The Burning White (Lightbringer #5) - Brent Weeks Page 0,272

The whales left thereafter. No one knows why.”

“How do you know all this?” Kip asked.

Andross shrugged, as if to say, Really?

“These cards. They’re very similar.”

“They’re the same, some say. Having no sea giants to compare our sea demons with, I have no way of telling. But some have said in bygone eras, before such talk was too dangerous, that our sea demons now are the last of those will-cast sea giants. They roam the seas, senescent, angry when roused from their near-immortal torpor.”

“Reminds me of someone,” Kip said.

“Damn, kid. I should beat you with my cane.”

“You know interesting stuff,” Kip said.

“Oh, high praise! You little shit. Have you decided yet?”

Kip shuffled through both decks one last time, trying to memorize them. Then he extended them.

Andross took Delayed Destruction, leaving Kip with Nine Mirrors. “Pick that for the name?” he asked.

“Not re . . . er, of course. I was hoping you’d ramble on about the Great Mirrors as a conversation piece,” Kip said. “Have to confess, learning about them would probably be a lot more useful to my immediate future than learning about moldy old sea demons.”

It actually would’ve been a clever plan, if Kip had been quick enough to think of it.

“Really?” Andross said.

“Not really. But I found a Great Mirror in Blood Forest. Triggered it. Huge thing, still pristine. Had been underground for centuries, it looked like. I don’t suppose there’s actually . . . nine of them?”

Andross gestured to Grinwoody to pour them some drinks while he shuffled his own cards, his liver-spotted hands moving as deftly as a cardsharp’s. “The Nine Kings cards are a repository of ancient knowledge, some of it very unpopular with the censors of their eras, some of it unpopular with later ones.” He flipped half his deck from one hand to another in a move that seemed to defy physical laws. “It’s also just a game. How many Mirror cards in that deck?”

“Three?” Kip said. He hated that it came out as a question.

“But three doesn’t sound scary. Three Mirrors? In a game called Nine Kings? Nine Mirrors, much better.”

“Is that why you called us ‘the Mighty’?” Kip asked. “For the name?”

“If I hadn’t given you a Name, what would you have been? Six scared adolescents who’d dropped out of the Chromeria, who’d washed out of Blackguard training and been chased off the Jaspers by a half-trained band of thugs.”

“Those thugs are your Lightguards. Who you also gave a pretty awesome name, much as we hate you for it. Hated.” Kip cleared his throat.

“ ‘The Lightguard’ is a name that either calls ironic attention to itself or, maybe one time in twenty, might have encouraged those thugs to make something of themselves. The latter is a gamble I lost, but I still win. They know everyone hates them, and they depend utterly on me, so they’re fiercely loyal to me.”

“Except for that incident where Zymun sent them to kill me and the Mighty.”

“Well, yes, except for that. But they only obeyed him because he told them that they would actually be fulfilling my will by fulfilling his. He, too, is a Guile.”

“I can’t believe you’re keeping him close,” Kip said. “He’s poison.”

“He says the same about you. Shuffle?”

They shuffled for each other, and Kip kept his eyes tight on Andross’s hands. One last cut of the decks, and they handed them back to each other.

Andross chose the setting as Big Jasper and set the sun-counter at noon. Kip went first.

He drew his cards: a tough polychrome named Katalina Galden, Red Spectacles, a musket, a good sword, Blue Spectacles, a green-drafting Blackguard with a musket proficiency, and a red-drafting Blackguard. It would have been a great hand for the normal game, good for offense and defense early. In a normal game, it would have put him in an early lead that Andross might never have recovered from.

But at full noon, and with two draws? Every card Kip kept in his hand was one less card he could draw, one less chance to get the powerful cards he needed. He flopped them all down.

“The discard pile is faceup in this variant,” Andross said.

Kip hadn’t recalled that. Great.

The old man studied Kip’s overturned cards. “A tough call. But the right play.”

“A compliment?” Kip asked.

“Doled out in heaping measure, when deserved,” Andross said. He discarded three. They didn’t help Kip at all. They were three cards you’d toss regardless of what you were pursuing.

“I knew her, you know.”

“Katalina Galden?” Kip asked. “Any relation to that