The Kingdom of the Seven Stars: Chaturanga

Chapter 2

Jessamine's office was on the ground floor of the palace, looking out over the Fountain Gardens.

It was a small room with a green carpet, tall windows and a high ceiling. Jessamine had inherited the office from her father after he had appointed her regent of the star cluster when his illness became serious five years ago. Her large, smooth-topped desk was made of Martian mahogany and was carved with scenes of the Seven Sisters of the Pleiades from the ancient legends of Earth. The tall bookcase behind it was filled with volumes on the history, laws and constitution of the star cluster. There were also lots of books on chess, which had been a passion of nearly all the Tarquin monarchs, not just King Stephen, which the prime minister and the royal steward were quickly pulling down and hunting through.

"What in the names of all seven of the Sisters does Lord Blackstar think he's playing at?" said Ellen.

"I don't know, your highness," said the prime minister. "Though I have a feeling that, when we do find out, we're not going to like it."

"I don't like it now," said Alex.

It was nearly half an hour later and Alex was amazed at how shocked he was still feeling. Lord Blackstar's move had been so surprising, so unexpected, that he literally did not know what to think. Something that he had never even imagined was possible had just happened right in front of his eyes. He knew he should not be thinking about this now. He should be putting it very firmly to one side and concentrating on mourning for his grandfather, but he could not. Lord Blackstar's move kept pushing everything else aside instead.

"I think it's pretty clear what he's doing, even if we don't know why," said Alice. "He's trying to stop Mum becoming queen."

Everyone was silent for a moment. The prime minister looked up from the latest book he was searching through. The royal steward paused in consulting a book of advanced chess problems. Ellen raised a worried eyebrow. Captain Zachary swallowed by the door. Jessamine, who was sitting behind her desk studying the chessboard on her computer screen, nodded.

"It does look that way, doesn't it?" she said.

A chill ran through Alex's heart. A part of him had guessed this already, he realised, but it had been keeping it very firmly at the back of his mind, where it kept everything he did not want to think about. But now that Alice had said it, it suddenly moved to the front and seemed very solid and very real.

"Mum?" he said.

"Don't worry, darling," said Jessamine, without looking up from her computer. "We'll get through this."

"But he can't actually do that, surely?" said Captain Zachary. "Her highness is the crown princess. She's been regent for the last five years. We all know his majesty wanted her to follow him. Parliament approved his choice."

"Yes, so Lord Blackstar hasn't got a leg to stand on," said Ellen. "Call him and tell him that. He's just the Lord Chancellor. Mum's the queen and you're the prime minister."

"I haven't forgotten that, your highness," said the prime minister. "The problem is that King Stephen's Last Game is legally binding. It's been used to settle disputes and solve problems with the royal succession many times. We can't just start ignoring it now. But I never imagined someone might try to use it to block the succession!"

He reached the end of the latest book he was flipping through and slammed it shut.

"No, that's no help either. Where's volume seventeen?"

That was true as well. Alex remembered his family's history again. There had been lots of occasions in the four hundred years that the Tarquin dynasty had ruled the star cluster when King Stephen's Last Game had been used to decide who was becoming king or queen of the Pleiades next. The identical twins Prince Eric and Prince Alan had decided which of them would inherit the throne by seeing who could solve a chess problem set on the board by their Lord Chancellor first, something which Alex might have to do with Alice one day. When Princess Kendra's cousin Prince Hugo had challenged her right to inherit the throne, she had challenged him to find more ways to capture her Lord Chancellor's bishop than she could and had beaten him by eleven ways to five. There were plenty of other examples and some of them had even stopped civil war from breaking out in the Pleiades. The prime minister was right. They could not simply ignore the chess game.