A small frown slipped past Eos's face before it disappeared.
"Then what am I?"
The Painter smiled. Eos could not see the smile, but the shrouded shape shifted in a way that suggested it, and said:
"You are the first piece I have been unable to watch without being watched back. Every one of the forty-four has done it in their way. Each one has looked up at me from the floor. Each one has met my attention with attention of their own. It is an extraordinary sensation. It is also, as you can perhaps understand, the thing I have spent every subsequent era of my existence trying to prevent from happening again. And yet here we are."
"So the game…"
"Is whether I can put you back on the floor," the Painter said, "or whether you can drag me out of the stands?"
It gestured at the board between them.
"Shall we?" it said.
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