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 central 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.