The Burning White (91 page)

“You believed in what we’re doing. I know you did.”

“Maybe I did. For surely the Lightbringer must be a man unstoppable. And then I fell in love with you, and I justified everything. I made my reason a whore. If you were the greatest man ever, that made me the right hand of the greatest man ever. That made
me
special. That justified my sins, my suffering. Whatever was good for us was surely for the good of all. It is the same convenient deception the powerful so often believe. And for it, I know I’ll answer. But it didn’t matter what I believed. Not really. The Lightbringer might be greater than Lucidonius himself, so of course you would believe that person must be you. Lightbringer! Ha! You went to Lucidonius’s statue and wept, because by the time he was your age, he’d conquered the world. You think you’re the Lightbringer because you couldn’t bear to stand in another man’s shadow! You needed it. You need it still. The text of every prophecy was illuminated by that need in you. How many prophecies did we skip as incomprehensible or decide were clearly not authoritative or corrupted because they didn’t fit you?”

She’s trembling with rage that should be mine.

If there’s proof that breaking the halo doesn’t necessarily make one a wight, it is this: she raves; I listen.

“Look at you!” she shouts, despite those that might hear through these walls. “You’ve gone
wight
! You think that’s bringing light? It’s over! We deluded ourselves!”

“You think I don’t know that?!” I shout, flinging a crystal decanter to shatter against the wall.

But she goes on, heedless, voice cracking. “We sacrificed our boys for our ambition. We
murdered
our sons! Our own sons!”

“Felia, stop it! Stop it!”

“My sons, Andross. My
sons
. Better I had put them in pagans’ fires as babes. Sevastian! God curse me, all these years gone and I still see his sweet, trusting face every time I close my eyes!”

There is no answer.

“We sold our souls for this wretched dream. We sacrificed our sons with our own hands. Our beautiful boys. To our pride. Not just yours, Andross. Mine too. I thought I was part of something so important, but we’re nothing but schemers. We’re just like everyone else. You hold on to whatever you need to, but I’m finished. I deserve death, and I will have it. I will join the Freeing this year,” she says. She’s been bringing this up for five years. But this time is different.

“I forbid it.”

“If you stop me, I’ll reveal what you are. I want my own apartments, Andross. Immediately. I won’t share a room with you anymore. Your face is as revolting to me as a bloody mirror.”

Andross had already been extending a pair of decks toward Kip, and his eyebrows dipped, lips tightened. “Yes?”

Kip’s heart had leapt into his throat.

‘You won’t be the next Prism,’ Janus Borig had told him. But was she telling him—or was she steering him? But Kip wasn’t so worried about whether the prophecy was predicting the future or forming it; he was wondering how it could help him.

Like, if I play to become the next Prism, I’ll definitely lose. But if I play for stakes
other than becoming the next Prism
, maybe I can win? But how could the outcome of the game be affected by the choice of the stakes? It was the same game, and Kip certainly wasn’t going to play differently depending on what he won; he had too much to lose to give it anything less than his best regardless. It didn’t make any sense.

And Andross was the cold, unblinking master of Nine Kings. He wouldn’t play differently, either.

Unless . . . unless the stakes were high enough to rattle even Andross Guile.

“Please,” Andross said languidly. He sipped his almond tea. He didn’t offer Kip any. “Take your time. I’ve no other pressing matters to attend to while you sit there in uffish thought.”

Janus Borig had said something else that night she died, hadn’t she? Not just ‘You won’t be Prism.’

“If I win, I don’t want to be named Prism; I want you to publicly acknowledge me as the Lightbringer.”

The teacup hovered halfway to Andross’s mouth. His lower eyelids tensed and his eyebrows moved almost imperceptibly—merely surprise, or was that fear?—then his lips narrowed and his eyes tightened, back into an expression Kip had seen before.

“Now, that was interesting,” Kip the Lip said. “Why would you be afraid of that?”

The anger hardened. “Not ‘afraid.’ It’s certainly audacious. I guess you learned something about overawing your opponents when you demanded to be made satrap in Dúnbheo. Well done. It won’t work here.”

“My God,” Kip said, ignoring him. “You think
you’re
the Light-bringer!”

The stricken look on Andross’s face was priceless. And it was confirmation. Kip was so surprised, he laughed aloud and clapped his hands.

Andross’s face went black. He banged down his teacup and snatched up a pistol and bolted out of his seat, sending his chair crashing. He cocked the jaw and pointed the pistol at Kip’s upturned face. His hand trembled.

Kip looked at him, serene.

Andross’s finger lifted from the trigger. He lowered the cockjaw, clearing his throat. Then he put the pistol back down on the table and sat in the chair, which Grinwoody had put back in place.

Grinwoody mopped up a bit of spilled tea.

“Yes, I do,” Andross said. “Forty years of preparations, and gathering prophecies, and sacrificing . . . everything. Everything, that I might save our empire, and our very world. Well done, Kip, you have found me out. I daresay not even Grinwoody had guessed it. Had you, Grinwoody?” he asked, turning to him.

“No, my lord. I stand in awe, sir, that one could possibly conceal something so profound about one’s identity from the person at your very shoulder.” The slave bowed deeply, respectfully.

“But . . . but you’re not even a full-spectrum polychrome,” Kip said. This he hadn’t meant to say aloud.

“Am I not?” Andross asked.

“Holy shit,” Kip breathed. “You kept yourself from drafting half your colors for forty years?!”

“It was the least of my sacrifices, I assure you. But—” He raised a finger suddenly, as if to forestall questions about what the other sacrifices were. “But I’ll admit that it’s not escaped my attention that there are certain ways of reading the prophecies that could indicate you are he, and certain qualifications that you currently lack might, after all, not emerge until you’re older. I’ve thought about this no small amount. So . . . yes. Yes, should you win, I will begin paving the way immediately; I will protect you; and I will fully champion you the moment you’re ready to announce your identity—in the unlikely event it’s not immediately apparent to the whole world.”

“Wait . . .” Kip said. “Just like that?” He’d imagined getting a little more pushback. “I’m asking you to tell everyone I’m the most important person in history, not you. And you’re okay with playing a game for that? A single game. Where I could get lucky.”

“I think luck shall have very little to do with it,” Andross said.

“I’m asking you to wager everything you’ve spent forty years pursuing,” Kip said, though he wasn’t sure why he was arguing against his own case. “That’s like twice as long as I’ve even been alive.”

The irony of Kip taking his side evidently wasn’t lost on him, as Andross suddenly smiled. “There is now nothing in the world that could keep me from this game, and this wager. For you see, I won’t be playing against you, Kip. I’ll be playing against Orholam Himself. For the answer to the question ‘Who is the Lightbringer?’ is not a name; it’s not a man or a woman. The answer to that question answers how Orholam interacts with the world—if He does so at all.

“I’m asking you to wager the most important thing in your life,” Andross said. “It’s only fair that you demand the same of me. Grinwoody, the decks.”

Kip sat stunned, silent. There were too many questions—what prophecies did Andross know that Kip didn’t? If he were a full-spectrum polychrome, why had he had Kip View cards for him? What did this all mean?—but the cards were in front of him now, and those questions would have to wait. He had to win first.

Shaking himself, breathing deeply, Kip began studying the play decks Andross had constructed mostly from Janus Borig’s new cards.

He looked up. “You didn’t.”

“Seemed appropriate,” Andross said.

The old man had constructed decks to reflect the coming fight. There weren’t enough legendary characters who’d earned their own cards to fill two entire decks, but he’d done as well as he could. Plenty of wights on the one side, the White King, drafters aplenty, lots of ships, and seven bane. “Six bane?” Kip suggested.

“Your people may have only seen six, but I believe superviolet will show up. That Danavis girl has a way of doing her own thing. In the last months, I’ve had reports from Aslal, Smussato, Cravos, Wiwurgh, Garriston, and Ru of a woman matching her description, traveling alone, with no obvious transportation. The ravishing fairy princess in white and gold with amethyst eyes. Not the color of amethyst, but with jewels crusted over her very eyes themselves. And at the joints of her fingers, in some later accounts. Always inspecting old ruins. And the prophecies suggest seven will come.”

Kip felt sick. He believed it. No matter what she’d told Kip, he’d held on to some small hope that she was going to stay out of the battle, that she hadn’t forgotten herself completely.

“We could’ve been a good team, you and I,” Kip said, finishing up with the White King’s deck.

“Pick a deck,” Andross said impatiently. “Ah, one moment.” He grabbed the Chromeria’s deck before Kip could pick it up and snatched out a card, handing it to Grinwoody. “Won’t be needing this.”

“What was that?”

“Gavin’s card. Since you established he’s not coming back in time, if he ever does.”

“I’d like to see that card,” Kip said.

“Really, right now?” Andross said. “It’s not an original. You can’t View it.”

“Oh. Right. I . . . later, then.”

“If you win,” Andross said.

“That weakens the deck,” Kip said. Certainly his father’s card would have to have been a powerful one.

“Then pick the other deck, moron. Hurry it up. I’ve got other things to do today.”

“So, just to clarify, the stakes are my remarriage against your full support—”

“No, not your remarriage only. Your full obedience in all things until I die,” Andross said. “Against my full support, until I die. All you want, against all you have,” Andross said. “Isn’t that the wager life always offers?”

“Agreed,” Kip heard his voice say. “More liquor, calun.”

As Grinwoody poured for him, Kip turned the next card of the Chromeria deck, and chuckled. “Now, that’s a good one. After all you said about him, you gave the Chromeria Ironfist?”

“Without Gavin, the Chromeria needs Ironfist, or it loses every time.” Andross rubbed his nose for a moment. “Think of Nine Kings as an aid to thinking, the way an abacus is an aid to arithmetic. At some point one should grow beyond the need for the physical prop, but the cards are actually best for those like you, who have difficulty looking at their friends and seeing them as a list of strengths and weaknesses—you, who would vacillate before spending two lives even if their deaths are necessary to forestall ten thousand more. This is why Nine Kings is more valuable for you, but I am better at it, and better at politics as well.”

“What you miss,” Kip said, “is that my friends will fight for me in ways they would never fight for you. When led by one they know loves them, they perform better than a number on a card could possibly capture. Everything that is most important about this game can’t be captured by a game.”

“Then you take the Chromeria deck,” Andross said. “Perhaps the cards will fight
extra hard
for you.”

Kip shouldn’t have let him get away with that, shouldn’t have let him get under his skin. The Chromeria was clearly the inferior deck, but his victory would be all the sweeter when he shoved Andross’s nose in it like pressing a dog’s nose to his shit.

It was a mistake, and Kip knew it, but he couldn’t stop himself. “Fine, I’ll take it.”

Andross separated the decks and shuffled them under Kip’s watchful eyes.

Kip reshuffled and let Andross cut both decks.

The old man smirked. “It takes years to become a proficient cardist.”

“With your memory?” Kip asked.

“It’s the dexterity that’s challenging as one ages, and finding the time for the continual practice.”

It was as close to an admission as Kip was likely to hear. “How many times have you cheated me that way?” Kip asked.

“You think I had to cheat, before?”

“Had to?” Kip said. “No. But you’re the kind of man who likes to guarantee victory, aren’t you?”

“I’m also a man who likes a challenge.”

“No doubt the only reason I’m still alive,” Kip said as they dealt out their cards.

“There are others.”

“Oh, pray tell,” Kip said lightly.

Andross waved it away, studying his cards instead.

“Huh, would you look at that,” Kip said. “Never realized it before, but the Ironfist card actually has a perfect empty place for ‘King’ to be written in. The other cards don’t have that spacing. It can’t be an accident.” Actually, Kip’s hand had a nice collection of earlier attack soldiers and defenders, but it needed a noontime striker like Ironfist.

Andross gave him a disbelieving look. “You’re trying to get into
my
head?”

“Me?” Kip said. “Just making conversation. I think you’ve radically underestimated the power of this deck.”

Andross played a Pagan Priest, and Kip had to respond with a Lightguard—boy did that stick in his craw, using those bastards. “Odd that those cards don’t come with a betrayal mechanic,” Kip said. “Limitations of the game, I guess.”

“I’ve found them quite loyal where they should be.”

“Really? Is Aram still sucking at Zymun’s teat?” Kip asked.

“Oh, yes,” Andross said. “He much preferred to report to me secretly on what Zymun is doing than be executed for his little indiscretion.”

‘His little indiscretion’? Setting the Lightguard on Kip and murdering Goss, rather than letting them escape, was an
indiscretion
?