That was the great joy of speaking with Andross Guile, of course: you knew everything you said would be used against you sooner or later.
“Tell me every card name you remember.”
Kip told him. It didn’t take very long. He ended by saying, “And there was even a card that may have been you. I saw a man, maybe in a ship? The Master. He was writing a letter to the Color Prince, a treasonous letter about becoming Dagnu. He was cowled, though, as you used to be. And his hands were stained crimson like a red drafter who’s gone wight.”
“Ah, that’s why you tried to assassinate me after the Battle of Ru,” Andross said.
“That is . . . not what happened. And we both know it,” Kip said.
“No, it’s not,” Andross admitted. “You remember no more of that card?”
“No. Not then or ever. One glimpse.”
Andross believed him, he could tell.
“Now, I’ve fulfilled the terms of my wager,” Kip said. “More than fulfilled them.”
“Tell me about these flashbacks you ‘sometimes’ get.”
“That wasn’t part of the deal,” Kip said.
“They’re part of the cards you destroyed, and it may be the key to saving us all, and who better to help you disentangle a puzzle than I?” Andross asked.
So Kip told him all about that, too.
Andross ended up shaking his head. “Off saving one satrapy when you could have been uncovering the mysteries of the Thousand Worlds that could save us all.”
“Perhaps,” Kip admitted, “but I’m not a man to sit idle while my people bleed.”
It caught Andross up short. He marveled at it. “An honest statement of your limitations, but without apologies nor posturing that those limits somehow make you superior to other differently gifted men. Hmm. I know men twice your age who are less comfortable with themselves.”
‘Comfortable with myself’? Kip thought that was the first time anyone had ever said that about him. But he supposed he had made some progress on that front in the last few years.
“You didn’t get all the new cards,” Andross said.
“Excuse me?” Kip asked.
“Gavin left the bulk of them where he hoped you would find them, but some he considered too sensitive for you.”
A shock passed through Kip, tightening his throat and turning his bowels to water. “How would you even know he did such a thing?”
“It’s what I would do. There are some things I wouldn’t want my own son to know.”
“And?” Kip asked.
“Naturally, I found them.”
“He left them for Karris, didn’t he?” Kip guessed.
Andross Guile only hesitated a moment. “Curious,” he said. “That’s the kind of thing Felia would have done. That much of an intuitive leap, so quickly.”
“Does Karris know about them?” Kip asked.
“Of course not. You don’t show the other players your hole cards, especially not literal ones.”
He flicked his gaze up to Grinwoody, who he suddenly realized was hanging on every word, as if he knew none of this. “More whiskey, calun,” Kip said.
Of course Grinwoody’s service was impeccable, silent, and swift, and emotionless. Maybe Kip should have called him by name to insult him.
“Where’s this going?” Kip asked.
Andross weighed him while Grinwoody served them both. Though he’d chosen a fast-game variant, he now gave no indication of hurry in his manner and seemed not to worry at all about the calamity bearing down upon them.
“The truth?” Andross said.
A smart-ass comment leapt to mind, but Kip the Lip clamped his jaw tight shut. Hectoring Andross wasn’t going to help anything.
Andross waved Grinwoody away. “Go, now, for a bit. Some few things are too secret even for you.”
Grinwoody retreated to stand with his back turned toward them, close enough to hear and return instantly if Andross called. Andross produced a long key, opened a locked drawer in the table, and withdrew a card box. He handed it to Kip.
Nonchalantly, Kip flipped open the box. And his heart stopped.
It was the deck he’d absorbed. The new deck Janus Borig had painted—the deck Kip had destroyed, erased.
“Not originals,” Andross said. “These cards can’t be Viewed. They’re paint and gold and parchment and lacquer only. There is no magic in them.”
“How did you . . . ?”
“Janus had enemies. She kept this deck far from her home in a place she thought was safe. She hoped that if she were killed, some future Mirror would might be able to use these to re-create her work.”
“How’d you get them?”
“Please,” Andross Guile scoffed.
“You killed her? She was too dangerous to you.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. I don’t destroy what I might better use. And I had many questions for her. Some other player did that, and not necessarily even a major one.”
“Why have me describe them if you already have them all?” Kip asked.
“For one reason above all: it tells me you’re honest, that you’ll make good on a wager, even to me. I had to establish that first. Now, with that done, I believe it’s time for our second game,” Andross said. “If you win, I’ll give you Gavin’s card. The original.”
Kip’s heart seized. His father’s card?! The original? That meant he could View it.
And if it truly wasn’t retrospective, and if he used it properly, he could find where his father was now.
It was everything he’d hoped to do, simply offered by his grandfather.
But that was if he won.
If the reward for victory was so enormous, what would the cost of losing be?
“Wait,” Kip said. “Why wouldn’t you want me to View that card regardless? Don’t you want him back? What did you see when you Viewed it yourself?” Andross wasn’t a full-spectrum polychrome, but surely he would have—
“I’ve not tried.”
“You don’t want to see yourself through his eyes,” Kip said.
Andross’s eyes flashed. “My reasons are my own. Perhaps if you win, you’ll find out what they are. I don’t know. That’s what makes it such very, very good bait. I mean, such a very good wager.”
“What’s the price of defeat?” Kip asked.
A cat who’d stolen your dinner couldn’t have grinned with the mixture of malevolence and self-satisfaction that Andross showed. “You lose, and I’ll show you another card. You’ll View it for me and tell me everything you see.”
“That . . . doesn’t sound that bad,” Kip said.
“Well, then, you win, win or lose.” Andross voice was so blithely pleasant, it could have been honey and melted butter.
Which was all the evidence Kip needed that it was covering the taste of arsenic.
Andross Guile would never offer uneven stakes that were tilted toward his opponent.
Kip wanted to think, How bad can it be?
But he remembered the card The Butcher of Aghbalu. He remembered the months of nightmares he’d had from watching the massacre unfold—no, not just watching but partaking in it, over and over. What if the card was one of those cards?