Revenge14 min read
The Chess Move That Cost Us All
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I was twelve years older than him. I told myself, "If only one of us can live, it must be me." I said it out loud in my head so many times that the words became a shield.
"Do you want to go catch crickets?" Julissa's child tugged at her skirt and looked at me. He was small, bright-eyed, and when he smiled it was like a crack of sun through winter clouds.
"Yes," I said. "Come with me." I did not know why I offered. I only knew a chessboard took my attention, but children and animals broke the stillness in a different way. People make mistakes with noise; they make worse mistakes with affection.
"What's your name?" I asked the boy when he held out a small trap, a cage with two crickets inside.
He looked up at me seriously. "Garth," he said. "Garth Xu." He said his name like a small pledge.
"I am Jaime," I said. "You will call me Prince Jaime."
"Prince Jaime," he replied with no fear.
"Which will win?" I asked. "The big one or the little one?"
"The big one," he answered.
"You think so?" I smiled. "What if the little one grows? What if the big one grows old?"
Garth's face went still for a moment, then he blurted, "Then the little one runs away!"
"Run away?" I laughed softly.
He shoved the little cage forward and shouted, "Run! Run away!" He flung the small cage toward the reeds. The little cricket scurried, the larger one chased. The child laughed like a bird.
"A good student," Tilda said from the pavilion where she watched the chessboard. "A good son."
"How long will she live?" I heard her whisper to her friend, and though I kept my eyes on the chess pieces, I heard the meaning in her voice.
"Not long," Tilda's friend said. "Those of low birth do not always carry luck in this house."
I did not answer. I was learning how to be silent in front of the people who fed me and warmed me. Silence is a kind of armor too.
Later, my mother—Tilda—cornered the woman they called Julissa and smiled the smile of a woman who prays but holds a knife behind her hand.
"Sit with us," she said. "Sit, sister. We will speak like sisters."
When Julissa came with her boy, she was proud the way new mothers are proud, and the palace took pride gladly when it could. The world has strange rules: the same hand that feeds you can also take your child and carry him into a house with colder rooms.
"Garth," I said, because the boy looked at me again. "Show me your cage."
He did. He opened it.
"Which wins?" I asked.
"The big one," he said at once.
"But if the little one grows?" I asked.
He thought, then carefully picked up the smaller cricket and flung it into the air. "It runs away," he cried. "It is gone!"
Years later, that image would be the last simple thing I could hold onto. A small creature running away from a trap.
"Your son should be near me," Tilda said later when the palace shifted as palaces do—like a land where the ground is pulled from under you and replaced by someone else's carpet.
"What did you say?" my father asked. He had come like a man who wanted to look in the mirror and pretend he saw a friend.
"She needs help," Tilda answered, laying her hand on my arm like a leader marking a soldier. "She does not know how to be a mother in this house."
The next thing that changed the air was small and official: Julissa's baby was given away. "Overnight adoption," someone said like it were a joke. The palace kept itself tidy by telling jokes about tragedy.
"Why would the Emperor take him?" a maid whispered to me when the word came through the corridors. "Why would he take him into the house?"
"Because it is the Emperor's place to take," the aunt who served my mother said, sounding wooden.
It is strange to be the one who watches and loses like a spectator at a cruel play. I watched my mother smile at the woman who lost her child and I watched the woman cry alone in the dark.
I learned then that in this house, being born to a woman of low rank could mean the slow trimming of her days. I learned how the court tells itself that kindness and cruelty can sit together with comfortable faces.
Not long after, Julissa killed herself. They carried her away without a fuss. "A servant’s proper death," one nurse said, but she didn't say it to my face. She said it under her breath, the way people say cold weather.
I was wet with something that came from the fishpond that my mother had used to make the tragedy proper. My mother lifted her hands once as if blessed, and then she asked me in a small voice, "Did you feel how good a chance this is?"
"Yes," I said, and the voice that answered was not the voice I had as a child. It had been rubbed smooth with practice.
He called me "Fifth Brother" once—Garth. Once, he clung to my knees, begging, "Do not let them take her. I will go anywhere—just let me keep my mother."
"You will listen to the Empress," I told him in a voice that sounded nothing like his name. "Speak well of her. If you do, she might keep her days."
"I won't take your place," he cried. "I swear."
"Your place," I said. "That is an armor for me."
He went away. He stayed. They put him beside the Empress and called him their son, and prime among palace mouths there was a new spirit to be smoothed and shaped. The world turned, and I learned the cold arithmetic of power.
Garth's mother died. Garth grew thin and pale and learned to hide his fear behind a face that sometimes looked like a child's. But other faces came upon him as he grew: a cleverness, a habit of squinting when he thought, a way of finding allies in the most surprising places.
Once he used a small trick—a white cat running into the council hall, sitting on the map like a small lord—and people took omens for what they were. I laughed at that time and named him "Nine" with a tone like a judge. "You shall be Nine, Garth. Stay here. Stay with me."
He stayed.
He learned to play tragedies the way some learn to play the lute. He played to survive. He became dangerous in the way a quiet pond grows deep.
"He's too clever," the guards would tell me in later years. "He moves like someone who knows steps no one taught him."
"He will be nothing," I would think. I wanted the world to be that simple. It was not.
Then he loved someone.
"Who is she?" I asked when whispers came.
"Her name is Jayleen," someone said. "She was a girl in the inner rooms. She served in small ways—mended sleeves, spun thread."
"Small things," I said, but my voice had a hollow. People think small things cannot change the tide. They forget that a nail can sink a ship.
Jayleen loved him. He loved her. They looked foolish and brave at the same time.
"Will you run away with me?" Garth asked her once in a corner of the garden where the night was thick and soft.
"No," she said. "I will not run. I will stay."
"Stay to die?" he asked.
"No," she said, and her courage was awful in its simplicity. "Stay to be with you."
They were fools. They had been set against the grain, but their foolishness had a softness that made my chest thin. I watched them like a man who watches birds with one wing.
"Do you think he will leave her?" someone asked me. "Will he make a choice?"
"I have no idea," I said. I wanted to see whether their small love would survive the palace's grinding. I also wanted to test himself.
I gave them little things to ease my curiosity. I placed late-night guards that let them sit and talk when no one watched. I sent a small servant to bring vegetables that were not common. I was playing a game, and I told myself I was generous.
Then the hunting field happened.
"Ride!" I shouted, because I am a man who likes to keep a show. I like to see how men look under pressure.
Garth rode with a strange hunger. He was not a great rider, but he rode like a man who would step into the world that tried to swallow him. He drew a bow that day and, whether by chance or by plan, he made a show that seemed to mock the rest of us.
"Do you try to humiliate me?" I asked later in a small voice.
"No," he said. "I try to live."
"Live," I repeated. "In my shadow?"
The palace loved scandal. They turned small moments into fanfare. Jayleen's name became rumors, sweet and bitter. People bet on whether his love would make him strong or ruin him.
Then came the worse part. A knife was set to ruin. Someone aimed at him, someone who thought death would be quick. He turned it into proof—false evidence, clumsy lies, and then a truth that could not be swallowed. He used the court's own hunger for spectacle and turned it into his shield.
"He staged it," some said. "He made wounds that don't kill." Others said, "Who would make his ruin their victory?"
"He made his own net," I told myself. He learned to weave and pull it tight. And he did not get caught in it.
He loved Jayleen so badly that she became his center. He wanted to keep her alive, and the palace wanted to keep the story.
"She is not of rank," the Empress said one night, smooth as silk. "Do what must be done when commoners rise."
"Will you take her?" Garth whispered to me in a moment that had not meant to be heavy but was.
"I will decide what will be done," I said.
The game moved on. The Empress birthed a child. The halls filled with incense and false joy. My mother grew serene and quieter. I received the title rightfully and awkwardly, like clothing somewhat too big but fit as I walked through it.
People died around us as if the world were shedding unneeded leaves. Eight of my brothers wasted away in time and misfortune. The palace is an efficient place for disappearance.
Jayleen was only a handmaiden. She had nothing but her courage and the way she smiled, which I had never been given. Garth begged for her, knelt, pleaded, but power translates itself into rational acts. I played rational.
"Give me one chess game," I told her once when I put my head over a chessboard and asked the world to show itself in black and white. "One game."
She looked at me then—Jayleen—and she trembled. "If I lose, I go to the land of death," she said softly.
"If you win?" I asked.
"If I win," she whispered, "we live."
We played, and I played like a man who keeps a razor in his pocket and says he will not use it. I moved the pieces, and I watched her face. She swallowed something small that women carry when they are told to hold their breath for the sake of men.
"You know why you are called?" I asked while we played. I wanted to see where she stood.
"Because he taught me the patterns," she said. "Because I learned to look where no one expected."
"Are you worth it?" I asked. "Worth him? Worth the games?"
"You have never been loved," she said simply.
That line struck like cold water. "You are wrong," I said, but my voice did not sound like my own anymore.
She made a move and swallowed something from her hand. I knew then she had chosen death as a slow thing, and she took it like an answer.
"Why do you do this?" Garth cried later when his Joan had been taken.
"Because I am the Emperor," I answered. "Because the chessboard has to keep order."
He wailed, "Five-brother! You promised!"
"I promised nothing to anyone that I could not keep," I said, and the words had the weight of a man who pretends he is made of stone.
They put Jayleen down like a quiet lamp. She looked at me once before the light went and said, "I am glad I was loved." The voice was thin.
"You are a fool," I said later to no one. "You were the last foolish thing in that house."
I have told that story to myself in the years since until the edges softened into gray. I told it to the generals, to my servants, to no one. The truth is the same: I did it. I put my hand on the path that ended her life. I believed then it was for the throne. I believed then that I had to make my choices clean.
But the palace imposes balances. People who reach out to take often are taken apart in public.
Constance Ricci was proud and bright. Her brother was louder. He thought himself entitled. When a blot of evidence, a ledger, a paper they had used to buy a favor, came into my hands, I did not hesitate to open it. The court needed a show, and the court never tires of seeing the proud humbled.
"Bring them to the Hall," I said. "Let all this be weighed in the light."
The day of the reckoning, the Hall of Audience smelled of incense and sweat. The people we had called friends filled the tiers like a sea. There were whisperers, men with their hands in their pockets, women with their fans shaking, guards who wanted to see a name burn.
"Why this?" Constance asked first when her brother was dragged in, ropes rough against his wrists.
"You should have known better," I told her. "You sold influence like cotton."
"We did nothing," she snapped. "You have no proof."
"I have proof," I said, and I let the paper slide from my hand like a small animal.
"You dare—" her brother tried to speak, but the crier silenced him.
"Watch," I said.
"It is our practice," he cried. "We shared gifts with the house, counsel—"
"Counsel bought with coin is not counsel," I answered. "You bought people's silence and their favors. You thought yourself above the law."
"They are lies!" she screamed suddenly, and the sound cut across the hall like a thrown cup. "Lies and jealousies!"
A woman near the front stood up and shouted: "She made my child a servant and then sold my grain! I have no husband because of her brother's debts!"
Others began to chant. The hall warmed like an oven.
"Confess," I said.
"Confess to what?" she yelled back. "To being a woman of status? To letting my brother be human?"
"Confess to taking what is not yours," I said. "Confess to buying the loyalty of men with their children's futures."
He reached out to me with face wet. "You are the Emperor," he said. "Spare me."
"Spare you?" I echoed. I felt nothing noble. I felt a ledger and the need to show that even bright women fall.
They were pulled down to the steps. The crowd surged forward like hungry birds. A clerk read the inventory: names, payments, favors. It took a long time, and the sound of the paper being read was like nails being hammered into a coffin.
"Do you deny this?" I asked Constance when the last line was read.
She looked out at the flat rows of faces. Some had their palms open to catch the spectacle. The noblemaids gossiped softly, the old ministers folded their hands like men who had worn out their palms, asking for nothing but the comfort of the past.
"No!" she cried. "No!" She tried to stand straight.
"Then you will watch," I said.
"Watch what?" she asked.
"Watch your brother die for what he did," I said.
Her mouth opened and closed like a fish. "You are monstrous!" she screamed.
The crowd stilled at that word and then howled.
"Monstrous?" someone yelled. "He bought our silence!"
"I never—" she cried. "I helped no one!"
The brother's head was taken simply, and for a moment the world went silent like a breath held in a room where a lamp is dying. Blood is a loud, red thing. It fell in bright ribbons. People turned their faces quickly. Some covered their mouths. Some watched as if they were counting coppers.
Her reaction changed like a tide. At first she was furious and defiant, chest out, chin up. Then she grew pale. Then her voice cracked.
"It is not fair," she whispered. "It is not fair. Please—"
People pointed fingers and took out small papers to scribble. A woman in a silk robe made a quick drawing with charcoal, folding it for a loved one. Men took out their small talismans as if they could keep fate at bay.
"Apologize," I said.
"For what?" she asked.
"For what you did," I said. "For what your brother did. For the way you smiled when other people did not eat."
She fell to her knees. "Please," she begged. "Please forgive me. I will strip my bracelets. I will go to the cold rooms. I will kneel."
A boy in the crowd spat. "She will be cold to us all for a long time," he said.
The Empress looked on with a face as calm as a knife. A minister murmured, "The law is the law." A woman in the second row whispered, "Good. Let the proud see their danger."
Her brother's execution had the weight of months of quiet grievances. It had the satisfaction of someone getting what they felt was owed. It was public; it was a feast, and the crowd had mouths.
Constance's face changed again—defiance, shock, denial, pleading. She spat in my direction suddenly, hard and furious.
"Save your breath," I said.
Her hair, once arranged like spring branches, looked disordered. Her hands shook. "You cannot take everything," she cried.
"I can take what the house gives me," I said. "And you gave it away like peanuts."
Tears came down her face—not only for the brother who would not rise, but for the shame, the people who now turned from her. A woman behind her lifted a fan but did not use it. A little boy in the crowd pointed and laughed.
"Look at her!" he said. "Her eyes are empty."
"You always loved shows," she said between sobs. "You always loved to see people fall."
"It keeps order," I said. "It keeps balance."
They stripped her of rings. They took off her brooch and pushed it across the floor like an unwanted bone. Women who once nodded at her back now turned away. Men who once bowed with flourished arms now walked with their shoulders straight past her.
"You wanted your brother to be safe," she said suddenly, voice thin. "You wanted the house to be clean. You wanted praise."
"I wanted fairness," I replied. "I wanted less poison."
"Less poison?" she laughed, but the laugh had a broken sound. "You pour as much as you remove."
"Perhaps," I said. "Still, the law must be watched."
They led her out into the hall where the sun does not reach. Her steps were small as if the floor had become an enemy. People touched their robes and whispered. The court's cameras—young men who turned life into paper and talk—snapped small drawings of her humiliation. They would show them to their friends, and the palace would remember for a while.
She begged for the mercy that kings sometimes give and sometimes keep. Her posture broke like a branch. I watched the way her face folded in stages: pride, disbelief, denial, bargaining, crumbling. It is an ugly, human process and the crowd loved it.
"Do not look as if you are happy," Constance said at last when they led her away. "Do not think your throne is safe."
"I do not think my throne is safe," I said. "I only think I am a man who keeps the house from burning too fast."
People clapped and hissed and recorded. Children learned a lesson that day that some things could be taken publicly, and the parents smoothed their foreheads because they were relieved to live on.
Later, at night when the lamps burn low, I sometimes imagine her standing at a window looking at a new moon that cuts her face like a blade. I think of the way she was stripped and brought low. The court had wanted a spectacle. The court had received one. The court cheered.
Yet punishment is a cheap thing. It does not put back what was taken. It does not bring back a child who died in a pond, or a woman who swallowed peace like poison, or the small bright laughter that once ran toward the reeds.
Years passed. Garth—Nine—did what he knew how to do: he put his life into a different rhythm. He married, they said, and he had children. People told me he had made a life away from my sharp edge.
"Does he come?" I would ask my steward when the wine was thick at night. "Does he ever come to see me?"
"He does come," the steward said carefully. "He comes quietly and leaves quietly."
"He should come more," I said.
"He fears," the steward said. "He remembers."
One night I dream of a small cage. The cricket is gone. The cage is empty on a shelf above my chessboard. A child's small voice says, "Five-brother, come see us." It is soft and ordinary.
I wake and sit by the chessboard, my fingers on the ivory pieces like a pen on a last will. I have the power, but power tastes like old coins.
"Why did you do it?" a voice asks me sometimes in the dark. It is not Garth's voice. It is not Jayleen's. It is a voice I keep like a stone in my mouth.
"Because I had to," I say, aloud to the empty room.
"Was it worth it?" the voice asks.
"At the time," I say, truth like a thin skin over a wound. "At the time it was worth the stability."
"You called Jayleen to play chess," the voice says, softer now. "You asked for a game."
"She accepted," I say. "She accepted because she loved him."
"Do you ever see her?" the voice asks. "Do you ever see her when the moon is wrong?"
"Sometimes," I answer. "In a mirror, in a bowl of water, in a child's laugh."
The mirror gives no comfort. The bowl of water stares back. The child's laugh is only a sound across an ocean of silence.
I am Emperor. I wear robes and sit on a throne and hold a ledger. I told myself long ago that the throne was the only safe seat. I told myself long ago that one of us must live. I thought it would be me.
In the end, the last thing I keep is a small, empty cage. I put it on a high shelf above my chessboard. When the light hits it, the bars throw shadows across the worn squares.
Sometimes at night I lift the cage and listen. The silence inside is not comfort. It is a tiny accusation.
"Do you remember," I whisper to the empty room, "when you said the little one ran away?"
The chess pieces wait. The ivory king tilts ever so slightly like a man who has survived too much.
Outside, in a courtyard where the moon hits the stones, a child who might be Garth's son or grandson is playing with a small white cat. The cat leaps across the cartography of our empire and sits on the map like it owns the world.
I look at it and feel a tenderness that surprise me. "So small a thing," I say aloud. "So dangerous."
I close the chess box and set the empty cage back on its shelf. The lid clangs once, a clean note.
Some things are punished and others are lost. The public can watch the punishing and call it justice, but it will never mend the small running cricket, nor will it make the woman who loved him breathe again.
At court they will tell the story different ways. They will say the Emperor is stern. They will say the Emperor is just. They will say the Emperor saved the house.
In my chest I keep a different sentence.
"I am the Emperor," I say to myself, as if the words can make me whole.
The cage sits above my chessboard. The little one is gone.
The End
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