“S-sorry,” he said. He’d be more embarrassed if he weren’t in so much pain.

“The captain’s name is Two Gun Ben. You don’t pay him a danar more than two hundred, you understand? He’s already agreed. East docks, blue. Now move! We’ve probably—”

A sharp knock at the door interrupted them. “Kip, it’s your grandfather. Open the door. It’s urgent.”

The Master. Hands stained red with betrayal. Scribbling lines—he’d been writing to the Color Prince. He’d gone wight, and he didn’t know how to escape, so he was planning to ‘join’ the Color Prince. Eventually, he would betray him, too. But joining the Color Prince would give him time, and that was a commodity the Master needed.

Kip blinked. His head was pounding.

Teia was cursing silently. She was mouthing words to him: Don’t. Open. It.

For a moment, he couldn’t think at all. Then all he could think about was all the cards in his pockets. Teia was already moving, throwing open his bureau. Kip handed her the card boxes, and she buried them all under some clothes and shut the bureau quietly.

“Hesitated,” Kip said. “I hesitated. Not like me at all.” Dammit. He opened the door.

Andross Guile stepped inside, not waiting for an invitation. He looked at Teia, surprised, perhaps, to see her here. “Hmm, you’re filling out nicely,” he said, staring Teia up and down. “So sad Kip won you away from me.” He gave her a little charming grin. “If you wish to visit my chambers on a more … open basis, though, please come by.”

She shrank from him. Kip realized what she did not: Andross Guile wasn’t serious. His tastes didn’t go so young. If he wasn’t interested in Tisis, he certainly wouldn’t be interested in Teia. He was merely digging deep enough into debasement to undercut her fundamental decency. He wanted to unnerve her. It worked.

“You’re dismissed, caleen,” Andross said, turning his attention to Kip.

“I’m a free—”

“Dismissed,” he said. He was the promachos, and even without the weight of his new title, he was a man accustomed to being obeyed.

Teia practically fled.

Andross closed the door behind her. “Has she come to you?” he asked.

“Pardon?” Kip asked.

“Tisis. Has she come to you? My spies have reported a Malargos ship being quietly readied to sail this evening. A smuggler’s ship, fast, one they don’t know I know they own. Has she come and proposed marriage, or not?”

A long silence. “Yes,” Kip admitted.

Andross slapped his gloves into his other hand and smiled. “I so love it when I’m right. That prediction? That was a bit of genius, if I do say so myself. New player, impulsive, trapped. Hard to predict. Did you bed her?”

Kip shook his head. Then was ashamed of himself. He should have told the old bastard it was none of his business. Why did Kip defer to his enemy?

“Well, you can lead a horse to a mare in heat, I suppose, but you can’t make him mount her. Not usually a problem for us Guiles. My advice? Get rid of that fat. You might find a libido hiding under it.”

Kip opened his mouth—he wasn’t even sure what he was going to say, and he didn’t care, he was about to open the Blunderbuss and let fire—but Andross raised a finger.

“But.” His eyes twinkled. “I didn’t come here to lecture you, dear boy. I came to give you a choice. Few in this world get their life-defining choices handed to them and labeled as such, but you are special, and I am feeling generous. Do you have them for me?”

“Huh?”

“The cards, Kip.”

“You never sent me to look for my father. You broke your word.”

“I broke nothing. We agreed I’d choose the time. I mean to send you to be part of the group that will free him. You are spending your time here profitably. I don’t waste those who work for me. Now. Do you have my cards?”

Kip could feel his future slipping away. “No,” he said. He wasn’t sure, at this moment, if he would have handed them over regardless.

No, that was a lie. He would have. He was that much of a coward.

Andross Guile sighed. “Do you know that I really did want to make you Prism? I was ready to groom you, to give you, the bastard from a backwater village, seven years as one of the most powerful people in the world. I would have made you, the fat little orphan, the most admired man in the world. From there, you could have possibly extended your reign, were you competent enough. But you’re not much of a Guile. Not enough to hide your ambition and take my orders for a short while. You’re too stupid to play the game at its highest levels. I was going to give you a task next: you against your brother. Whoever won would be Prism.”

“The promachos doesn’t name Prisms.” Kip was parroting Quentin, though.

Andross Guile merely smirked.

“But you can orchestrate such things,” Kip said, heart sinking. I knew I was right to be skeptical.

“What do you think I’ve been doing the whole time Gavin’s been gone? What do you think I’ve been doing my whole life?”

Setting things up. Destroying and sacrificing people as if they were cards, as if all that mattered was the game.

“What was the task going to be?” Kip asked.

“To destroy the green bane and bring me something from it.”

“What?! I already destroyed the green bane!”

A smile lit Andross’s lips. “Oh! You are learning. Look at that. An effort that took thousands of people, and you easily inserted yourself into the story as the hero—as if you’d done it all alone. A noble’s trick, that. A dirty one, but time-honored. Congratulations. Fact is, the green bane is reforming or has reformed already. You botched the job. You need to take the seed crystal from it, or it simply grows again.”

Kip was gutted. “So all we did … the destruction of the whole navy. The whole Battle of Ru. The capture of Ruic Head. The deaths … they were all for nothing?”

“It was a setback for our enemies. They had the seed crystal, the green bane, and an Atirat. They lost them all—but we didn’t gain them.”

The idea of going back to fight the green bane again was like being asked to voluntarily get back in a closet full of rats. “So that’s why you looked so inept.”

“Pardon?” No one applied the word ‘inept’ to the Guile.

“You took the navy to Ru and did everything wrong—if you were trying to save the city. You didn’t care about the city,” said Kip.

“Had we saved the city, but lost the bane, we would have lost the war. And lost the city, too, within days.”

“But you didn’t care that you lost it. That’s the difference.”

“Yes, please. Given unlimited time and perfect hindsight, tell me how you would have directed our forces so that all would have been well. Regardless. You dithered, and Sun Day is upon us. You won’t be the next Prism.”

The words echoed in Kip’s head: ‘You won’t be the Prism,’ Janus Borig had told him. Plain as day. That wasn’t how prophecy usually worked, was it? It was usually all obfuscation. Smoke and mirrors and darkness and flashing lights to blind the unwary. When it was just stated, did that make it more certain, or less?