The Burning White (Lightbringer #5) - Brent Weeks Page 0,278

I believe it’s time for our second game,” Andross said. “If you win, I’ll give you Gavin’s card. The original.”

Kip’s heart seized. His father’s card?! The original? That meant he could View it.

And if it truly wasn’t retrospective, and if he used it properly, he could find where his father was now.

It was everything he’d hoped to do, simply offered by his grandfather.

But that was if he won.

If the reward for victory was so enormous, what would the cost of losing be?

“Wait,” Kip said. “Why wouldn’t you want me to View that card regardless? Don’t you want him back? What did you see when you Viewed it yourself?” Andross wasn’t a full-spectrum polychrome, but surely he would have—

“I’ve not tried.”

“You don’t want to see yourself through his eyes,” Kip said.

Andross’s eyes flashed. “My reasons are my own. Perhaps if you win, you’ll find out what they are. I don’t know. That’s what makes it such very, very good bait. I mean, such a very good wager.”

“What’s the price of defeat?” Kip asked.

A cat who’d stolen your dinner couldn’t have grinned with the mixture of malevolence and self-satisfaction that Andross showed. “You lose, and I’ll show you another card. You’ll View it for me and tell me everything you see.”

“That . . . doesn’t sound that bad,” Kip said.

“Well, then, you win, win or lose.” Andross voice was so blithely pleasant, it could have been honey and melted butter.

Which was all the evidence Kip needed that it was covering the taste of arsenic.

Andross Guile would never offer uneven stakes that were tilted toward his opponent.

Kip wanted to think, How bad can it be?

But he remembered the card The Butcher of Aghbalu. He remembered the months of nightmares he’d had from watching the massacre unfold—no, not just watching but partaking in it, over and over. What if the card was one of those cards?

But it was his father against that.

Did it matter now? Kip wasn’t going to be able to save him. But Karris deserved to know. The Blackguard deserved to know. Someone might help him, even if it wasn’t Kip.

“Ah, one further stipulation,” Andross said. “Whichever way the game goes, you have to View whichever card you get, and you have to answer my questions about it.”

“So you win, win or lose, too,” Kip said.

“Yes, isn’t it nice that we can play a game so mutually beneficial?”

“Why do you want me to do this?” Kip asked.

“My son has a knack for showing up at the last moment and wrecking all sorts of plans. Usually the enemy’s, but not always. Either card you View might tell us my son’s location. Should he arrive quite suddenly in the next day or so, I should like very much to make sure that I enact the correct plan for this most important Sun Day.”

Now, finally, Kip understood why Andross had said there was nothing more important for them to be doing than this. Preparations for battle? The people they each commanded could do most of those. Unfolding the past and the present itself? Only they could do this.

And it meant helping his father either way.

“Let’s play,” Kip said.

Andross chose conventional rules. Kip chose decks he was familiar with. He even added cards from the array Grinwoody brought in once more, based on what he guessed of how the Black Cards would affect the strategies.

It was close. Damn close.

He came to his last turn. His facedown deck held fourteen cards. He could only draw one, and any one of four cards left in that stack would give him the victory.

“Four,” Andross said aloud. “Four winners. Out of fourteen.”

“How do you know I don’t have it in my hand already?”

“A man doesn’t pray over his last draw when he has the winning card in hand.”

Of course Andross knew exactly what Kip was looking for. Kip couldn’t find it in himself to hate the old spider, not for this. Hating Andross Guile was like hating the weather. If the sun burns your head, you don’t shake your fist at the sun; you blame yourself for not wearing a hat.

The game had been fair. Kip had watched for any cheats, eagle-eyed.

“You want to back out?” Andross asked, amused. “The odds are against you. Failure might break your spirit . . . Breaker.” He said it with a light derision, as if Kip was trying on names like a child tries on his parents’ fancy clothes and big hats.

“Not ‘Breaker.’ I prefer ‘Diakoptês,’ ” Kip said. For some reason Grinwoody