A quick flash of rage rippled over that mask of a face, disturbing and cracking it, and filling in immediately, as before, but not before Kip saw something beneath it, green and black, the mouth all wrong, the eyes huge and alien.

“So the fly taunts the spider about problems too late to fix? From my very web?”

Oh, no. And there it was. The teeth of the trap.

Abaddon said, “Truth is, the longer you stand here and listen to me, the closer to death you are. Truth is, you’re dead already. You’re—”

“Truth is, you’re still talking, which means lying, which means I’m still a threat. Somehow. That must irk you. Me. Little fat Kip of Rekton. A threat.” Kip chuckled involuntarily. Such a silly thought, and yet, why else would he even be worth the attention of such a being? But that was beside the point now, a distraction. Don’t pat yourself on the back while there’s a dagger in it.

Kip turned away, to where the invisible hands were writing, drawing, etching, hammering. That was the crux, that was the present, that was where the answer lay.

A short inhuman roar, the size of the creature that the man disguised, sounded. Abaddon did not like being dismissed.

Kip flinched, and out of body, out of time, and all that he might be, he was still surprised he didn’t wet himself at the noise. But he didn’t turn. If that thing wanted to kill him, if it was allowed to do so by whatever murky rules governed this place, there was clearly nothing Kip could do to stop it.

“Know this, Diakoptês, I may not be allowed to kill you here, but my hands are not bound in—” He stopped. “Should you leave, I will follow, and there is no foe who compares.”

“Shut it. I’m thinking.” Oh Ramir, I never thought I would have a reason to thank you for anything, but for this I thank you, you small-souled, small-hearted, small-town tough: I know how to needle a bully when he can’t get to me. For that, thank you.

Now, why am I in the Great Library?

It’s the repository of all knowledge. So what does that—

Kip looked at the invisible hands again. They were drawing glyphs right now. Pictures as words. Pictures as knowledge. Knowledge in every language, in every medium.

Perhaps even the knowledge in cards. Perhaps even the knowledge in cards inside careless young fools.

I’m here because this place is the repository of all knowledge, and I’m here until I get all this knowledge out.

Kip looked down at himself for the first time. He was absolutely covered in tattoos. On every exposed bit of skin, every place a card had stuck to him, it had left its image. Perhaps they’d left more than their image, perhaps they’d left their essence. It didn’t fully make sense to him. Why hadn’t the cards come here the moment of their creation? But maybe he was asking a time-bound question—time that he was running out of.

He turned over his left wrist.

Gunner.

The crazed Ilytian was wearing a waistcoat, open over a naked torso, sailor’s loose pants, no shoes, and a huge grin. He was seated on a smoking cannon like he was riding it. It was bigger than any cannon Kip had ever seen. Gunner also had a blunderbuss in his left hand and a pistol with multiple long barrels in his right hand. Like the first time Kip had seen him, the man had woven burning slow matches into his long unruly hair and beard and into his waistcoat to make himself look like he had come striding out of hell. Gunner? I’ve got to go be Gunner?

Fine, Gunner, let’s dance.

Kip bunched his fingers in the familiar pattern to touch the five jewels: one at each corner, and the middle finger at the middle top. One at a time, he pressed them onto the tattoo of Gunner, fully expecting nothing to happ—

~Gunner~

Tap. Superviolet and blue. As his thumb touched, it was like someone had blown out a candle. The world went dark. Eyes useless. But then, a moment later, there was sun, waves washing over him, blinking, bobbing. Seeing his perspective shift while he felt his body utterly motionless made him queasy.

Tap. Green solved that in a rush of embodiment, touch restored. He was swimming. A strong body, wiry, naked to the waist. The water is warm, strewn with flotsam.

Tap. Yellow. Hearing restored, the shouts of men calling to each other, others screaming in pain or terror. But yellow is more than that; it is the logic of man and place. But the yellow in this one isn’t quite right. Disbelieving. The Prism came out of nowhere. Dodged all his cannon shots. Even when Gunner finally started shooting both at once. That little boat the Prism made moved at speeds he wouldn’t have believed if he’d heard another telling the tale. Ceres is going to take this out on him. Damn Gavin Guile.

But this mind skips around. There’s something—

Tap. Orange. The smell of the sea and smoke and discharged powder, and he can sense the other men floating in the water, and below them, around them— Oh, by the hells. Sharks. Lots of sharks.

His finger is already descending. Tap. Red-and-sub-red-and-the-taste-of-blood-in-his-mouth-and-it’s-too—

The trick with sharks is the nose. Not so different from a man. You bloody a bully’s nose, and he goes looking elsewhere right quick. Easy, right? Easy.

Gunner ain’t no easy meat. The sea’s my mirror. Fickle as me. Crazy as me. Deep currents, and monsters rise from her depths, too. What others call sea spray, I call her spitting in my face, friendly like—

Kip tore his hand away as soon as it touched all the points—instantly—but that instant was minutes long in the card. He’d not left until he’d—until Gunner had killed a shipmate named Conner, who had the oars. Kip had just seen Gunner make himself a captain and get his first crew. The benighted madman.

Finding himself back in the Great Library, Kip looked down at his wrist. The tattoo was faded, but not gone. Right in front of him, a hand had drawn half of the card, hanging in midair. And now it stopped.

He had to go back into the same one. There was something important about Gunner. He had to find the right time. He had no idea what he was doing, but he had to learn.

Kip’s fingers descended into a raid on an Angari ship, the murder of men, the lopping of limbs, and a little singsong, ‘Rinky, sinky, dinky, do.’ He pulled his hand off again, unable to bear it.

And the tattoo still wasn’t gone.

Twice more he submerged himself into that ill-fitting skin, and emerged, gasping, weeping. But the card before him was being drawn, and split: one copy flew to his hand, and one went winging to a shelf.

Time out of joint, Kip stares at his wrist. The Gunner tattoo is disappearing even as the hands finish drawing the card. But then his tattoos move, shift, rearrange themselves, and there on his wrist sits Samila Sayeh, the heroine from the Prisms’ War.

“You’ll never make it,” Abaddon said. For some reason, his coat was gone, but he had a cloak of the same black and white leather spread in his hands. “Even if you could live every card in turn. Even if any human could take that much punishment, you don’t have the time.”

Kip didn’t answer. There was no answer. There was no giving up.

“Samila, let’s dance.” His hand came down.

But it didn’t end with Samila. It didn’t end with Helane Troas. It didn’t end with Viv Grayskin. It didn’t end with Aheyyad Brightwater or Usem the Wild or Halo Breaker or the Fallen Prophet or Pleiad Poros or the Novist or Orlov Kunar or New Green Wight or Heresy.