side.
Korey shrugged nonchalantly and said, “Don’t look at me, this was all Martin. They would not let him in.”
Since that moment, Rebekah gave the guards permission to let me into any room in the court I wished to enter. Unless it was someone’s private quarters, I was permitted into any section of the castle at any time. If I had more time and less worry, I would have abused this privilege to explore everything. However, after healing people most of the day, I didn’t feel like taking an adventure.
Yet, when I needed to make an unscheduled visit to the jail, the universal pass came in handy.
This was one part of the castle I had yet to go to. The walls stood strong and intimidating with a layer of hard stone. The ceilings were low and didn’t accommodate my tall frame, so I had to hunch over when traveling down the narrow hallways. The only light came from the torches, which were far and few between. Insomier took to punishing their prisoners with limited light, damp cold, and a stale smell. Anyone could develop a serious case of claustrophobia since the walkways were only wide enough for one person, and the cells themselves couldn’t be bigger than eight feet wide.
Taking deep breaths, I navigated my way through the maze of cells. Most were unoccupied. However, those that contained humans rotting away the rest of their lives made my skin crawl. Some would pop out their faces through the bars, like flowers turning towards the light. Others would howl at the sight of me, more like vampires protecting themselves from the sun.
Feelings mixed together in a confusing and tumultuous swirl. My stomach responded with rocking nausea even though I was the furthest place from a boat or the sea. The intensity only worsened when I approached Maria’s cell. I only knew it was hers because Bailey-Sue sat on a petite stool on the other side of the bars.
The caretaker looked up at me as I approached. Her face curved into one of desperation. She immediately rose to her feet and rushed towards me.