Gurgeh hadn’t felt like breakfast. The ship had been in contact that morning, to congratulate him. It had finally seen. In fact, it thought there was a way out for Nicosar, but only to a draw. And no human brain could handle the play required. It had resumed its high-speed holding pattern, ready to come in the moment it sensed anything wrong. It watched through Flere-Imsaho’s eyes.
When they got to the castle’s prow-hall and the Board of Becoming, Nicosar was already there. The apex wore the uniform of the commander-in-chief of the Imperial Guard, a severe, subtly menacing set of clothes complete with ceremonial sword. Gurgeh felt quite dowdy in his old jacket. The prow-hall was almost full. People, escorted by the ubiquitous guards, were still filing into the tiered seats. Nicosar ignored Gurgeh; the apex was talking to an officer of the Guard.
“Hamin!” Gurgeh said, going over to where the old apex sat, in the front row of seats, his tiny, twisted body crumpled and hopeless between two burly guards. His face was shrivelled and yellow. One of the guards put out his hand to stop Gurgeh coming any closer. He stood in front of the bench, squatting to look into the old rector’s wrinkled face. “Hamin; can you hear me?” He thought, again, absurdly, that the apex was dead, then the small eyes flickered, and one opened, yellow-red and sticky with crystalline secretions. The shrunken-looking head moved a little. “Gurgeh…”
The eye closed, the head nodded. Gurgeh felt a hand on his sleeve, and he was led to his seat at the edge of the board.
The prow-hall’s balcony windows were closed, the panes rattling in their metal frames, but the fire shutters had not been lowered. Outside, beneath a leaden sky, the tall cinderbuds shook in the gale, and the noise of the wind formed a bass background to the subdued conversations of the shuffling people still finding their places in the great hall.
“Shouldn’t they have put the shutters down?” Gurgeh asked the drone. He sat in the stoolseat. Flere-Imsaho floated, buzzing and crackling, behind him. The Adjudicator and his helpers were checking the positions of the pieces.
“Yes,” Flere-Imsaho said. “The fire’s less than two hours away. They can drop the shutters in the last few minutes if they have to, but they don’t usually wait that long. I’d watch it, Gurgeh. Legally, the Emperor isn’t allowed to call on the physical option at this stage, but there’s something funny going on. I can sense it.”
Gurgeh wanted to say something cutting about the drone’s senses, but his stomach was churning, and he felt something was wrong, too. He looked over at the bench where Hamin sat. The withered apex hadn’t moved. His eyes were still closed.
“Something else,” Flere-Imsaho said.
“What?”
“There’s some sort of extra gear up there, on the ceiling.”
Gurgeh glanced up without making it too obvious. The jumble of ECM and screening equipment looked much as it always had, but then he’d never inspected it very closely. “What sort of gear?” he asked.
“Gear that is worryingly opaque to my senses, which it shouldn’t be. And that Guards colonel’s wired with an optic-remote mike.”
“The officer talking to Nicosar?”
“Yes. Isn’t that against the rules?”
“Supposed to be.”
“Want to raise it with the Adjudicator?”
The Adjudicator was standing at the edge of the board, between two burly guards. He looked frightened and grim. When his gaze fell on Gurgeh, it seemed to go straight through him. “I have a feeling,” Gurgeh whispered, “it wouldn’t do any good.”
“Me too. Want me to get the ship to come in?”
“Can it get here before the fire?”
“Just.”
Gurgeh didn’t have to think too long. “Do it,” he said.
“Signal sent. You remember the drill with the implant?”
“Vividly.”
“Great,” Flere-Imsaho said sourly. “A high-speed displace from a hostile environment with some grey-area effector gear around. Just what I need.”
The hall was full, the doors were closed. The Adjudicator glanced resentfully over at the Guards colonel standing near Nicosar. The officer gave the briefest of nods. The Adjudicator announced the recommencement of the game.
Nicosar made a couple of inconsequential moves. Gurgeh couldn’t see what the Emperor was aiming at. He must be trying to do something, but what? It didn’t appear to have anything to do with winning the game. He tried to catch Nicosar’s eye, but the apex refused to look at him. Gurgeh rubbed his cut lip and cheek. I’m invisible, he thought.
The cinderbuds swayed and shook in the storm outside; their leaves had spread to their maximum extent, and — whipped by the gale — they looked indistinct and merged, like one huge dull yellow organism quivering and poised beyond the castle walls. Gurgeh could sense people in the hall moving restlessly, muttering to each other, glancing at the still unshuttered windows. The guards stayed at the hall’s exits, guns ready.
Nicosar made certain moves, placing element-cards in particular positions. Gurgeh still couldn’t see what the point of all this was. The noise of the storm beyond the shaking windows was enough to all but drown the voices of the people in the hall. The smell of the cinderbuds’ volatile saps and juices pervaded the air, and some dry shreds of their leaves had found their way in to the hall somehow, to soar and float and curl on currents of air inside the great hall.
High in the stone-dark sky beyond the windows, a burning orange glow lit up the clouds. Gurgeh began to sweat; he walked over the board, made some replying moves, attempting to draw Nicosar out. He heard somebody in the observers’ gallery crying out, and then being quieted. The guards stood silently, watchfully, at the doors and around the board. The Guards colonel Nicosar had been talking to earlier stood near the Emperor. As he went back to his stoolseat, Gurgeh thought he saw tears on the officer’s cheeks.
Nicosar had been sitting. Now he stood, and, taking four element-cards, strode to the centre of the patterned terrain.
Gurgeh wanted to shout out or leap up; something; anything. But he felt rooted, transfixed. The guards in the room had tensed, the Emperor’s hands were visibly shaking. The storm outside whipped the cinderbuds like something conscious and spiteful; a spear of orange leapt ponderously above the tops of the plants, writhed briefly against the wall of darkness behind it, then sank slowly out of sight.
“Oh dear holy shit,” Flere-Imsaho whispered. “That’s only five minutes away.”
“What?” Gurgeh glanced at the machine.
“Five minutes,” the drone said, with a realistic gulp. “It ought to be nearly an hour off. It can’t have got here this quick. They’ve started a new fire-front.”
Gurgeh closed his eyes. He felt the tiny lump under his paper-dry tongue. “The ship?” he said, opening his eyes again.
The drone was silent for seconds. “… No chance,” it said, voice flat, resigned.
Nicosar stooped. He placed a fire-card on a water-symbol already on the board, in a fold in the high terrain. The Guards colonel turned his head fractionally to one side, mouth moving, as though blowing some speck of dust off his uniform’s high collar.
Nicosar stood up, looking around, appeared to listen for something, but heard only the howling noise of the storm.
“I just registered an infrasound pulse,” Flere-Imsaho said. “That was an explosion, a klick to north. The viaduct.”
Gurgeh watched helplessly as Nicosar walked slowly to another position on the board and placed one card on another; fire on air. The Colonel talked into the mike near his shoulder again. The castle shook; a series of concussions shuddered through the hall.
The pieces on the board juddered; people stood up, started shouting. The glass panes cracked in their frames, crashing to the flagstones, letting the shrieking voice of the burning gale into the hall in a hail of fluttering leaves. A line of flames burst out over the tops of the trees, filling the base of the boiling black horizon with fire.