“Wait . . .” Kip said. “Just like that?” He’d imagined getting a little more pushback. “I’m asking you to tell everyone I’m the most important person in history, not you. And you’re okay with playing a game for that? A single game. Where I could get lucky.”
“I think luck shall have very little to do with it,” Andross said.
“I’m asking you to wager everything you’ve spent forty years pursuing,” Kip said, though he wasn’t sure why he was arguing against his own case. “That’s like twice as long as I’ve even been alive.”
The irony of Kip taking his side evidently wasn’t lost on him, as Andross suddenly smiled. “There is now nothing in the world that could keep me from this game, and this wager. For you see, I won’t be playing against you, Kip. I’ll be playing against Orholam Himself. For the answer to the question ‘Who is the Lightbringer?’ is not a name; it’s not a man or a woman. The answer to that question answers how Orholam interacts with the world—if He does so at all.
“I’m asking you to wager the most important thing in your life,” Andross said. “It’s only fair that you demand the same of me. Grinwoody, the decks.”
Kip sat stunned, silent. There were too many questions—what prophecies did Andross know that Kip didn’t? If he were a full-spectrum polychrome, why had he had Kip View cards for him? What did this all mean?—but the cards were in front of him now, and those questions would have to wait. He had to win first.
Shaking himself, breathing deeply, Kip began studying the play decks Andross had constructed mostly from Janus Borig’s new cards.
He looked up. “You didn’t.”
“Seemed appropriate,” Andross said.
The old man had constructed decks to reflect the coming fight. There weren’t enough legendary characters who’d earned their own cards to fill two entire decks, but he’d done as well as he could. Plenty of wights on the one side, the White King, drafters aplenty, lots of ships, and seven bane. “Six bane?” Kip suggested.
“Your people may have only seen six, but I believe superviolet will show up. That Danavis girl has a way of doing her own thing. In the last months, I’ve had reports from Aslal, Smussato, Cravos, Wiwurgh, Garriston, and Ru of a woman matching her description, traveling alone, with no obvious transportation. The ravishing fairy princess in white and gold with amethyst eyes. Not the color of amethyst, but with jewels crusted over her very eyes themselves. And at the joints of her fingers, in some later accounts. Always inspecting old ruins. And the prophecies suggest seven will come.”
Kip felt sick. He believed it. No matter what she’d told Kip, he’d held on to some small hope that she was going to stay out of the battle, that she hadn’t forgotten herself completely.
“We could’ve been a good team, you and I,” Kip said, finishing up with the White King’s deck.
“Pick a deck,” Andross said impatiently. “Ah, one moment.” He grabbed the Chromeria’s deck before Kip could pick it up and snatched out a card, handing it to Grinwoody. “Won’t be needing this.”
“What was that?”
“Gavin’s card. Since you established he’s not coming back in time, if he ever does.”
“I’d like to see that card,” Kip said.
“Really, right now?” Andross said. “It’s not an original. You can’t View it.”
“Oh. Right. I . . . later, then.”
“If you win,” Andross said.
“That weakens the deck,” Kip said. Certainly his father’s card would have to have been a powerful one.
“Then pick the other deck, moron. Hurry it up. I’ve got other things to do today.”
“So, just to clarify, the stakes are my remarriage against your full support—”
“No, not your remarriage only. Your full obedience in all things until I die,” Andross said. “Against my full support, until I die. All you want, against all you have,” Andross said. “Isn’t that the wager life always offers?”
“Agreed,” Kip heard his voice say. “More liquor, calun.”
As Grinwoody poured for him, Kip turned the next card of the Chromeria deck, and chuckled. “Now, that’s a good one. After all you said about him, you gave the Chromeria Ironfist?”
“Without Gavin, the Chromeria needs Ironfist, or it loses every time.” Andross rubbed his nose for a moment. “Think of Nine Kings as an aid to thinking, the way an abacus is an aid to arithmetic. At some point one should grow beyond the need for the physical prop, but the cards are actually best for those like you, who have difficulty looking at their friends and seeing them as a list of strengths and weaknesses—you, who would vacillate before spending two lives even if their deaths are necessary to forestall ten thousand more. This is why Nine Kings is more valuable for you, but I am better at it, and better at politics as well.”
“What you miss,” Kip said, “is that my friends will fight for me in ways they would never fight for you. When led by one they know loves them, they perform better than a number on a card could possibly capture. Everything that is most important about this game can’t be captured by a game.”
“Then you take the Chromeria deck,” Andross said. “Perhaps the cards will fight extra hard for you.”
Kip shouldn’t have let him get away with that, shouldn’t have let him get under his skin. The Chromeria was clearly the inferior deck, but his victory would be all the sweeter when he shoved Andross’s nose in it like pressing a dog’s nose to his shit.
It was a mistake, and Kip knew it, but he couldn’t stop himself. “Fine, I’ll take it.”
Andross separated the decks and shuffled them under Kip’s watchful eyes.
Kip reshuffled and let Andross cut both decks.
The old man smirked. “It takes years to become a proficient cardist.”
“With your memory?” Kip asked.
“It’s the dexterity that’s challenging as one ages, and finding the time for the continual practice.”
It was as close to an admission as Kip was likely to hear. “How many times have you cheated me that way?” Kip asked.
“You think I had to cheat, before?”
“Had to?” Kip said. “No. But you’re the kind of man who likes to guarantee victory, aren’t you?”
“I’m also a man who likes a challenge.”
“No doubt the only reason I’m still alive,” Kip said as they dealt out their cards.
“There are others.”
“Oh, pray tell,” Kip said lightly.
Andross waved it away, studying his cards instead.
“Huh, would you look at that,” Kip said. “Never realized it before, but the Ironfist card actually has a perfect empty place for ‘King’ to be written in. The other cards don’t have that spacing. It can’t be an accident.” Actually, Kip’s hand had a nice collection of earlier attack soldiers and defenders, but it needed a noontime striker like Ironfist.
Andross gave him a disbelieving look. “You’re trying to get into my head?”
“Me?” Kip said. “Just making conversation. I think you’ve radically underestimated the power of this deck.”