The pawn is a baby-faced young man called Magnus, with bristly brown hair and a stocky build. He looks to the viceroy in confusion, but she is preoccupied with a stack of cards. ‘Stjepan,’ she says, without looking up, ‘define “sunflower”.’

 

Magnus aims what I presume is a quizzical look at Felicity behind him. It happens every week, to the first pawn to encounter this phenomenon, but it is nevertheless a mistake. I brace myself.

​

‘DO NOT LOOK BEHIND YOU!’ shrieks the viceroy in abject fury, as if she has never witnessed such disrespect in all her life. Magnus gives a start and whips back around, shaking. ‘S-sorry, ma’am,’ he manages, voice quaking in fear whilst laughter is stifled behind hands all around the hall.

 

‘Do not speak to me either, boy,’ says the viceroy, with less volume but just as much severity. ‘You do not have the luxury, here, of gaping around the board like a bemused ape, or questioning the process like an insolent child. You will stand with your fellow pawns and follow orders, and trust that your king, who can see the entire board, knows what she is doing. Do not reply, I have made myself clear.’

 

‘A tall garden plant of the genus Helianthus with large golden-rayed flowers, now extinct,’ says Stjepan lazily, as if nothing has happened.

 

‘Correct. Exit, exhaust, exile, or execute?’

 

Stjepan slowly puts his wine down on the board. ‘Oh,’ he ponders, with joyless mirth, ‘I think I’ll exhaust him.’

 

A smattering of excited laughter rings out around the room – the effects of the beer have not properly taken hold yet, but a corpsman would enjoy what’s coming even on his driest day. Magnus, who, in truth, has not recovered from the rebuke of moments before, looks positively terrified as Stjepan rounds on him.

 

He has scarcely a moment to process his fate before Stjepan’s fist cracks his jaw, his full bodyweight shifting behind the punch in a precise movement almost too quick to register.