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your Protector piece. You sacrifice everything to keep it free from threat.’ She nodded at the board. ‘Look. You are thinking about blocking my Mounted piece with your eastern General, leaving it open to my Tower after we’ve exchanged Caravels on the left flank. Well, aren’t you?’
    DeWar frowned deeply, staring at the board. He felt his face flush. He looked up again at those golden, mocking eyes. ‘Yes. So I am transparent, is that it?’
    ‘You are predictable,’ Perrund told him softly. ‘Your obsession with the Emperor with the Protector is a weakness. Lose the Protector and one of the Generals takes its place. You treat it as though its loss would be the end of the game. I was wondering . . . Did you ever play “A Kingdom Unjustly Divided” before you learned “Monarch’s Dispute”?’ she asked. ‘Do you know of it?’ she added, surprised, when he looked blank. ‘In that game the loss of either King does indeed signify the end of the game.’
    ‘I’ve heard of it,’ DeWar said defensively, picking up his Protector piece and turning it over in his hands. ‘I confess I haven’t played it properly, but ‘
    Perrund clapped her good hand on her thigh, attracting the frowning stare of the watchful eunuch. ‘I knew it!’ she said, laughing and rocking forward on the couch. ‘You protect the Protector because you can’t help it. You know it’s not really the game but it would hurt you to do otherwise because you are so much the bodyguard!’
    DeWar put the Protector piece back down on the board and drew himself up on the small stool he sat upon, uncrossing his legs and adjusting the positions of his sword and his dagger. ‘It’s not that,’ he said, pausing to study the board again briefly. ‘It’s not that. It’s just . . . my style. The way I choose to play the game.’
    ‘Oh, DeWar,” Perrund said with an unladylike snort. ‘What nonsense! That is not style, it’s fault! If you play like that it’s like fighting with one hand tied behind your back . . .’ She looked down ruefully at the arm in the red sling. ‘Or one hand wasted,’ she added, then held up her good hand to him as he went to protest. ‘Now just you never mind that. Attend to my point. You cannot stop being a bodyguard even when playing a silly game to pass the time with an old concubine while your master dallies with a younger one. You must admit it and be proud secretly or not, it’s equal to me or I shall be quite thoroughly upset. Now, speak and tell me I’m right.’
    DeWar sat back, holding both hands out wide in a gesture of defeat. ‘My lady,’ he said, ‘it is just as you say.’
    Perrund laughed. ‘Don’t give in so easily. Argue.’
    ‘I can’t. You’re right. I am only glad that you think my obsession might be commendable. But it is just as you say. My job is my life, and I am never off-duty. And I never will be until I am dismissed, I fail in my job, or Providence consign such an eventuality to the distant future the Protector dies a natural death.’
    Perrund looked down at the board. ‘In a ripe old age, as you say,’ she agreed before looking up at him again. ‘And do you still feel you’re missing something which might prevent such a natural end?’
    DeWar looked awkward. He picked up the Protector piece again and, as though addressing it, in a low voice said, ‘His life is in more danger than anybody here seems to think. Certainly it is in more danger than he appears to believe.’ He looked up at the lady Perrund, a small, hesitant smile on his face. ‘Or am I being too obsessive again?’
    ‘I don’t know,’ Perrund said, sitting closer and dropping her voice too, ‘why you seem so sure that people want him dead.’
    ‘Of course people want him dead,’ DeWar said. ‘He had the courage to commit regicide, the temerity to create a new way of governing. The Kings and Dukes who opposed the Protector from the start found him a more skilled politician and far better field