His gaze fixed on Chauncy’s wizened face. Päl swallowed back the nausea that threatened to overwhelm him, though he was uncertain at that moment if it were a reaction to his injury, or the realization his mother had just attempted to have him assassinated.
“Päl?”
He blinked at the pommel of the knife protruding from his wife’s chest. He knew better than to remove it. It would only hasten her bleeding. He saw the glint of his ring beside her and with a burst of anger he grabbed it and tossed it across the room. He hissed at the pain in his shoulder that threatened to pitch him into unconsciousness. He bent and kissed his wife tenderly on her cold cheek, then stood on uncertain legs. “Watch her, Chauncy. I’ll send for a doctor.”
Päl knelt beside the assassin and retrieved the Nakjima, then moved slowly out of the nursery toward the elevated voices below.
Guests had spilled out of the ballroom and were now creating a ring of enclosure about the Baron. Many had been muttering and whispering among themselves. As news spread, the crowd grew louder.
“It was as the Baron warned, the Dragon has come.”
“The snakes have tried to kill the Baron’s son!”
Someone else was more certain. “Dead. He must be dead!”
Päl stood in the shadows beneath the stairs, away from the guests. His shoulder burned and again he felt himself grow light-headed. He watched with distant fascination as the panic spread. Simple words, spoken with just the proper emotion—and all of them would turn on Tancred. Realization of what his true standing was within the family did not come as a surprise, but more as a sad revelation. I am a pawn. Nothing more. Nothing less.
Carrying the Nakjima, Päl Wyndham-Sandoval stepped forward. Sharp intakes of breath greeted him as the crowd parted to allow him through. Many, seeing his bloodied uniform, gasped aloud. His father leaped forward, braced him with a hand on either shoulder, and then grabbed the weapon from his son.
“Nakjima.” He nearly spat out the name. “Combine manufacture.”
Neither Baron or Baroness appeared overly worried about Päl’s condition. But then his father was lost to his hatred for House Kurita. His mother, though, was calm. Far too calm. He found her eyes, and just below the surface of her calm, proud mask, he saw the truth of what the assassin said.
She wanted the family’s loyalties turned, as did his father. As did most of those here in this room. But she had been the one willing to sacrifice her only son to achieve it. And why not? She had a new son to raise.
The truth was there and then gone in an instant. As Margarette Wyndham-Sandoval stepped from behind her guests, a grand show of concern washed over her face toward her son. “Päl, was it the Dracs?”
He matched her gaze with his own and said simply, and quietly. “No.” He turned to the nearest guard. “Please, could you summon a doctor? My wife….”
But the Baroness wasn’t going to be ignored. She moved even closer to Päl, the flash of her eyes toward the crowd of guests making it obvious to her son that she knew she was on stage. It was time to call the play together. “But it has to be.” Her eyes narrowed. “How do you know it is not?”
Päl kept his voice even, though the fatigue he heard in his words was genuine. The pain in his shoulder was like a smoldering fire, constant and fierce. The loss of blood was making it difficult to stand. The guard hurried off to summon help for Khim, so Päl allowed himself a moment. “Because he told me,” he said.
“He told you?” The Baron stepped forward. “Tell us, Päl. I demand to know!” A murmur of assent swept the assembled nobles. When the baron looked to his wife for support in his demand, however, he found only stony silence. Frowning, glancing between his wife and son, the Baron fell back on the will of the crowd. “Who did this?” he asked.
A hush settled as all eyes turned to Päl. His own vision wavered, though nothing could erase the still image of his mother, standing close enough for assumed concern, yet far enough away should her son betray her to the assembly. He blinked several times, willing himself to stay conscious. Focused.
He narrowed his eyes at her. Their very way of life depended on his answer, and he knew the use of ruthlessness at that moment. Understood it, for like his mother who had wagered the life of her son on the turn of history, Päl too had put the assassin’s family on the table to force the confession that now would change his life forever.
He swallowed, blinking with sluggish control as the world seemed to spin slower around him, and looked to his father, who stood within the nexus of this moment.
Päl saw the board clearly now—saw the position of the pieces. The game had just started. The Baroness held the kingdom in white—but it was Päl who now controlled the black. He saw the carefully placed moves that might have sent him and Khim to their deaths.
Two moves of a pawn across the board.
In truth, he knew she hadn’t expected him to live.
But there was a little known move in chess called the en passant, where the first move of a pawn with two squares can be met and defeated by one move of the enemy’s opposing pawn.
“Päl! Who has done this?”
With a sigh, the Baron’s son moved his gaze from his father’s red, flushed face, to rest it calmly upon the serene visage of his mother’s composure.
“Katherine Steiner-Davion.”
DESTINY’S CHALLENGE
by Loren L. Coleman
Tharkad, 2721
Coming down off Wolstenholme Plateau, one of the Nagelring’s primary live-fire and piloting ranges, Alek Kerensky heard the order passed for line abreast formation. He scratched at the
