"Can they?"

"Indeed. Once everybody thought the world was flat."

"Many still do," Perrund said, raising one brow. "Few peasants want to think they might fall out of their fields,

and a lot of us who know the truth find it hard to accept."

"Nevertheless, it is the case." DeWar smiled. "It can be proved."

Perrund smiled too. "With sticks in the ground?"

"And shadows, and mathematics."

Perrund gave a quick, sideways nod. It was a mannerism that seemed to acknowledge and dismiss at the same time. "What a very certain, if rather dismal world you seem to live in, DeWar."

"It is the same world that everyone inhabits, if they but knew, my lady. It's just that only some of us have our eyes open."

Perrund drew in a breath. "Oh! Well, those of us still stumbling around with our eyes tightly shut had best be grateful to people like you then, I should think."

"I'd have thought that you at least, my lady, would have no need of a sighted guide."

"I am just a crippled, ill-educated concubine, DeWar. A poor orphan who might have met a terrible fate if I had not caught the eye of the Protector." She made her withered arm move by flexing her left shoulder towards him. "Sadly I later caught a blow as well as a glance, but I am as glad of one as the other." She paused and DeWar drew a breath to speak, but then she nodded down at the board and said, "Are you going to move, or not?"

DeWar sighed and gestured at the board. "Is there any point, if I am so deficient an adversary?"

"You must play, and play to win even if you know you will probably lose," Perrund told him. "Otherwise you should not have agreed to begin the game in the first place."

"You changed the nature of the game when you informed me of my weakness."

"Ah no, the game was always the same, DeWar," Perrund said, sitting suddenly forward, her eyes seeming to flash as she added with a degree of relish, "I merely opened your eyes to it."