Chapter 35: The Siege

The prediction of the leader of the Chessboard proved accurate: the very next day, Lord Turin of the Great Bowl requested a connection to the network of hamlets belonging to Lady Stella of the Black Star, which surrounded the game’s surface — and she appeared in person.

The news was sent to all the players, and a tremendous surge of hope swept through Trust.

Emerging from an archway, she wore only an officer’s tunic; no cosmetic modifications from the game, no mount — even though she could have afforded every discovered species. Turin found this attitude insolent, all the more so because she barely looked at him, but he held back his furious words. The meeting took place in the hollow of Canyon L444, in a desert of burning black sand swept by fierce winds. Turin, for his part, rode a restless albino tiger, his only adornment the tattoos shifting across his body.

“High-level connection,” Cass demanded.

“Yeah, whatever — I get it, we have to bow to your rules, right? Fine. I accept.”

The connection was established, and the agreement appeared in the tens of thousands of reports issued by the Explorer Guild in every city, torn from trembling AI bureaucrats by their master-players.

“Tell me, Lady Stella,” Turin said with morbid delight. “Haven’t you realized that now that you’ve opened a breach in your barrier, I can start charging others for passage? That’s going to bring your precious barrier down, isn’t it?”

Cass turned to him, tired, slightly disdainful, ever icy. She wanted to wring his neck but reminded herself that she was mainly fighting Julia and her damned game.

“Who knows?” she replied simply.

And she vanished into the Arch.

A veil of worry passed over Turin’s face, which gave way to a sneering contempt. The breach was open, and he had made it happen. Now, he just had to find another hamlet in the area to exploit. That hamlet would be the open gate toward the uncharted outer lands and the only way for players to expand ... he was going to earn millions of gold coins. He might well become the second Emperor.

He tugged on the reins of his tiger, which leapt along the walls of the Canyon and landed in the black desert (L4443). He pushed his mount to maximum speed, due south, as if being chased — his heart pounding ... he had a hunch, dark as a storm cloud, a bad feeling...

Sliding to a halt in the sand, the tiger stopped before a path traced into the ground. Stella had enclosed the newly accessible area within another network of roads between hamlets. And she had won herself a damn village.

“SO WHAT?” Alice later shouted at the Council of Player Clusters over the din. “She got a village — so what? Who’s going to give her another high-level connection?”

“Any idiot,” replied the Head of the Chessboard. “You don’t know players very well. They know only two will become Emperors — and it won’t be them. The average player dreams only of a bigger castle, more privileges, and more conquests — especially if, in the process, it pisses off the old-timers like us. I’m sorry to say it, but we’re done for. I can’t wait to see how she forces Ariane to yield — now that’s going to be a show. As for me, I’m mentally focused on finding out what’s on the throne of the gods — and planning my strategy for the next round.”

And that prediction was correct too: for a sliver of free space, for the right to exploit one of the discovered wonders, sometimes for a simple pile of gold that allowed a player to advance into interior territories with battalion placements, Stella turned her hamlet into a village, then a town, then a fief, then a lordship (which she connected with Lucky’s, in exchange for a kind word and a smile), then a vavasoury ... impatiently cycling through bombastic titles like Bey, Rajah, or even Basileus, until she finally became Empress, ruling over ghostly city-states haunted by emptiness, save for a few livestock farms sustaining idle, gloomy neutral AIs.

The alliance of clusters tried, clumsily, to mount a counterattack, attempting to sabotage the farms of two remote hamlets, but Cass had purchased seven-league boots from Lucky — who made a tidy profit from the deal.

What did Ariane think of the Black Crow perched on the throne of her capital, Celestial Rome — a vast city of white marble sprawling across the cherry-blossom mountain? She did not show herself, but she must have been preparing for a confrontation both hoped for and feared.

Lucky had opened a path to Celestial Rome from H1024, capital of the Empire of the Black Star, and Cass had finally linked a road between the two capitals. An arch opened, and when Ariane stepped through, Cass had vanished. No offer was made, and the request remained pending.

Cass had descended to a remote hamlet of the Empire of the Black Crow — a handful of dry poplar log houses painted in bright colors, in a place called Savage Beauty. All around stretched a perfectly flat taiga, a few white mountains to the north, and enormous cows so round they looked as though someone had inflated them.

Savage Beauty survived thanks to its Delicious Turkey farm — a food as pleasant as it was easy to obtain. Amid the cries of the villagers, she wrung the necks of every single bird. She grabbed the village chief by the collar, tied him tightly to the mast where the flag of the Black Crow flew, then borrowed a flower-painted wooden chair from inside a dacha, set it next to the mast, and sat down.

Fifteen minutes later, a griffin with gold and silver feathers landed at the hamlet’s edge. Ariane dismounted — Empress of the Black Crow: a tall woman with dark skin, wearing a simple white tunic, armed with a golden spear, and crowned with a laurel wreath of gold. When she spoke, her brown eyes turned to gold.

She didn’t approach too quickly — she had time. The hamlet would vanish in four days. Neither friendly nor aggressive, measured in her movements, she kept a few paces’ distance from Cass before addressing her in a very soft voice:

“Empress Stella, my respects.”

Cass stood. She seemed tired. Ariane judged she wouldn’t be a physical threat and feverishly began assessing her rival Empire’s possible vulnerabilities.

“We have a pending connection request,” Cass replied without ceremony. “I request a high-level connection.”

“And to end Trust. Do you imagine, Empress Stella, that such a sacrifice demands an exceptional compensation? Out of curiosity, I’d like to hear your proposal.”

“The carrot,” said Cass, “is that I don’t actually want to sit on the throne of the gods. I never did. I need to speak to Julia Prahi, the game’s creator, who stands in front of that throne — and I was forced to play this damned game. So, if I manage to talk to her without having to sit on the throne, it’s yours — or whoever you choose. The stick is that in four days, Savage Beauty will disappear, your Empire will revert to a Kingdom, and by domino effect you’ll lose half your achievements.”

“As for the carrot — I’m supposed to trust you, I suppose? Trust...”

“Doubt the carrot exists, but in that doubt, know that the stick is very real. And let me make a prediction...”