Like I was capable of computing chess permutations.
“—you will be able to use your knowledge of your opponent’s tactics against him more effectively, something impossible if you introduce random factors into the equation. Use his momentum to let him maneuver himself into his own destruction.”
“Is that what Senhora Ahlgren does?”
I’d hit a sore point. Sra. Ahlgren is one of the other cryptanalysts, and she beats my boss at chess nine times out of ten, although he never makes a technical mistake. She’s a world-class grandmaster, which doesn’t make it any easier for him to bear.
“As I said,” my boss replied, putting my queen out of her misery, “I do not like the game—and no, not only because she occasionally wins.”
I made a vaguely affirming noise. I thought the conversation was over, and it was for that game and the next one. But two games later, he picked it up again.
“Consider the chessboard before play begins,” he said, putting the last pawn into place. “Two colors, each in its place. Two rows on each side, identical in setup. Perfect balance, perfect harmony, perfect order. Then the game begins, and what happens?”
“Black sticks its head in the sand while white attacks.”
“Exactly: one side moves; the other does not. Balance is lost. The pieces intermix. Some are removed from the equation. Pawns turn into knights. Chaos ensues. One side wins by destroying the other—restoring balance by way of annihilation.”
“You could refuse to play,” I pointed out.
“I could,” he agreed, “except what then? Someone sets up the board, moves a piece. Order is lost, and I can restore it only by playing the game to completion.”
“To annihilating the enemy.”
“Or to being annihilated myself.”
“Which is better than a little disorder?”
He inclined his head, and we played on in silence. I was a far superior player to when he’d first brought out the chessboard, about a year ago, which didn’t stop me from losing soundly.
I sighed and knocked over my poor abused king for the sixth time in six games. “If you ask me,” I said, “chess is a poor analogy for the conquering of a kingdom.”
“You do not see any parallel between the strategy of generals on the battlefield and the movement of pieces?”
“Sure I see a parallel,” I said, “but battlefields aren’t the only way to defeat the opposing king and put oneself in power. For one thing, the conqueror may come from inside the country instead of the next kingdom over.”
“Careful, Mercedes.”
I shook my head to show him that I wasn’t about to blab anything I shouldn’t, and clarified, “I mean, it’s not how I would go about making myself king—even if I had my own army, which I don’t.”
My boss’s eyes sparkled with uncommon mischief. “It would be far easier for you to marry the king.”
“That wouldn’t make me king, only consort—and he already has an heir.”
My boss nodded, giving up the point but countering, “You could be the power behind the throne, which is much more effective and much less dangerous than sitting upon it.” He held up one of my pawns—white this time—and placed it on his side of the board. “Queen me. An excellent analogy.”
I put another pawn next to his. “King me,” I said. “Except you can’t do that in chess, can you.”
He took the pawn and began setting up the board again, so he could trounce me a seventh time. Like he needed the practice.
“As I see it,” I said, “there are two ways to make yourself king: by force or by invitation. Using force requires an army behind you, and unless that army is so overwhelmingly enormous that the other side surrenders immediately, you’re looking at heavy casualties, broken morale, and unstable politics. You leave the losing side terrified and the winning side in danger of rebellion. If you make yourself king that way, you’d better be darn sure of your power, the loyalty of your subordinates, and your ability to protect yourself.”
“A king only rules by consent of his people,” my boss murmured, for the moment distracted from beginning the game. “Go on.”
“That leaves invitation. Don’t make yourself king—convince everyone else to make you king. A propaganda campaign helps, but you need something to back it up. Say the country has an imminent disaster—you can create one if there isn’t anything available. Solve that disaster, and everyone is happy, you’re lauded as a hero . . . and you’ve got a foothold. Time for a new crisis that only you can solve.”
“Like the Roman dictators,” my boss said.
I blinked at him. I’m mostly accustomed to my boss’s tremendous breadth of knowledge, but since military history and strategy are my area of expertise, I’d thought for once—
“In times of crisis, the Senate would elect a temporary dictator,” my boss explained, taking my surprise for confusion, “that is, a military commander, for a term to solve the crisis. Typically, the dictator—Julius Caesar did this—would solve the problem and then refuse to give up power.”
“Basically, yes,” I said. “Except that instead of seizing power as they did—which goes back to making myself king—I’d simply keep the crises going until they begged me to stay for good. Between solving crises, my propaganda campaigns, and a few surgical assassinations, I’d become and remain king through popular demand. We’re assuming, of course, that I have the intelligence, knowledge, personal charisma, and lack of morals to achieve this.”
My boss smiled indulgently and moved a pawn. “All in all, wonderfully analogous to chess: moving people in predictable patterns toward a final goal.”
“Personally,” I said, “I prefer capture the flag. Or murder in the dark.”
This train ran right to the border, which it reached at 2:58 a.m. There, adventurous souls could hire ponies and guides to take them across Plisp to Vela or Akter. Personally, I’ve never seen much appeal in traveling that way—through the wastes and past the wind-warped trees of the neutral territory connecting our nations—when there are perfectly serviceable ferries. But maybe one day I’d buy a really good windbreaker, travel to the southernmost outcropping of Plisp, and look toward the South Pole—just to be able to say I had.
My boss and I weren’t traveling as far as the border tonight: we reached our stop at 2:25 a.m. Frigid night air whipped my breath away as I stepped out onto the platform, and I instantly wished I’d brought a ski mask after all. We were a good 150 miles closer to the Pole here, and I hadn’t realized how big a difference that’d make. I turned up my collar and jammed on my hat before looking over to my boss, who was calmly hiding his luminously pale face under a woolly green scarf.
No one else had alighted with us. There wasn’t anywhere to miss them; the platform was only a platform, without a ticket booth or shelter anywhere to be seen. No one in their right mind would arrive here at half past two in the morning, with no light beyond a single orange lamp and no possibility of a taxi.
As the train rumbled off, I hiked up my backpack and followed my boss down old wooden steps and toward the town beyond.
“Town,” by the way, is a misnomer. Edenfield Prefecture’s capital is by far the dinkiest in Carina. It’s called Gjerde, and it has 171 inhabitants, most of whom spend three-quarters of the year away on border duty. The train station was built about a century ago by some optimistic but unrealistic soul who’d placed it a mile outside of town to allow for expansion.
He’d have been better off laying the tracks through the center of town to allow for contraction. Edenfield has the smallest population of any prefecture but the third largest landmass (after Canopus and Batata). The bays separating Carina from her neighbors are at their narrowest here, which means that Edenfield effectively borders Akter and Vela on three sides. Those able-bodied men and women who aren’t lumberjacks are border patrollers—some knights, some lower-ranking prefectsmen, all underpaid and overworked.
Hopefully, that meant there would be few to no knights guarding t
he prefect’s manor. That, along with the prefect’s general character, the manor’s isolation, and the distance from Avior and Lindo Prefectures, was why my boss had chosen it.
I could have done with it being less cold, though.
Gjerde hadn’t sprung for streetlamps any more than its train station had, so our way was lit only by a half moon and a sky full of stars—plenty of light to see by, but not enough that we had to worry about being seen.
The town came and passed in a single block of houses, a church, and a general store, and then the road narrowed to a paved lane. Woods crept in on either side—beech trees with plenty of room for gloomy paths beneath their ancient trunks and not much in the way of undergrowth. The sort of woods that are great for walking through and terrible for hiding in.
We’d completed our third mile, and I was warm going on hot, when the paved lane spilled into a wide gravel loop. The tree line spilled away too, as if pushed back by trolls to make room for a lawn on either side of the manor.
Edenfield Manor. I’d never seen it in person before, but I couldn’t have mistaken it for anything else. It loomed out of the darkness, white-painted wood interrupted by dark crosshatching and curtained windows. My initial impression was that the manor stretched into the distance, staggeringly enormous, ferociously forbidding.
“It is built into the hillside,” my boss murmured, almost too low to catch. “There is the knighthouse.” He pointed left, and I picked it out with difficulty.
“It looks empty,” I commented, no louder than he. The knighthouse had been built to match the manor and stood slightly detached from its northeast corner. It was unlit and smaller than my apartment, both of which facts struck me as promising.
My boss contemplated the manor, comparing it to the information he’d dug up on it and drawing various conclusions. Then he nodded and indicated the left side.
My eyebrows went up. Personally, I’d have picked the side without the knighthouse, but no doubt he knew something I didn’t. Anyway, this wasn’t the time to argue about it.
I headed due east into the trees, on the theory that staying behind a layer of them would make me less visible than striding directly across the lawn. Plant debris softened my footfalls, and the gentle sounds of a woods at night shielded me—though I suspected no one was watching anyway.
I circled the lawn until I came up against the hillside. It was mostly dirt and rock down here, but it climbed suddenly and steeply—too steeply to easily scale—and it stretched up into the line of mountains that protected the south and east edges of Edenfield from Plisp’s brutal winds. The manor wasn’t so big, in comparison.
Starlight gleamed off three windows on the ground floor, two more above that, and two on the top level. The crosshatching stuck out enough that I thought I could climb it to an upper window, especially if I left the backpack behind. On the whole, though, I preferred sticking to the ground floor.
I edged along the side of the manor and pressed my nose to the first window. Moonlight shone through the curtain crack, illuminating a slash of rumpled bedding. An ear to the window confirmed that it was occupied by either a vacuum cleaner or a sleeper who snored like one.
I moved on to the next window, which was to the same bedroom, and then to a third. The curtains on this third were properly closed, but an ear to the glass met with silence. Either the room was empty or the sleeper didn’t snore—and the latter was almost as good as the former. Snoring means shallow, unhealthy sleep that’s easy to disturb. Silent sleepers are deep sleepers: easier to wake than the dead, but not by much.
I ran my fingers around the window frame and grinned. It must’ve been older than the rail station, and no one had bothered to upgrade it. Who’d break in to Edenfield Manor?
Glad my boss couldn’t see me (he thought I was looking for unlocked entrances), I jimmied the window, swept aside the curtain—and found another bedroom. Twin beds, unnecessarily disturbing lemur clock, and . . . no sleepers. A children’s room without children. The current prefect had never married.
In other words, a perfect room for clambering into.
There wasn’t any light to speak of in the hallway, but I didn’t dare use my flashlight yet. I felt my way along the wall to each room, mentally mapping and cataloging. I listened intently before opening doors, and none were locked.
It didn’t take long to establish that the east wing was the family suite. In addition to the bedrooms—the occupied one surely belonged to Lord Bo Holst, the current Prefect Edenfield—I found a study, various closets and bathrooms, and stairs to the cellar.
(I didn’t go down. The gust of damp and mold told me everything I needed to know.)
Between east and west wings was an open area: foyer to the north, sitting room on one side of the front entrance, and coat closet on the other. Opposite were the main stairs and the dining room, which connected to the kitchen.
The kitchen began the west wing, which also included servants’ quarters (occupied by elderly breathing—the Gulbransens, according to my boss), servants’ stairs, conference room, and two-car garage.
No one was awake on the ground floor, and if anyone was awake on the others, he was staying awfully quiet.
I felt my way back to the front entrance and peered out the peephole before silently unlocking the door and pulling it open. My boss arrived a few seconds later to slip inside and follow me to the conference room. He used the flashlight—he’s not the kind of man who goes fumbling through the dark, and taking his sleeve would have been an unpardonable liberty. Anyway, I was sure enough by then that no one was about to catch us. But I did hold off flicking on the overhead light until I’d secured the shutters and curtains. Then, without hurrying—there wasn’t enough time to make mistakes—my boss set up the equipment while I watched.
“I found the basement,” I told him while he worked. “It’s extremely damp.”
Too damp, in fact, to plant spy equipment with any expectation of it still functioning in two weeks’ time. I can’t pretend I was sorry about that. Basements might be more suitably creepy than other rooms, but I hate them. Always have.
“We will use the attic then,” my boss said. “Lead on.”
I returned the windows to their previous state and guided him to the main stairs.
Every prefect’s manor is designed to host the yearly prefects’ conference, which means nine spare bedrooms: enough for eight visiting prefects and the king. The prefects aren’t allowed to bring extra personnel, not even their head knights. The king can bring anyone he wants, but if that’s more than a few bodyguards, they’ll have to camp outside or stay in town.
I expected the extra bedrooms were what we’d find on the second floor, and I was right: eight nice but simple suites, one lavish suite, and a back area with servants’ stair, laundry room, and linen closet. The main staircase ended on the second floor, but the servants’ stairs continued up.
Eureka.
The attic had clearly been designed with serving quarters in mind, probably to cope with extra staff during conference time, but the accumulation of dust spoke of decades since Edenfield could afford such luxuries. There were a few pieces of extra furniture, mostly threadbare, and a small collection of trash from neglected years gone by. The area by the stairs was the only reasonably clear space in the attic—although the dust ensured that we’d have to be wary of leaving traces.
As in the conference room, my boss worked precisely and assiduously, triple checking everything while I kept watch. It was nearly five in the morning when he finished. I felt dirty, satisfied, and like I might topple over if I let my eyes close for too long. I thought about the hour-long walk back to the train station, how cold it was, and how much I didn’t want to sit on the platform for half an hour waiting for the train.
“There should be an extra bedroom in the family wing,” my boss told me.
I caught my eyelids sagging, squeezed them shut and open, and made myself stand straight. “That’s right. It’s how I got in.”
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br /> “Good. Plant this”—he handed me a device about the length of my thumb, with a memory card and a speaker—“in the bottom drawer of a dresser. I will erase my traces here and meet you by the road.”
I hiked up my backpack, pulled my hat back on, and headed down the servants’ stairs, through the kitchen and dining room, into the main area, and toward the children’s room. I was about to pass the prefect’s bedroom when the front door clicked open.
I blame my fatigue for what happened next. I thought at first it was my boss leaving, then realized it couldn’t be: whoever it was was coming in. It wasn’t anyone who should’ve been here, either. The innocent use light switches, not flashlights, and they don’t creep into manors at night in socked feet.
It took my brain so much time to process this that I didn’t hurry on to the children’s room: I threw myself across the hallway into the room opposite the prefect’s and quivered behind the door, watching through the crack.
The flashlight was more like a penlight, a narrow beam that stayed steadily before even feet. The intruder wasn’t hunting around: he or she had a definite goal, and knew how to get there. And by “there,” I mean “this way.”
I shrank back, realizing that I’d chosen Edenfield’s office to hide in. The room that, no doubt, held the most sensitive documents.
I scurried around, desperate for a place to hide. The closet? Under the desk? No time. I dove behind a wingback chair and huddled against the soft old fabric.
The footsteps stopped outside the door, and the beam of light flicked off. A pause, the faint rattle of . . . a turning doorknob?
That wasn’t right; I’d left the office door cracked open. Was the intruder in the room with me, closing the door? The sounds were too distant. Then where—?
The prefect’s bedroom.
I shoved a hand over my mouth to stop myself from exclaiming. Was this—could it be another assassination? But who would want to kill Prefect Edenfield?
I crept out from behind the wingback chair, feeling my knees creak, and squinted through the door crack. The intruder was definitely in the prefect’s bedroom; he or she had left the door slightly open.
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