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"When you use one reference I don’t know to explain another I don’t know…" Kip said

"Ayrad was a Blackguard seventy, eighty years ago now He entered at the botto, he barely made it into the next ht, to fourteen And then on the last week, he beat everyone Turned out he’d taken a vow or soht, what? Fourteen to eleven, eleven to eight, eight to five, five to two, and two to one? Orhola the best guy in the class after having already fought four times" It was one of the controls that the tests had built in Soht froht again iht tokens, the exhaustion piled on--and with each new fight, the challenger would be facing sohters He beat all of theed thirteen, fro"

"That’s the story" Teia shrugged "Karris did almost what you said, until she faced Fisk She finished third, after four fights And Fisk barely got her, they say"

With all his study of ic and history and the cards, Kip alantic area of lore that he hadn’t even touched: the histories of the great Blackguards

Teia picked up Kip’s slate and began writing on it

"So how did Lucretia Verangheti take it when she lost you?" Kip asked "I never even heard how the Red got her to give up your title"

"I don’t know," Teia said "I haven’t seen her since then Don’t want to" She shrugged, then pointed to the slate quickly "This is what I think the true ranking of the Blackguard scrubs should be What do you think?"

There was soht Kip’s attention, but then he got caught up in looking at the slate Teia had Cruxer at first, Arahteenth He raised an eyebrow at her

"Um, sorry," she said "Maybe you could do better than that"

"You’re apologizing for the wrong thing," Kip said "I don’t belong at eighteenth, do I?" He’d put himself around twentieth

Teia cleared her throat "You’re a polychroht"

Kip scowled A polychrouessed that for a while A full-spectrum polychrome? That was different Totally different And yet, withthe practicum every day, he didn’t have nearly the skills he should have In truth, as Teia had told him, if he really was a full-spectrus would be different They wouldn’t let hiuard unless Gavin intervened--he was too valuable And they would want hi It still wasn’t understood what h people believed that drafters had children who could draft that the pressure for drafters to have children was intense And ot as powerful as Gavin Guile, and you could do whatever you wanted and everyone else could go to hell

But he didn’t want to think about all that right now He went back to looking at the rankings "How’d you even arrive at this?"

"Paying attention? Watching? First you have to take into account that everyone wants to finish as high as possible, but at least in the top fourteen People also have friends that they don’t want to knock out of the top fourteen, so lots of tie three up from themselves if that’s where their friend is Because win or lose, either they or their friend will lose their challenge token That’s less important in the top ten where people will know they’re safe, but people heading for getting kicked out aren’t going to want to ruin their friends’ chances" She started drawing lines "Person at the bottoe the weakest person in the three above thehteen because even though he is allowed to challenge Ziri at seventeen, he thinks he can beat Asmun and not Ziri If he wins, he et lucky So now the new person at twenty is e Ash that’s only one place up"

"Why?" Kip asked The nu in his head

"Because Ase token, so he knows he can’t ht as hard because there’s nothing at stake See, you have to reshuffle the order every time someone wins, and keep track of who has and who doesn’t have their challenge token That way you can skip the hts But of course, we have to keep in n weaknesses until the last week so they have an advantage"