The Broken Eye
Page 71

Kip didn’t touch his cards, didn’t turn around. “Tell Grinwoody not to stand behind me.”
Andross laughed. “You make me wonder, Kip, if I posed such dilemmas for my father Draccos. So smart sometimes, so clever, so adult, and then the next minute an utter belligerent child, striking out and destroying things more good for him than for anyone else, simply because he’s been vexed.” He waved to Grinwoody, who moved away from his cheater’s perch over Kip’s shoulder.
“Who starts?” Kip asked. He picked up his hand.
“I will. Privilege of age.”
Kip threw down his hand. “You dealt me eight.” It was one card too many.
“Did I? Age dulls us all, I suppose.” He grinned, and this time there was real playfulness in it. So said the man who, just a few months ago, had looked twenty years older than he did now.
Kip couldn’t help but grin. A little.
“Wasn’t a good hand anyway, huh?” Andross asked. He picked up Kip’s hand and shuffled again quickly, then dealt him out seven.
“Lousy,” Kip said.
Andross laughed, and Kip remembered how the man had said that he liked Kip—a little. He realized then that Andross had been testing him, seeing if he’d cheat. Or perhaps Andross wouldn’t have thought of it as cheating. Maybe he would have thought of it as taking advantage of an opponent’s error. But it had been a bad hand, which was why Kip had thrown the whole hand down for a re-deal rather than extend the deck and have Andross take out one card to bring him down to seven.
The promachos set the sun counter to predawn, and played his first card. “So, grandson,” Andross said. “The Chromeria finds itself about to enter a fight for its life, and most of them still don’t realize the fact. What do you see that needs fixing?”
Kip cocked his head to the side. “Are you serious? You really want my ideas?”
“Is it so surprising?”
“Yes, it is.”
“There are many things you can learn from slaves and spies, and I have learned them all. But some things can only be seen with one’s own eyes. My eyes have been—”
“Broken?” Kip couldn’t help but get in the little jab about Andross hiring that assassin from the Order, Mistress Helel, Kip saw Grinwoody tense, but Andross didn’t miss a beat.
“Unavailable. I may have missed things.” But he was examining Kip sharply. “Boy, I am ferocious when crossed, I don’t deny it. I find being led by fools intolerable. But I am magnanimous in victory. I do what needs to be done to win and without putting on a false display of sorrow or reluctance; you think that makes me hideous? Others pay homage to common pieties with their lips but betray them by their actions. I am simply more forthright. Orholam needs even honest men, does he not?”
His eyes twinkled. That inversion, so typical of this family. Gavin would hint at irreligiosity and flirt with the line. Andross would breeze right past it, but if his approach saved them all regardless, who was to say that Orholam wasn’t using him? Their ends were the same.
He was the promachos. Surely, if only to preserve his own power, he would fight the Color Prince.
So Kip told him about the classes, how the magisters were lecturing on topics that had nothing to do with the conflict at hand, that only the engineers seemed to grasp the problems. He also thought that they should have a whole contingent of battle drafters, not only the Blackguard and a few isolated drafters who learned the arts of war for their sponsors. He thought that they should open all the books of forbidden magics, and start teaching them—or at the least how to defend against them.
“And who’s to teach all these new battle drafters?” Andross asked.
“The Blackguard,” Kip said. “At least, those not directly involved with recovering my father. If they’re not busy protecting the Prism and the Colors, might as well put them to use until spring. They’ll complain, but training others is sometimes even better than being trained. And speaking of the Blackguard, there’s a slave who scrubbed out. You should put him in with my initiate cohort.”
“What’s his story?”
“Winsen was one of the best scrubs, but his master was a horror. He was also deeply in debt, and he needed to sell Winsen into the Blackguard to avoid being ruined. Winsen failed on purpose.”
“And you wish to reward treachery?”
“I think what made him a bad slave will make him a great Blackguard. And we need Blackguards.”
The game proceeded to noon on the sun counter—the time when the most powerful cards could be easily played. Kip got a sea demon. As long as there were other cards on the table, the sea demon had to attack, but if only you had another card on the table, the sea demon would attack your own card. Like all the best daggers, it was double-edged.
“They say Gunner killed a sea demon,” Andross said.
“I’ve heard that,” Kip said. “Do you think it’s true?”
“I think it’s possible. Carcasses have floated to shore before, so the beasts are not immortal.”
“How was Gunner supposed to have done it?” Kip asked.
“They say he filled a raft full of the ship’s whole store of powder and floated it behind the Aved Barayah five hundred paces. Something about that little raft irritated the sea demon, I’ve never heard exactly what—apparently this Gunner has a penchant for irritating those more powerful than he. He waited until the sea demon surfaced and shot the raft with a cannonball just as the sea demon swallowed it. In heavy seas, if the tales be believed.”
Kip made a moue of appreciation.
Andross said, “I’d wager it was more like two hundred paces. Regardless, impressive. Another version says he rode on the raft himself, singing sea shanties and howling curses at some whore he’d loved, and lit the fuse himself, jumping out of the way at the last moment. But sailors and a straight-told tale have but passing acquaintance.”
“I’d believe five hundred paces,” Kip said. “I’ve seen the man shoot.”
Andross had a veritable army of wights on his side of the table. Plenty of fodder for Kip’s sea demon, so Kip played his heavy galleon to be able to sail past Andross’s defenses and attack him directly on the next round.
“I want something of you, Kip,” Andross said.
“Other than learning if I stole from you and crushing me in a few games?”
“Hard as it may be to believe, I want more than even your excellent company.” He said it flat, like he might have been mocking, or might have meant the compliment.
Kip found himself grinning despite himself. This was the man who’d tried to have him killed, who’d tried to kill him, who had lost Gavin for all of them. And yet Kip grinned.
And Andross grinned back. God or beast, the man appreciated when someone appreciated his sense of humor.
“Well…” Kip prompted. He couldn’t take the suspense.
Andross looked up from the cards. “I want to know where my other grandson is.”
A kick in the groin. “Other?” Kip asked. Had he hesitated too long?
His face must have blanched, because Andross grinned wolfishly. “I love surprising people. It was really one of the greatest losses of my seclusion. So much more satisfying when I can see your face.”