Disclaimer: I must first say, before someone sues me, that I do not know a mouse from a keyboard, and therefore could not be the creator of this game.

In the world that you lived in, where no one befriended another without desperate reason, where alliances changed in an instant and men who counted themselves friends declared each other enemies, there was no space for gentleness, luxury, long hours spent understanding the intricacy of loving.

In the world that you lived in, love came in a series of quick, hard blasts of realisation. First, that he shared your quick wit, that he thought differently, that you almost always arrived at the same conclusion anyway. Second, that he was unique, that there was a tilt to his chin that reminded you of nothing sweet, that his gaze was always intense and never on you. Third, that you liked to touch him, that he always had the reassuring taste of dirt and leather, far more grounded than any of your quicksilver plans, far easier to hold on to.

Finally, you would realise, and this would be the slowest softest realisation, only as strong as a waterfall of boulders, that you loved him.

You had your first tryst with him, for it could be nothing more than that on the summit of Chibi, up in the cool reaches of bare rock. He was silent for he never speaks or moves without reason to do so, and forced you into silence also. You would have bitten his hand, so firmly pressed against your mouth, but you did not. It was another realisation. That you and he were forbidden. And that realisation led to another, as they often do, that you had known that all along.

After Chibi, when your encounters were few and far between, when you had to trade camaraderie and alliance for uneasy truce and subtle betrayal, you would think of him sometimes. You would think that he must still be playing music, for he loves it so much, you would think that his son, little Peace, must be three now, and once you were finished thinking, you would wonder. You would wonder if his music sounded any different, you would wonder if Ping An had his father's eyes, and you would wonder if he ever wondered about you.

It was often summer when you met again, lazy hot days in flapping tents perched on drying grass, their lives drowsing away slowly beneath your feet. You would converse, always with the politeness of two people who understand the language of barbed words and meant praise. Sometimes when you took your leave of him, back to your master with tactics whirling in your brain, insubstantial and treacherous even to you, you remember the way he touches you, and it makes you feel less alone.

You learnt to treasure him, more than you treasured your wife, a woman of plain beauty and an intelligence that challenged yours, more than the leader you had sworn your life to, more than the kingdom you would give your life to, more than yourself, to whom you owed everything.

He would die young and pained; you would die old and exhausted, and you would never be truly able to identify the emotions with which you regarded each other. You would never discuss or mention it, a ghost in your bitter war-ridden lives, welcomed like a mad mother to her dead child.

You knew that you were both mad, mad to even concede to this, and that anything you could ever have shared was dead before it was born, killed out of necessity rather than passion. Sometimes you think that if for no other reason, maybe that is why you regard him with such bitterness, and he you.

Neither of you wanted to try.