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"Yes, Mistress," Teia said fervently There was no trace of guile in her

Was she a good liar? Aglaia had asked Teia was a slave Of course she was a good liar

"Oh, I aled through a little jewelry box "You are to wear this at all times, understood?"

"Yes, Mistress" Teia had no idea what she was talking about

Lady Crassos handed her a slender, pretty gold necklace with a little vial dangling fro the puzzled look in Teia’s eyes, Lady Crassos merely smiled broadly and left

As Gaeros helped her dress, eliciting gasps and grunts and grinding teeth as cloth slid over infla next door, cries of passion not unlike pain When Teia was all dressed and her tears dried, Gaeros gently took her tightly balled fist in his hand to take the necklace and put it on her

With difficulty, Teia unclenched her fist and surrendered the vial A vial of olive oil

Chapter 43

Kip held a book open across one arm and rubbed his forehead, rubbed his eyes He’d discovered a little trick to help his concentration He was standing at the , and now he closed the book, keeping a finger tucked in to hold his place He looked left and right No one was in sight He turned the book over; its cover was bright blue, drafter’s blue

Blue sluiced through hi at his eyes, and cleared away every obstruction to logic: weariness, e scrunched Kip breathed out and let the blue go He grabbed another book, on the fauna of old Ruthgar when it was called Green Forest It was actually a pretty interesting book, but he’d grabbed it for its cover as well: drafter’s red The primary colors--not in the sense artists used the term, but in the drafter’s sense, the colors that were closest to their luxin counterparts--were endlessly popular Kip looked at the cover and drafted a bit of red It blew air on the dying sparks of his passion for learning about the cards He set the book down Grabbed orange A thin tendril of that helped hi any of these colors perfectly, he knew To be counted a drafter of a particular color, you had to be able to craft a stable block of its luxin Kip couldn’t do that He could draft only green and blue The sub-red had been a fluke, just that once He’d taken the test He was a bichrome

But what he could do was pretty darn useful He opened his book again and kept reading

Over the last teeks, he felt like he’d ood sense of the basic strategies--it was, after all, only a ganore as well--strategies when playingfewer cards or er money, drafts from common piles All unnecessary for him

Then, at soy, but in studying accounts of great games, he still didn’t understand why players wouldn’t play their best cards iaured were uniaies to thin the opponent’s deck Theories as to how to balance play styles when addressing decks of certain colors It beca piles of nuainst a certain deck in a certain situation, your opponent would have a one in twenty-seven chance of having the perfect card to stop you If he played Counter-Sink now (and he was playing logically), you could infer that he didn’t have it

He walked up to the librarian with the huge black halo of hair, Rea Siluz, and handed her back the basic strategy book she’d told hirinned She had beautiful, full lips "That was quick"