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.
"But... does that mean he can actually do this?" he said.
"Well, unless I can find something in the constitution or the legal codes or government procedure that specifically forbids him from doing it...," said the prime minister. "...Yes. I'm afraid it might."
Alex's heart got even colder. It had to be approaching absolute zero by now. For most of his life, one of the things Alex had thought he could be certain of was that his mother was going to be queen one day. He had never even tried to imagine what it would be like if she would not be. The future suddenly seemed a lot less certain, and stable, than it had when he had woken up this morning.
"Well, you'd better find something then," said Ellen. "And quickly."
"I'm trying, your highness," said the prime minister, holding up the latest book. "But the other problem is that King Stephen wrote the constitution and most of the star cluster's laws. His words and works have legal authority. Even if I can find something, it's going to be very difficult to argue that it should take precedence over the chess game."
"Well then, we'll just have to thwart him on the chessboard," said the royal steward. "Find some way to escape from this clever trick of his."
He held up the book of chess problems and compared one of its pictures to the chessboard on Jessamine's computer screen and then shook his head.
"Though I have to admit... that might be difficult."
"It will be," said Jessamine, who was still studying the chessboard. "I certainly can't see a way out of this at the moment. Lord Blackstar really has outdone himself this time."
Alex's heart sank. His mother had always been – and probably always would be – a much better chess player than he was. If she was stuck on what he to admit was one of the best checks he had ever seen, there might not be a way out of it. He looked at Alice, who was also better than he was, hoping she might have come up with something, but she was frowning at the board too.
"That's what I can't understand," said the royal steward, shaking his head. "The Blackstar family have traditionally been one of the Tarquin dynasty's strongest supporters in the Pleiades. They've lived in the star cluster – and on Magenta – almost as long as the royal family has. And while Lord Damon has always been arrogant, conceited and borderline insufferable, he's always seemed to be more loyal than most. We all remember how close his father was to King Geoffrey. I can't imagine why he's suddenly turned on us like this."
"I've been wondering the same thing," said Jessamine. "But I doubt he's going to tell us if we ask."
"All right. There's only one solution then," said Ellen. "One thing that's sure to work. Alex, you have to challenge him to a duel and kill him."
"What?" said Alex, looking at her.
"What?" said Captain Zachary.
"Oh, come on. You're always fencing," said Ellen. "And you're the crown prince now remember? Be a man. Prince up."
"Your highness, you can't," said Captain Zachary, stepping forward. "I'm responsible for your safety. I cannot allow to start fighting duels. Especially not with Lord Blackstar. He's not just a chess grandmaster. He's an intergalactic fencing champion. I'll have to do it. Your mother can appoint me as the royal family's defender..."
"Don't be ridiculous. You can't do it," said Ellen. "Lord Blackstar beat you in the last three fencing tournaments."
"No one is challenging Lord Blackstar," said Jessamine.
"Quite," said the prime minister. "I know how you feel, Princess Ellen, but what would we challenge him for? He hasn't technically done anything illegal or dishonourable. He's entitled to make any move he wishes in the chess game."
"So we can't do anything?" said Alex.
"Well, we could find out why he's doing it," said Alice.
There was another pause. Everyone looked at her. Jessamine looked up from her computer.
"Lord Blackstar is the Lord Chancellor, but he's not related to us," said Alice. "He can never become king himself and he knows it. So he has to be doing this for a different reason. We need to find out what it is."
* * * * * * *
Blackstar Hall stood on top of a wide, sloping hill at the edge of Magenta's capital.
It was an elegant, flat-roofed mansion with tall windows and long balconies. It was built almost entirely out of black marble. The black columns and balconies almost disappeared against the black walls, with only the starlight reflecting on their edges to show they were there. It was the same inside and lots of the Blackstars guests spent their first visits to the mansion tripping on steps they had not noticed, bumping into half-closed doors or falling down the stairs. Lady Miranda Blackstar, who had designed and built Blackstar Hall, had had to spend almost as much on interior lighting as she had on all the other building materials, but she had still been pleased with the final result, despite the number of broken ankles that guests at her dinner parties had suffered.
The dining room was in the middle of the mansion. It was a long, rectangular room with a chessboard floor made of alternating black and white marble flagstones, each one a metre square. Chandeliers carved from comet ice hung from the ceiling and a small grey meteorite sat on the mantelpiece, where it was carefully dusted and polished by the servants every morning. The meteorite had been found where it had fallen on Magenta by Nathan Blackstar, four hundred years ago, and, once it had cooled down from its trip through the atmosphere, had given him the inspiration for the shooting star of the family crest. The dining room was one of Lord Blackstar's favourite rooms in the mansion and he was in an excellent mood as he strode into it after returning from the palace.
"Will! Break out the champagne," he said. "One of the oldest and most expensive bottles will do nicely."
"Did it work, sir?" said Will Trentor, jumping to his feet. Will was Lord Blackstar's personal assistant. He was in his early twenties, short and skinny, with untidy brown hair and was dressed in a smart brown suit.
"I would hardly be asking for champagne if it hadn't," said Lord Blackstar, pulling his gloves off.
"Heck, no," said another voice. "If it had failed miserably and the entire royal family had laughed at you, you'd be telling him to pack your bags, get all your fake passports and book you a taxi to the spaceport."
Lord Blackstar rolled his eyes to the ceiling for a second, and sighed silently through his teeth, before he turned around.
"Good evening to you too, Darla," he said.
His niece smiled at him from where she was sitting on the other side of the long dining table. Darla Blackstar was thirteen. She was short and slim, with the family's famous dark eyes and black hair, though hers was long and straight rather than curled, which she had inherited from her mother. Darla's parents were currently running Blackstar Starships's new testing facility on Magenta's southern continent and Darla was living with her uncle in the family home while she went to school in the capital.
"You'll be pleased to hear that is not what happened," said Lord Blackstar, as Will returned with the champagne bottle and glasses. "It worked perfectly."
"I know. I heard about it at the snack bar after shooting," said Darla. "The entire city's already talking about it. Nobody in the club could believe it. Who'd have thought one of your over-complicated evil masterplans would actually work for once?"
To Lord Blackstar's never-ending disappointment, Darla had never taken any interest in the star cluster's two traditional pastimes of chess and sword fencing. Instead, she was a keen member of Magenta's target shooting and marksmanship society and she was sitting at the table with her favourite large custom-made, chrome-plated laser pistol disassembled in front of her, carefully cleaning and polishing every piece.
"This is not the first time one of them has worked!" said Lord Blackstar. "But if the entire city's already heard about it; good. The faster the news spreads, the easier stage two will be."
"Oh, great. There's a stage two is there?" said Darla. "Why does everything have to be in stages? Why can't you ever do anything simple, straightforward and to the point?"
As she was speaking, Darla finished slotting her laser pistol back together. She picked up three coasters from the table with her other hand and tossed them into the air, flicking her wrist so they spun very fast. Darla raised her pistol and fired three times. The pale blue low powered laser bolts hit each of the three coasters, burning black scorch marks on them, and flipping them around so they spun just as fast in the opposite direction. They all dropped back down to the table and landed with their burnt sides down.
"My lady, would you please stop doing that to the tableware?" said Will. "The housekeeper has been very upset."
"Yes. And not every problem can be solved by blasting holes straight through it," said Lord Blackstar. "Some situations are more complicated than that. They require ingenuity, forward planning and creative thinking. As I've just proved."
"Sure," said Darla, sliding her pistol back into her custom-fitted magnetic thigh-holster. "If it works."
"It already has worked," said Lord Blackstar. "Perfectly."
He turned around and looked at the other end of the room. The far end of the dining room was covered with notes, drawings and diagrams. They were spread all over the table and pinned to the walls from head height down to the floor. It was the only part of the mansion where there was more white than black. Several chessboards were set up on the table, showing King Stephen's Last Game in various stages of play, both before and after his match with Jessamine. The diagrams on the walls showed with coloured arrows where every piece could move to and how it could be blocked or captured. Several computer pads were running simulations of how the game could play out after possible future moves. There were probability charts and studies of Jessamine's latest chess games, long lists of her favourite moves and notes on the pieces and tactics she favoured. Pinned to the wall in the middle of it all was the most recent family photograph of the Tarquins, showing King Geoffrey with his children and grandchildren.
"Ten years of hard work," said Lord Blackstar, as Will filled his champagne glass. "They've paid off nicely."
"It was a brilliant plan, sir," said Will.
"Thank you. Well, I can't take all the credit," said Lord Blackstar. "Most of it belongs to my predecessors. They're the ones who made this possible."
"All the Lord Chancellors who came before you?" said Will.
"Yes, but also all the crown princes – and princesses – as well," said Lord Blackstar. "They're the ones who made the moves that got the game to the position it's in now. But they all forgot that it is a game and that games are meant to be won. And lost. They created the opportunity for the perfect checkmate, and every single one of them failed to see it."
"And who'd have thought it would only take you ten years to spot it?" said Darla.
"It was not the entire ten years!" said Lord Blackstar. "For most of that time, I was looking at alternatives. Different possibilities. Other constitutional manoeuvers I could make if there wasn't a suitable chess move. But there was, I've made it, and it worked perfectly."
"Sure," said Darla. "So far."
"No. Not so far," said Lord Blackstar. "Permanently."
"Princess Jessamine is trapped, my lady," said Will, indicating the diagrams. "We've checked everything. I've tried out every single move she can make with every piece she has left. There's nothing she can do to escape."
"OK," said Darla. "And that brings us to the million dollar question. Why are you doing this? And why have you spent ten years on it? What's the point of the whole thing?"
"It's simple," said Lord Blackstar, looking at the picture of the royal family again. "It's to put the rightful heir on the throne."