The Broken Eye
Page 170

“No!” he screamed. “No!”
Kip’s door was flung open and two Blackguards were inside in a blink, each with a knife drawn for close-quarters combat and spectacles on, drawing magic. Looking for a source of attack, and alighting on Kip.
Andross held a hand up and waved them off immediately. It was Gill Greyling and Baya Niel. “Out!” Andross ordered. “Out now!”
They sheathed weapons and left immediately. Andross Guile obviously tolerated no less. They didn’t even apologize for intruding, which Kip guessed was the price Andross Guile paid for always treating them so poorly.
Before the door had even closed, Andross said, “What have you done? This isn’t what I demanded. This doesn’t make you Prism.”
“I’m telling you,” Kip said. “I found them like this. After months of searching, I find them like this. After all the threats you’ve thrown my way. I finally find them—and they’re blank. I knew you wouldn’t believe me.”
“You destroyed them.”
“I’m still scared of that old lady, and I saw her die. I didn’t dare mess with them. She was crazy. I saw the traps she laid in her own home. Fire traps, when there were barrels of black powder everywhere in her home.” Don’t go on too long, Kip. Let the hook stay in the water.
Andross looked at Kip skeptically. “So either Gavin destroyed the cards, accidentally or on purpose, or someone found them since, and did the same, accidentally or on purpose. You found these where?”
“In the middle of a heavy bag, in Gavin’s exercise room.”
Andross thought. “So, unlikely that someone else would have hidden it there, unless Ironfist is making a play. Of course, he’d be much more likely to trigger a trap. No. Gavin. That’s how he knew about…” Andross’s eyes lit suddenly, and Kip knew he’d swallowed it. It fit some narrative in his own mind, and he’d almost given Kip information by thinking aloud.
The weakness of a spider: it sees every dangling thread as part of a web.
“Name every card you can remember, boy. It may be I can glean something from the very names or the inclusion of certain men or women.”
“I saw them only briefly,” Kip pleaded. “Six months ago.” Oh, Orholam have mercy, even saying the names might … might flay his mind. “Fine, fine. I remember a few.” He sat down and closed his eyes to make a show of trying to remember, but really because he thought he might get dizzy again. “Shimmercloak.”
His vision swam and he was following Niah’s perfect ass down the dock on his way to assassinate Janus Borig. He swallowed hard.
“It said something like, ‘If lightsplitter…’ I remember it because I’d never heard of a lightsplitter before. I’ve been afraid to ask any of the luxiats or magisters about—”
“Not interested in your interpretations. Names,” Andross Guile said.
“Zymun the Dancer,” Kip said. And he was standing on the deck of a great barge, looking at Gavin Guile’s back, trying to make himself look more frail and younger than he was. He fingered the knife secreted under his tunic, picking his moment.
“Zymun?” Andross asked. “Do you remember that one? What did it look like?”
“I thought you weren’t interested in my inter—” Kip shut up at the look in Andross’s eyes. “I don’t remember what he was doing, but it was Zymun. It was definitely Zymun.”
“Damn you for turning the cards over to Gavin and not me,” Andross said.
“You were trying to murder me at the time.”
“Next! The Malargos girl will be coming anytime now, and I can’t be here when that happens. Quickly.”
It was like choosing to plunge your hand into fire. How smart was Kip? He had to give the list fast enough so that his grandfather wouldn’t think he was sorting them, had to give enough of a list so that his grandfather would think he was giving him all that he remembered, but not so long of a list that he’d be suspicious why Kip would remember so many, and if they weren’t a good enough list of surprising and unsurprising cards, he would know. He would know. And Kip had to do all this while his head split and hallucinations danced around him every time he spoke. Oh hells.
“New Green Wight. Incipient Wight. Flintlock. Sea Demon Slayer,” Kip blurted. That last. That damned pirate. That was Gunner! “Shimmercloak. Uh, sorry, said that already. Um, Dee Dee Falling Leaf. Usem the Wild. Aheyyad Brightwater. Samila Sayeh.” Kip was going to throw up. He was forgetting who he was. “Mirror Armor. The Fallen Prophet.” He almost said Black Luxin and the Master. “Skimmer. Condor. Viv Grayskin. The Butcher of Aghbalu. Incendiary Musket. The Burnt Apostate. The … the Angari Serpent.”
Andross listened with a quiet intensity that told Kip he was memorizing all of it. All of it, on one hearing. The man was infuriating. Finally, Andross spoke. “So you have something of the Guile memory, if nothing else. Good. Did you see Orea Pullawr or any of my sons?”
“Orea?”
“The White!” Andross said, terse, impatient, frustrated.
“No, no. I looked for my father, but I never saw him.”
“So some cards are still out there,” Andross said. “Still intact. Maybe.”
For some reason, Kip found that funny. Andross was so certain of his own judgment. If he thought someone was important, he had no doubt that they would have a card. My judgment and the judgment of history will be the same, he thought. What an ass.
“One last question,” Andross said. “Did you see a Lightbringer card?”
Janus Borig’s face was unnaturally pale, luminous in reflected lightning-light. ‘I don’t suppose you grabbed my brushes,’ she asked. ‘Because I know who the Lightbringer is now.’ And then she died.
“It was … it was me,” Kip said quietly.
Faster than most men would have been able to process shock alone, Andross Guile’s face went through shock, insult, and settled on rage. “You lie!” he barked, sinews standing taut on his neck. He stepped forward, as if to strike.
“Of course I lie,” Kip said. His tone said, ‘You moron, I just wanted to see you dance.’
He saw his disdain like a tuning fork ringing Andross Guile’s rage, which went from hot to cold in an instant as he realized he was being taunted. But Kip wasn’t done. “And obviously, you lie, too. You’re the one who brought up the idea of me being the Lightbringer. To torment me. I know there’s no such thing. I know how you work, you old cancer.”
“You really think you can outsmart me? Me? I know what you and your father are doing, Kip. Have known, since you claimed the epithet Breaker. Clever, to set it up as you did. Clever, to have another give it to you. Clever, using the Blackguard habit of nicknaming to take it, and to take a tertiary translation that might slip past the luxiats yet look so obvious in retrospect. But clever isn’t enough, boy, not against me.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Kip said. But it was a lie, and he felt the blood draining from his face, from his head, leaving him lightheaded on top of sick and dizzy and pained. He wouldn’t have known, yesterday, or two hours ago. But now … He who tears asunder, renderer, shatterer, destroyer. Breaker was the most pedestrian and vague of translations for Diakoptês.