“Nautical trade came to a standstill. There’s simply no defense against them. A few very strong will-casters had limited success against them, but it was rarely duplicated. Without nautical trade, every one of the nine kingdoms became utterly dependent upon its neighbors, and that only gave them all another reason for war. When the Chromeria gained control, the sea giants were hunted to extinction. The whales left thereafter. No one knows why.”
“How do you know all this?” Kip asked.
Andross shrugged, as if to say, Really?
“These cards. They’re very similar.”
“They’re the same, some say. Having no sea giants to compare our sea demons with, I have no way of telling. But some have said in bygone eras, before such talk was too dangerous, that our sea demons now are the last of those will-cast sea giants. They roam the seas, senescent, angry when roused from their near-immortal torpor.”
“Reminds me of someone,” Kip said.
“Damn, kid. I should beat you with my cane.”
“You know interesting stuff,” Kip said.
“Oh, high praise! You little shit. Have you decided yet?”
Kip shuffled through both decks one last time, trying to memorize them. Then he extended them.
Andross took Delayed Destruction, leaving Kip with Nine Mirrors. “Pick that for the name?” he asked.
“Not re . . . er, of course. I was hoping you’d ramble on about the Great Mirrors as a conversation piece,” Kip said. “Have to confess, learning about them would probably be a lot more useful to my immediate future than learning about moldy old sea demons.”
It actually would’ve been a clever plan, if Kip had been quick enough to think of it.
“Really?” Andross said.
“Not really. But I found a Great Mirror in Blood Forest. Triggered it. Huge thing, still pristine. Had been underground for centuries, it looked like. I don’t suppose there’s actually . . . nine of them?”
Andross gestured to Grinwoody to pour them some drinks while he shuffled his own cards, his liver-spotted hands moving as deftly as a cardsharp’s. “The Nine Kings cards are a repository of ancient knowledge, some of it very unpopular with the censors of their eras, some of it unpopular with later ones.” He flipped half his deck from one hand to another in a move that seemed to defy physical laws. “It’s also just a game. How many Mirror cards in that deck?”
“Three?” Kip said. He hated that it came out as a question.
“But three doesn’t sound scary. Three Mirrors? In a game called Nine Kings? Nine Mirrors, much better.”
“Is that why you called us ‘the Mighty’?” Kip asked. “For the name?”
“If I hadn’t given you a Name, what would you have been? Six scared adolescents who’d dropped out of the Chromeria, who’d washed out of Blackguard training and been chased off the Jaspers by a half-trained band of thugs.”
“Those thugs are your Lightguards. Who you also gave a pretty awesome name, much as we hate you for it. Hated.” Kip cleared his throat.
“ ‘The Lightguard’ is a name that either calls ironic attention to itself or, maybe one time in twenty, might have encouraged those thugs to make something of themselves. The latter is a gamble I lost, but I still win. They know everyone hates them, and they depend utterly on me, so they’re fiercely loyal to me.”
“Except for that incident where Zymun sent them to kill me and the Mighty.”
“Well, yes, except for that. But they only obeyed him because he told them that they would actually be fulfilling my will by fulfilling his. He, too, is a Guile.”
“I can’t believe you’re keeping him close,” Kip said. “He’s poison.”
“He says the same about you. Shuffle?”
They shuffled for each other, and Kip kept his eyes tight on Andross’s hands. One last cut of the decks, and they handed them back to each other.
Andross chose the setting as Big Jasper and set the sun-counter at noon. Kip went first.
He drew his cards: a tough polychrome named Katalina Galden, Red Spectacles, a musket, a good sword, Blue Spectacles, a green-drafting Blackguard with a musket proficiency, and a red-drafting Blackguard. It would have been a great hand for the normal game, good for offense and defense early. In a normal game, it would have put him in an early lead that Andross might never have recovered from.
But at full noon, and with two draws? Every card Kip kept in his hand was one less card he could draw, one less chance to get the powerful cards he needed. He flopped them all down.
“The discard pile is faceup in this variant,” Andross said.
Kip hadn’t recalled that. Great.
The old man studied Kip’s overturned cards. “A tough call. But the right play.”
“A compliment?” Kip asked.
“Doled out in heaping measure, when deserved,” Andross said. He discarded three. They didn’t help Kip at all. They were three cards you’d toss regardless of what you were pursuing.
“I knew her, you know.”
“Katalina Galden?” Kip asked. “Any relation to that asshole Magister Jens Galden?”
Kip looked at the cards he’d drawn. Nothing. A big, heaping, steaming-on-a-cold-winter’s-day pile-of-stinky nothing. He’d drawn most of the equipment in his deck, but no direct attacks and no one good enough to put the equipment on. If he’d kept Katalina Galden, he would have had a chance.
“Same family, though not likely by blood. I was actually speaking of Janus Borig,” Andross said, drawing his own cards, imperturbable. “The woman who drew the new cards.”
It was whiplash for Kip. He’d been walking down another mental path completely. And then he remembered. This was how Andross Guile operated: overload your opponent with too many things to think about, and then drop a bomb with a burning fuse in his lap and see what he did.
“How many people in history do you think were smarter than you are?” Kip asked.
But the counter didn’t work.
“She was a dear friend of your grandmother’s,” Andross said. “For a long time. She, more than anyone, I think, is responsible for our family’s troubles. She lied to me. She lied to us.” She? Oh, she Janus Borig.
Kip got to go first, so he laid out nearly all of his cards. “How so?” Kip asked, suspicious.
“I was going to say, ‘So beware of trusting anything she told you.’ But instead you’re surprised,” Andross said. “So you think she’s a truth teller? Because she’s a Mirror? Because ‘Mirror’ implies a passivity?”
After his talk about mirrors with his wife not two hours ago, Kip felt like either history was bringing something together for him to understand or this was just one of those times where you learn a new word or concept and suddenly you’re seeing it everywhere.
“I know this much,” Kip said, trying not to show how troubled he was. “She didn’t try to kill me before even meeting me.”
“No, she was more interested in using you to kill someone else,” Andross said. He played three coccas; they were smaller ships, but each capable of decent damage. If Kip got the direct attacks his deck depended on, he would have to waste valuable turns taking them out.