by Brent Weeks
“You can win, but you won’t win consistently, even if you play well. The odds you’d judge from are the wrong odds.” She shrugged.
“And I can’t find the real odds by playing because no one plays with the heretical cards Andross Guile has in his decks, and I can’t find out the real odds by studying because I’m not allowed into those libraries?”
“Pretty much.” She looked like she wanted to say more, though.
“Or?” Kip prompted.
“There’s someone who might help you, a woman named Borig.”
“Borig?” It had to be the ugliest name for a woman Kip had ever heard.
“She’s an artist. A little eccentric. Be respectful. The spies who check in on you are accustomed to you and me spending the next two hours playing in this room. If you leave by the back and take the stairs down a level, you can slip out without them seeing you. It’s important, Kip, for her sake as well as yours, that you not be followed or overheard. The Office of Doctrine is more academic now than it once was, but with the recent troubles, there’s been talk of appointing a few luxors. You don’t want to run afoul of people who are afraid. Not now.”
“Luxors?”
“Lights mandated to go into the darkness. Empowered to bring light by almost any means they deem necessary. There were… abuses. This White wouldn’t stand for them to be appointed again, but Orea Pullawr is not a young woman, Kip.”
It made Kip feel sick to his stomach. There were layers on layers of intrigue here, everywhere lurking under the surface. And any one of them could engulf him. “Where is she?” he asked.
Rea gave him directions, and he left immediately. Down the tower, across the bridge, into Big Jasper. He was walking through a narrow alley before he realized that sneaking away might be dangerous. Might be a setup. How stupid was he? Someone had tried to kill him once already. He didn’t know Rea Siluz’s loyalties, and she had both given him the problem (the existence of black cards) and the solution (visiting someone who might not exist, in a place far from safety).
He should go home right now. He should stop playing with Rea Siluz, and he should… What? Wait until he was a Blackguard? Ignore every summons from his grandfather? That wouldn’t work. The old man wouldn’t let Kip show him that kind of disrespect. Kip didn’t know what Andross Guile would do, but it would be bad. Very, very bad.
If only Gavin would come back. Gavin could protect him. Even though Kip had heard people say that Gavin was afraid of Andross Guile—that everyone was afraid of Andross Guile—it felt like Gavin could arrive and solve all of his problems in an instant. Kip could go back to being a child again.
A child tasked with destroying the Blue.
Orholam have mercy. Kip couldn’t count on anyone. He had to make the best of it. He had to go on.
It was late afternoon. The stars of this district had their light focused elsewhere. Here, the buildings were close, the shadows long. He looked over his shoulder.
Sure enough. A large, unkempt man was looming at the mouth of the alley. The man drew a knife from his belt. It was roughly the size of a sea demon.
Kip ran.
It was only twenty paces to the nearest lightwell. Kip skidded to a stop. He fumbled with his pocket, pulled out his spectacles as the big man charged after him. Put them on his face.
The big man pulled up short. Raised his hands. “Didn’t see you there, drafter, sir. Was just running, uh, home. No offense.”
Kip hadn’t even started drafting. In truth, he probably wouldn’t have had time to draft before the big man killed him.
But the man didn’t know that. He backed away, as if from a wild animal, then ran.
Just a thug. Just a thief. Nothing personal. No conspiracy. No assassination attempt.
And Kip hadn’t even thought of the fighting skills that Ironfist and Trainer Fisk had been beating into his skull. He looked down at his hands. His knuckles were chafed, fists bruised from constant use, and Kip had simply… forgotten it all. Hadn’t even occurred to him that he could fight.
He tucked his spectacles back in a pocket, and saw that the door in front of him was labeled: Janus Borig, Demiurgos.
He knocked and swore he saw dark-clad figures up several stories on either side of the alley bob out of nowhere quickly and disappear. He felt the weight of hidden eyes.
Jumpy, Kip. Jumpy.
An old woman opened the door. She was almost bald, and she was smoking a long pipe. Long nose, few teeth, a scattering of liver spots amid faded freckles. Her dress was besmirched with paint. She would have looked like a vagabond, but she wore a thick gold necklace that must have weighed a sev. She was wrinkly and ugly as afterbirth, but plainly vigorous, and there was such warmth in her features, Kip found himself grinning almost immediately.
“So. You’re the bastard,” she said. “Rea told me you’d come. Come in.”
Chapter 44
The first thing Kip noticed about Janus Borig’s home was that it was home to the largest mess Kip had seen in his life. The mess had paws in every nook, had shed fur in every cranny. Piles of clothes like coughed-up hairballs hid the floor, and stacks of books stood like trees for the mess to mark its territory. The mess seemed to have little sense of human valuation, because old gnawed-on chicken bones shared floor space with strands of pearls and either jewels or colored glass close enough to jewels to fool Kip’s eyes.
The second thing he noticed was the guns. Janus Borig liked guns. There was one attached to the door, swiveling toward the peephole, in case Janus decided to kill a visitor rather than welcome him. But others were scattered everywhere, as if the mess had gotten into them and tossed them about. Pistols, the latest flintlock muskets, matchlocks, blunderbusses—there were handy ways to kill people everywhere.
“Don’t touch anything,” Janus said.
Which was impossible, thanks.
“Half the things in here will kill you if you nudge them wrong.”
Oh. Lovely.
She spun around and put something down on a shelf. It was a tiny pistol. She took a drag on her long pipe, contorted her lips into a quasi-smile, and blew smoke out of both sides of her mouth simultaneously. “Promise me something, bastard of the greatest Prism to ever live.”
She turned over her pipe and tapped out the ashes into a small pile of the same. She picked up another pistol, cocked it, and then used the spur of the hammer to scrape out the remaining ashes from her pipe. With every scrape, the cocked—and for all Kip knew, loaded—pistol rotated from being pointed at Kip’s forehead to being pointed at his groin.
To his left and right, there were piles; he couldn’t move anywhere without touching something.
“Uh, yes?” Kip said.
“Promise me you won’t kill me or report me to those who might.”
“I promise,” Kip said.
She sucked at her lips, making a squeaking sound, then spat. She put down the pistol and grabbed at a pile of tobacco, stuffed some in her pipe, eyeing Kip closely. He swore there was a pile of black powder right next to the pile of tobacco. She snatched a fuse cord from one of the matchlocks and stuck it onto the flame of a lantern, then used the fuse to light her pipe. “Swear it,” she said from behind a curtain of smoke.
“I swear,” Kip said.
“Again.”
“I swear.”
“And thus are you bound. Come with me,” she said.
Kip picked his way around piles that reached up to his knees. The woman wasn’t right.
He followed her upstairs. It was, apparently, her workroom. The division between the rooms was stark. The mess didn’t set one grubby paw beyond the stairs. There was no disorder here, none. Every surface was immaculate, all done in white marble with red veins. Jewelers’ lenses and hammers and chisels hung beside tiny brushes, special lanterns, palettes, and little jars of paint. One desk was slate, with little bits of chalk and an assortment of abacuses, large and small. An easel sat opposite, with a blank canvas on it, a magnifying lens in front of it.
; One wall was dedicated to finished cards. They were hung so densely that you couldn’t touch the wall. And the wall was so big, so packed—from floor to ceiling—that if Kip hadn’t spent the last weeks in the library, memorizing everything he could learn about these cards, he’d have no idea that every single one of them was worth a fortune. These were originals.
And there were too many of them. Kip sucked in a sudden breath.
“The Black Cards. The heresy decks,” Janus said. She sat on a little stool in front of her easel. “You know of them.”
“I’ve barely heard a whisper,” Kip said. “I—not really.”
“What colors have you drafted, Kip Guile?”
Kip felt a chill, displacement, sickness. “That’s not my name,” he said stiffly.
“There is no one else you can be, Kip. I’ve seen your eyes. You think you’re smart, but the truth is—”
“Right, I know, everyone tells me—”
“—you’re a lot smarter than you think you are.”
Which left him dumbstruck. Ironically enough.
“You’re a Guile to your bones, young man. Even if you’re not a son, a bastard can go far in this world. The Guiles are cursed, don’t you know? The family has few children, and has had few for generations. Intense lights all snuffed too soon. So goes the story, anyway. Now, what colors have you drafted?”
“Why do you want to know?”
“Because I’m starting your card.”
She was speaking another language, or nonsense. Kip knuckled his forehead.
“I have a gift,” Janus Borig said. “Curious, curious gift. Unusual. I have a host of gifts that are common enough, of course, though not common all together, and one gift as rare as a Prism’s.”
“I suppose you’re going to tell me,” Kip said. Someone is telling you something interesting, and you have to let your big yap interfere?
But she laughed. “Green, of course. But blue, too. What else? You’re not merely a bichrome, I’m certain of that.”
Want to play it like that?
“You can paint,” Kip said. “Very skilled, and you’re a jeweler, too. You can split a stone finely enough to fit it on your cards.”
She chuckled. Smoked. “Here’s the thing, this game is much easier for me. I only have nine colors left to guess from, and you may well be able to draft more than one of those. You, on the other hand, have all the uncommon abilities in the world from which to guess.”
Nine colors left? Eleven colors? What the hell was she talking about? “You’re teasing me,” Kip said.
“Maybe we’ll know each other well enough someday that you’ll be able to figure that out,” she said. “Smoke?”
Huh? “Sub-red,” Kip said, thinking she was guessing what he could draft.
She lowered her pipe. Oh, she’d been offering to share her pipe. But she said quickly, “You’ve drafted sub-red, or fire?”
“Same thing,” Kip said.
“Answer the question.”
“Fire.”
“Do you know, a scheme can be useful without being true. You can see sub-red?”
“Yes,” Kip said. Suddenly, he wasn’t sure why he’d come. Curiosity? Maybe it hadn’t been a good enough reason.
“Can you see superviolet?” she asked.
He nodded, grudgingly. He wasn’t even sure why he was loath to give her more information.
“Do you want to be a Prism, Kip?”
It was like she had a trick of asking questions that he didn’t want to ask himself. “Everyone probably thinks about that,” Kip said.
“You don’t know if you want it or not. Part of you does, but you don’t think you could ever be the man your father is.”
“That’s crazy talk,” Kip said. He swallowed.
“No, it’s not. I know crazy talk. I know it well. I am a Maker. We are not mere artists; we are the caretakers of history. The cards are history. Each one tells a truth, a story. The Black Cards tell history that has been suppressed, because it threatens…” She looked up at the ceiling, thinking, looking for the right word. She gave up. “Well, it threatens. Take that as you will.”
She smoked, thinking.
“What I’m about to tell you is heresy. Don’t repeat it, if you value your life. Heresy, but true. Take these words, and bury them, treasure them. There are seven Great Gifts, Kip. Some are common. Others are given only to one person a generation, or one person a century. Light is truth, and all the gifts are connected to this foundation. To light, to truth, to reality. Being a drafter—one who works with light—is a great gift, but a relatively common one. Being a Prism is another. Being a Seer, who sees the essence of things, that is much rarer. My gift is rare as well: I am a Mirror. My gift is that I can’t paint a lie. And my gift tells me that your father has two secrets. You, Kip, are not one of them.”
Chapter 45
“So what’s your real name?” Gavin asked the Third Eye, coming to stand beside her on the beach. She had kept her vigil on the southernmost point of Seers Island, and the descending sun bathed the woman in gold. “Or what was it, before? Who are your people?”
The Third Eye was dressed in a yellow cotton dress that made her look merely mortal, though she was still a striking, radiant figure. She hadn’t sent for Gavin until late afternoon. Her associate, or servant, or friend, Caelia, told Gavin that seeing the future took time.
“Oh no you don’t,” the Third Eye said. “You’re probably one of those men who accuses women of being capricious, too.”
“Huh?”
“You ask me last night not to tempt you, to be more formal, and today the first thing you do is ask for greater familiarity. Uh-uh, Lord Prism. In your vanity you can take pleasure in breaking other hearts. Not mine.”
Vanity? That was a little offensive, a little blunt, a little… accurate. He made to speak, then found he had nothing to say.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “The aftermath of Seeing is… I forget myself. It’s hard not to be honest. My apologies.” She snapped open a handfan and fanned herself. “I’m afraid I’ve overheated, too. My skin doesn’t well tolerate so much sun.”
She did indeed look like she’d have a good burn.
“Seeing requires light, you said?” Gavin asked.
She nodded but didn’t seem interested in explaining her gift any more than that.
“Did you find it?” Gavin asked finally.
“Many times, and down many paths. It’s in the sea.”
“Pardon?”
“The bane is floating, somewhere in the Cerulean Sea.”
“That is…” Useless? Unhelpful? “… a large area,” Gavin said. She’d said three hours east and two and a half hours north—which would be in the sea from here, but somehow he was sure this wouldn’t be that easy.
“I’m aware of this. It is also fairly hard to find landmarks or time markers to tell you where to find it in the sea. It’s moving through the water.”
Gavin threw his hands up. “Where’s it going? Where’s it coming from?”
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I think I can tell you it’s heading toward center. A center? The center… I’m not sure.” She looked apologetic.
“The center of the sea? Like White Mist Reef? Or the center like sinking?”
“Bane float, most of the times.”
Times, plural. “That doesn’t give me anything.”
“It gives you enough.” If the bane was floating toward White Mist Reef, then taking the calculations backward, it would be somewhere south of the Ilytian city of Smussato, perhaps floating in a line from the border between Paria and Tyrea. If he knew where it was going, and he could guess that it would go straight, and he knew where it was going to be at any one time, that should give him a line on which it must be.
“You mean I’m going to find it?” Sudden hope.
“Yes.”
He couldn’t believe it. There had to be a catch. This was going to take some figuring with a map and an abacus, but it seemed t
oo easy. “How long is it going to take me?”
“If I tell you that, you’ll stop looking until the day I said you were going to find it.”
“No I wouldn’t—Yes, yes, of course I would.”
She sighed.
“Am I going to find it in time?” he asked.
“Even I don’t know what you’re asking by that.”
“You can’t do this to me,” Gavin said.
“Please don’t blame me for things I have nothing to do with.”
Gavin licked his lips. She was right. Of course she was right: she could see everything. Unnerving still. “What can you tell me?” he asked.
“That you’ll be here for a while, and that the Color Prince is looking for it, too, and that you better not let his plan come to fruition. It’s growing, Lord Prism, and the more it grows, the more blues will be drawn to it. Blue wights most of all.”
“Why, what happens? All I know is that the bane were tied in with the old gods’ temples.”
“You’ll see. There’s something else I should tell you.”
“There’s a thousand other things you should tell me!”
“If you take Karris when you go fight it, you’re much more likely to succeed.”
“I could have guessed that myself. She’s a useful woman.”
“And if she goes with you, she’ll almost certainly die.”
“Had to be a catch, didn’t there?” Gavin said.
“I’m not trying to give you a catch; I’m trying to give you a chance.”
He shrugged that off. “ ‘Almost certainly’ as in ninety-nine times out of a hundred, or as in two times out of three?”
“When I see her go with you, I watch her die in dozens of different ways. It’s not pleasant for me. Especially since I know that if she lives, we’re probably going to be friends someday. Assuming you don’t bed certain… you know what? I’ve already said too much.”
“You called Karris The Wife,” Gavin said. “But then you said it was wrong. What did you mean?”
“Knowing that if you know, it will change things… do you really want to know?”
Gavin scowled. “Well, yes.”
“Tough. I’m not telling you.”
