The Best of World SF by Lavie Tidhar (children's ebooks free online .txt) 📕

He’s stripped the un-Septed of their homes at the command of his Grandmaster. Put the spear to those who attempt to come too close to his charges. He’s turned away from the food banks those who’ve lost their ranking in the Lesser Games and watched them walk away into certain starvation when trade is slow, and rationing begins.

He’s done it all while showing none of the rage and despair that fills him at the sight of the waste that continues in Lucochin’s Halls, even when the un-Septed have nothing. The Young Masters eat and drink and play the Great Game they’re born into, and he hovers at the edges.

Waiting.

Watching as the Lucochin’s youngest daughter pulls him down with her onto the bed.

Holding himself separate as she has her fun with him. Remaining passive as she licks his ear behind his mask and says, ‘If you kill him, we can be like this always.’

She thinks as they all do. That un-Septed are ignorant. Stupid. That they can be easily manipulated by base emotion.

When she sighs the question, he says yes, and she whispers a date and time for the deed.

He scrubs himself well before he meets with the Grandmaster, trying to erase the previous hour from his body. Lowers himself to the cold floor and touches his head to the ground, as all do who have bad news to deliver. He’s calm as he explains the plot, though he knows the Grandmaster could choose to have him killed instead of his daughter. He has nothing to lose but his life, and that hasn’t been his since he was a child.

‘You’ve done me a great service,’ the Grandmaster says to him as the youngest Lucochin Master rides away in a transport to a hastily arranged marriage. ‘Name your reward.’

He’s always known he must become more than he is, so he doesn’t hesitate. ‘I would be a Rook in your service.’

The Grandmaster turns cold eyes on him and says, ‘Why waste such talent at gameplay? My Bishop is old, and his strategies grow simplistic. Take his place, if you will.’

They hand him the keys to their Kingdom.

He will find a way to throw open the gates.

*

The Bishop is buried in pomp and circumstance, and at the graveside he sees his future for the first time. Master Alexandar is blond and grave as a painting in his white half-mask. The only Young Master left alive in the vicious Sept of Valencia – his form straight and strong as a Coretree.

The thump of his heart as he looks at Alexandar is an unfamiliar rhythm in his chest.

The Master turns away without seeing him, and he returns to his Sept – a new Bishop with a tiny crack in his façade only he knows is there.

*

He’s seventy and Queen, and it’s his wedding day. Grandmaster Yuta congratulates him even as he apologizes for refusing the match he was offered to one of the Grandmaster’s many children.

‘You’ve done well,’ Yuta says. ‘My son would have poisoned you at the first opportunity and taken your post.’

He knows this, of course. It’s what he would have done.

He’s pressing his thumb against the contract when the new Grandmaster Valencia, now unmasked, enters to add his DNA to the seal.

His wife Rachel steps aside and dips low with the elegance of a Master whose family has always been Septed. When he straightens from his own bow, the Grandmaster Valencia is between them and the crack in his façade widens as those blue eyes remain on him, speaking of other things than the polite felicitations the Valencia utters to his face.

*

He’s one hundred and three, and a Grandmaster, and soft lips touch his under the Coretrees of the Greatwood, sending sharp shocks through his entire body – and the Corevines in his wrists. Alexandar also forgets to remove his Corevines.

That’s when he finally learns it. The language he’s been searching for his entire life.

For the first time, he’s unable to hide his discovery – his truth – from his wife. She narrows her eyes at him as he tries to make her understand.

‘You’re a Grandmaster,’ she says in a voice that betrays only mild annoyance. Her hair is braided intricately in coils on her head. She’s unmasked, as they often are in private. ‘Why do you concern yourself with the troubles of the un-Septed? You give them higher rations than they deserve, build them better houses. They’re not grateful for this and you only encourage them to believe they’re entitled to more.’

‘How can you say this,’ he says, ‘when I was one of them?’

‘You are Grandmaster Lucochin, Sire to a Master of Sept Kingston. You are not them. Cease this inappropriate worry over their comfort.’

‘And yet,’ he says, ‘how many of them would be me, if given the chance?’

‘Chances are taken, not given,’ she scoffs. ‘Keep your sympathy for those who work to provide the foundation for all Valencia is and can be.’

He stares at her, resigned. ‘You truly don’t care.’

*

‘Of course, she doesn’t,’ Alexandar says, touching his jaw gently. ‘She’s your Queen. The latest in a line second only to mine. This is her world. You don’t belong in it.’

He reaches for that hand, but Alexandar is standing next to the fountain in the middle of Valencia’s Audience Room, staring into the rippling pool. He walks toward him, the fountain pulling away from him with every step, the tinkling of the water a rising susurration.

‘Didecus,’ Alexandar says, not looking at him, hands clenching the sides of the basin. ‘They must see everything. You must show it to them, as you showed it to me.’

‘Alexandar,’ he calls over the roaring in his ears, heart pounding, fracturing in his chest. ‘Wait.’

Alexandar’s lips open and Rachel’s voice emerges. ‘They’ll destroy us. They’ll destroy it all.’

‘Alexandar.’ He would cry if he could. But this part of him never does. ‘Forgive me.’

‘Grandmaster Lucochin.’

*

‘Grandmaster Lucochin.’

He started awake, his hand tightening on something. Someone.

The Knight hung motionless over him. He had it by