She sucked at her lips, making a squeaking sound, then spat. She put down the pistol and grabbed at a pile of tobacco, stuffed some in her pipe, eyeing Kip closely. He swore there was a pile of black powder right next to the pile of tobacco. She snatched a fuse cord from one of the matchlocks and stuck it onto the flame of a lantern, then used the fuse to light her pipe. “Swear it,” she said from behind a curtain of smoke.
“I swear,” Kip said.
“Again.”
“I swear.”
“And thus are you bound. Come with me,” she said.
Kip picked his way around piles that reached up to his knees. The woman wasn’t right.
He followed her upstairs. It was, apparently, her workroom. The division between the rooms was stark. The mess didn’t set one grubby paw beyond the stairs. There was no disorder here, none. Every surface was immaculate, all done in white marble with red veins. Jewelers’ lenses and hammers and chisels hung beside tiny brushes, special lanterns, palettes, and little jars of paint. One desk was slate, with little bits of chalk and an assortment of abacuses, large and small. An easel sat opposite, with a blank canvas on it, a magnifying lens in front of it.
One wall was dedicated to finished cards. They were hung so densely that you couldn’t touch the wall. And the wall was so big, so packed-from floor to ceiling-that if Kip hadn’t spent the last weeks in the library, memorizing everything he could learn about these cards, he’d have no idea that every single one of them was worth a fortune. These were originals.
And there were too many of them. Kip sucked in a sudden breath.
“The Black Cards. The heresy decks,” Janus said. She sat on a little stool in front of her easel. “You know of them.”
“I’ve barely heard a whisper,” Kip said. “I-not really.”
“What colors have you drafted, Kip Guile?”
Kip felt a chill, displacement, sickness. “That’s not my name,” he said stiffly.
“There is no one else you can be, Kip. I’ve seen your eyes. You think you’re smart, but the truth is-”
“Right, I know, everyone tells me-”
“-you’re a lot smarter than you think you are.”
Which left him dumbstruck. Ironically enough.
“You’re a Guile to your bones, young man. Even if you’re not a son, a bastard can go far in this world. The Guiles are cursed, don’t you know? The family has few children, and has had few for generations. Intense lights all snuffed too soon. So goes the story, anyway. Now, what colors have you drafted?”
“Why do you want to know?”
“Because I’m starting your card.”
She was speaking another language, or nonsense. Kip knuckled his forehead.
“I have a gift,” Janus Borig said. “Curious, curious gift. Unusual. I have a host of gifts that are common enough, of course, though not common all together, and one gift as rare as a Prism’s.”
“I suppose you’re going to tell me,” Kip said. Someone is telling you something interesting, and you have to let your big yap interfere?
But she laughed. “Green, of course. But blue, too. What else? You’re not merely a bichrome, I’m certain of that.”
Want to play it like that?
“You can paint,” Kip said. “Very skilled, and you’re a jeweler, too. You can split a stone finely enough to fit it on your cards.”
She chuckled. Smoked. “Here’s the thing, this game is much easier for me. I only have nine colors left to guess from, and you may well be able to draft more than one of those. You, on the other hand, have all the uncommon abilities in the world from which to guess.”
Nine colors left? Eleven colors? What the hell was she talking about? “You’re teasing me,” Kip said.
“Maybe we’ll know each other well enough someday that you’ll be able to figure that out,” she said. “Smoke?”
Huh? “Sub-red,” Kip said, thinking she was guessing what he could draft.
She lowered her pipe. Oh, she’d been offering to share her pipe. But she said quickly, “You’ve drafted sub-red, or fire?”
“Same thing,” Kip said.
“Answer the question.”
“Fire.”
“Do you know, a scheme can be useful without being true. You can see sub-red?”
“Yes,” Kip said. Suddenly, he wasn’t sure why he’d come. Curiosity? Maybe it hadn’t been a good enough reason.
“Can you see superviolet?” she asked.
He nodded, grudgingly. He wasn’t even sure why he was loath to give her more information.
“Do you want to be a Prism, Kip?”
It was like she had a trick of asking questions that he didn’t want to ask himself. “Everyone probably thinks about that,” Kip said.
“You don’t know if you want it or not. Part of you does, but you don’t think you could ever be the man your father is.”
“That’s crazy talk,” Kip said. He swallowed.
“No, it’s not. I know crazy talk. I know it well. I am a Maker. We are not mere artists; we are the caretakers of history. The cards are history. Each one tells a truth, a story. The Black Cards tell history that has been suppressed, because it threatens…” She looked up at the ceiling, thinking, looking for the right word. She gave up. “Well, it threatens. Take that as you will.”
She smoked, thinking.
“What I’m about to tell you is heresy. Don’t repeat it, if you value your life. Heresy, but true. Take these words, and bury them, treasure them. There are seven Great Gifts, Kip. Some are common. Others are given only to one person a generation, or one person a century. Light is truth, and all the gifts are connected to this foundation. To light, to truth, to reality. Being a drafter-one who works with light-is a great gift, but a relatively common one. Being a Prism is another. Being a Seer, who sees the essence of things, that is much rarer. My gift is rare as welclass="underline" I am a Mirror. My gift is that I can’t paint a lie. And my gift tells me that your father has two secrets. You, Kip, are not one of them.”
Chapter 45
“So what’s your real name?” Gavin asked the Third Eye, coming to stand beside her on the beach. She had kept her vigil on the southernmost point of Seers Island, and the descending sun bathed the woman in gold. “Or what was it, before? Who are your people?”
The Third Eye was dressed in a yellow cotton dress that made her look merely mortal, though she was still a striking, radiant figure. She hadn’t sent for Gavin until late afternoon. Her associate, or servant, or friend, Caelia, told Gavin that seeing the future took time.
“Oh no you don’t,” the Third Eye said. “You’re probably one of those men who accuses women of being capricious, too.”
“Huh?”
“You ask me last night not to tempt you, to be more formal, and today the first thing you do is ask for greater familiarity. Uh-uh, Lord Prism. In your vanity you can take pleasure in breaking other hearts. Not mine.”
Vanity? That was a little offensive, a little blunt, a little… accurate. He made to speak, then found he had nothing to say.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “The aftermath of Seeing is… I forget myself. It’s hard not to be honest. My apologies.” She snapped open a handfan and fanned herself. “I’m afraid I’ve overheated, too. My skin doesn’t well tolerate so much sun.”
She did indeed look like she’d have a good burn.
“Seeing requires light, you said?” Gavin asked.
She nodded but didn’t seem interested in explaining her gift any more than that.
“Did you find it?” Gavin asked finally.
“Many times, and down many paths. It’s in the sea.”
“Pardon?”
“The bane is floating, somewhere in the Cerulean Sea.”
“That is…” Useless? Unhelpful? “… a large area,” Gavin said. She’d said three hours east and two and a half hours north-which would be in the sea from here, but somehow he was sure this wouldn’t be that easy.
“I’m aware of this. It is also fairly hard to find landmarks or time markers to tell you where to find it in the sea. It’s moving through the water.”
Gavin threw his hands up. “Where’s it going? Where’s it coming from?”