Seelah has a few stories about fighting monsters on the way up to Kenabres, but none of them are nearly as popular.

After dinner, Dyra is selling spots in a channel for anyone who wants them for one seashell or equivalent. Horgus Gwerm pulls Anevia into a corner for a quiet conversation. Lann attempts to correct one of the kids' aim with a shortbow. 

Does Blai have anything else he wants to try to do before the party rests for the night?

Well, anybody might choose to find it interesting that he's setting up a chessboard but he'll play alone if that's not the case.

A kid with furry shoulders and claws watches from a short distance. After a few minutes, he approaches and starts to ask questions, under the apparent belief that Blai is reenacting battles between the crusaders and the demons.

"This isn't - representative of anything. It's a game."

"Oh. ...Does it make you better at fighting demons?"

"Not really."

"So it's... pretend?"

"...something like that. Yes."

"...Okay."

The child wanders off to talk to the other surfacers and leaves him to his game. No one else interrupts him.

Look, kid, there aren't any demons here right now, he's got a suspected murderer to keep half an eye on, and he's obliged to have fun once in a while. He will sit up playing chess with himself for his whole watch period.

...When Camellia notices that he's continuing the chess into their watch, she will offer to play against him.

"Only if you wish to, of course, but I'm sure that playing against yourself can hardly match the thrill of the real thing."

Is it in some sense fucked up to play chess against someone whom you are going to have arrested at the first real opportunity? ...no, not really, he doesn't think? You're not supposed to solitarily confine people and if you are going to visit someone who has already been arrested you might as well play chess with them then if they offer and there is no obvious discontinuity except insofar as she might possibly conceive of playing chess with her as some kind of armistice, which would be really very stupid of her, he made his suspicions pretty clear. ...can he safely assume she is not stupid, given that she stood over a guy while covered in his blood and tried to play it off really badly. Maybe not? Is there a good way to make this plain without provoking an immediate fight, and if there isn't, should he provoke the fight, or not. He pops his present Guidance on this question.

...if she's stupid, nothing he can say that is not at least potentially provocative will get through to her, and if she is not stupid she already knows the score. There is no point in saying something coy and hedgey. He can't think of anything direct to say ("this does not constitute an agreement not to turn you over to the Watch as soon as we reach the surface"??) which doesn't risk her flying off the handle here and now while everyone else is trying to sleep. He'll just have to avoid making any positive statements about not arresting her, he guesses.

"White or black?"

"White, if you please."

Camellia has clearly played before, and knows the standard openings particularly common among the Mendevian elite. Her greatest weakness is her overaggressive playstyle; she's competent enough to avoid allowing her pieces to be captured for no benefit, but it isn't difficult to bait her into exposing a valuable piece by giving her the opportunity to capture a weaker one. She has a habit of licking her lips whenever she captures one of Blai's pieces.

Non-Chelish people yelling with their faces is usually less disturbing because usually they are not yelling I AM A MURDERER. He will defeat her and offer a handicap for the next game.

She accepts graciously. She uses a different opening this time, but otherwise keeps her strategy broadly the same.

The strategy of yelling that she's a murderer? That one? The handicap is at least enough that he can't casually bait her at every opportunity, he does need some of his pawns to live.

If he's being conservative with his pawns, she will take the opportunity to make some more aggressive moves towards his other pieces. She's staring at the board intently.

The only piece that is decisive in winning or losing is the king. If he has a strategy which will allow him to checkmate her king, it does not matter, at all, if she takes any piece not participating in that checkmate beforehand.

Then he will win, again! Does he want to play again?

Always. (He'll take another one of his pawns off.)

She gets much closer to victory this time, whether from the extra handicap or just luck! When she's getting very close she misses an opportunity to force mate-in-four in favor of exposing her own queen to capture his.

Then they will finish the game with no queens and the widowed white king in checkmate.

Again? (If he keeps increasing the handicap, she will eventually manage to win.)

Yes, he'll nudge it up by degrees till she manages a win and then they can park there - for the rest of their watch, if she's game.