by Brent Weeks
“I don’t imagine King Ironfist will have any trouble with one of your puppies,” Andross said.
“This one he might,” Kip said.
“You’re in the middle of something?” Corvan asked. “I’m sorry I interrupted with such bad news. You’re in the middle of… a game?” He didn’t bother to conceal a note of disbelief.
“Hardly,” Kip said, “but please stay. That is, if you don’t mind watching.”
“I’d be delighted to see the era’s greatest mind at work.”
“Thank you—” Kip and Andross said at the same time. They even sort of inclined their heads the same way. That was weird. Kip hadn’t been around this man at all growing up.
The blood is strong.
Corvan said, “Your pardon, my lords, a slip of the tongue. ‘Greatest minds.’”
“After I win,” Kip said, “I’d like to go over some ideas on the Jaspers’ defense with you.”
They took their seats, Grinwoody having already scuttled about on his little roach legs to provide a chair for the satrap.
Kip brushed the art on the cards with his fingertips in frustration. He had to settle for playing a Lightguard, though the sun was high enough he could have played a more powerful card if he’d had it.
Andross played the Red Bane.
Kip flopped Cannon Island onto the table. “This deck isn’t good enough. If Janus Borig had had time to complete—”
“No sniveling,” Andross said. “You had first choice of decks.”
“Here I could have been king of Blood Forest,” Kip muttered.
“I think we’ve had quite enough of kings,” Andross said. He dropped another bane, and attacked.
Kip didn’t defend, soaking up the damage like he was the damned Turtle-Bear.
“Why isn’t there a Turtle-Bear card?” Kip asked suddenly. Surely he had to be important enough to get a card, right?
“A what?” Andross asked, not that interested.
“Come on, you were looking at it earlier.” Kip put down his cards, pushing his chair back. He showed off his tattoo. Swapping spectacles of various colors, he quickly worked through the superviolet, which gave the edges their nice borders, then as he drew in blue light, zigzags of blue shot through his forearm, just above the wrist. A rounded rectangle. Kip drew green, and color suffused the outlines. Yellow, and the colors gained richness.
Corvan Danavis inhaled sharply. “What did you call that card?” he asked.
Kip ignored him until he finished, and the tattoo stood sharp and clear on his forearm. “Turtle-Bear. I’m the Turtle-Bear,” Kip said.
“Where did you get that?” Andross asked easily.
“Fighting Abaddon,” Kip said, as if it were a small thing. “Like I told you.”
“The art style’s Atashian, isn’t it?” Corvan asked. “I recognize that creature, though I’ve never heard it called a turtle-bear.”
“What have you heard it called?” Kip asked, though now, in looking at it, it seemed different than he remembered. The Turtle-Bear that had been seared into his arm had been a fat, round little thing, furry in all the wrong places, awkward as Kip himself. Now it seemed elongated, stronger, not nearly so ridiculous, like a juvenile…
“My maternal grandmother was Atashian,” Corvan said. “She had this ancient brooch that looked like that. She told me Atashians believed men were born with two natures. One was usually symbolized by the monkey: the chattering dung-flingers of the forest—social, passionate, but all-reliant on the tribe, attacking those the group disliked without an independent thought in their heads, warm, caretaking, but always looking to the group for approval. The other nature was usually symbolized by the snake: cold, dispassionate, patient in ambush, not shaken from the truth by anyone or anything, but also uncaring, heartless, rejecting company heedlessly. They believed that only when one brought these natures together, not lukewarm but cold and hot in the appropriate times, fur and scale, could one be truly wise. Only by bringing the contrary animal natures together could one become fully human, whether monkey and snake, or dog and scorpion, or turtle and bear. And the greatest of these become dragons.”
“A Dragon would be helpful now,” Kip said lightly. He looked at Andross Guile, who was watching cold as an asp. “Don’t suppose you’ve got a Dragon in the deck I missed?”
Andross’s eyes glittered darkly.
“Luxin-reactive tattoo dyes. A nice parlor trick,” Andross said. “An art lost long ago. We’ll talk about who in Blood Forest holds this secret, if we live long enough. In the meantime, let’s finish the game, shall we? Here, this will drain your excess luxin.”
Andross handed Kip a little cylinder much like the testing sticks used in the Threshing. Kip pressed his finger firmly on the black point and watched his colors swirl down into the stick’s bone-white body. Unlike the ivory of the testing sticks, though, here the colors dyed the stick fully their color and then faded in turn, swirling away like smoke.
They all waited until every color was gone, and then a few more seconds.
Without looking up, Andross said, “Grinwoody. The integrity of our game is intact?”
“Absolutely, my lord. I watched most carefully.”
Andross picked up his own deck and motioned that Kip could do the same.
Kip picked up his cards.
He had two turns left before Andross won. No more stalling.
Andross played another bane. That he appeared to have an insurmountable lead wasn’t slowing him down.
Kip supposed he could should feel flattered for that.
He did not feel flattered.
Andross pushed his eligible cards forward to attack Kip’s sad selection of defenders. Cannon Island could take out the Blue Bane but would be destroyed. Kip’s Lightguards and galleys couldn’t stop the other bane, and any of the Lightning cards Kip might have could only take out a few of Andross’s galleys, which was pointless.
The game was over. Kip was dead. He was going to lose everything.
Kip didn’t lay down his cards, though. He played two Lightning cards, killing the attacking galleys.
“Petty,” Andross said.
Still not touching any of the cards, Kip said, “I block the Blue Bane with Cannon Island. Oh, and I block the Red Bane and Dagnu with Ironfist.”
There was no Ironfist on the table. Everyone stopped for a moment, then double-checked to see if there had been some mistake.
“I see he has an interesting Rage mechanic that kicks in when he defends against a superior attack.”
Everyone in the room looked at Kip like he was mad.
Check it yourself, Kip wanted to say. But you don’t tell your prey how good the meat in the trap will taste. You let the bloody scent in the air do the convincing.
“That card’s a Lightguard,” Andross said.
“Oh, but he’s fighting extra hard for me,” Kip said archly, and he thought, like Súil did.
If there was one thing Andross Guile couldn’t stand, it was condescension.
The old Red angrily snatched up the card in his hand, and the trap snicked shut. His fingers broke the delicate layers of luxin across the face of the card, shattering the spiderweb-thin portrait of a Lightguard that Kip had copied with paryl and then laid atop Ironfist’s portrait.
“This is—” The old man went wide-eyed as he saw Ironfist staring out of the card. He was uncomprehending for a long, long moment. “This is impossible,” he breathed.
“I believe my Ironfist kills off both of your bane and your Dagnu,” Kip said. “Good round for me. Shall we—”
Andross held up a finger. “Grinwoody?” he hissed without turning.
“My lord,” Grinwoody’s voice trembled. “He hasn’t touched that card since he played it. I swear. He has no sleeves. The number of cards remaining in his deck is correct. I…”
But Andross’s eyes tightened. He sniffed. Then he wafted the card toward his nose. The luxin scent, tiny as it was, must not have dissipated fully. “You che
ated,” he said. “You’re disqualified. You lose.”
“I did nothing disallowed by the rules.”
“You substituted a card!” Andross said.
“No, I played it legally at noon. Nor did I announce it as anything other than it was,” Kip said. “Some men simply don’t look under the surface to see things as they truly are, grandfather.”
“You little fuck!” Andross jumped to his feet.
“So help me, if you hit me—” Kip started.
“What? What will you do?” Andross demanded.
“The question isn’t what I’ll do,” Kip said.
Andross’s eyes twitched tight. Then he glanced at Corvan.
Corvan hadn’t moved, but he sat with the languid grace of a killer.
“Whose play will he back, grandfather? Corvan practically raised me. How much loyalty have you inspired in him? Grinwoody was so intent on the game, did he search the satrap before he came in? Thoroughly?”
Corvan leaned to one side, and a large pocket on his cloak seemed to gape open a bit; it held something heavy.
A vein throbbed in Andross’s neck as he mastered himself. “Then let’s finish the game. I’ve got a chance yet.” He dropped a musket on one of his wights. It left each player with a sliver of life.
Kip drew a Blackguard and dropped it onto the table. With a Blackguard backing him, Ironfist was able to attack twice.
“And that’s game,” Andross said, his voice tight, his eyes unfocused. “You win, and you may have doomed us all.”
“Nice playing you, too. Let’s never do it again,” Kip said.
“Get out of my sight before I do something red,” Andross said, not looking up.
Kip and Corvan left, with Kip expecting a musket ball between his shoulder blades at every step.
Outside the door, Cruxer was nowhere to be seen. Dammit.
The satrap looked at Kip appreciatively. “Slipping an Ironfist in under your opponent’s guard.” Corvan shook his head. “That was subtler work than Gavin would’ve even attempted.”
“My father’s a colossus. I’m a flea in his shadow,” Kip said. He still couldn’t believe what had happened.
“He has no greater supporter, but I recall Gavin Guile building the mammoth Brightwater Wall in five days yet still failing to change the fate of one small city. You, on the other hand, may have changed the whole world by drafting a portrait I could cover with my thumb. That is not the work of a flea, Kip. That’s the work of a dragon.”
Chapter 84
“Quiet,” Ben-hadad said as they paced out the circle of Wrath/Mercy halfway up the Prism’s Tower.
Walking ahead of Teia, Quentin froze in place. She ran into him, losing her grip of paryl and shimmering back into visibility.
She looked around quickly, but there was no one in the halls. “Sorry,” she whispered.
“What is it?” Quentin whispered to Ben.
Ben looked at them both quizzically. “It’s… quiet?” Ben-hadad said. “Oh, you both thought—no, I didn’t mean for you to be quiet.”
“Oh,” Quentin said, straightening. “Yeah, I don’t like to bother anyone, so I memorized when the various lectures and special events are in session so I can encounter the fewest people possible.”
“For all the levels?” Teia asked. “Not just where your room is?”
“Well, I didn’t know when I might need to drop in someplace else, and I already had the scheduling book…”
“Of course,” Teia said. “Totally logical.” When your brain is the size of a watermelon.
“I thought we’d like to avoid people as well,” Quentin said. “Though with all the preparations for the defenses and for Sun Day itself tomorrow, there are more people about than usual.”
“They aren’t still having the parade, are they?” Teia asked.
“Of course they are,” Quentin said. “There’s tens of thousands of terrified pilgrims in the city. You want to take away the one thing that will give them hope? Plus, we don’t know for sure if an attack will even come tomorrow. Honoring Orholam first might seem like the worst idea militarily, but there are a lot of us who think it’s the best idea. Naturally, there have been some compromises on the parade route and the disposition of drafters. It will be the least, shall we say, lavish Sun Day celebration in many years.”
“Worst Sun Day ever, you mean,” Ben-hadad said, shooing them forward to walk once more, silently counting out his paces.
“On the contrary,” Quentin said.
“How so?” Ben asked. “Fourteen more paces, I think.”
“A pagan invasion, on Sun Day itself? Where we have scant hope of victory?” Quentin asked.
“Yeah,” Teia said. “We’re agreed on that much.”
“It seems to me such a time is precisely when Orholam must show His power.”
“Or else we’re fucked,” Ben-hadad said.
“Yes! So He will show His power.”
Teia and Ben both looked at Quentin like he was out of his mind. Ben shook his head.
“Three more paces.”
Quentin said, “I’m not saying I’m eager for the—”
Ben said, “I don’t know where you found this guy, Teia, but—”
“What do you mean, where I found him?!” Teia said, and then stopped at an unfamiliar voice.
“Teia?” a girl repeated, looking straight at Teia. In front of them was a discipula, carrying a mop and bucket. She wore her hair in a bun with flyaways everywhere, was maybe fourteen years old, and looked even younger.
They had never met, Teia was sure of it.
“Teia Darksight?” the girl said.
“Huh?” Teia asked. A flash of fear shocked her like a flash grenade. She’d thought herself quite nondescript.
“You’re Teia Darksight,” the girl said, wide-eyed.
“Oh dear,” Quentin said.
“O’s itchy bung!” Ben-hadad said. He flowed forward just as the girl squeaked and brought her hands up to her cheeks, dropping her bucket.
Ben-hadad snatched the mop bucket out of midair and popped the handle of the mop back up into his hand with a dextrous flick of his cane. Teia had almost forgotten that for all of his technical genius, Ben-hadad had made it through Blackguard training, too.
“It is you!” the girl said, paying no attention to Ben-hadad or the impressive feat of dexterity he’d just performed.
Maybe not fourteen yet, then, part of Teia thought. Ben-hadad was annoyingly handsome.
But another part of her was already doing what was necessary. Paryl shot from Teia’s fingertips and into the girl’s chest. In a moment, Teia had the knot ready to slam home to sever the nerves that told the heart to beat.
She’d loused up. She’d let herself feel at home here, in the building that had once been her home. And now she had to kill this girl. This pale, wispy thing, all knees and elbows and big baby eyes and crooked teeth, mopping the halls as punishment for some mild transgression—this girl had to die. An hour ago she’d probably been jabbering complaints about this harsh magister or that reading that was way too hard.
That was just and right; it was as it should be.
Every painful stage of life is dictated by nature to make a woman. But nature’s abortions are frequent and rude. Today, this girl would be one more civilian dead in a centuries-long war that only Teia could end. A necessary corpse. One innocent, who had to be killed because you couldn’t trust an entire war’s outcome to the discretion of a fourteen-year-old. An innocent, murdered because Teia had loused up. Teia had killed innocents before, but those had been innocents she’d been forced to kill. This was forced only by her own error. She’d let down her guard.
A woman like her could never, ever let her guard down.
This girl was innocent, but was her life worth so much more than a slave’s life?
“Teia Darksight?” Ben-hadad asked. And Teia realized it had only been an instant that she’d stood paralyzed with the killing threads in her hands.
“Don’t you know?” the girl asked. “She’s the first paryl drafter in centuries!”
“No, she’s not,” Ben-hadad said, puzzled. “There’ve been a doz—”
“But everyone knows her! Mistress Teia, will you show me—”
Flaring her eyes to their fullest spooky black, Teia roared aloud at her. It was a cry of a damned soul. It was every old warrior’s plaint, every penitent’s wail.
But she did what had to be done.
The young girl squeaked and bolted.
“Subtle, T,” Ben-hadad said. “I’m sure she won’t tell any of her friends about meeting you now.”
But Teia barely heard the jibe.
Ben-hadad didn’t know.
He didn’t know how bad this was. They hadn’t had that long together. She hadn’t gone into specifics. He didn’t know the stakes. He thought they were just messing around in areas where maybe someone might realize they shouldn’t be.
“Subtle… T,” he continued. “I think you’ve got a new nickname! Subtle T!”
“Is this the door?” she asked. Subtle T was exactly the kind of name that could stick. It sounded laudatory to outsiders, but could either be praise or a quiet mock among comrades.
It made her miss the Mighty. These damn boys. It made her miss her old life.
Patch or no patch, she could never be part of the Mighty now. It was a fantasy to think she could ever pick up where she’d left off.
She’d never stopped to think what would happen after she took down the Order, had she? It had seemed such an impossibility, her mind had simply refused to go further.
There was no further.
But enough of that now. Teia had to be present, had to be sharp. Enough of thinking about that girl—that poor, innocent girl who would tire in a few minutes as her heart was slowly starved of blood, who would go lie down to nap and never rise.
“Yeah, this should be it,” Ben-hadad said.
Silently, Quentin was staring at Teia. She hadn’t told Quentin about everything she could do now, but Quentin knew.
Ben knocked on a door.
“What are you going to do if someone answers?” Teia asked.
“Hadn’t thought that far ahead,” he said. But he flicked down his blue lenses, and his hand filled with a blob of blue luxin.
