But it was his father against that.
Did it matter now? Kip wasn’t going to be able to save him. But Karris deserved to know. The Blackguard deserved to know. Someone might help him, even if it wasn’t Kip.
“Ah, one further stipulation,” Andross said. “Whichever way the game goes, you have to View whichever card you get, and you have to answer my questions about it.”
“So you win, win or lose, too,” Kip said.
“Yes, isn’t it nice that we can play a game so mutually beneficial?”
“Why do you want me to do this?” Kip asked.
“My son has a knack for showing up at the last moment and wrecking all sorts of plans. Usually the enemy’s, but not always. Either card you View might tell us my son’s location. Should he arrive quite suddenly in the next day or so, I should like very much to make sure that I enact the correct plan for this most important Sun Day.”
Now, finally, Kip understood why Andross had said there was nothing more important for them to be doing than this. Preparations for battle? The people they each commanded could do most of those. Unfolding the past and the present itself? Only they could do this.
And it meant helping his father either way.
“Let’s play,” Kip said.
Andross chose conventional rules. Kip chose decks he was familiar with. He even added cards from the array Grinwoody brought in once more, based on what he guessed of how the Black Cards would affect the strategies.
It was close. Damn close.
He came to his last turn. His facedown deck held fourteen cards. He could only draw one, and any one of four cards left in that stack would give him the victory.
“Four,” Andross said aloud. “Four winners. Out of fourteen.”
“How do you know I don’t have it in my hand already?”
“A man doesn’t pray over his last draw when he has the winning card in hand.”
Of course Andross knew exactly what Kip was looking for. Kip couldn’t find it in himself to hate the old spider, not for this. Hating Andross Guile was like hating the weather. If the sun burns your head, you don’t shake your fist at the sun; you blame yourself for not wearing a hat.
The game had been fair. Kip had watched for any cheats, eagle-eyed.
“You want to back out?” Andross asked, amused. “The odds are against you. Failure might break your spirit . . . Breaker.” He said it with a light derision, as if Kip was trying on names like a child tries on his parents’ fancy clothes and big hats.
“Not ‘Breaker.’ I prefer ‘Diakoptês,’ ” Kip said. For some reason Grinwoody flinched at that. “My father told me once that the odds were against us, but that odds are for defying.”
Kip drew.
He lost.
Chapter 81
“Grinwoody,” Kip said. “Go fetch a bucket for me. I may vomit. Also, get a physicker. One with experience starting stopped hearts. Or better yet, the Blackguard Adrasteia.”
“Teia’s disappeared,” Andross said. “Some time ago now. Absent without leave. I think they thought she might have gone to join you and your Mighty. No?”
Kip shook his head.
It was terrible, but the first thing Kip felt was relief. He wasn’t going to have to face her yet. Not that that was really in the top ten things he ought to worry about right now.
Then his chest tightened as Andross went to a combination safe and opened it. He brought out a tiny vellum book, barely larger than a card itself. With careful fingers, he unwound the string from the button holding it shut and lay the covers open. Without touching any part of the card, he offered it.
Kip took the card by the edges, careful not to touch its face. He lay it on the table before him. The card depicted a golden ship, glowing in the sun, sails full-bellied, cutting through easy seas. It was exquisite art, as all of Janus Borig’s had been, and obviously done by her hand.
“Some water, calun,” Kip said. After all this time, he’d finally learned not to say please to a slave. Not that Grinwoody was any normal slave. “But open the window first. I need full-spectrum light.” He turned to Andross. This card didn’t look threatening in the least. “The Golden Mean? Is that the name of the ship?”
“Made by a pair of Abornean brothers, a shipwright and a yellow drafter, since sadly deceased in an apparent robbery. Possibly an assassination to keep them from talking. No, not done by my orders. Really, Kip, must you suspect me of everything?”
“What? No, I wasn’ t—”
“I saw the look on your face. Anyway, it was sold to an Ilytian cannon maker from Smussato named Phineas, and from there it’s been seen in numerous ports, though of unknown ownership. Not least, it was here. On the Jaspers. Not five weeks ago.”
“How do you know it has anything to do with Gavin?” Kip asked.
“Because I tried to View it myself.”
“And?”
“Searching an item card for one person who’s touched it isn’t a matter of strength of will but of singularity of focus. I think you have that in a way I don’t. When I look for Gavin, my attention is bifurcated, and my intentions are muddied. I was able to establish only that he has been on that ship in the recent past. You’ll do better.”
Grinwoody set down Kip’s water, and there was an odd intensity about the man, a tension about him that touched those Blackguard senses that Kip had begun to develop, something that spoke of danger. Kip looked at the older man then, but Grinwoody was all placid subservience. Surely he’d merely been echoing the tension in his master, who was meeting with a man Grinwoody surely thought might be a threat to Andross. After all, Grinwoody had had Blackguard training himself.
Kip dismissed it. Why was he focusing on a mere slave rather than on the fiercest intellect he’d ever known?
“Open the windows,” Kip said.
But Grinwoody only looked to his master.
“The drapes are open,” Andross said.
“That gives me seven colors,” Kip said. “I have a feeling I’m going to need nine.”
Andross gestured, and Grinwoody went and opened the large windows, bathing Kip in unfiltered light.
There wasn’t need for much of any color, and Andross helpfully had blocks of every color large enough for Kip to draw source from, but as Kip finished with chi—his pupils squeezed down to nothing—he understood Andross’s fear of the cards for the first time. Kip’s gallium necklace felt heavy against his chest, concealing the chi bane within it, and Kip felt a twinge of fear as he thought for the first time, What if there’s a card of this necklace? What if Andross knows everything?
But unhurried, Kip stared at the Golden Mean card on the table and set his fingers down on it, one by one, concentrating on his father alone.
Kip was the eager face of the prow cutting through azure waves, his decks gliding frictionless through the upbearing seas. He was the strain of the mast against the wind, two old friends leaning against each other as they walked home tipsy. His gunports opened like gills opening so he might breathe, and exhaling black smoke and shot, with the hurried walking of the crews and the shouted orders of a familiar voice. Gunner. And from the lack of distress in those somehow-distant voices of his crew, these were mere practice volleys with the many cannons.