by Brent Weeks
“Illegal to possess,” Kip said quickly, “but the justiciars of the game never declared them illegal to play.” He flipped his sand clock over.
“A fine distinction.”
“A fine distinction? I only learned about the black cards because you play with them!”
“Some of the black cards were withdrawn, others were outlawed—” The bell rang, signaling the end of Andross Guile’s turn.
Kip played another card quickly, cementing the luxlord’s missed turn.
Rage washed over Andross Guile’s face. The loose flesh below his jawline quivered. But he said nothing. He played.
In five minutes, Kip won. The additional turn and the surprise of playing against cards he hadn’t seen in more than a decade threw off Andross Guile’s game. Still, it seemed like the man played defensively. Unusual.
“It was a good trick,” Andross said afterward, while they shuffled their decks. “You shouldn’t have wasted it on the girl. That’s the kind of trick that only works once. You should have seen if you could beat me once, and then played that deck for the tiebreaker if you couldn’t. Beyond that, you should have waited until your own future was in jeopardy, not spent it on a slave girl. Foolish.”
Kip turned to Grinwoody. “Some water, please.” He forgot again that you don’t say please to a slave. He was always forgetting that.
But the water wasn’t the point. Kip had figured out that the big spectacles Grinwoody wore somehow allowed him to see in the darkness. With them, Grinwoody was Andross’s eyes. As soon as the old slave turned to grab the pitcher, Kip brought the other deck out of his pocket quietly, speaking to cover the noise of it. “There’s a thousand things you could teach me, Luxlord Guile. You’re brilliant and experienced. But right now you’re my enemy, and you’re trying to inflict horrors on someone who is dear to me. So I’ll keep my own counsel, thanks.”
Lord Guile’s face cleared. “You are learning, aren’t you? Ignorant, naïve, but not altogether as stupid as I thought. I know you may not believe this, Kip, but I actually like you. A little. How’s your hand?”
It took Kip a moment to understand he didn’t mean his cards, he actually meant his hand. “Better.” His fingers still wouldn’t straighten all the way, but his grip was strong, and he was working on them.
Andross Guile made some noncommittal noise and picked up the yellow deck that he’d set out for Kip earlier. He opened a box off to one side, grabbed out a few cards, took some out of the deck, and shuffled the new ones in. You were allowed to switch or modify your deck between rounds, to adapt to your opponent’s strategies. “So have you thought about it? Most boys do, eventually.”
“Thought about what?” Kip asked. The old man started speaking about whatever he was thinking of at times, not bothering to connect them for his listener.
“Whether you’re the Lightbringer, of course.” There was a savage, amused edge to Andross Guile’s tone, like he was juggling fire and throwing it to Kip still burning.
“No,” Kip said. Something in him seized up. “Let’s play.”
“He’s supposed to be of mysterious birth, and yours is at least dubious—which could be close enough.”
Kip flushed. “Your turn,” he said.
“The old word that says he’ll be a ‘great’ man from his youth could be a pun in the original Parian—another meaning of the word ‘great’ is ‘rotund.’ Which… well.”
Die, you old cancer. “Your turn,” Kip said.
“But I am moving, don’t you see?” Andross asked. “When the Lightbringer comes, he’s going to upend everything. Anyone who has wealth, position, or power will fear him because he could take it all away. But everyone who doesn’t have any of those will love him, hoping he’ll give all that to them. So what part will you play, Kip? Garden.”
Garden? Oh, he was declaring the setting.
Kip drew—and got lucky. A hand full of time control cards.
Using his first turns to gather the light he needed in various colors, he appeared to do nothing.
Andross played a Superchromat, a powerful card for a yellow deck, meaning his spells wouldn’t fail, and then he drafted a yellow sword, which took two rounds, one to draft it and one to solidify it.
By the time Kip played Panic, the old man’s lips were pursed. He wasn’t aware of any green deck that used the strategy Kip was employing. Andross’s five-second sand clocks were swapped out for four-second clocks.
And the pleasure of playing a Panic on the cold old man, who had probably never panicked in his entire life, was a joyous dagger-twist.
Andross attacked, and Kip didn’t even try to stop it. It took off nearly half his life.
Kip played another Panic. Four-second sand clocks were replaced with three-second clocks.
It was, of course, a completely unfair strategy. It already took the blind man at least an additional second longer than a sighted man to tell what the card played was, and three seconds was no time to come up with any sort of good tactics.
He attacked again and took Kip within a hair’s breadth of death. Then Kip followed up with a few weak attacks, barely staying alive. Between his own draw, reading his own card, and reading Kip’s, Andross had no time at all.
Kip Disarmed him, playing his own cards as quickly as he could to deprive Andross of as much of his time as possible. Within five more turns, by a hundred weakling cuts, he’d killed the old man.
Andross’s fist crashed onto the tabletop and he swept the sand clocks off the table, smashing several against the wall. He balled his hands and his fists shook.
“Give me your deck,” he said, barely leashing his rage.
“It’s on the table. In front of you,” Kip said. His voice sounded thready and tight. Some dim part of him wondered why he was so terrified of an old, infirm man, but he was.
Andross went through the deck with surprising speed, given his blindness. “You switched decks,” he said. “Grinwoody?”
“My lord, I didn’t see him do it. It was my failure.”
Andross screamed, voice raw, “I know it was your failure!” Kip was suddenly intensely aware that Andross Guile was the Red. He’d been using red luxin for twice as long as Kip had been alive. The darkness of the room was to keep Andross from becoming a color wight—and the man might be very, very close to the line. “Out, bastard! Out!”
Kip sat very still. Licked his lips.
“I said, out!” Andross roared.
Kip cowered. Very quietly and respectfully, he said, “I need Teia’s writ, my lord. And my deck. Please.”
Andross snarled and flung Kip’s deck in his face. He whirled and stormed to his bedchamber. He paused at the open door, but didn’t turn his back. “Grinwoody!” he barked.
“Yes, my lord,” the slave said. After their years together, the little man was able to discern exactly what the Red wanted from the barest modulation of his voice.
The door slammed behind Andross, and Kip picked up his scattered cards. Grinwoody brought forth a sheaf of papers and Andross Guile’s seal.
“Mother’s name?” Grinwoody asked, voice low.
“Katalina.”
“Full name.”
“Katalina Delauria.” Grinwoody nodded, as if he knew it all along and was merely receiving confirmation. Kip was dimly aware that even in this loss, Andross Guile was getting some information out of him. Kip had no idea what the information was good for, but he knew the spider was spinning silken snares with every breath.
Grinwoody filled out the forms, affixed the seal, and handed them to Kip. There was a brown stain on the papers. Blood? “Turn these in to the head scribe in the Prism’s Tower. And congratulations, you’re now the owner of a young slave girl. Enjoy.”
Chapter 59
~Shimmercloak~
Tap, tap, tap, tap…
Out of time. Out of place.
Dissolving.
As his fingers touched each point, he felt as if a scroll unfurled. Not simply the senses: the five centra
l colors offering sight, touch, hearing, smell, and taste, but more. Superviolet and blue came together through his thumb at the bottom left of the card: cities and superstructures, their outlines burning in tight, logical lines, then rising up out of the page, lines of reason, of thought, of history, causality lifting up—and still deeper he plunged.
Green through his forefinger at the top left of the card. Embodiment: the health, the shape of the body that he now knew he would inhabit, but also the bodies around him, the physical presences, the lives—the sick, the weak, the vivacious. Even the flashes of the fishes in the bay, the background light of the life in the waves, and the cool peace emanating from the grasses and the trees of this island. His body in this card was strong, a man in his prime, some aches, though. Perhaps a warrior of some sort? An old back injury, never quite healed. An ankle that he’d rolled a dozen times, always weak. And then, deeper, he felt the strength of his muscles, the grace of a fighter who’d grown up in a dance troupe, felt the dammed-up libido of a man traveling with a woman he desires.
The next finger to touch was his ring finger. Top right corner. Orange. Where green was life, the orange was the connections between the living. Those glowing blue lines of causality, of logic, now came alive. Those lines, without this, were meaningless. Some of those blue structures were the lies he’d told, the foundations he’d placed for falsehoods, false trails, deceptions that made sense to his inquisitors. And now, quite suddenly, the young man had a taste of how dangerous this man was. There was something stunted about him. He’d had a relationship with Niah, that was the woman, he now knew. His partner, a woman he can’t help but eye: admiring, desiring, and hating. He’d coaxed her to bed, once, early on.
She’d said afterward that if he ever touched her again, she’d kill him. Said he’d been too rough—or something.
She just didn’t like to admit how she liked it. Weak in that. Shy. She could fight, though. She’d asked their superiors to be reassigned after their one tryst, but she hadn’t told them why. Too embarrassed, too weak. They’d refused.
He hadn’t touched her since, though. She was good with a dagger, good with a gun, good with a grudge. Still, he couldn’t help but fantasize about tying her up again. Normally, after he’d had a woman once, he lost interest. Not Niah. Maybe this is love, then.
Oh, Orholam help him. The young man was losing himself into the card, already, and he hadn’t even touched all the—
His little finger, bottom right, sub-red and red at almost the exact same time his middle finger touched the top middle, the yellow.
Whatever disinterested study of the mechanics of the cards and how they connected a drafter to his subject was obliterated in the rush of Vox’s crippled passions and Vox’s single-mindedness. And Vox’s shimmercloak.
I throw my bag over my shoulder and follow Niah down the pier. I hate the rotten seaweed stench of the sea, always have. But it’s good to get off the corvette. Hate ships. If I’d stayed much longer, I would’ve opened that gangrenous captain from groin to gills. The thought puts a smile on my face, as do Niah’s swaying hips in front of me. Niah’s ass could make luxiats curse and eunuchs pop wood. Made up for her face, I suppose.
Niah shifts her own pack on her back and adjusts her belt. She extends a single finger down as she does so. A little token of her appreciation for my appreciation.
I laugh. Niah loves to flirt.
We don’t even clear the taxmen’s station out of the docks before Niah coughs. It’s the signal that she’d been passed her orders. Our superiors always have the orders passed to her. Think she’s better than me, for some reason. It keeps me attached to her, though. Keeps me from hurting her, they think. Like I’d hurt her.
She walks on ahead of me. Doesn’t tell me the message, doesn’t show it to me. It’s in code anyway, a code they haven’t taught me, and that Niah refuses to teach me. Smart woman, sometimes.
I look up at the Chromeria. It fills me with rage and loathing. They kicked me out in my first year, thirteen years old, and over what? A cat.
Who likes cats? Cats aren’t even capable of loving you back. Why had they decided that damned beast was worth more than me? I was a budding green drafter. They couldn’t have known then how special I would be, but who would throw any drafter away over a cat?
Still, that cat taught me something. Taught me to be careful. Invaluable in my occupation. It’s why I’m still alive, twenty years later. My first three partners hadn’t been as careful as I am. I barely recovered Gebalyn’s cloak last time, and wasn’t able to pull it out of the fire before it lost six precious thumb-widths off the hem. That cloak would always have to go to someone as short as Niah now. It was already hard enough to find lightsplitters—now my matron would have to find a short splitter.
Not my problem.
All I hope is that this job hurts the Chromeria. Atirat is far more accepting of my little quirks than Orholam and his Chromeria would ever be. The green goddess doesn’t chain those who love her. Atirat saved me from a life of self-loathing. She gives me freedom, acceptance. These cattle, these chattel, would never know that.
The taxmen don’t stop me, don’t search my bag. Though they have the right to do so, the volume of people who come through is simply too high to effectively stop all of them. They do spot checks instead, pulling people out of the lines and searching for ratweed, for jewels, for saffron, for any items that are small enough and precious enough that individuals could smuggle an untaxed fortune’s worth in their pockets.
Maybe I don’t look the type, though in my experience smugglers do look as bedraggled as I must. My beard needs a fresh oiling at the least. If I can find an Atashian barber, I’ll get the whole beard redone—unbraided, beads removed, combed out, face massage, dyed to cover the patchy gray, then rebraided and tied, with gold beads perhaps instead of the blue glass I have now, maybe some gold wire woven in. Gold wire, that’s how I’ll reward myself for this job, whatever it is.
I catch up with Niah an hour later, after both of us have taken rooms in an inn, separately. There are good operational reasons for doing so, but Niah didn’t mention those when I suggested we save money by sharing a room; she simply said that she’d kill me if I ever came into her room.
Sometimes I think she doesn’t like me much. Good partner, though. Capable, won’t get me killed. In the end, that’s what I care about, although I miss that look on her face when I started asphyxiating her after I tied her up. She panicked, but I knew she’d thank me as soon as she hit the peak. I couldn’t wait to see her terror turn to delirious pleasure.
But she was frigid. Man can’t help that.
I fall in beside her as she buys fruit at the market a block away from the inn. “Nice melons,” I say.
She pretends I haven’t said anything. “I translated the code. You’re not going to believe it.”
I’m much taller than she is, and I stand close, looking down the front of her blouse. “Mm, suspense.”
“You know, Vox, there’s a brothel across the street. You need to go take care of something before we can talk?” Spunky. Like that about her.
I glance back up to her eyes. “You don’t want me to look, don’t show ’em off. I’m free to look; you’re free to cover up. What’s the job?”
She looks around, making sure no one is close enough to listen in. She lowers her voice. “They want us to kill the Witch of the Winds. They want us to kill Janus Borig herself.”
My eyes go dark even as I feel dread shoot down into my stomach. Sound ceases. I’m losing feeling, losing my train of thought. I’m being shot up and out and back.
I hover, suspended between my own body and the body of a fat young man. Ugh, fat, after the glorious utility of my warrior-assassin’s frame, after the grace earned by ten thousand hours of training. I’m sitting in the—
What the hell?
What was—
He was back.
Chapter 60
“You won me? You won me in a card game?” Teia
asked.
“Yes?” Kip said.
It was after their midnight workout and drafting practice. Teia had apparently noticed that Kip was acting strange and had cornered him. Now they were sitting in his new room. He was still hot from their exercise, wearing a towel around his shoulders, having a hard time making eye contact. He wasn’t even sure why he felt ashamed.
“What did you bet against me? I mean, what stakes did you put up?” Teia asked. “You don’t own anything. I mean, no offense. I don’t either, but…”
“It wasn’t really a bet like that. The Red was—I don’t know—seeing how much strain he could put on me, I guess. It was you against… a secret that he thinks I have.”
“I… see.” Teia’s nose wrinkled for a second. She saw that he wasn’t going to trust her. “I’m sorry, I’m not at my best when I’m tired,” she said. “They gave you my papers?”
Kip waved toward his desk where the stamped paper sat. “I already registered it with the head scribe. He said they have to query the Abornean satrap’s embassy to make sure there’s no liens on you, but with it countersigned by Andross Guile, he was sure there would be nothing wrong. He already entered it in the Chromeria’s books.”
Teia was still blinking like a child who’s fallen and can’t decide whether she’s hurt or not. Is the right response tears, or just getting back up and walking away? “You won me?” she asked again. “What… what are you going to do with me?”
Her eyes flicked to his bed, back to his eyes, then down.
“No!” Kip said. “Like you said, that’s forbidden for Blackguards. I…”
“For full Blackguards, not for scrubs,” she said quietly. “Not until you take the vows.”
No woman would ever take Kip to her bed willingly. Not for himself. He’d have to get a room slave to do it, or a prostitute. He was fat, a bastard, stupid, ugly, awkward, Tyrean, mixed-breed. He didn’t know how to talk to girls like other boys did. This was his only chance. Teia wasn’t exactly volunteering, but she didn’t seem disgusted by him either. Andross Guile was right.
