27
"Those five seats... sooner or later, one of them will be mine."
In a corner, an unnoticed shadow rippled slightly, as though the air had been disturbed by silent laughter.
Become one of those five? The very idea was like a child making a wish upon the moon.
Those truly chosen had been steeped in entirely different rules from their very first breath-combat, political intrigue, maps of continents and oceans were the lullabies beside their cradles.
Yet the vast majority of the privileged were carefully reared in carefree cages all their lives, with extravagance and pleasure as their only lessons.
The occasional one or two who knew how to place their own pieces outside the chessboard were already a rarity.
This Saint Rosward before him did qualify as an exception.
"Thousand Faces," whom the Donquixote Family had erased,
Gamenio, and the slave market reduced to ruins not long ago-his faint, elusive threads could be glimpsed behind them all.
Only-
A page turned, and the man suddenly raised his head, looking toward one side of the room.
The window frame sat quietly in the wall, with a neatly trimmed courtyard beyond the glass.
He frowned. He did not seem to remember ever pushing that window open himself.
Was it the wind? No, the latch was clearly fastened tight.
Atop a lamppost across the street, the night breeze brushed past an empty metal hood.
Below, a squad of armored guards rounded the street corner in orderly steps, the clatter of iron boots against paving stones gradually fading.
And farther away, deep within another mansion, an invisible presence had already seeped into the next shadow-shrouded domain like water into a crack in stone.
Deep underground, the stench of rust and damp decay hung solid in the heavy air.
Two rows of