Mirage (Mirage #1)(33)

“Do you mean to take the whole couch?” he asked, staring pointedly at my outstretched feet.

And just like that, the nervous flutter in my chest disappeared. I resisted the urge to sigh, and pulled my feet underneath me, rearranging myself so that there was room for him.

“Thank you,” he said. All traces of his earlier shock were gone, though when my gaze darted to where the shirt stuck to his chest he caught my eye and then looked away. He took the seat beside me, and without saying anything unfolded the board and set it on the table in front of us. From the bag, he pulled what looked like more than two dozen pieces split evenly between red and green.

“Have you played before?” he asked. I flushed again, caught staring a second time.

The board was set, but in mid-play. “Shatranj? Yes. It’s popular with children.”

He raised an eyebrow again. “The elder among us enjoy the game too.”

I picked up one of the red pieces, shaped like an old chariot. The piece was well worn, though I could still see gold flakes in the grooves. “Not,” I said, setting it down, “if they do not want to be accused of treason and sedition.”

Idris snorted, a half smile lifting the corner of his mouth.

“What do farmers need to understand strategy for, if not to revolt?” I leaned away from the board.

He pursed his mouth, as if resisting the urge to bite on his bottom lip. My skin prickled just looking at his mouth when it had no business doing so.

“Well,” he said, interrupting my thoughts, “a princess needs to know strategy, and you more than most. When did you play last?”

I lifted a shoulder.

“Then it will be easy to beat you?” I didn’t rise to the bait. He sighed. “I really am trying to help you. You give away too much with your face, and so far you haven’t been faced with Maram’s peers alone. You will need to think strategically to survive.”

“Alright,” I said after a moment. I set my book aside and put my feet on the ground. “You will have to set the board from the beginning.”

He shook his head. “It’s a mansuba,” he explained. “A problem board. Your pieces are trapped like so. How do you get them out?”

I could not have been more than nine or ten the last time I played shatranj, but the rules and strategies I’d learned came back easily. Idris was an engaging player. I was not surprised to learn that he was just as good as masking his emotions while we played as he was everywhere else. He was clever and distracting, and more than once I lost track of the board laughing.

“You are not thinking more than two moves ahead,” he said when I reached for an elephant piece. “You need to be anticipating the end—you won’t solve the problem any other way.”

“I would have to know the other player extraordinarily well,” I pointed out, picking up the piece.

He grinned when I moved. “You could if you weren’t distracted. Like this.” It was a single move, but it landed him on my side of the board. I could see, clearly, how he would win in four or five more turns. And there was no move I could make to stop him.

“You cheated.” Even I could hear the undercurrent of whining in my voice.

“I used the skills available to me,” he said, and plucked one of my viziers from the board. “It isn’t my fault you enjoy laughing. Shall we try another?”

I nodded. The book of fairy tales lay on the table beside me, so I opened it while he cleared the board and rearranged the pieces into another mansuba.

“You can read?”

I stilled, and waited for him to repeat the question. When he didn’t, I lifted my eyes from the page, still silent. He frowned, obviously confused, and then at last his eyes widened.

“No—I didn’t mean at all,” he said.

“What did you mean?” I said, and let some of Maram’s frostiness seep into my voice.

His eyes fell to the book. “Kushaila. You can read Kushaila?”

“My mother taught me,” I said and closed the book.

I didn’t ask if he could read Kushaila. It was becoming abun dantly clear that while the lower classes had suffered beneath the occupation, the royal families had suffered a different kind of cruelty. He might have learned when he was young and then been made to forget. I watched him reset the pieces and tried to think of what to say. I knew what I would want. A piece of myself, of my family, back. A taste, no matter how bitter, was better than knowing that a piece of you was missing and having no way to fill it.

He gave me another half smile. “You’re staring.”

Idris had offered me respite. Telling him my name, speaking of my life in Cadiz—in some small measure, he’d helped me find a way back to myself. Didn’t I owe him the same?

“I could read it,” I said.

It was his turn to go still, a hand poised on a red horse piece. He knew I meant the ink on his arm. “It’s in the formal script,” he said eventually.

“What do you think the Book is written in?”

I thought he would reject the offer, he was quiet for so long. His nod was sharp and fast, as though he were afraid that he would change his mind before the movement was complete. He didn’t look at me when he gripped the bottom of his shirt and pulled it up over his head. Idris wouldn’t meet my eyes, and his jaw was tight almost as if he were bracing himself against a blow.