Grey’s eyes narrowed down to slits. “How they cannot see the depravation in your every word and action is beyond me.”
“As this most recent iteration of the Game began, I feared just that.” Zed’s smile returned. “But then I realized something.” The wizard in black drew uncomfortably close to his opposite. “After witnessing you, the supposed paragon of all that’s good and right in this world, destroy in Antarctica the very construct you now seem hellbent on preserving, leaving friend and foe dead in the wake of your decision, it would seem the two sides of this little Game we play are no longer so black and white. Would that be fair to say…Grey?”
In a move that seemed more from Emilio’s playbook, Grey’s hand balled into a fist and was well on its way to impact Zed’s face when Steven caught his arm.
“Whoa, Grey,” he said. “Don’t let him push your buttons.”
“Trust me, Steven. They are all well and truly pushed.” Grey sucked in a deep breath in a vain attempt to brush off Zed’s taunts. “As well he knows.”
“So,” Zed said to the group at large, “it seems that neither removing you from the board nor shifting you to a time and place where you are no longer a nuisance has proven effective at keeping the lot of you from being a collective thorn in my side.” He returned his attention to Grey. “Therefore, as distasteful as I may find it, you have left me no choice. If it is a third slaughter you want…” His eyes cut to Niklaus, who jerked back as if struck. “It is a slaughter you will get.” He offered the slightest of bows. “Until we meet again.”
Before any of them could so much as inhale to make a response, Zed disappeared through another dark doorway in space, as if he were never there. No one said a word. The hair rose on Steven’s neck, both in response to the barrage of threats as well as the oddness at seeing not one person in the crowded coffee shop so much as blink an eye at the bizarre turn of events.
Zed’s cloak of anonymity had clearly been working overtime.
“So this is how it is to be.” Grey sat back at the table and rested his forehead on his palms. “What I intended as an act of supreme kindness for the world has instead descended into an exercise in abject cruelty.”
“That wasn’t your intent.” Lena rested a comforting hand on Grey’s shoulder. “All of us know that.”
“It doesn’t change the reality.” Grey met each of their gazes in turn. “This boulder I’ve sent hurtling down the mountain of time cannot be stopped, and each one of you rests in its path.” He pounded the table. “Gods. I swore that this time I would keep myself from getting close. Friendship clouds judgment.”
“I don’t know.” Steven glanced across the table at Audrey. “Sometimes when you care, things become surprisingly clear.”
“We’ll kick his ass.” Emilio sent a punch into his own palm. “Isn’t that what you were saying on the way here, Archie?”
The priest lowered his head and ran his fingers along his newly cropped scalp. “With our return to the time of this most recent iteration of the Game, the visions have again retreated. But one thing is clear from what I’ve already seen: this particular gathering of the White embraces an aspect none of the others ever has.”
They all waited expectantly for Archie to complete his thought, and in practiced pulpit style he held out the moment for as long as he could.
“A sense of…family,” he proclaimed eventually, the proud smile on his face sending Steven’s self-doubt into overdrive.
“Pardon?” This new voice came from behind Niklaus’ massive form. He shifted out of the way, revealing a young Asian woman of college age standing with a yellowed envelope in her hands. “But since you’re speaking of family…”
Emilio tensed, but a gentle brush from Lena’s hand convinced him to hold his tongue. Niklaus, Audrey, and even Grey looked on in surprise and wonder, though none were as flabbergasted as Archie.
“And who might you be?” Steven asked.
“My name is Sumire.” She bowed her head and held out the envelope. “And you are…Steven Bauer, are you not?”
“I am.” He took the envelope. “Have we met?”
“No.” She smiled. “But, strange as it sounds, you knew my great-great-grandmother.”
Steven inspected the envelope. His own name, scrawled across the center in familiar script, quickened his pulse. “Your great-great-grandmother?”
“Just read the letter, Mr. Bauer. As I understand it, all you need to know and more than I could ever explain waits inside.”
Steven carefully tore into the yellowed envelope and pulled out two pages of equally familiar stationery. The tiny script began with a simple salutation in the upper left corner.
He read aloud.
Dearest Steven Bauer,
As I sit here, years after our paths last parted ways, I look back upon our brief crossing (pardon the play on words) and remember you and your friends with the deepest gratitude.
My time on this side of the veil is quickly approaching its end and as someone who understands the siren call of a mystery, I will answer one of many questions that likely remain in your mind, though if you read this at the juncture I intend, you no doubt have many more pressing matters weighing on your thoughts, so I will be brief.
I purposefully kept my identity a secret until such time that you had returned to your point of origin to keep from muddying the waters of time. Were I you, I might have been tempted to seek me out instead of moving forward. If you are reading this, then all the answers I might have provided, you have already discovered on your own, which is best.
Please know that my life since I was very small has been the very definition of conflicting loyalties.
Loyalty to blood versus loyalty to my adoptive father.
Loyalty to that family versus loyalty to those who saved that very family.
Loyalty to the people closest to me versus loyalty to the world at large.
Like your mentor, who I pray is sitting beside you as you read this, my final letter to you, I strive for balance in all things. Fairness. Justice. In this, I went against the wishes of the man you know as the Black King and attempted to aid you in your safe return to your own time. Some would argue that my actions were foreordained and that all I have done was already written somewhere in the stars. But I believe we all make decisions each day that change everything, not the least of which, the balance of good and evil in our own souls.
I love the man that Zed has proven he can be as much as I loved my own father.
I hate the man that Zed has allowed himself to become more than I can fathom.
This war in my heart has been the hardest balance of all to achieve. Trust me on this.
Fight him, Steven Bauer. Do not let his madness engulf the earth.
But fight this battle, this war, not out of hate for the man who raised me to be the very woman writing to you now but out of love for the world that would suffer from the avarice and insanity that has engulfed him.
My request may sound impossible, but I have no doubt the man who risked everything to stop and save my sister, even when the fate of the world was at stake, would understand.
Fare thee well, Steven Bauer. May you and your friends comport yourselves with honor as you fight for what is right, and in the end, may goodness prevail, for all our sakes.
-Kiku
Steven locked gazes with the girl. “You were instructed to seek us out here?”
Sumire checked her phone. “On this date, at this very time.” A slight blush colored her cheeks. “I’ve been waiting for hours.” Her eyes glistened, a wellspring of emotion. “That man. Was he my great-great-grandmother’s adoptive father?”
She saw him, Steven considered. Or at least some version of him.
“In every way that counts.” Steven took a breath. “Yes, Sumire. That was Zed.”
“All these years I’ve awaited this day.” She shook as tears began to flow. “I never dreamed any of it could be true, much less that I’d see it—him—with my own eyes.”
“You know we’re destined to fight him, right?” Steven held up Kiku’s letter. “To the death, if need be.”
“I understand.” Sumire turned to leave. “Before I go, though, one last thing?”
Steven laid the letter on the table before him and stood. “Of course.”
“This ‘Game’ you’re about to play for the fate of the world…” She crossed her arms, steeling herself for the answer. “What happens if you lose?”
TO BE CONCLUDED
Author’s Note
The whole is greater than the sum of its parts.
Aristotle
Welcome to the end of the second act of this three-part story I’ve been either writing or preparing to write for as long as I can remember. As we saw at the end of the last chapter, the White stand gathered once more after having been dispersed through time by Zed and his dark machinations. Ready for the battle to come in the final book of this story, we must now take a pause so my heroes can catch their breath, and so I can write another 100,000 words. The coming conflict has been brewing in my head for over three decades and I’m already hard at work at closing this story with the endgame this particular game of chess deserves.
If you enjoyed this middle section of The Pawn Stratagem, consider yourself lucky, as the events chronicled herein were not a part of the original story I imagined. In its original conception, the story was basically supposed to involve gathering together all the pieces and then proceed straight into a battle to end all battles in a single volume. That’s it. As I was writing Pawn’s Gambit, however, it became clear very quickly that unless I was going to try to sell a doorstopper as my debut novel (a rarity, though it does happen), I was going to have to break the story up into more than one book. Thus, the first part of The Pawn Stratagem became a “gambit” where Steven, against all odds, assembled all the various pieces of the White. This change, in turn, necessitated another book to chronicle the resulting battle.
But, as anyone reading this series likely knows by now, chess games don’t involve just a beginning and ending. For the most part—unless you find yourself on the wrong end of a fool’s mate—they consist of three parts: an opening, a middle game, and an endgame (a term that is strangely on everyone’s tongue here in May of 2019.) If the opening gambit was the first part and the inevitable conflict to decide the fate of the world the third, then I needed to create a middle ground, some additional connective tissue, a place to get to know better all these awesome people we’d just met before sending them off to fight for their lives.
And how better to get to know someone than see what happens when you remove them from their comfort zone and pair them off with someone they don’t know all that well?
I have to be honest: writing this book was a ton of fun. Way more fun, in fact, than I imagined it would be. Though everything in this story needed to point back in some way to the main story, sending people anywhere you wanted in American history and then seeing what they did once they got there was extremely freeing, a pantser’s dream. As a result of this truly freeform experiment, a lot of connections that would never have been made had we stuck with “Plan A” suddenly sprang to life, bringing new depths to these characters and situations I had never dreamed of. As Steven keeps discovering, sometimes things are simply meant to be.
And now, as always, time for a few acknowledgements.
To my critique group of Matthew Saunders and Caryn Sutorus, thank you for taking the time to always provide such top-notch observations about my writing, characters, and story. I’ve done my best to incorporate your sage advice at every turn of this twisty maze of a story and the resulting book is the better for your efforts.
To my friends and fellow creators in Charlotte Writers, thank you for ten years of support, for smiles and laughter, and for always being there. Keep writing!
To John Hartness at Falstaff Books, thank you again for taking a chance on this series. I dedicate Book Two to you and everyone at Falstaff for helping me bring the adventures of Steven and his friends to the world.
To Melissa Gilbert, thank you as always for your outstanding editing and proofreading. There is no story so polished that you can’t make it shine even more. Also, thank you for the beautiful cover that graces these carefully edited pages…
To the fine folks at Starbucks on East Boulevard in Charlotte, NC, as well as the Park Road Caribou Coffee (the only one left in my immediate vicinity, in fact), thanks for your excellent service, not to mention sustenance, during the countless hours I’ve spent at your respective establishments as I’ve pounded out the words found between these covers. They say that writers are strange organisms that consume caffeine and produce words and I appreciate you keeping this particular writer fed and watered over the last decade.
As always, an eternal shout out to all my teachers and professors that helped make me the writer and person I am today. Keep doing what you do. Your noble work grows more important every year.
To my Mom and Dad who just celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary, thanks for always being there and for being the example of how to keep a promise, be it to yourself or another human being. I love you both.
Lastly, to all the many readers who have been waiting a LONG time for this next chapter in the adventures of Steven Bauer and company, enjoy. I hope this book was worth the wait.
About the Author
Darin Kennedy, born and raised in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, is a graduate of Wake Forest University and Bowman Gray School of Medicine. After completing family medicine residency in the mountains of Virginia, he served eight years as a United States Army physician and wrote his first novel in the sands of northern Iraq, a novel that started this very trilogy. He is currently hard at work on the third and final book in the series.
His Fugue and Fable trilogy, also available from Falstaff Books, was born from a fusion of two of his lifelong loves: classical music and world mythology. The Mussorgsky Riddle, The Stravinsky Intrigue, and The Tchaikovsky Finale, are the beginning, middle, and end of the closest he will likely ever come to writing his own symphony. His short stories can be found in numerous anthologies and magazines, and the best, particularly those about a certain Necromancer for Hire, are collected for your reading pleasure under Darin’s imprint, 64Square Publishing.
Doctor by day and novelist by night, he writes and practices medicine in Charlotte, NC. When not engaged in either of the above activities, he has been known to strum the guitar, enjoy a bite of sushi, and, rumor has it, he even sleeps on occasion. Find him online at darinkennedy.com.
Also by Darin Kennedy
Fugue & Fable
The Mussorgsky Riddle
The Stravinsky Intrigue
The Tchaikovsky Finale
The Pawn Stratagem
Pawn’s Gambit
Queen’s Peril
King’s Crisis (forthcoming)
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Copyright © 2016 by Darin Kennedy
Cover by Melissa McArthur
Author jacket photo by Michael Church Photography
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form
or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
This book is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to any person, living or dead, is coincidental.
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