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“Pay up, Kaz,” Jesper grinned wide.
Wylan managed to keep his own smile small. Proper. Polite. Definitely not the self-satisfied smirk he knew he was entitled to. For his part, Kaz was scowling at the table between them, and the jade piece that Wylan had toppled over to mark his victory.
“You cheated,” Kaz accused him.
“We can play again,” Wylan offered. The calmer he was, the more it seemed to irk Kaz.
They were in the mansion’s dining room – his mother had gone to bed early, and Kaz had come to discuss better gunpowder for Inej’s ship. That was, until Kaz had brought up strategy. Something about Inej needing different options, long-range and shorter-range alternatives for her cannons to help her on both the defense and the offense. Wylan had huffed and reminded Kaz that he knew strategy too – had been taught enough history and warfare by his tutors.
Kaz, callous as ever, had said that all of it was textbook. Wylan wouldn’t be able to get past Kaz’s back up plans of back up plans in a simple chess game – and Jesper, eyes bright, had leaned across the dining table and laughed: “Want to bet?”
“Ten kruge,” Kaz had risen to the challenge, hand picking at the edges of his other glove.
“Fifty kruge,” Wylan countered.
Kaz shrugged. “Surely you can afford a hundred kruge, now.”
“Five hundred, if you’re so sure you’ll win.”
Wylan didn’t want to bankrupt his friend, but he’d never claimed to be a Saint. And it was Kaz’s fault. If Kaz would just apologize – no. If Kaz was stubborn, then Wylan would just have to hold his ground.
Clearing out the erwtensoep was simple, Jesper happily leaving to search for the jade chess set he had been using as a paperweight in the office. Board laid out on the dinner table, Kaz set up the sixteen pieces as Wylan took out one of his father’s more expensive wines. He liked the little rebellions, even if it wasn’t a rebellion anymore. It was all his.
“You can start the game,” Kaz had magnanimously offered. “The deal is the deal.”
“Nonsense,” Wylan turned the board around so that the darker pieces were on his side. He flashed Kaz his most polite smile. “You’re the guest. You start first.”
The game was over in under five minutes.
“Knight takes pawn, and,” Wylan leaned back, his knight pinning Kaz’s King against his bishop, and Kaz’s own rook blocking the King’s only exit, “checkmate.”
Beside him, Jesper hooked an arm around Wylan’s shoulder and stole a kiss over his cheek, and then another on his lips. “You really are cuter when you’re smart,” Jesper grinned wider at the flush that rose up, even now. They’d lived in the mansion for over a year already, and still he managed to fluster Wylan at least once a day. It’s good for circulation, Jesper would usually tease, but now he only turned to Kaz and added: “Pay up, Kaz.”
“You cheated,” Kaz accused.
“We can play again.”
Standing, Kaz picked up a jade piece – the Queen with its crown that Wylan had stolen from Kaz six moves into the game. “No,” Kaz flipped it over. There was nothing except stone. For a moment, Wylan thought he might have cut Kaz’s pride deeper than he’d intended, but Kaz put the piece back down. “We play again next week.”
“Next week?” Wylan asked.
“Tell the cook I’d like some poffertjes to go with it.”
This time, Wylan couldn’t hold back his grin.
The first time Wylan had won against his father at chess, he had been five, and his father had been proud. A true Van Eck, his father had said, shrewd and unyielding. Chess was business: clear rules to make a contract, sixteen pieces as assets to lose, to trade, to win back. It was sacrifice: how much were you willing to give up, in order to win? It was knowing how to pick apart the person opposite you, finding weakness and pressing down on it.
The last time Wylan had won against his father at chess, he had been thirteen, and his father had been livid.
He hadn’t played again until Jesper had found the old jade chess set in the office drawer, beside a stack of letters from St. Hilde. When his mother had seen the jade pieces, she had held them up into the sun, the green a smoky thing in the fading light. “He proposed to me the day I beat him at his own game,” she told Wylan. Then, almost as if Wylan was a stranger, almost as if Wylan was his father, she placed the Queen beside the bishop. “Have a match with me.”
“You can start,” Wylan offered.
“You’ve grown,” his mother watched him move the pieces, and when he tried to let her win, she moved all their pieces back where they had been three moves ago. “Wylan,” she said, stern. “I’ve been fooled before. I won’t be, again.”
So he had won against her, even if he stretched the game longer than it should have gone. He lost pieces to her, and he would have lost more for her, but she cornered herself before he could.
“Thank you,” Wylan said, because he didn’t know yet how to say he loved her without it being an open wound.
“You beat him at his game,” she replied, distant. Lost where Wylan couldn’t find her. Then, her gaze focused again, sharp and hopeful. “You won.”
“We won,” Wylan corrected. We lost, they both knew. “And I learned from the best.”
Her smile was a chapter of a book he’d never learn to read, but she shook her head, and took his hand – a chess piece pressed between them: a jade pawn, chipped at its base. “I wouldn’t have traded it for anything. I wouldn’t have traded you.”
“You could have,” Wylan told her. She should have. “I would have understood.” If she hadn’t stood her ground against his father, perhaps – she could have been a queen, she could have been happy –
“I trusted you to win,” she let go of his hand, her back straightening tall. “I raised you to be more than a Van Eck.”
“We won,” Wylan repeated past the lump in his throat.
And he was starting to believe it, too.
The only letters in chess were the markers on the board to map each square on the horizontal, numbers running vertical to complete the board. He didn’t need to know them to picture them clear in his mind, two dimensions to build a world he understood, and a third to add the pieces. A fourth, to add the time ticking between each move.
“You played that same move eight weeks ago,” Wylan said.
“I did not,” Kaz huffed. He moved another piece: rook to G7, to defend his Queen.
Each piece was a note in an octave, each move a chord to pluck, and each game a waltz, a minuet, a dance weaving in and out and over.
“I’m going to move my knight to C7 to block your rook, and you’re going to move your Queen to try and save it.”
“No,” Kaz said, and that was as good as a yes.
Fine. Wylan would move his own Queen – he didn’t need his most powerful piece to win: he always did better with the sum of parts, small moves, small cogs, small increments in his chemicals to build up to what he needed.
“You don’t win by running one game,” Wylan threw Kaz’s words back at him. Kaz could keep track of five decks of cards in a game of Three Man Bramble, but Wylan had memorized all of Ghezen’s prayer books, all of his father’s history books. It wasn’t hard to remember his games with Kaz.
Kaz used his Queen to take Wylan’s. “That’s cheating.”
“No,” Wylan slid his pawn forward. “It’s just chess.”
Kaz won against Wylan in the mercher game of Risk.
That was fine.
Wylan still had a point to prove.
Inej came to visit.
Wylan let her win – just to spite Kaz.
Kaz, torn between frustration and his pride for Inej, demanded she tell him how. She just winked at Wylan, raising her wine glass up, letting it clink against Wylan’s in a toast. “To marketable skills,” she laughed, “and profitable investments.”
Her laugh was enough to distract Kaz for the night.
Her laugh was enough for Wylan to realise: the chess was an excuse to come visit.
It wasn’t enough for Wylan to let Kaz win.
“It’s all a trick.”
Kaz had taken to bringing pen and paper, noting down Wylan’s moves. Now, with his King trapped, he was glaring at his own scribbles, trying to find where he’d gone wrong. They had semi-permanently set up a chess table in the music room: the room was the old office that Jesper had happily torn down to make way for a piano and a harp and a very comfortable couch for him to lounge in while Wylan played.
“There’s no trick,” Wylan watched Jesper throw a new piece of wood into the fireplace, bringing it roaring back to life. They had ordered some Inferni-made lanterns from Kuwei to light the house more easily, but the last batch had come with color-changing lights that had made even Jesper dizzy.
“Prove it,” Kaz demanded.
“I can play blindfolded,” Wylan offered. “I won’t even touch the pieces – you or Jesper can move them for me.”
Jesper was behind him immediately, hand reaching forward to tip Wylan’s chin until Wylan was looking up at Jesper and Jesper could press a kiss between his eyes. It was an awkward angle, but there was nothing awkward about Jesper, who leaned down again to whisper:
“I’d never miss a chance to see you in a blindfold.”
Wylan flushed. Still, he leaned forward and whispered right back: “I could put you in one, too.”
Eyes dark, Jesper bit the edge of his lip. Two could play a game, and Wylan could just as easily fluster Jesper. It was fun: Wylan had to admit he understood the thrill in it, the satisfaction that he could still surprise Jesper, even after all this time.
But Kaz cleared his throat pointedly.
“Stand outside,” Kaz said. He placed the jade pieces back in neat rows, louder than he needed to. “I’ll move the pieces for you.”
Wylan crossed his arms. “You’re kicking me out of my own home?”
“Be grateful I’m not pushing you into the canal.”
“Kaz,” Wylan patiently said, “you know I’d win that game, too.”
Kaz stood up, and took the chess board with him.
“Pawn takes pawn in passing,” Wylan shouted out through the door. “Checkmate in one.”
He heard a groan from Kaz, followed quickly by Jesper’s laugh.
The next week, Wylan stumbled home to Kaz having evening tea with his mother.
There was a new chessboard between them: silver and dark to Wylan’s clear jade pieces. Placed right next to a clutter of paintbrushes that his mother had been using earlier in the morning. They were in her garden parlor, between the last blossoms of spring.
“A strong closing requires a good opening game,” his mother was telling Kaz. “You need to practice opening up.”
Wylan snorted, and Kaz’s gaze jerked toward him, caught.
“You can’t give away all my secrets, Mama,” Wylan greeted them both, tugging his tie loose. He’d been stuck in meetings all day: the Van Verents had denied his motion to build up Sixth Harbor, and Jesper was off to fetch some snacks from the kitchen as his consolation prize. His collar was already loose from where Jesper had popped a button earlier.
His mother gestured at a chair for him to join them. “You have your own secrets now,” she said, wistful, but not resentful, “and you learn most from a worthy partner.”
“You learn most from a worthy opponent,” Kaz grumbled.
It was then that Jesper chose to appear with a plate of stroopwaffles, laden high with honey and cream. They were both right, Wylan thought as Jesper pecked a kiss over his cheek in greeting, chaste in front of his mother. They were both wrong: Wylan had learned most from hours spent alone, told to be silent, told to be shadow.
Chess was a game without words: it was there, behind his eyes, and he played against himself. He played against himself, until winning was losing too. Until losing was better than nothing.
Chess was a game of respect: you could only win if you understood your opponent. You could only win if you didn’t underestimate them. If you didn’t overestimate yourself.
“Why the pawn?” Jesper asked Wylan, one night after Kaz had left and it was just the two of them in bed, tangled in their blankets, Jesper’s shirt already lost to the floor. “They only move one step, but you gave up your knight for it.”
“I didn’t know you were paying attention,” Wylan propped himself up on an elbow to properly look at Jesper, who easily reached up to play with a stray strand of his hair. Turning them into little rings that he let loose.
“I’m always paying attention.”
It was hard not to smile at that. But there was no reason not to, so he let himself smile in the hazy dark. “They’re underestimated,” Wylan leaned into Jesper’s touch. “The King can only move one step, too.”
“The King can move backwards. The pawn can’t.”
“And the game can only move forward,” Wylan shrugged. When you saw something as expendable, it was easy to forget its value. But just because the pawn could do less, that didn’t mean it was worthless.
“Are you ever going to let Kaz win?” Jesper flicked his hand, and the curtains on the other end of the room shifted, letting more of the moonlight outside in. “He sounds ready to burn our house down.”
With his Grisha – zowa – powers growing, Jesper had taken to letting out their jittery itch onto the small things: bleeding ink off paper, fixing the carriage, changing their wallpaper designs. Once, during a meeting, Councilman Schenck had insulted Wylan, and found that all the ledgers he’d brought to the meeting where illegible by the end of it, letters and numbers turned into dark blotches that, if Schenck squinted, spelled out profanities.
It was useful, and especially useful now, to move the curtains without needing to get out of bed.
“Kaz hasn’t apologized,” Wylan scrunched his nose, stubborn. “Besides, he’s too scared of Inej and my mother to actually set our house on fire.” He paused, the extra light from the windows allowing him to savor this: Jesper without a shirt, on his bed. “Your hats, on the other hand – ”
“You can’t use Kaz as an excuse for you to burn my hats!”
Wylan rose to the challenge. “Can’t I?”
“If you wanted to,” Jesper steered him away, hand drifting down until his ring caught on the edge of Wylan’s shirt, neckline giving way to bare skin, “you could try that blindfold now.”
“I could teach you how to play,” Wylan suggested. “You can be my advisor for that, too.”
The silver light always brought out the grey in Jesper’s eyes, and they were fond, now. So fond that it was hard to look away. So fond that it was hard to look, aching and far too much for Wylan to ever hold.
“You’ve never needed me to win,” Jesper tugged Wylan down, anchoring him where he wanted to be. His hands, skilled as ever, traced circles down to Wylan’s hip. Nights at the Geldcanal were far quieter than the Barrel: that didn’t make Jesper – or Wylan for that matter, less quiet. If anything, Jesper seemed to relish trying to make things louder.
Strontium chloride, Jesper liked to see how far down Wylan’s flush went. In the dark, it burns red.
“Play a game with me,” Wylan insisted.
They’d never gone head to head in chess: Jesper had taught Wylan cards, and Wylan taught Jesper how to play mercher games of Risk. Counting cards was something Wylan had taken to so easily that he’d been banned from the Crow Club’s tables – though he had yet to beat Kaz in a game of Three Man Bramble – but Jesper was really only interested in one game.
He pressed a kiss behind Wylan’s ear, hot and insistent, and whispered: “Bet you can’t win a game if I’m distracting you.”
Wylan pulled him close to nip at his lip. Barely a kiss, wholly a taunt. “What do I get when I win?”
Jesper grinned in the dark, wolfish, and Wylan realized he wouldn’t mind it if he lost, either.
“You still owe me five hundred kruge,” Jesper reminded Kaz.
“You can get it when you beat me,” Kaz shot back, even as Wylan cornered his King to a checkmate for the third time in the past hour.
Jesper’s grin turned dangerous. “Is that a challenge?”
Kaz glanced between Jesper and Wylan, and jotted down something on his notebook – a new one, that had almost reached its end. “Have you won against Wylan?” Kaz asked, suspicious.
“I’m the only one out of us who went to University,” Jesper reminded, “and I went at fifteen.”
“Have you won against Wylan?” Kaz repeated, unyielding.
Jesper only shrugged. “I have marketable skills too.” He paused, winking at Wylan. “Highly marketable skills.”
“Very, ah,” Wylan flushed pink, “very effective, too. In five moves.”
Kaz pinched the bridge of his nose, tired. “I’m telling your mother who burned her opera tickets.”
The jade chess piece turned copper in Jesper’s hand, static turned lodestone. If Wylan had taken to cards easily, then Jesper had taken to chess like he’d been born for it. Granted, he had trouble sitting still, but they were all moving pieces, each pawn, each rook was a cog in a gun, a loaded pistol waiting to meet its mark.
Jesper didn’t even need to touch the pieces to move them: he felt them, mapped out clearly in his head as he mapped Wylan with his hands.
“Knight,” Wylan unbuckled Jesper’s gunbelt, tossing it to the padded carpet of their bedroom floor, “takes pawn at C1.”
“Are you sure?” Jesper thumbed Wylan’s shirt button off.
“It’s your move,” Wylan flipped them over, pushing Jesper down on their bed.
“Rook,” Jesper reached up to thumb another button off, and then another, a line down to Wylan’s navel, “takes knight, and – discover check.”
Wylan kissed him in reward. He could picture the game as easily as he could picture Jesper, splayed out before him, a game, a world of his own, and he planted his own piece – his own mark – over Jesper’s lips, over collarbone and breath. “Queen to D1,” Wylan grinned against Jesper’s skin, warm and altogether his.
“Is that really what you want?” Jesper paused. “You’re giving your Queen up?”
When Wylan was like this, he was quite sure he’d give everything up for more. Earnest, Jesper liked to tease him, and it wasn’t because Wylan didn’t have any tricks up his sleeve. It was because Wylan knew what he wanted, stubborn even at his most desperate.
“I’m not settling for easy,” Wylan let his hand trace the corner of Jesper’s smile, thumb catching on the edge of Jesper’s lips. Because it wasn’t easy, it never was. But it could be done: the impossible turned probable, the infinite turned tangible in Jesper’s touch.
Jesper hummed into Wylan’s neck. “Bishop takes Queen.”
And if the game got heated, then it was the game – the spirit of it, testing and pushing, taking and baiting and spinning offense into defense. If the game got heated, then they had the whole night to settle it, move turned to touch, touch turned to want, and want turned to worship.
If the game got heated, then –
It was only because Wylan knew what he wanted. It was only a matter of principle.
“Check,” Wylan grinned, “and incidentally,” he let Jesper pull him down, let Jesper pull him home, “discover mate.”
Nina came to visit.
They reached a stalemate. Then played a blitz round, lightning fast between each move.
“Your heart rate isn’t changing,” she noted as Wylan took her bishop, and then her knight.
“Why should it?” Wylan asked as Jesper and Kaz watched them both.
Nina had learned strategy at the Little Palace in a country at war, and Wylan had been raised in a house that was never a home. She had a soldier’s discipline, he had a mercher’s cunning – and chess, chess was a game of endurance, until it became a game of equals.
“Kaz’s blood pressure is through the roof,” Nina observed instead of answering.
“Play your move, Zenik,” Kaz glared at her.
She smiled, moving her Queen just one square backward. “You’ve been playing not to lose,” she told Kaz, “but Wylan hasn’t been playing to win.”
Kaz scoffed. “What else is there but winning?”
“A truce,” she answered. “An agreement.”
They reached another stalemate: a perfect game, pieces balanced where there was no other move for either of them, except to start over.
“No,” Wylan corrected, stubborn and unforgiving, “I was playing to make a point.”
“We could switch it up,” Jesper offered one night, while Wylan and Kaz were locked in the sixth match of the evening. “We could play Mystery.”
“No,” Kaz was the one to refuse. “That's a solved game.”
Jesper sighed. “Are you ever going to give this feud up?”
“Why should I?” Kaz asked. “I have a new set of rubies to show for it.”
Wylan blinked. Pawns for the Dregs. Bishops for his spiders, and the Queen for his Wraith. Kaz wasn't one to ask for help outright, but Wylan realized with a jolt that he'd been testing his strategies on the board, planning a heist, seeing how it might play out when pitted against a mercher.
Kaz didn't mind losing a battle if he could win the war.
“Just rubies?” Wylan moved his rook one square left. The Van Verents had reported a burglary, just a few days after they'd blocked Wylan's move to build up Sixth Harbor.
Kaz smirked. “And some secrets, too.”
Everything came to a head on an otherwise calm Friday evening.
Wylan had been walking home from the apothecary with Jesper when Kaz slipped out of the Wijnstraat and joined them.
“Saints,” Jesper had cursed. “You’re getting as bad as Inej.”
“I’m getting as good as her,” Kaz smirked. There was a splatter of something on his gloves, but his coat was sleek as ever – almost as sleek as Wylan’s, and tailor-made too.
Appearances, after all, mattered in the Barrel and in the Gelden District, as Jesper loved to remind Wylan. Jesper’s favorite part of the day seemed to be the hazy mornings, when the sun had just risen: a farmer’s child, never quite growing out of the early habit – and when he would pick a suit for Wylan to wear for the day. A good suit is like a good pawn, Jesper tried to explain, one small step, but it can be the thing that gets you through the door.
I own the door, Jesper.
And Jesper had winked: It got me through to you.
“If you’re going to steal our kruge,” Wylan led them along the Geldcanal, the cobbled street pinched between the water and a row of office buildings. In the sunset, the waves lapped at the edges, turning a fiery red, “you better get on with it, Kaz.”
“Something new is hitting the market,” Kaz handed him back his pocketwatch, and Wylan handed Kaz back his lockpicks.
This, too, was another game between them: Kaz took from Wylan to teach him not to let his guard down now that he was a mercher, and Wylan stole right back from Kaz to prove a point. He was sure, though, that Kaz let him steal it, if only for Kaz to remind himself not to grow complacent.
“You need my Council vote to stop it?” Wylan surmised.
“This isn’t parem,” Kaz walked around a puddle. The small street was empty except for them, other merchers preffered to take carriages home than to walk. “This is a new kind of explosive.”
“And you want me to replicate them?”
“The existing prototypes set themselves off without warning.”
“Wy,” Jesper tugged at his hand, “there’s – ”
Something sharp hit his neck, he caught a blur of shadows on the roof, and there was a small pin, a dart – when he tried to turn, there was a hand that wrapped itself around his neck, and the cool touch of a blade against his rapid pulse.
“Councilman,” a gruff voice interrupted from behind them, “a shame Dirtyhands got to you first.”
Wylan inhaled, sharp, and there was the iron tang of blood behind the scent of cigar smoke, heavy and choking. Jesper, he tried to think, but Jesper was safe. Jesper was pointing one of his pistols at the man behind Wylan, and Kaz was surveying them with dispassionate interest.
From the corner of his eye, Wylan caught sight of a tattered leather coat, wide shoulders, and scars running down the hand holding a knife to his throat.
“Eamon,” Kaz greeted. The name rang a bell: a former Dime Lion, with a gold tooth and scars from crossing Nina’s powers. “How do you like having a head?”
“Step aside, gentlemen,” the man – Eamon – said. His knife was still pressed over Wylan’s throat, where fear became jugular. “I only need the Councilman.”
“You’ll have to go through me,” Jesper flicked the safety off his revolver, arm steady. But Wylan saw how Jesper’s eyes were pinched: it was a risk. Could he fire before the knife cut? It was more than that, though – there was that shine in Jesper’s eyes, the same glint of distraction he had when he used his powers – he wasn’t bending the knife as Wylan thought he would. Instead, he was glancing at something beneath Eamon’s arm.
“You need him,” Kaz added, his grip tight on his cane, “you won’t kill him.”
“And why does he need Wylan?” Jesper asked. Keep them talking. Wylan didn’t know if he had the time. The sedative in the dart. His thoughts were growing sluggish, and there was something pressing into the back of his ribs. A box of some kind, its corners –
“I’ve heard of the Councilman’s skills,” Eamon pulled him backward. There was nowhere to go: the canal on one side, a row of empty office buildings to the other. Was that a ticking noise? “Now, gentlemen,” the hand around Wylan’s neck left, but the knife stayed on his skin. “I think I can persuade you to leave.”
Eamon’s other hand was holding – oh. The box. Jesper’s powers. The existing prototypes set themselves off without warning. The ticking.
Kaz didn’t need Wylan’s help replicating it. He needed Wylan’s help fixing it. But it was too late. It didn’t matter how a former Dime Lion had gotten their hands on one of them, or how he’d managed to track Wylan down. All that mattered was the ticking, counting down, down, down –
“Wylan is very skilled,” Jesper was going on, trying to distract, “But I’m afraid you’ll be too busy dying – ”
“Rook takes pawn,” Wylan said. Everything was slowing down, too. He tried to scramble against the sedative, to claw at Eamon’s hand, but – “Bishop to knight.”
“Shut it.” Eamon’s knife pressed down, and Wylan felt his skin break. He saw Jesper flinch, felt something trickle down his skin, but he managed to meet Kaz’s gaze.
“This isn’t the time to let me win, Wylan,” Kaz said tightly. He understood – he had to. Give Wylan up, take Jesper and run. Wylan was more than willing to take this risk. There wasn’t any other way out.
Wasn’t that the point of it? Weighing sacrifices, and accepting the best loss. Practical, pragmatic, rational: there had been no sentimentality with his father, and there wasn’t any sentiment to this too. There wasn’t any, except for how Wylan weighed himself against Jesper, against Kaz, and would always reach the same equation: better two lives, than one.
Eamon held the box up with his other hand. “Last chance to walk away, Brekker.”
“Pawn to knight,” Kaz countered, “Bishop takes rook.”
“I’m sorry,” Jesper snapped, his raised pistol the only thing betraying his fear. “Is this a game to you?”
The ticking was growing louder, and Kaz was saying something, but Wylan didn’t hear it. He could feel the heat from the box, radiating and growing, and ticking, ticking, ticking. There wasn’t any other way out, there was a knife to his throat, and the sedative was working its way through his limbs, heavier and heavier by the second.
There was a knife to his throat, and a ticking time bomb, and a canal –
“Take care of him for me,” Wylan said, the world freezing down to the moment, and Kaz jerked forward, Jesper a moment too slow, before Wylan pushed, and pushed back, momentum and force and acceleration: Eamon cursed as he stumbled backward, off the board, off the street – the knife clattered to the ground, the box, the bomb, hitting Wylan’s chest.
A hand clawed at his back, dragging him down with it, the ticking was growing louder, and – Kaz held Jesper back. Wylan could see, in the split moment before everything sped back up, how much it cost Kaz to do it. Jesper was shouting – his name, maybe, but Wylan had the time to think: thank you, before he wrapped his hand around the box, the ticking speeding up to its damning conclusion, and let himself fall, too, taking Eamon with him –
The water was cold –
The ticking stopped, and –
The bomb went off. Underwater, muted, but the force of it pushed Wylan deeper down, knocking the air out of his lungs –
There was no light anymore. The hand on his back was gone –
Jesper. Jesper. He still owed his mother a night at the opera.
Jesper could take her –
He could –
“We’ve both played this game before,” a voice said, rough gravel over concrete, “and you aren’t losing now.”
Did it matter?
Everything burned –
“He’s slipping away again,” another voice said, and there was a cool hand over his cheek –
He tried to lean into it, but he couldn’t breathe.
He couldn’t –
“It’s been three days,” a voice murmured.
“The Stadwatch fished Eamon’s body from Sixth Harbor this morning.” The same rough voice was back. “It was missing a head.”
“Saints.” That was – Jesper. Jesper was good. Jesper was safe. “What did you do to him?”
“I made an example out of him,” Kaz replied. “And out of the new weapon. It won’t be entering the market anytime soon.” Whoever had developed the weapon, they wouldn’t want to cross Kaz Brekker, not after what he’d done at the Harbor.
Wylan didn’t think he wanted to know what exactly Kaz had done.
“You do care,” Jesper teased Kaz, but it fell flat, the worry clear in his voice.
Light came back to him in increments.
When he managed to open his eyes, it was pleasantly dark: not too dark to see, with the small Inferni lamp Jesper had set up on the windowsill. The light cast a pleasant gold hue across the room. Home, he thought, and it was strange to think of these walls as home, but the mansion had become a home, and it was right to think of his friends as home.
He made out Jesper sitting on the settee by the foot of the bed, and Kaz with his head bowed over a damned chess table. They were playing a game, Jesper moving one of the lighter pieces. Wylan couldn’t tell who was winning. Still, he noticed one of Jesper’s pawns missing –
“Kaz,” Wylan rasped out, wincing. He hadn’t realized how sore his throat was. “Put the piece back.”
Both of them whirled around.
Jesper was beside him in a heartbeat, his hand finding Wylan’s and holding tight to it. “Wylan,” he said, as if Wylan’s name was prayer. Was prayer answered. “Wylan.”
“The next time you fall into a canal,” Kaz stayed at the end of the bed, standing stiff. “I’m pushing you back in.”
Wylan coughed out a laugh. He was propped up on some pillows – likely to help him breathe easier while he slept. A glass of water appeared in Jesper’s other hand, and he helped Wylan drink it as he said, “Kaz pulled you out.”
“You owe me a new coat,” Kaz added.
“And I can take care of myself,” Jesper huffed. For all this teasing, it was even clearer now how Jesper’s voice dipped with an echo of fear. “You have to – Wylan. Promise me.”
“Promise?” Wylan managed to ask.
“That you won’t trade yourself again. That you won’t – Saints, Wy, I didn’t know what to tell your mother. I didn’t know what to do – ”
“Is she alright?” Wylan frowned.
“She’s cooking dinner for us herself,” Jesper squeezed Wylan’s hand, planting a kiss over the back of it, and holding it there. Breathing him in. “With stroopwaffles and poffertjes.”
“It was the best move,” Wylan told him. He couldn’t make any promises: he wanted, more than anything, to live. He had paid for his wish, many times over, but he also knew that he’d lived a good life. He’d lived a good life, because of them, and he was willing to give it up for them. “There was no other way.”
Jesper shook his head, harsh in his fierceness. “I was trying to Fabrikate it, to keep it from going off.” His other hand shifted to fix the edges of Wylan’s blankets, lifting them higher: soft, in his fondness. “And I almost – until you – ”
“Breathe,” Wylan whispered. He was tired already, and he would need to sleep again before he could stomach any food, but first, this. “Again,” he told Jesper, and he waited for Jesper to let out a stuttered exhale before he went on. He had his father’s name, but he was his mother’s too. He was Jesper’s too, he was theirs too – their little family of stolen pieces, Kaz’s callousness, Inej’s kindness, Nina’s courage – he was theirs, as much as they were his. “I trusted you,” Wylan said in the end. “I trusted you to win.”
To make it out. To make it alright.
Jesper let out another stuttered breath. A chord, broken down into its core notes, its core truths.
In the end, it was Kaz who replied, the half-played chessboard standing between him and the bed. “There’s more to it than just winning.”
Wylan paused. He squeezed Jesper’s hand back, trying to make sense of the world. “What else is there?” he challenged.
Kaz only levelled him with a stern look. “I can’t give away all your mother’s secrets.”
Before Wylan could say anything to that, Kaz was already walking out the room, his cane silent over the padded floor. No echo, just the click of a lock that was fixed, the door swinging shut behind him.
In the silence that followed, he listened to Jesper breathe. One, two, three, he counted them as he counted his own pulse. It wasn’t the rapid ticking anymore, counting down, down, away. It was a measured rhythm that eased him back into a hazy comfort.
“Merchling,” Jesper started, as the light cast shadows all around –
“Jesper,” Wylan tapped his own rhythm into the back of Jesper’s hand. Staccato, slowing down into a whole note. Into a melody he recognized: guilt and grief and regret. “It wasn’t your fault.”
Jesper shook his head again. “I should have been faster, I should have felt the metal.”
“I should have found another way,” Wylan admitted. The world wasn’t black and white, wasn’t the clean corners of a chessboard. It was messy and difficult, and if there wasn’t a way, then Wylan should have made another way. If there wasn’t a door, he thought wryly to himself, there was the floor to go through.
But he was still learning too. He was still learning how to find his way in the world, how to find his way out of his father’s shadow, how to find his way on his own without anyone to hold his hand. How to find his way together, trusting enough to let Jesper help him, to let his mother love him, to let Kaz push him, and Inej remind him, and Nina find him.
“I would have made the same choice, in your place,” Jesper confessed in return. It was there: his fear of loss, but Jesper didn’t run from it, and Wylan didn’t hide from it.
“You weren’t hurt?”
“No,” Jesper shifted so that he was seated on the bed, letting Wylan move to pillow his head on his thigh. “No, you made sure of that.” Then, soft and rueful, he added. “You were quite the knight, saving us.”
Wylan’s ribs still ached. That was fine. They would heal. They would find a way through.
“I thought I was a lost prince,” Wylan managed to tease, looking up at Jesper. A suit of armor never fit him as well as his tailored suits did, and his tailored suits never fit on him as well as they fit on Jesper. He didn’t mind: he was never one for weapons, anyway. He liked music, and numbers, and he liked Jesper.
“Not lost,” Jesper tucked his other hand beneath Wylan’s chin, tipping it up so he could lean down to kiss him, finding him somewhere between the shadows and the light. “Not anymore.”
“Are you sure?” Wylan asked.
“Rest,” Jesper told him, “and I’ll go make sure Kaz leaves some poffertjes for us.”
Wylan curled tighter around Jesper’s hand. “I don’t need that.”
“What do you need, then?”
“What were you playing for?” Wylan flicked his gaze over at the chessboard. What were you betting on?
“Kaz was trying to distract me,” Jesper let his hand tangle with Wylan’s hair, restless as he played with the curls there, gentle. “I was wearing a hole through the carpet, but I – I didn’t have anything on the table.”
“You didn’t?”
“I was playing to see a point.”
Wylan studied him, his grey eyes clear of gunsmoke. Rough edges against soft sheets, the finite made infinite again in the seconds that stretched between them. “What point?” Wylan asked.
Jesper smiled. Barely a challenge, wholly a promise: “I’m not settling for easy, either.”
He learned most from a worthy partner.
He learned most from a worthy opponent.
Did it matter?
In the end he learned, and he kept learning. He learned, and he lost, and he won it all back.
And he let Jesper win, too. And he won with Jesper, too.
When Wylan sat up to peer at the chessboard that Kaz had left unfinished, Wylan spotted the missing piece – bright, in the sea of chipped jade pieces.
A new pawn: its base made of gold and its head a clear-cut ruby that caught in the firelight.
Pinned beneath it, five hundred kruge.
He never got an apology from Kaz.
That was fine.
Kaz never got a victory from him, either.