Chapter 8: The Seal

After saying that, Odette remained silent for a long time.

I could not tell whether she was waiting for the redness around her eyes to fade or choosing her next words. I did not know where to put the casual speech I had just heard, so I simply held on to it.

It had come from someone who had addressed me only in brief, cold formalities for over a month. My ears were startled first, and its meaning followed late into the place that surprise had left behind.

"Vodianitsa’s house won’t do."

Odette said.

That, too, was casual speech, but unlike her earlier words, it carried no emotion. It sounded like the voice she used when discussing chalk marks on the stage floor, and with that voice she was talking about my home.

"What?"

"You can’t walk the forest road for two hours with a cane. Move somewhere near the theater."

"There isn’t anywhere to move to..."

"I’ll look into that. We’ll need to find someone to take care of you too."

Odette said that and rose. Her eyes were still red, and her hands were folded together again. She straightened the hem of her coat with those hands and walked toward the door, her steps as light and steady as when she had arrived.

"Odette."

"Yes."

"Just now..."

"It’s business."

Without looking back, Odette opened the door. It shut behind her, and her footsteps in the corridor receded for perhaps six steps before disappearing.

On the bed, I laid out what had just happened from the beginning. At my saying that it had simply happened, Odette’s face had collapsed. For the first time, she had spoken casually. Then she had begun talking about a house and someone to care for me.

Something large had changed, and immediately afterward something small had come in a businesslike manner. I could not make sense of the two things coming one after the other from the same person for a long time.

Usually, when people started speaking casually, it meant they had grown closer. That was how it had been at the company too. But Odette’s casual speech was less a signal that we had grown close than a sound that had come from where something had broken.

I had never seen someone discuss a house in a voice that came from a broken place.

I did not tell Vodianitsa, when she came that evening, that Odette had visited.

Odette had told me not to say anything, so I merely did not. Yet as I swallowed those words and listened to Vodianitsa chatter, it occurred to me late that this was the first time I had something to hide from her. I swallowed that thought with my bread.

A great many days passed afterward. Every morning, the doctor pressed on my leg. One day, he began undoing the cloth wrapped around it, and the nurse removed the pillows from behind my back one at a time.

Vodianitsa came every evening. The forest road took two and a half, then three hours, before packed snow brought it back to two and a half. Meanwhile, the Teyvat script on the backs of the papers filled an entire sheet of lyrics and spilled onto the next.

On the day I was told the bone had fused, the doctor brought me a cane.

It was an ordinary wooden cane, and the handle did not fit my hand, sitting loose against it. On the first day I got down from the bed using it, I stopped after two steps.

When my left foot touched the floor, I could not tell whether what rose from below my knee was pain or unfamiliarity. It took several more days to grow accustomed to putting my weight on something I did not understand.

There were six steps from the bed to the door.

On the fifth day, I tried the distance Odette had measured before leaving. At first it took nine steps, just as she had said it might take longer. Three days later it became seven, and on the day it became six, I went out to the corridor and back alone.

My left leg dragged. As the doctor had said, I limped. My limping steps made a sound, and when I heard that sound in the corridor, I turned around.

That was when the word discharge began to come up.

The doctor said we should watch for another ten days, then changed his mind after three. He said they were short on beds. I did not know whether that was true, but if it was a lie, it was the first kind lie I had heard in that hospital.

The theater director came carrying documents. His steps were fast for someone entering a hospital room, and the face behind his glasses was paler than usual. He held the bundle of papers against his chest, and his fingertips gripping it were white.

It was strange to see a man who lived buried in documents holding one bundle so carefully.

"Mr. Kim Sang-hyeon."

"Yes. You came."

I offered him the chair beside my bed, but the director did not sit. He seemed unable to think of sitting. Standing there, he turned one page, then another, before returning them to the front.

"This arrived at the theater this morning."

The director did not hand me the bundle. He turned only the top page so I could see it. It was densely covered in Teyvat script. Beneath that was my name, and beside my name was the troupe’s name. By then, I could read both.

"Can you read it?"

"A little."

"Then read it. That would be better than having me read it to you."

I propped my cane against the bed and accepted the paper. The first line was the hospital, with a date and an amount beside it. The number in the amount column was so long that I counted it twice. The second line was a house, followed by words saying it was behind the theater and under the troupe’s name.

The third line was wages. Beside it were the words: from the day of injury until the day of return.

After reading the three lines, I returned the paper to the director.

"What does this mean?"

"Exactly what it says. All hospital fees have been paid. A troupe residence has been assigned to Mr. Kim Sang-hyeon, and your wages while you rest will be paid under the troupe’s name until you return."

"My wages?"

"The same amount you received before. There is no mention of a reduction. The hospital says someone came this morning as well. They said the money had arrived."

As he spoke, the director pointed at the very bottom of the page.

There was a red seal. It was about half the size of a palm, with a round border. There was a pattern within it, but I could not tell what pattern it was. The director’s finger paused beside the seal, then fell away.

"Do you know what this is?"

"No."

"It is used by the royal court. At the very top of it, too."

"The court?"

"That is all I know. I do not know who sent it, and I am not in a position where I can find out."

The director took off his glasses and put them back on. He turned through the documents once more, missed the paper’s edge twice with the hand turning them, and I watched that hand.

It was the hand that used to slide my pay envelope across a desk, the hand that had casually set documents atop stacks of paper. Now that hand could not set a single sheet straight.

"Director."

"Yes."

"I am not someone who deserves this. I have no status, and I have not even been with the troupe for three months."

"I know."

"Then why..."

"If I knew that, I would not be standing here like this."

The director smiled a little then, but only his mouth smiled.

"Mr. Kim Sang-hyeon, I have handled documents in theaters for thirty years. I have seen court documents a few times and government documents by the hundreds. But this is a first. Papers bearing this seal do not come down to places like a troupe. At least, not as far as I know."

"Could it have come by mistake?"

"Your name is written there. So is the troupe’s. It could not have come by mistake."

The director held the bundle to his chest again.

"I will process this according to the documents. I do not know what will happen to me if I do not, and I do not wish to find out. I will bring the residence keys tomorrow. Leave the hospital whenever the doctor decides."

"Director, the residence..."

"It is what the documents say. It is not for me to decide."

The director turned away, then looked back once more at the door.

"Mr. Kim Sang-hyeon, does anything come to mind? Someone you know at court, perhaps?"

"No one."

"Of course not."

The director left. His steps were even quicker than when he had come in. As they faded down the corridor, I sat on the edge of my bed and thought of the red mark he had pointed to.

I did not know what the seal meant. The word court brought nothing to mind except that this country had a queen, and the phrase at the very top meant even less. All I knew was that the director could not lay the paper straight and that a man who had handled documents for thirty years said he had never seen it before.

Those two facts alone were enough.

At the company, there would have been paperwork, I thought. Papers that counted the days I took off due to injury and made up the wages for those days. On my first day in the hospital, I had stopped calculating because I thought there could be no such papers here. Yet that very paper had just passed through my hands.

If something that could not exist had come, I should have been happy. My concerns about making a living had been resolved all at once, so I should have been grateful.

The word grateful did not come to mind.

What came to mind was high school. The time I had believed a letter for three days, and the time I had learned where it had come from three days later.

Things that came without a price either had their price later or had not been meant for me in the first place. When I did not know which it was, I suspected first. At least, I did.

Hospital fees, a house, and wages had arrived as one bundle. There was no reason they should have arrived as one bundle for me.

That night, I took out the Korean paper from between the lyric sheets.

The things I had received were listed from the top down. The line at the bottom was blank, and above it I wrote three more lines in charcoal.

Hospital fees. House. Wages while resting.

Once I had written them, the letters were shorter than any line I had written before, yet those three short lines weighed more than all the long lines above them put together.

There was one more thing I could not write down.

Every previous line had a name. I knew who had given me the soup, the candy, the boots, and the blankets. Because I knew, there was a place to return them someday.

The three new lines had no such place. The director was someone who passed them along, not someone who gave them. And at the very top of the court was not a person’s name.

Beside the column for my leg, another blank column appeared: to whom.

I stared at the paper with its two empty columns side by side for a long time. One was empty because there was nowhere to put it. The other was empty because there was somewhere to put it, but no one to receive it. That night, I could not decide which was worse.

Without deciding, I folded the paper and slipped it back between the lyric sheets.

The next evening, two people came together. Vodianitsa entered first and Odette followed behind. Since the first day I woke up, they had never entered the hospital room side by side.

As usual, Vodianitsa set a bundle of bread on the table. Odette stood by the door as she had on my first waking day.

"I heard from the director," Vodianitsa said as she sat down.

"About the residence at the end of the street behind the theater. The stage manager lived there until last year, but it has been empty. It has a stove and two rooms."

"I do not intend to accept it."

"Why not?"

"We don’t know who gave it. Even the director said he does not know."

Vodianitsa looked at me. Her eyes were as bright as usual, but it seemed that she was weighing something in them. After weighing it, she opened her mouth.

"So you’re saying you won’t take it?"

"Yes."

"Then where will you live? My house? It is two hours through the forest, and when the snow melts, it will be mud. Can you make that trip with a cane?"

I had no answer. I was winded after six steps in the corridor. I had not even tried going down stairs yet. Saying I would travel the forest road on that leg was wrong before I even calculated it.

"So go," Vodianitsa said.

"I know you do not want to accept it, but sort that out later. First, go somewhere you can walk around. Once you have accepted it, you can slowly find out who gave it to you."

"Vodianitsa."

"Go."

She said the same thing twice, but the second time was quieter. I heard that diminished sound and pretended not to. If I did not pretend, I would not know what to say.

"I asked the agency about someone to take care of you," Odette said from beside the door.

It was casual speech. It was the first time I had heard her speak to me that way in front of Vodianitsa. Vodianitsa turned to look at Odette once. She said nothing, but her gaze lingered a little longer than usual.

"A list will arrive soon. It only provides room and board and almost no wages, so there probably will not be many applicants."

"Who would come if they are not paid?"

"Trainees would. People looking to learn maid work."

Odette looked at my leg. The cane was leaning against the bed. She looked briefly at its handle, then looked away.

"The handle is loose, isn’t it?"

"Yes, a little."

"I’ll replace it next time I come."

That was business too. I was still unaccustomed to business discussed in casual speech, but Odette spoke as if she had already grown used to it. With no way to bridge that difference, I only said yes.

After the two left, I did not take out the paper again.

I did not need to. I knew. Pressed by their words to go, I would go; pressed to accept, I would accept. But something accepted under pressure was still received, so the three lines on the paper remained, as did the column that said to whom.

The next day, the theater director brought the keys. There were two old iron keys. As he placed them in my hand, his face looked a little better than yesterday, but he did not mention the documents.

"There are two. One is in case you lose the other."

"Thank you."

"I am not the person you should thank."

After the director left, I placed the two keys on my palm and weighed them. They were light. Far too light for the weight of a house, so I could measure nothing by their weight.

I put one key beside the paper in my inner pocket and the other in my coat’s outer pocket. He had said it was in case I lost one, so it would remain there until I did.

On the morning of my discharge, a troupe carriage came to the hospital.

The doctor showed me once more how to use the cane and told me to lead with my good leg on the stairs. Following his instructions, I borrowed the nurse’s arm twice to descend the hospital’s six steps.

When I climbed into the carriage, Vodianitsa supported me from below. Only after getting in did I think that it was the same hand that had carried me on her back through the snow.

We did not go straight to the residence. My belongings were at the house in the forest. They were only a few changes of clothes and some pages I had used to practice letters, but I could not leave those pages behind.

The carriage went as far as the edge of the forest. From there, there was no road. Before I could ask how we were supposed to travel where there was no road, Vodianitsa pulled a sled from behind the carriage.

"I use it to haul firewood. Get on."

"You’re going to pull it?"

"Then who will? Are you going to walk?"

I could not walk. I sat on the sled with the cane across my knees. Vodianitsa slung the rope over her shoulders, and the sled began to glide across the snow. The road I had walked every day for over a month looked different from atop the snow. I tried to point out where we had practiced writing letters, then stopped.

Where the forest opened up, Vodianitsa pointed left with her chin without stopping the rope.

"There. That is where I found you."

There was only a white slope. The lake must have been somewhere beneath it, but snow covered everything. There was no place where I had lain, no place where I had stopped after counting ten steps.

Vodianitsa looked once more at the place where there was nothing, then pulled the rope again.

She talked the entire time she pulled. She said that the practice-room piano had finally been tuned, that the two leads had fought over parts in the next performance, and that the old man had strained his back moving boxes and rested for three days. The words continued like the sled rope, interrupted here and there by things like, "See that tree? It fell last week."

Her breath should have made her stop talking, but it did not. Watching her back from behind, I only thought she was talking more than usual.

The house was unchanged. The stove was cold, an old pouch lay folded on the shelf, and the bedding beneath the bed was still neatly folded. There were two blankets on top of it: one Odette had brought, and one belonging to Vodianitsa.

"Take the blankets. Both of them."

"Just one. Leave yours."

"I’m fine. I don’t mind the cold."

"Still."

"Then leave one."

Vodianitsa folded Odette’s blanket and placed it atop my belongings. She folded her own blanket with the bedding and pushed it under the bed. There was no one left to sleep on the floor, but Vodianitsa did not say that.

Packing did not take long. I tied my clothes into one bundle. The pages I had used to practice letters went into my inner coat pocket, beside the Korean sheet tucked between the lyric pages. I left the old pouch on the shelf, and Vodianitsa did not touch it either.

"Should I boil water? Eat something before we go."

"The carriage is waiting."

"Let it wait. It is the troupe’s carriage."

Vodianitsa lit the stove and put water on to boil, talking all the while. The stove in the residence was smaller than this one, she said. The road behind the theater would be slippery when snow piled up, so I needed to scatter salt. Someone from the agency would bring a list tomorrow. I sat before the table and listened.

There was a piece of charcoal on the table. It was the charcoal we had used to write letters, during those nights when Vodianitsa wrote and I copied after her. She picked it up and pushed it toward me.

"Take it. There will not be charcoal at the residence."

"Then you will not have any either."

"More comes out of the stove."

I put the charcoal into my inner pocket, beside the paper.

When the water boiled, Vodianitsa poured it into two cups and set one before me. It was the same spot where, on an evening in the third week, I had placed a cup in front of her and used polite speech for the first time. Remembering that, I could not lift the cup right away.

"What are you doing? It will get cold."

"No, I’m drinking."

I drank. Vodianitsa drank too. She stopped talking only while she drank, then started again once she put her cup down. She said that, in the next performance, the back row would move forward one row. The words passed amid all the others, but I heard only those words separately.

"Forward?"

"Yes, one row. One of the leads left, so that happened."

"That is good."

"It is."

Vodianitsa smiled. I did not distinguish what kind of smile it was. I simply received it as a smile.

Even on the sled back to the carriage, Vodianitsa talked. She repeated some of the things she had said on the way there, a little differently. I understood that they were different, but did not point it out. Her words continued until the forest ended.

The new things she added were that she had never seen the director go to the hospital himself over a residence matter, that Odette had not said a word on the day they went to the agency together, and that the snow on the forest road would start melting next week.

She did not say that once it began melting, two hours would become three.

At the forest’s edge, Vodianitsa removed the sled rope from her shoulder and helped me into the carriage.

"It is the blue door at the end of the back road. You have to turn the key while pushing to open it."

"All right."

"See you tomorrow. I will go with you when the agency person comes."

"All right."

Vodianitsa pulled the sled back into the forest. The carriage did not move until her retreating back vanished between the trees. I watched it from inside, and when it was no longer visible, the driver set the horses moving.

It was the back of someone walking alone for two hours, pulling an empty sled. The thought came to me, but I did not know which line to put it under, so I did not put it anywhere.

The blue door opened only when I turned the key while pushing.

The driver carried my belongings inside and left. Leaning on my cane, I crossed the threshold. The house stood at the end of the back road that led over flat ground from the theater’s rear entrance. By carriage, I had estimated it at ten minutes walking slowly, but I would not know how long those ten minutes were with my current leg until I tried.

The house was old. It had one floor, two rooms, and a small kitchen. There was one stove, smaller than the one in the forest house, just as Vodianitsa had said.

There was a bed in the large room, while the smaller room was empty. I opened its door and shut it again. It was a room I had no use for.

It took a long time to light the stove. Someone had stacked firewood against the wall. To carry it to the stove, I had to prop my cane against the wall and move it one-handed. After carrying two pieces, I sat on the bed.

At the forest house, carrying firewood had been my job. Now it had become something that left me breathless after two logs.

I was alone that night.

There was no sound but the stove. No footsteps beyond the wall, no carriage wheels in the distance, and above all, no voice continuing endlessly beside me.

The sound I had thought I would miss if it were gone really was gone, and that night I learned that lonely was exactly the right word for it.

At the forest house, there had been snow beyond the walls. Here, there was a road, but nobody passed along it at night.

I took the paper from my inner coat pocket. The two blanks on the Korean sheet remained. I considered adding first day at the residence beneath them, but did not. It was a day with nothing to write.

In the morning, I tried the back road. I wanted to know how long the ten minutes I had estimated by carriage would take with a cane. It would have been easier to leave it unknown, since knowing would add another number to calculate, but I walked anyway.

The road was level, and the snow was packed. There were three places where the tip of my cane slipped. I had to catch my breath twice passing those three places.

I counted in intervals of more than twenty steps until I could see the theater’s rear door. By the time I reached it, about twenty-five minutes had passed. I stood before the door and looked at its lock.

It was the lock that had been said not to turn well in the cold. Faint piano music traveled through the wall from inside, but I did not touch the handle.

I did not yet have a place inside. I did not know what a props-room worker who could not carry boxes was supposed to do in the props room. And if I went in without knowing, I did not know what face the old man would make.

The way back took longer. By the time I reached the blue door, my left leg was shaking. I sat on the threshold until the shaking subsided, and sometime in between, the number one hour, there and back, appeared. I still did not know where to write it.

The agency representative came that afternoon. Vodianitsa and Odette arrived first, followed by a middle-aged man carrying a document case. He had slicked-back hair and his coat buttoned to the top. He looked around the room once, at me once, and at my cane once.

"Are you Mr. Kim Sang-hyeon?"

"Yes, I am."

"I have come regarding the request made by the troupe. The position was listed as a caretaker and housework trainee. There are three applicants."

The man took out a paper from his case and placed it on the table. It had three lines, each with a name, age, and a brief circumstance. I could slowly read the letters.

The first was a woman around forty. She had done housework for a long time, but wanted wages.

The second was a young man. The circumstance column was empty.

The third was a young woman named Danika. Her circumstance column said maid trainee and willing to work for room and board alone.

"Only the third line meets the conditions," the man said.

"She is the only one willing to come for room and board without wages. She has no experience as a trainee, but the agency found her diligent."

Vodianitsa came to the table and picked up the paper. She said nothing while she read, and that silence differed from her usual chatter, making me lift my head.

Vodianitsa’s eyes were on the third line. They stopped somewhere after the name on that line, and one beat passed while they remained there.

It was brief enough that no one else would have noticed. Yet during that brief moment, Vodianitsa’s fingers tightened slightly on the paper’s edge, then released it.

"Take this one," she said as she set the page down. Her voice and speed were as usual.

"A trainee is a trainee. She will do what she is told, I suppose. What about you, Odette?"

"I don’t care."

Odette answered shortly from beside the door, and the agency representative looked at me.

"What do you think, Mr. Kim Sang-hyeon? You are the one receiving her services."

"I..."

I looked at the paper again. There was only the name Danika and the word trainee. I could not tell from letters what sort of person bore that name.

The very idea that someone would come into a stranger’s home to care for him without wages was hard for me to understand. But things I did not understand had not happened only once or twice lately, making it difficult to examine that one thing separately.

"If you two are all right with it, then I am too."

"Then I will tell her to come the day after tomorrow. In the morning."

The man took out another page from his case and set it in front of me, pointing to where I needed to sign. I wrote my name in Teyvat script.

It was my second signature after the wage documents. Unlike the first, my hand trembled a little this time. I did not examine whether it was because that hand had held only charcoal since I was injured, or for another reason.

The man put the paper into his case and stood. At the door, he looked back.

"Since this is a troupe request, the agency fee will be charged to the troupe. Mr. Kim Sang-hyeon does not need to pay anything."

"The troupe?"

"Yes. That is what the documents say."

The man left. In only a few days, I had heard the words that is what the documents say twice. Both times, they had been documents I had never written.

"The day after tomorrow," Vodianitsa said.

The tiny pause where she had stopped at the list had vanished without a trace. After that, she looked over the residence kitchen, talking about how there was only one pot, no salt, and a window that did not shut properly.

In the meantime, Odette took my cane. She wrapped cloth around its handle, tied it with string, and gave it back. When I gripped it, the part that had been loose fit perfectly.

"Thank you."

"It’s business."

After saying that, Odette scraped away ice caught before the threshold with the tip of her shoe. It was a place where the cane’s tip might slip. I had not slipped there yet, but Odette scraped it away before I could.

The two left before sunset. Vodianitsa had two hours through the forest ahead of her, and Odette still had rehearsal at the theater. I watched them walk up the back road together from before the blue door.

They had said they did not walk side by side at the hospital, but they were doing so again. I did not ask why that had changed back.

I opened the small room again. It was the room I had shut because I had no use for it, but someone would use it from the day after tomorrow. Dust had settled in it, so I wiped it down one-handed.

I propped my cane against the doorframe and cleaned while supporting myself on the wall. When I was finished, the room was still empty, but the shape of that emptiness had changed a little.

I picked up the charcoal to write down what I should have the arriving person do first, then set it back down. That was something to do after she arrived. Writing it down before she came was a habit from the company, and I did not yet know whether that habit belonged here too.

Back in the large room, I took out the paper.

I added one day at the residence and the cane handle to the list of things received. I did not know which line to put the person arriving the day after tomorrow under, so I left it blank. I began counting whether there were now three blanks or still two, then stopped and folded the paper.

It was a night spent waiting for someone sent on the troupe’s request, while receiving wages under the troupe’s name in a house listed under the troupe’s name. No one inside this house knew who stood behind that troupe.

=========

It was a night about fifteen days earlier. A props-room worker from the theater was still lying in a hospital bed, counting cracks in the ceiling.

In the deepest room of the Ice Palace, the Tsaritsa was alone. She had dismissed her attendants long ago, and the hall beyond lay against the walls. An unread bundle of documents sat on the table, but the Tsaritsa was looking out the window instead.

Beyond it were the rooftops of Snezhnaya’s capital, with snow falling over them.

The door did not open.

Yet there was one more person in the room.

The Tsaritsa did not turn her head. She knew before turning. No person could enter this room. If something had entered where it could not, it was not human. And among those that were not human, only four could stand there with such ease.

"That took a while."

The voice was gentle. Slow and unhurried, with no hint of haste anywhere in it. Yet it was from that leisure that the Tsaritsa first felt threat. Within this room was power counted among the greatest of the Seven Archons, but it had never felt so useless.

"Hah, not getting in. You took a while to turn around."

The Tsaritsa turned. A white veil was the first thing she saw. The inside of it was blue, and a golden crown ornament rested on the woman’s head. Golden hair flowed beneath the veil to her hips, while a golden ring floated above her crown.

Her eyes were different colors. The left was gold and the right pale blue. Those eyes were not looking at the Tsaritsa, but at the place where the Tsaritsa stood.

The Tsaritsa knew that face. She had never seen it in person, but anyone who knew of the fall of Khaenri’ah could not fail to know that name. Anyone who knew when the things made by that name swept across the continent could not fail to know what that face had done.

She was one who had left without watching to the end what her creations destroyed. It had always been other hands that cleaned up what remained after she left.

"Gold."

"I have not used that name in a long time."

Rhinedottir walked into the room. Her steps made no sound. As she passed the table, the room’s cold eased ever so slightly, and the Tsaritsa noticed the dried floral decoration atop the table.

The Tsaritsa looked at the flowers, then away.

"You live somewhere cold."

Rhinedottir looked around as she said it. The walls and floor were white stone, with only that one dried flower as decoration. It was neither criticism nor pity. She was merely saying what she saw, which made it colder.

"I would hear why one of the Shades has entered my palace."

"Chess."

Rhinedottir said that and sat in the chair before the table. As she sat, she spread one hand, and a board appeared on the table with pieces lined upon it. The white pieces were of an ordinary design, but the two knights on the black side were different: they were unicorn heads in golden armor.

"Let’s play a game. Playing alone is boring."

"Is that so?"

"If you will not play, I will leave."

The Tsaritsa sat opposite Rhinedottir and thought.

If one of the four Shades walked in of her own accord to suggest chess, chess could not be the purpose. And one who placed something other than her purpose before her meant to make the other wait until what lay behind it appeared.

The Tsaritsa waited.

The white pieces belonged to the Tsaritsa. She made the first move. Rhinedottir responded without looking, and several moves passed in silence.

Rhinedottir’s hands were slow. There was a pause in picking up a piece and another in setting it down. By the fifth move, the Tsaritsa understood that it was not the slowness of thought, but the slowness of having no need to think.

On the eighth move, the Tsaritsa offered a pawn. Taking it would open her bishop in three moves; it was a move meant to see whether Rhinedottir recognized the position. Rhinedottir did not even look at the pawn and moved her knight elsewhere.

"Not bad," Rhinedottir said.

It was unclear whom she meant. The Tsaritsa did not answer.

"In your capital..."

Rhinedottir continued after the Tsaritsa’s white bishop crossed the board.

"Death is here."

The Tsaritsa’s hand did not stop. She tried not to let it stop, and tried again not to let the effort show. But she could not stop the frost on the window from spreading ever so slightly.

"What do you mean?"

"Exactly that. The Consul of Death is in this city right now. Has been for quite a while. More than two months, probably."

"Where?"

"That is not included in the price."

"Whose face is she wearing?"

"That is not included either."

Rhinedottir lifted a black knight and set it down. The unicorn’s golden armor caught the lamplight.

The Tsaritsa pretended to study the board as she weighed those words. The statement that the Consul of Death was in the capital was, by itself, a matter on which the nation’s fate hung.

The Tsaritsa knew it was not an opponent she could defeat by her own power. Therefore, she also knew this was not information for fighting, but for avoiding and preparing.

It was something she could verify by turning every eye and ear of the court toward it. And anything that could be verified had a price.

The problem was that price.

"Name your payment."

"That is how it should be."

Rhinedottir leaned back in her chair. As she did, she tipped her head slightly to the right. There was no one there, but the Tsaritsa saw that tilt.

"There is a man who injured his leg working in a theater props room. He is with the Korolyovsky Troupe, and his name is Kim Sang-hyeon. Have his hospital bills paid, provide him a house near the theater, and see that his wages during his injury are paid under the troupe’s name until he returns to work."

Her words were businesslike. They named only what would be written on documents, and Rhinedottir’s voice remained as gentle as when she had invited the Tsaritsa to play chess.

"And send one capable maid to that man’s house."

"A maid?"

"One who cooks well, is perceptive, and knows how to keep her mouth shut. I do not want his leg fixed. Your doctors cannot do anything about that leg anyway."

The Tsaritsa held those words for a moment. If it was a leg her doctors could not deal with, the Consul who governed life certainly could.

Yet that Consul, instead of fixing the leg, wanted a maid who cooked well. The Tsaritsa did not yet know where to place that strangeness, so she set it aside.

"Is that all?"

"That is all."

The Tsaritsa lifted her eyes from the board.

Opposite her sat someone who had named one man’s hospital bills, house, wages, and a maid as the price of information upon which the nation’s fate rested.

She was one who had abandoned Khaenri’ah, one who had created things that swept across the continent and never looked back. And now, over a theater props-room worker’s single leg, she was selecting words to write on documents.

It was unsettlingly strange.

"What is that man to you?"

"Nothing."

Rhinedottir answered at once. Too quickly. That speed stood out alone amid her unhurried words, and the Tsaritsa did not miss it.

"I’m bored. That is enough."

"Truly?"

"Hah. What would you like me to say?"

Rhinedottir pushed forward a black pawn. As she did, her fingertips remained briefly on the board, and a pale gold shimmer spread across the wood grain, making it look new for an instant.

"You mean you would sell the Consul of Death out of boredom?"

"I am not selling her. I am informing you. That child will not die, no matter what you do."

As she said that, Rhinedottir looked to the right again. This time she looked longer, then murmured as though to herself.

"I know. I know."

She was not speaking to the Tsaritsa. No one stood there, yet Rhinedottir had answered someone. In that instant, the pale blue of her right eye brightened once with a light unlike the lamp’s, then returned to normal.

The Tsaritsa looked at that eye, then lowered her gaze to the board.

"I accept," she said.

Information was not her only reason for accepting. Only a Shade of equal rank could contend with the Consul of Death, and one such Shade had come here of her own accord to play chess.

If a tie that would not end when this game ended was formed, then one man’s hospital fees were far too cheap a price for that tie.

"I will choose the maid."

"Fine. Your people would know better."

One person came to mind for the maid’s role: the daughter of a family that had served the court for generations. She had only recently come of age and had not yet entered the palace, leaving her in a position where she could be sent anywhere as a trainee.

The Tsaritsa did not voice that thought, and Rhinedottir did not ask.

The game moved again. Several more moves passed. One white piece was captured, and so was one black piece, but neither side tilted.

The Tsaritsa was not playing to win. Rhinedottir seemed never to have intended to win. Both knew that a game played that way did not end, and they continued.

"Does that man know you came here?"

"No. Nor will he have any reason to know."

"The papers will go to the troupe. The troupe will know at least that they came from the court."

"That much is fine. As long as he does not know who."

The Tsaritsa set that statement aside too. As long as he did not know who sounded like it was not the Tsaritsa whom the recipient must not know, but Rhinedottir herself. The Tsaritsa did not say that aloud.

As she played, the Tsaritsa considered the request again. Hospital fees, house, wages, and maid: all four pointed toward one man, and there was nothing besides that one man.

There was no nation, no palace, no Heavenly Principles, and no matter between the four Shades.

The Tsaritsa pushed her thought as far as the conclusion that this man was the ring moving this Shade. She held that thought, and moved the white queen one square.

"I will arrange that man’s affairs according to the documents. But there is one more thing I want."

"I’ll hear it and decide."

"If the Consul of Death is in my capital, I cannot prepare alone. You would be different."

For the first time, Rhinedottir looked directly at the Tsaritsa. Her eyes were two different colors, and the Tsaritsa could read nothing in them.

"Kim Sang-hyeon."

The Tsaritsa spoke that name for the first time.

"Apart from granting that man’s requests, I ask you this. When I take action against Death, may I borrow your power?"

The Tsaritsa counted the beat after the name was spoken. Rhinedottir’s face did not change, nor did her hand, but the dried flower on the table had changed.

From the end of its withered stem to the edges of its petals, faint gold spread across it. For an instant, the dried flower took on the color of life, and alone atop a table in the palace of deepest winter, that color was warm.

The Tsaritsa looked at the flower. Rhinedottir did not.

"If it is something that will not harm that man..." Rhinedottir said.

"I will consider it. That is not an answer."

"Is that so?"

"It is."

Rhinedottir said that and stood. The board remained as it was. White and black pieces still occupied positions threatening each other, and the two captured pieces lay beside the board.

"Let’s finish the game another time."

"You are leaving without finishing it?"

"It would not be fun if we finished. There has to be a next time."

Rhinedottir turned from the table. As she did, the light in the room trembled once. When that tremor settled, the Tsaritsa was alone.

The door had not opened. The board remained on the table, and the gold glimmering on the dried flower remained too.

The Tsaritsa looked at the board for a long time.

Beside the unfinished game lay a statement upon which her country’s fate rested and one man’s name. The one who had placed both on the same scale had just left the room.

The scale did not tip. To the Tsaritsa, that untipped scale was the strangest thing of all, and the strangest thing was the most useful.

She pulled over the bundle of documents. She turned over the top page, took out a blank sheet, and wrote.

She wrote the Korolyovsky Troupe and Kim Sang-hyeon’s name first. Beneath them, she wrote full hospital fees, one troupe residence, and wages from the day of injury to the day of return.

She did not write down one maid. She did not need to, and it was better not to.

At dawn, this paper would pass through a clerk’s hands and go down to the troupe. Through the troupe’s hands, it would reach that man. The more hands in between, the less visible the very first hand became.

After writing, the Tsaritsa opened a drawer.

There were two seals within it. One was her own seal, and the other was used only at the very top of the court. The Tsaritsa took out the second.

It had to be issued in the court’s name rather than her own. Only then would the recipient never know from whom he had received it.

She placed the seal over the paper.

Beside the unfinished game, the Tsaritsa pressed down hard with the seal in her hand.

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