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"I doubt it’s that, Kip Every card has a story"

"Oh no"

"Every card is based on a real person, or a real legend, anyway But a number of the cards you’ve described to o They’re sometimes known as the black cards, or the heresy cards The odds of the entire game have shifted without those cards Some cards can’t be countered in ways they easily could have when those cards were in play, and so forth You can’t tell anyone you’ve been playing with those cards, Kip Playing with heresy is a good way to get a visit from the Office of Doctrine But I’ll tell you this: you won’t win against so with black cards The basics are still the say books in the last two hundred years have been written around the holes that yanking those cards has created"

"There’re no books with those cards in them?"

She hesitated "Not… here"

"Not here here, or not in the Chrohly that even horrid texts describing the rituals the Anatians used when they would pass infants through the flaotten so old that they need to be copied or disintegrate to dust, we still copy the teale word, and then eanyone fully Not everything that goes into the dark libraries is similarly evil--much is simply political, but only the es"

"Like who?" Kip asked

"The Chief Librarian and her top assistants, of course The Master of Scribes and his teaiven special dispensation by the White Full drafters who have subranted single books or are accouards, and the Colors And sorant permission to certain drafters, but those have to be approved by the Chief Librarian, who answers to the White herself"

"Blackguards?"

"They’re the ainst them as they protect the Prism or the White And, unofficially, they’re also the ones who need to knohat longstanding feuds there are, so they can prepare defenses against the right people"

It was a light in darkness A way Kip could kill about fifteen birds with one stone: he could learn the ga up dirt on Klytos Blue, and he could try to find out if histooto her accusations about Gavin All it required was that he do what he’d already decided he had to do: get into the Blackguard Easy Ha

"Blackguards being allowed in doesn’t include scrubs, does it?"

She chuckled "No Nice try"

His irandfather And he knew, even though he’d been ignoring it because she was pretty and helpful, that he probably shouldn’t share anything at all with Rea Siluz

"So I’ve been wasting my time," Kip said