Free Sharps by K. J. Parker

play chess?”
    “Yes. Why?”
    “I’ve got a chess set in my pocket. You know, the little travelling ones.”
    Giraut was impressed. They were made in a far province of the Eastern Empire; ivory and some kind of incredibly hard black wood. You could rest them on the palm of your hand. Each piece had a tiny peg in the base, which fitted into holes in the middle of the squares. You could buy one second-hand for less than the price of a town-centre house, but they didn’t come up very often.
    Iseutz glared at him with barely controlled fury. “Why the hell didn’t you mention it earlier? We could’ve been playing chess, instead of sitting here like idiots.”
    “I didn’t think anybody would want to give me a game. I’m not a very good player.”
    “Excellent. I don’t like losing.”
    “I’ll play the winner,” Suidas said.
    “If you want. But we’ve got to make it interesting. Say, five nomismata?”
    Suidas frowned. “I haven’t got five nomismata. Sorry.”
    “That’s all right, you can owe me. What about you, Giraut? Do you want a game, after I’ve slaughtered these two?”
    Giraut thought about it for a moment. “For five nomismata.”
    “Yes.”
    “All right.”
    Iseutz disposed of Addo in a dozen moves, though Giraut had the feeling he wasn’t really trying. He counted the coins out of a heavy green silk purse. Suidas refused to play, which made Iseutz extremely angry. Giraut stepped in to keep the peace, and found himself sitting across the tiny board, facing a standard opening.
    He tried to spin it out, but he was never much good at deception. As soon as he’d taken her queen (in self-defence; what she lacked in skill she made up in aggression), it was obvious she was going to lose, but she fought on until he couldn’t stand it any more, and executed a simple checkmate. She looked at him, her face milk-white and her lips an impossibly thin line, and pushed Addo’s five coins across the table at him. Then she got up and stood beside the window.
    There was a long silence. Then Suidas said, “I’ll give you a game, if you like. Not for money.”
    What the hell. He enjoyed chess, and he was good at it. He found that Suidas was a high-class player, maddeningly slow at times, extremely cautious, with a defence he couldn’t break down, in spite of some quite inspired gambits he hadn’t thought himself capable of. In the end he lost deliberately. Suidas thanked him for the game, in such a way as to suggest he didn’t want another. They left the chess set on the table. Addo made no move to reclaim it.
    Giraut must have fallen asleep. He woke up in a spasm of terror, and for a moment he was sure the man standing in the doorway must be the hangman, or at best the chaplain waiting to hear his last confession. But the newcomer walked past him, an old man levering himself along with a stick; so much effort and determination required to accomplish something Giraut did without thinking. If that was me, he thought, would I go to all that trouble just to move myself five yards?
    “Ladies and gentlemen.” His voice was high, dry and brittle, and he spoke quietly, to make them all shut up so they’d be able to hear him. “You don’t know me. My name is Symbatus, and I’m the Abbot of Monsacer.” He saw Addo lift his head. “For my sins, I’m one of the organisers of the tour you’re about to take part in. Don’t worry,” he went on, “I’m not going to preach a homily. I’d like to introduce you to Jilem Phrantzes, who’s kindly agreed to be your coach and team manager.”
    Understandably enough, given its history, Permia is not a religious country. There are a few Eastern Didactic monasteries in the mountains, where a few grim old men still recite the Seven Offices, and the capital has a fire altar and a temple of the Invincible Sun, mostly for the convenience of foreigners. By and large, however, the Permians have no great interest in the divine. Occasionally, one or other of the mildly