by Brent Weeks
He nodded to her pleasantly.
She looked perplexed, and that, too, was sweetness to him.
Grinwoody had already disappeared in front of him, and another slave, dismissed, came out. Kip paused, his bravado leaking out like urine down a coward’s leg.
He braced himself for the smell in that room. And the darkness.
He glanced back at Tisis—because she was easy on the eyes, not because he was worried what she thought of him—and saw a nasty little smile on her face at his fear.
Kip blew out, puffing his cheeks. He’d deserved that. He drafted a torch of superviolet light. Grinwoody opened the way with his perpetual sneer, and Kip stepped forward through the heavy curtains.
Into light.
For a moment, Kip thought Grinwoody must have led them to the wrong place. But as soon as he thought that, he knew he was wrong. He remembered this room, albeit dimly. Literally dimly. That chair, that table, that painting over the mantel, they’d all looked different in the harsh, superfine light of the superviolet torches Kip had drafted, but they were the same ones. That lush carpet, that was where Kip had fallen when the old man slapped the hell out of him in the darkness.
Andross Guile was propped on the edge of his desk, half sitting on it, half standing. It was the pose of a much younger man, but it seemed to fit Andross now. Kip stood, dumbstruck.
Andross looked like he’d lost a decade or two. He looked like, perhaps, a tough old farmer or carpenter. He still had a bit of the paunch Kip had noted long ago, but it looked like it was shrinking fast. He looked powerful, his broad Guile shoulders and strong Guile chin no longer hidden under layer upon layer of clothing. He smiled pleasantly, but though that face was Gavin’s face, just older, the smile wasn’t the same. There was some warmth lacking there. Gavin would grin recklessly, knowing he was getting away with things because he was handsome and powerful, but you always got the sense that he was amused by it all. You got the sense that underneath it, Gavin really liked people. Andross Guile saw through you, to his objective.
“When they told me you were back,” Andross said, “they didn’t tell me how little of you had returned.” He smirked. Of course he’d seen Kip at the meeting of the Spectrum. He must have meant his spies had told him Kip was back before that.
“I see I’m not the only one who’s lost something,” Kip said.
“I meant that as a compliment.”
“Me, too. You were a wight.”
“Kip, a man only gets so many chances to start over in a life, or in a conversation. Don’t miss an important one.”
Beast or not, it was good advice. Kip held his tongue.
Hey! Second time in my life!
“Nine Kings?” Andross asked.
“I’d be glad to, but I don’t have my decks.” Wait, had Andross just asked that as a question? As if Kip could say no?
“I’m short a couple myself,” Andross said. “But I’ve got plenty. You can borrow whichever you like.”
“What are the stakes this time?” Kip asked. He was a little rusty on the game, but if he had enough time to look through decks, he could at least still tell a strong deck from a weak one.
“So you didn’t steal it,” Andross said.
“Huh?”
“Someone broke into my apartments and stole a few valuables. They also grabbed one of my favorite decks. It seemed like the kind of thing you might do.”
And he’d learned from Kip’s expression alone that Kip wasn’t the culprit.
They sat, and Andross put forward two pairs of decks. “I thought we might try one of the old duels: the Twins, or Gods and Beasts.” They were classic pairings. In such games, the decks had equal relative strengths, though very different strategies. Each player was expected to have memorized all the cards in each deck. Luck still played a part, but a player with a sharp head for numbers could judge the probabilities that their opponent would draw a card to counter any particular strategy. It was the kind of game where Kip would get slaughtered, even though he knew most of the cards in each.
“Gods and Beasts,” Kip said.
“Interesting choice,” Andross said. And Kip saw that Andross thought Kip was making a comment even in this. Of course, they had just faced both gods and beasts.
Kip had chosen it because he thought it was more fun.
Now I’m being overestimated.
He wasn’t sure if that was better, or worse.
“Which deck do you want, grandson?” Andross asked.
Now that Kip knew his grandfather thought Kip was making a point by which one he chose, he thought about it differently. “Odd that they’re on opposite sides, isn’t it? In my experience, the gods and beasts have fought together.”
“Not odd at all,” Andross said. “What can oppose a god but a beast?”
“Is that how you justify it?” Kip asked. No filter.
“When soft men sit in peace and criticize my choices ages hence, that they live to do so will be all the proof necessary that I did right,” Andross said. He picked up a deck. “A man who hesitates could never become a god, so you’ll be beasts.” He shuffled each deck as Kip watched, then dealt the cards. “No timers. I wish to have a leisurely match, and we’ve seen what mistakes you make under pressure.”
Kip didn’t touch his cards, didn’t turn around. “Tell Grinwoody not to stand behind me.”
Andross laughed. “You make me wonder, Kip, if I posed such dilemmas for my father Draccos. So smart sometimes, so clever, so adult, and then the next minute an utter belligerent child, striking out and destroying things more good for him than for anyone else, simply because he’s been vexed.” He waved to Grinwoody, who moved away from his cheater’s perch over Kip’s shoulder.
“Who starts?” Kip asked. He picked up his hand.
“I will. Privilege of age.”
Kip threw down his hand. “You dealt me eight.” It was one card too many.
“Did I? Age dulls us all, I suppose.” He grinned, and this time there was real playfulness in it. So said the man who, just a few months ago, had looked twenty years older than he did now.
Kip couldn’t help but grin. A little.
“Wasn’t a good hand anyway, huh?” Andross asked. He picked up Kip’s hand and shuffled again quickly, then dealt him out seven.
“Lousy,” Kip said.
Andross laughed, and Kip remembered how the man had said that he liked Kip—a little. He realized then that Andross had been testing him, seeing if he’d cheat. Or perhaps Andross wouldn’t have thought of it as cheating. Maybe he would have thought of it as taking advantage of an opponent’s error. But it had been a bad hand, which was why Kip had thrown the whole hand down for a re-deal rather than extend the deck and have Andross take out one card to bring him down to seven.
The promachos set the sun counter to predawn, and played his first card. “So, grandson,” Andross said. “The Chromeria finds itself about to enter a fight for its life, and most of them still don’t realize the fact. What do you see that needs fixing?”
Kip cocked his head to the side. “Are you serious? You really want my ideas?”
“Is it so surprising?”
“Yes, it is.”
“There are many things you can learn from slaves and spies, and I have learned them all. But some things can only be seen with one’s own eyes. My eyes have been—”
“Broken?” Kip couldn’t help but get in the little jab about Andross hiring that assassin from the Order, Mistress Helel, Kip saw Grinwoody tense, but Andross didn’t miss a beat.
“Unavailable. I may have missed things.” But he was examining Kip sharply. “Boy, I am ferocious when crossed, I don’t deny it. I find being led by fools intolerable. But I am magnanimous in victory. I do what needs to be done to win and without putting on a false display of sorrow or reluctance; you think that makes me hideous? Others pay homage to common pieties with their lips but betray them by their actions. I am simply more forthright. Orholam needs even honest men, does
he not?”
His eyes twinkled. That inversion, so typical of this family. Gavin would hint at irreligiosity and flirt with the line. Andross would breeze right past it, but if his approach saved them all regardless, who was to say that Orholam wasn’t using him? Their ends were the same.
He was the promachos. Surely, if only to preserve his own power, he would fight the Color Prince.
So Kip told him about the classes, how the magisters were lecturing on topics that had nothing to do with the conflict at hand, that only the engineers seemed to grasp the problems. He also thought that they should have a whole contingent of battle drafters, not only the Blackguard and a few isolated drafters who learned the arts of war for their sponsors. He thought that they should open all the books of forbidden magics, and start teaching them—or at the least how to defend against them.
“And who’s to teach all these new battle drafters?” Andross asked.
“The Blackguard,” Kip said. “At least, those not directly involved with recovering my father. If they’re not busy protecting the Prism and the Colors, might as well put them to use until spring. They’ll complain, but training others is sometimes even better than being trained. And speaking of the Blackguard, there’s a slave who scrubbed out. You should put him in with my initiate cohort.”
“What’s his story?”
“Winsen was one of the best scrubs, but his master was a horror. He was also deeply in debt, and he needed to sell Winsen into the Blackguard to avoid being ruined. Winsen failed on purpose.”
“And you wish to reward treachery?”
“I think what made him a bad slave will make him a great Blackguard. And we need Blackguards.”
The game proceeded to noon on the sun counter—the time when the most powerful cards could be easily played. Kip got a sea demon. As long as there were other cards on the table, the sea demon had to attack, but if only you had another card on the table, the sea demon would attack your own card. Like all the best daggers, it was double-edged.
“They say Gunner killed a sea demon,” Andross said.
“I’ve heard that,” Kip said. “Do you think it’s true?”
“I think it’s possible. Carcasses have floated to shore before, so the beasts are not immortal.”
“How was Gunner supposed to have done it?” Kip asked.
“They say he filled a raft full of the ship’s whole store of powder and floated it behind the Aved Barayah five hundred paces. Something about that little raft irritated the sea demon, I’ve never heard exactly what—apparently this Gunner has a penchant for irritating those more powerful than he. He waited until the sea demon surfaced and shot the raft with a cannonball just as the sea demon swallowed it. In heavy seas, if the tales be believed.”
Kip made a moue of appreciation.
Andross said, “I’d wager it was more like two hundred paces. Regardless, impressive. Another version says he rode on the raft himself, singing sea shanties and howling curses at some whore he’d loved, and lit the fuse himself, jumping out of the way at the last moment. But sailors and a straight-told tale have but passing acquaintance.”
“I’d believe five hundred paces,” Kip said. “I’ve seen the man shoot.”
Andross had a veritable army of wights on his side of the table. Plenty of fodder for Kip’s sea demon, so Kip played his heavy galleon to be able to sail past Andross’s defenses and attack him directly on the next round.
“I want something of you, Kip,” Andross said.
“Other than learning if I stole from you and crushing me in a few games?”
“Hard as it may be to believe, I want more than even your excellent company.” He said it flat, like he might have been mocking, or might have meant the compliment.
Kip found himself grinning despite himself. This was the man who’d tried to have him killed, who’d tried to kill him, who had lost Gavin for all of them. And yet Kip grinned.
And Andross grinned back. God or beast, the man appreciated when someone appreciated his sense of humor.
“Well…” Kip prompted. He couldn’t take the suspense.
Andross looked up from the cards. “I want to know where my other grandson is.”
A kick in the groin. “Other?” Kip asked. Had he hesitated too long?
His face must have blanched, because Andross grinned wolfishly. “I love surprising people. It was really one of the greatest losses of my seclusion. So much more satisfying when I can see your face.”
“Let’s talk about that seclusion,” Kip said, suddenly ready to do combat. To hell with this old man and his tricks. “Grinwoody, get away.” He didn’t turn to look at the slave. “Grinwoody, we both know I could have had you put out with forty lashes or worse when I spoke to the Spectrum, if I’d wanted to. I spared you. Get the hell out of here. Your betters are speaking.”
A moment passed. Kip saw Andross nod his head.
Grinwoody left, and Kip felt a little stab of pleasure.
So it begins. The opiate of power. Command and obedience, in a dance until you climb the greased pole high enough that all must obey you, and you must obey none.
“Thinking deep thoughts?” Andross asked.
“Am I so easy to read?” Kip asked.
“In your unguarded moments. You are young yet, trapped in that twilight of having adult thoughts and insights quite beyond what others think you should have, and being utterly, wildly out of control of your self. At your age, the emotions have a power greater than the intellect can tame. Slowly, slowly, they will become yours. Yours to master or at least to hide. If you survive so long.”
Kip looked at the cards, but he didn’t see them. “At moments, you sound so like my father that I despair.”
“At moments, you sound so like him that I rejoice,” Andross said. “I have hope for you, Kip. But there are hard lessons between where you now sit and feel, and where you shall stand and act. You must become master to that within you, not its puppet. In the meantime, your mouth is a loose cannon, Kip the Lip.”
“I know. I’m trying to—”
“Shut up and listen. You react exactly the wrong way. You say startling things, often rude things, but sometimes with stunning insight. Someday, you will control that tongue. In the meantime, when you say something that shocks your interlocutor, instead of being embarrassed and turning your eyes inward, pay attention! When you drop an explosive truth, don’t look at yourself. Package away your feeble blushes and your horror for later; in the moment, watch what others do.”
Instantly, Kip was embarrassed of his own feebleness and foolishness. Exactly what Andross was speaking about. So he blurted, “Why are you acting like my friend?”
“Not your friend,” Andross answered instantly. “Your grandfather, for all it costs us both.”
“You fear me,” Kip said.
The astonishment on Andross’s face was priceless. Then he laughed. “I see. You were trying it. No Kip. And yes. Not fear of you. Fear that you may put this family in danger, though for the nonce, if you do something horrific, everyone knows that you don’t act for me. As you grow older and more refined, that perceived gap will close. So in order for you to be of use to me, you must grow faster than the conventional wisdom believes possible.”
Oh, no pressure then.
But Kip realized this was exactly what his father had been trying to protect him from when he’d suggested Kip enter the Chromeria under an assumed name. And Kip had blindly wanted to be thrust directly into the middle of all of it. Had demanded it, long before he was ready.
“What are your plans for me?” Kip asked.
“You asked that before.”
“You were a wight then.”
Andross Guile paused. Looked at the cards. “Do you think, grandson, that all my rage was born of red luxin?” He affixed Kip with his many-colored eyes: a background of shocking natural blue making a canvas for sub-red, red, orange, and yellow entwined like serpents.
“I won’t tell you anything for free,”
Kip said. He swallowed. “We trade. Like adults.”
“Playing an adult while playing an adult while playing an adult, fair enough,” Andross said. He played a Flawless Mirror.
It didn’t make any sense. His deck had no Prisms, for one, and if he wanted to play a burning ray, it would take two turns. He’d be dead by then, killed by Kip’s heavy galleon.
Was he deliberately giving Kip a victory in the game so Kip would feel good about something after this talk?
Kip said, “I’ll tell you about your other grandson … if you give me written permission to all the libraries in the Chromeria. All of them.”
Andross raised his eyebrows. “There are things in some of those libraries that could put the whole Chromeria at risk.”
“All the more reason that those who defend her should know them.”
“A full accounting of your half brother,” Andross said. “All you know.”
“Done,” Kip said.
“Not done. That’s your opening bid. Here’s my counter. I told you how I like surprises. I want to buy one from you.”
“What’s that?” Kip asked. This didn’t sound good.
“Don’t tell Karris about Zymun.”
What, as if Kip wanted to tell Karris about Zymun? ‘Hi, stepmother, I met your real son. The one you’ve apparently been trying to hide? The bastard? Oh, and he’s the worst person I’ve ever met. He tried to kill me. Oh, he also tried to murder your husband, his father.’
“Done,” Kip said quickly. “If.”
Andross didn’t ask, ‘If what?’ Instead, he said, “Of course, if you tell someone else who may tell her, that’s an abrogation of our agreement.”
I’m a turtle-bear, not a weasel. “Of course,” Kip said irritably.
“And the if?” Andross asked.
“You’re going to send out Blackguard on skimmers, looking for my father.”
“Sea chariots,” Andross corrected. “Yes, of course.”
Something about his tone told Kip it was half a lie. Andross hadn’t been planning on sending the Blackguards out—or if he had, he’d been planning to send them to look for something else. But now, called on it, he would send them. So that was a victory, Kip guessed. “I get to go with them.”