decency.
Add Kip to the list of problems awaiting him when he got back to the Chromeria. Not waiting, festering-many of them problems that he desperately wanted to go tackle, but he felt trapped until he found the blue bane.
The next morning, Karris greeted him as if nothing had happened, and he let it lie, too. There was nothing he could do about Kip or anything else until he found the bane.
So he stopped whenever he saw ships out in the open sea, transformed the skimmer into a dory and rowed to them, asked his questions and deflected theirs, and kept searching. The problems elsewhere had to be growing. If he was gone too much longer, the Chromeria would declare him dead, despite the letters he sent with ship captains and the return letters from the Chromeria that he ignored. But he couldn’t leave his search. He hated blues too much. This, too, was part of his five purposes-to destroy all wights. He owed Sevastian that. Nothing would keep him from it. Not even the Chromeria itself.
He took Karris with him almost every day, partly because she wouldn’t let him leave her, and partly because he hoped she would feel the blue. The Third Eye had let slip that everyone in the proximity of a bane would be affected, but drafters most powerfully. Gavin’s plan was to use Karris to find it, and then go back the next day without her to destroy it. She would be furious with him, of course, but he didn’t care.
And the days passed, and passed, and passed. Two months passed. Three.
Chapter 52
“I can give them to you,” Janus Borig said.
There had to be some catch, of course. No one was going to give Kip something he needed so desperately. The black cards had to be priceless.
“But it’s going to cost me something,” Kip said. She closed the door behind him, threw many latches and bolts home.
“No,” she said. “Free gift. Which, come to think of it, is redundant, isn’t it?”
“But…” he led.
She poked his chest with the stem of her long pipe. “But do you know what it’s like to carry around an item of total wealth in your pocket? Walking down a back alley and knowing that you could buy every single house and shop on the block with what’s in your pocket? It’s terrifying. One of these cards is worth that, Kip. If I give you a deck, you’ll be carrying more than you may make in your entire life. And the wealth isn’t simply monetary. You’d be carrying history. History you could drop in a puddle and utterly ruin, or that could be quite literally stolen and gone forever. Do you have any idea how frightening that is?”
Kip was thinking of the dagger that might or might not still be in the chest in the barracks. He swallowed. “That’s something that’s been bothering me,” he said. “Your home here. Don’t get me wrong, it’s nice and all, but… it’s here. It’s not where I’d expect to find fortunes.” Which, he realized, might be the point.
“My husband and I built this house. Nigh unto fifty years ago now. I like it here.” She shrugged. “I know it doesn’t seem like a safe place to keep what I have here, but it’s more secure than you know. I spend a fortune to make it secure. The Prism and the whole Spectrum couldn’t come take something that I didn’t want to give them.” She grinned. “Now. Now. Now. Where were-Ah. The black cards. The question is, do you want the black cards because they’re forbidden, or do you simply want to beat Andross Guile?”
Kip scowled. It felt like the wrong answer, but he said, “I just want to beat Andross Guile.”
“In that case, you don’t need a full deck of black cards.” She groped on the counter for a jar with more tobacco while talking.
“I don’t?”
“The cards weren’t outlawed because they made good game cards, Kip. They were outlawed because they told stories that the Chromeria no longer wanted told. Just as when I release the new cards-the first new cards in many, many years-they will not be popular among those they depict.”
“Can I use the new cards?” That would be one way to truly foil Andross Guile.
“No. Absolutely not. They’re not finished, and when they are, my life will be in greater peril than usual. I’ll accept that risk when the time comes, but not yet.”
“Someone would kill you, over cards that are true, that must be true?”
“ Especially over such things, Kip. If I could just make up whatever I wanted, then, well, who am I?” She tamped some tobacco into her pipe. It seemed awfully dark. “Some old woman. No one. Truth gives power. Light reveals-”
A sparkling, crackling whoosh of fire from the tip of her pipe interrupted her. It leapt up to the ceiling. She cried out a curse and dropped the pipe she’d loaded with black powder. She stamped on the scattered flames trying to set the garbage alight, but soon the gunpowder burned itself out.
“Dammit, second one this week.”
Kip was round-eyed. “Are you-are you in danger?” he asked.
“Of course I am,” she said. “But I’m very hard to find. And I’m very well protected.”
“I found you no problem.”
“That’s because I meant you to find me, little Guile. Besides, haven’t you seen my men?”
“Um…” Kip had thought he’d been watched.
“Black clothes, silver shield sigil? Hmm, say that six times fast. Well, good, then perhaps they’re almost worth what I’m paying them.” Janus grabbed another pipe off the wall and tamped it full of tobacco. “Now where were-Oh, never mind, come upstairs.” Kip followed her as she kept speaking. “Here’s the catch.”
I knew it!
“I won’t let you take a card until you’ve lived it.”
“Lived it?”
“Lived the memory in the card. Like before. In case you lose it, I don’t want those memories lost.”
“How about, um, instead of taking your worth-a-fortune original cards, how about I take copies? You know, like people usually play with? Normal people, I mean.”
Janus Borig scratched the side of her nose with her new pipe’s stem. “That is… that is the most sensible idea I’ve heard in a long time. It would also allow me to put the blind man’s marks on the cards, which would make Lord Guile far more likely to allow you to use them. Kip, you’re brilliant.”
Brilliant? She hadn’t even thought of using cheap cards. Janus Borig was so smart, it was a miracle she could get dressed in the morning. Him thinking of the normal thing wasn’t evidence of being smart; it was the opposite.
“Great,” she said cheerily. “Well, let’s make you a deck.”
Chapter 53
Back into the same one. There was something important about this one. He had to find the right time. He had no idea what he was doing, but he had to learn. Tap, tap, tap, tap, tap.
Brent Weeks
The Blinding Knife
— Gunner~
Captain Burshward is a bit crabbed this morning. That might have had something to do with us killing two of his men and presently attempting to make off with his fine galley, his excellent rowers, his rich cargo, and his miserable self.
“Captain Gunner is going to ask you one more time, Cap’n Burst Wart,” I say. “I need that chain key.” I scowl. “I suppose that wasn’t a question, was it? But that was.”
The captain and his brother and two officers are seated, hands tied behind their backs, on the gunwale. And on this galley, it is a gunwale. Their two cannons are propped up on it. It was only twenty years ago that all ships were thus, before some genius had the idea to make gunports. In a mere two decades, the idea spread all around
