On the black shore, the sea made no sound.
It lay flat and still under the violet moon, lit from somewhere deep beneath by a cold blue-green glow, and nothing moved on it. Nothing moved anywhere. There was no wind. There were no birds. The black sand ran away in a long, soft curve toward the rocks at either end, glittering faintly where the moonlight touched it, and it was smooth, and unmarked, except in one place.
In that place, a figure sat.
It sat cross-legged on the sand, tall and thin, in rags so old that they had no color left at all. Its hands rested on its knees. Its face was white, and smooth, with narrow eyes, and fine lines carved into it that caught the moonlight.
In front of it lay a board. A single square slab of dark wood, polished smooth, perfectly blank.
On the board stood a pawn.
It was small and white, and very old. It had been worn so smooth by someone's fingers, over so many years, that it was barely a pawn at all anymore. Only a round head, and a wide base, and the faint ghost of a collar between them.
The figure looked at it for a long time.
Then it lifted one long, pale hand from its knee, and reached out, and moved the pawn forward. One square. There were no squares on the board. It moved one square all the same.
The figure looked at it again.
Then it reached out and turned the board around, slowly, so that the pawn was on the other side, facing it. It considered the position from there for a long while, as if there were other pieces on the board that no one else could see, and a great deal depended on them.
It moved the pawn forward again. One square.
It turned the board back.
* * *
It had been doing this for some time when the child came.
The child walked out of the grotto at the far end of the beach, in the direction the figure had once come from, and came along the black sand toward it without hurrying. It was small, perhaps seven or eight years old, barefoot, in a plain gray shirt and trousers that were a little too big for it. Its hair was dark, and its face was calm and grave and utterly unremarkable. It was the kind of face you would pass in a crowd and never think of again.
It left no footprints in the sand.
It stopped a few paces from the board, and stood there, with its hands at its sides, and looked at the figure. The figure did not look up.
After a while, the child sat down on the other side of the board, and folded its legs beneath it neatly, and rested its small hands on its knees, exactly as the figure's hands rested on its own.
"Shall we play?" it said.
Its voice was calm, and clear, and came from nowhere at all. There was no echo in it, and no accent, and nothing to hold on to.
The figure did not answer. It did not move. It did not seem to have heard. It went on looking at the pawn, with its narrow white eyes, as if the space on the other side of the board were as empty as the rest of the beach.
The child waited.
The figure reached out and moved the pawn forward. One square. Then it turned the board around again, slowly, until the pawn faced it once more. The child's side of the board swung past the child's knees and away, and the child watched it go, and said nothing.
* * *
"A mistake," the figure said.
It said it very softly. Its voice was dry and thin, like paper sliding over paper, and it did not seem to be speaking to anyone. It was looking at the pawn.
"It has made a mistake."
It was quiet for a while.
"It thought it could make one. From nothing. From a boy in a lecture hall. It thought it had only to press hard enough, and long enough, and wait." The white face tilted, very slightly, toward the pawn. "It does not understand what it is pressing. It never has."
The child sat very still on the other side of the board.
"And now," the figure whispered, "I will have to mend it. Myself."
It moved the pawn again. One square forward. The board was still blank. There was still nothing on it but that one small white shape, worn smooth, going forward, one square at a time, toward the other side.
* * *
The child looked at the figure.
Then it rose to its feet, without a sound. It stepped back from the board. It put its small hands together in front of it, and bowed, low and slow and very formally, the way one bows to someone far greater than oneself.
The figure did not look up.
The child straightened, and turned, and began to walk away along the black sand, back toward the grotto at the end of the beach, as unhurried as it had come. It left no footprints. The violet moon hung low and enormous over the silent sea.
It had gone perhaps twenty paces when the voice came from behind it.
"Where will you take him?"
The child stopped.
It did not turn around at once. It stood very still on the black sand, with its back to the board, for a long moment. Then, slowly, it turned its head, and looked back over its shoulder.
The figure had not moved. It still sat cross-legged in the sand behind the blank board, with its hands on its knees and the pawn in front of it. But the white face was lifted now. For the first time, it was turned toward the child. The narrow eyes were very dark, and there was nothing behind them at all that anyone could see.
"The Wildthorn Empire," said the child.
The figure said nothing.
The silence went on. The sea did not move. The moon did not move. Nothing on the black shore moved at all, for a long, long time. On the blank board, the small white pawn stood alone, halfway across.
Then the white face turned away again, back toward the board.
"You may leave," it whispered.