Free Crusade by James Lowder

started off in the direction of the palace.
     
    “Pawn to king’s four.”
    Queen Filfaeril smiled warmly and scanned the chessboard with her ice-blue eyes. “Your game has become rather predictable, husband,” she said, moving her hand to the board. She lifted a knight of purest ivory. “Knight takes pawn.”
    Consternation crossed King Azoun’s face. “You know that I’ll take that knight with my queen,” he said. “Losing it for a pawn seems rather pointless.” The king slid an onyx queen across the board and picked up the white knight in one smooth motion. “Queen takes knight.”
    Filfaeril studied the board for a moment, then moved her bishop. “Bishop takes queen.” Azoun cursed softly. “In three moves I’ll have you in checkmate,” his wife added.
    Azoun lifted a rook, then moved it closer to his king.
    The queen’s smile faded. “Are you sure you want to play this out?”
    “Of course. I never quit before the game’s over.”
    Positioning her queen to place Azoun in check, Filfaeril prepared to finish the game. As she had guessed, it lasted only three more moves.
    The king and queen set the pieces up for a future game. When the board was reorganized, Azoun asked, “Am I really that predictable?”
    The queen considered her answer for a moment, then nodded. “There are certain things I can count on you to do, and others I can count on you never to do.”
    “Such as?”
    Filfaeril picked up a pawn. “You don’t trade pieces well, my husband. That’s why you didn’t see my logic in sacrificing the knight.”
    Azoun took the pawn from his wife’s hand and replaced it on the board. “There should be some way to win that doesn’t involve losing one piece for another.”
    “As I said,” the queen repeated as she smiled and took her husband’s hand, “there are certain things I can count on you never to do.”
    The king laughed, patted Filfaeril’s white, slender fingers, and stood up. “I guess I’m still mulling over what Vangerdahast said the other day after the meeting. I don’t really think of myself as inflexible, predictable.” Azoun paused and looked into his wife’s eyes. “Still, what he said about Alusair…”
    Filfaeril saw the pain in her husband’s face when he mentioned their daughter’s name. What had happened with Alusair pained her, too, though she knew that Azoun considered himself directly responsible for driving the girl from home. “Alusair was willful, my husband,” she said after a moment. “Much like her father.”
    The queen rose and moved to Azoun’s side. She embraced him tightly. “If you’re looking for proof that you’re a good father, Tanalasta should stand as example enough.”
    Azoun nodded, though the furrow in his brow did not lessen. He certainly loved Tanalasta, his eldest daughter, and she had given him plenty of reasons to be immensely proud of her. Still, she lacked the spirit, the fire her younger sister possessed. No, Tanalasta’s devotion could never cover the rift between the king and Alusair.
    Filfaeril knew this, but had hoped her words would pull Azoun from the dark mood into which he had fallen. She caressed her husband’s cheek and turned his eyes toward hers. “And you have me. You are not so unbearably rigid that I cannot love you.”
    That last comment brought out Azoun’s smile again. Looking at his queen, he noted that she was as lovely now as the day they’d married. Many around the court said that Filfaeril was classically beautiful, and Azoun agreed. The queen’s delicate features seemed to have been smoothed out of the purest alabaster. And fifty years of life—thirty in the court—had done little to dull this loveliness. Even the wrinkles that pulled at the corners of Filfaeril’s startlingly blue eyes seemed intentionally carved there by some artist.
    But it wasn’t simply for her beauty that Azoun had first fallen in love with his queen. Filfaeril was far more than a nobleman’s statuesque daughter; she