> It is an unfortunate reality that the children of dregs inevitably become such themselves. Parents whose own misfortunes have led them to decks of dubious worth are obviously unable to correct the same tendencies in their children. Compounded, of course, with the physical impacts of deprivation on such a child, it is no surprise that they card early out of necessity. In my journeys through the slums, I encountered many children who, when bribed with a treat, would share with me what cards they had acquired at their tender ages. The displays were uniformly tragic. I recall one such child, a girl younger than ten (though it is difficult to tell with them), who proudly showed off a card that excised the rotten portions of whatever scraps of food that came to her, rendering them safe for consumption. I gathered that her ability was in much demand among her fellow scavengers, many of whom lacked even that basic functionality.

>

> Excerpt from “Conversations on Social Ills: A Collection”, by The gentleman Cenist Libon.

The conventional wisdom for the ideal deck size for an adult was thirty, which left room for taking high value cards that may come over time—a master of their domain may approach sixty cards by the end of their life, working hard to avoid dilution.

It was well known that carding slowed over time, particularly as one specialized and avoided taking unnecessary bloat. Exceeding a hundred cards was the stuff of legends, absurdist fantasies, and punchlines—it shouldn’t even be feasible, much less desirable.

“How is it even possible?” he finally managed.

“Why Jack, you’ll have to be more specific,” Liosa answered coyly.

“All of it! The size of your deck, why you don’t need to wait for deck cycling—it should be hours before you can guarantee any given card!”

She laughed at him! And this was her true laugh, clutching at her sides she bent over and let loose her guffaws as he stared.

“I’m sorry Jack, it’s just,” she wiped the tears from her eyes, “you are so clearly my son.”

What child could be affronted by that?

“When I encountered the same, when I lived it, I was so desperate to talk to someone. I wanted to theorize, to discuss it with a peer, or even just muse openly to the world. At one point I considered submitting an anonymous article, but with you and Syra I could never take the risk.” She drifted off.

“Well... I’m listening,” he said.

“Aye Jack, you have always been a good listener.” She looked at him with a radiant fondness. “I’ll end your torture and explain this to you, as much as I know. First you’ll need some context, as any story of carding is really a story of someone's life. Some of what I’m going to tell you will be unpleasant, but I do not want you thinking too harshly of anyone.”

She took a moment to gather her thoughts before beginning, and though she spoke in a light and airy tone, the subject matter could not have been heavier.

“You already know that your grandparents are not my birth parents. You’ve been told that they were relatives who adopted me at a young age. That was a lie. I have no relation to them whatsoever. My true parents are dead, both before their time as is often the case with dreg-caste.” He startled at that, but she talked over his reaction.

“Yes, your true grandparents were the lowest of people. I don’t know the details of their history, what brought them to that station, only that my father died before my memory and my mother never spoke of such things to me. We lived, just her and me, in a hidden alcove under a bridge. The weather is gentler in Rivenberth, so we could stay there without issue except during the deepest part of winter.

She was a cleaner–fair enough to be allowed into the homes of the well-to-do, with enough card support that her work was complimented. I would come along with her to help, and the kinder houses would pay extra because of me.

My mother had always struggled with some illnesses of the lungs. It was difficult when she suffered a bout because her employers didn’t want her coming into their homes. But the sea air and sun always seemed to rejuvenate her and so she was never out of work long. It was in my twelfth year that she was affected again, but it was the height of Summer so I expected her to recover shortly as she always had. After three days where she could hardly rise, we had run out of food and money.

That was when I went to your grandparents home and took my mothers role. They accepted my explanation easily enough, a clean home is a clean home after all, and in Rivenberth spring-batteries were unheard of in those days. When the work was done, I mustered my courage and asked them for some extra money—an advance on work done later, to help my mother get well. They told me that ‘a wage earned is a wage received’, and sent me on. She died that night. When I woke I already knew. The sound of her breathing, which had been a struggle, had stopped.”

She fell silent for a time, and Jack’s throat burned for the words that meant to escape it, but didn’t know what they were meant to be.

Feeling like he knew very little, but feeling very much, he reached out a hand; and Liosa reached back and took it in her own.

“I think it was shame, at least in part, that made them take me in—but that wasn’t all that motivated them. I returned twice more. The first time I told them what had happened, and asked to be allowed to keep working for them.

They accepted, but on that occasion they had some whispered conversations that culminated into veiled questions for me. I think I knew, somehow, even wrapped in my grief, what they intended. They asked me how old I was, and I knew to lie. I looked young for my age, scrawny thing that I was, so I told them I was eight.

They asked me why I always cleaned by hand; ‘Didn’t I have a card?’ I had several but I’d always been careful not to use them where anyone would learn of them. They were shameful, pitiful things, what appeared when a child is forced to card early to stay alive, and I knew that admitting to such would tarnish me.

The second time I came they asked me if I thought I would like to live with them, as their daughter. I did not tell them what I thought—that this was the least they could do for orphaning me. Instead, I told them I would like that very much.”

A host of questions Jack had never thought to ask were answered. Why the visits to her parents had been so few, why the interactions between them had come with such obvious, mutual discomfort. His mother’s truth was being revealed to him in detail he had never imagined would come.

But there was still more to learn, and she continued to produce revelations he could only try to keep up with.

“The rest went smoothly enough. At first I lived in terror of my cards being discovered, that I would be tossed aside and the dream would end, but I learned soon enough that good food and a ‘nurturing’ environment was sufficient to make my next cards functional. Feigned precociousness became authentic once I learned to read, assisted by my taking every card I could.

I didn’t have the luxury then to be circumspect—if there was a party to attend I needed to master the social graces on the first pass. They were delighted to have such a studious and well-spoken daughter, not knowing how foolish their gambit truly was.

Support the creativity of authors by visiting Royal Road for this novel and more.

If I had truly been the age they thought maybe it would have been easier to be taken in by that new life, but I felt such a clumsy imposter. It was frankly a miracle I passed through that world without incident, and only possible thanks to my secret accumulation of cards.”

Jack had a hard time imagining her as inept at anything, and said as much.

“Oh, that has always been the burden I took upon myself. Even the appearance of weakness could have led to the discovery of my lies. Excellence was the only shield I had to keep anyone from inquiring into my deck with investigatory cards.” She looked sadly at him. “I needed to maintain the deception for everyone, even those I loved, who might betray me unknowingly.”

Her secrets weren’t hidden out of shame, but fear. Fear so ancient it transcended even habit. Jack wondered at the nature of his own carding circumstance, which bore some resemblance to hers.

She continued. “That life continued until I began to appear formally in the Small Society occasions. I think the intention was to show me off, their trained bird. By then I was twenty-two, but believed by the world to be eighteen. The difference between myself and my ‘peers’ was stark.

I had my pick of suitors, and it was expected that I would wait a handful of years before accepting the courtship of a suitable match and marry to my parents' advantage. Their only misplay was assuming my acquiescence to their plan—I had been plotting my own future for some time, and I needed only a few parts to align.

It was at a Gala event that one such element arrived: your father. He had all the characteristics I had been waiting for; he was only visiting Rivenberth, hailing from the industrious and distant city of Calamut; he was of modest status, but stood to inherit a successful enterprise; and most importantly, he was alone.

He was twenty-four, gaining some independent experience out of supervision. Given the opportunity, either of our guardians would have forbidden the match: the distance was too great to be of any commercial benefit to either family.

I just wanted to escape. I seduced him, and we eloped. By now I think he’s realized who was actually sweeping whom off their feet.

After that... I was much happier. Your grandparents were furious, of course, but they held nothing over me that would not also be their undoing. With no recourse beyond accepting our match, they finally settled into tolerance. As for your father, I meant to guarantee my place, and so was quickly pregnant. But in those early days what started as convenience quickly showed me many of his best qualities, and soon we had started to feel real love for one another. Before long I was introduced into the Small Society of Calamut with significant scandal.

You know much of the rest, but I have neglected the details of my cards.

By this time I had a deck of approximately sixty cards, and the cycling delay was becoming untenable. However, with the new demands of married life and the social expectations it brought, I could not reject new cards. My carding rate had not slowed in the slightest, if anything it had increased. I was beginning to understand where my carding was taking me.

Here is your anticipated answer Jack. Under the pressure of a growing deck I began to receive metacards: card drawing, deck-cycle forcing, fetch effects, and synergies with existing cards. The trend was very clear, I was receiving cards that enabled my large deck. Compensating for the challenges of deck cycling and bloat was an emergent property of the carding. This is how I ‘do the impossible’,” she concluded mildly, as if little had been upended, and not his entire understanding of her and the nature of carding.

Jack asked her more about her childhood and mother; knowing that she had not spoken of them for nearly thirty years. He also felt that while she’d shared her secrets to help his future, a burdened past could be better carried by two. But such talk is fragile, and should not be shared lightly.

Eventually, they returned to the topic of necessity: the nature of carding.

“Why haven’t you shared what you’ve found?” Jack asked. “If decks are self-correcting, the assumptions of deck construction are fundamentally unsound!” He was beginning to warm to his subject as the excitement of her revelations once again overtook him. “The implications on... on everything! Eliminating the plateauing for materialists alone would change the world; this is everyone unbound! People can switch professions that don’t suit them, miscarding shouldn’t hold anyone back ever again.”

“I know Jack. Of course I know it.” Liosa interrupted him. “As I learned of it, I was as excited as you. But before I could share what I was finding I needed to see if there was any discussion, even speculation, in scholarly works. But none of it appears in the works I encountered on carding dynamics, and I am not so naive to think that no one has ever experienced anything like myself.”

Jack struggled to pace his mind as he worked through the implications. How could there be nothing? Her history was unusual. But there must have been other cases where people had taken excessive numbers of cards? Where people leapt from one life to another and encountered a similar need? Such examples should have at least provided hints, even if no one ever leaned into taking cards quite as far as she had.

The scholarship around carding, limited though it was in experimental practice, dutifully paid those with interesting card sets to be studied. Anyone encountering similar experiences would have known the possible rewards and been drawn into such ready opportunities. A total absence of information wasn’t just unlikely, it seemed impossible.

“You think... suppression?” He finally answered.

“Let me answer obliquely. What I did find were case studies of experiments performed on criminals, who were offered pardons for taking cards in excess. They claimed that as they approached a hundred cards they grew increasingly deranged and then died.” Her look and voice were icy. “Do I seem deranged to you?”

“Well...” He trailed off.

“Finish that thought Jack and you’ll see how deranged I can be.” Her tone was acerbic, but a hint of a smile tugged at her mouth.

After the moment’s levity they returned to the topic at hand.

“Could it be real though? You were younger, and in different circumstances. Maybe the prisoners had some fault, an illness, and they just...didn’t realize?” Jack ventured.

Liosa sighed. “I hoped the same but I grew cautious at that point. I worked to find any mention of high deck numbers in any context. At first, there was nothing but then I found something that confirmed it for me.”

She told him of uncovering an old code of laws, centuries out of use, that listed within it the harsh punishments for carding beyond approved numbers.

“Now why would you need to threaten maiming or death for a practice that’s believed to lead to death already?” Liosa mused.

“Point taken. But I just don’t understand it. Why such hostility? What is so wrong with changing the way carding is done?”

“Jack, it speaks well of your nature that you don’t immediately see it. Who benefits, or rather, who is threatened?”

“But everyone would benefit! Everyone’s decks could be stronger, more diverse and flexible!”

“No Jack, the average person would benefit. But the currently powerful would lose some of their height. As others rise, the cudgel has less time to gather speed. It is in the interest of some to keep the world the way it is. My life was chosen for me, but I will not see others bind my children to the same.” The last came out in a near snarl for its ferocity.

Her terrifying will was evident. A will that had taken her from the most fragile of lives to where she sat now. A will that would abide no shackling of what was hers.

“Now, I think you have your own tale to share with me,” Liosa said.

Jack hesitated a moment, he had been so committed to secrecy that a reevaluation was needed. Examining his own feelings, he was unsurprised to find that he wanted to tell her. And so he told her of the night he fell and his miscarding. The frustration of his years of effort dashed in a moment, and the fledgling hope he had nurtured with the help of the night-runners.

She listened with an intensity he knew well, asking only occasional clarifications until he was finished.

“With what I’ve told you, you know now that this is not an ending for you, or even remotely the setback you thought it to be. Just as with me, if you trust in the cards that are offered, you will not find yourself trapped,” she said.

“I do.”

“Then I have prepared you as best I can.”

Sensing the close of their conversation he went to stand, but she had some final words.

“Oh, and Jack,” she said too casually.

He looked back to find her intense stare waiting, catching his gaze and holding it fast.

“Much of my deck is devoted to trivial things, limited by the worlds I moved in, my understanding came too late… I expect much greater things from you.”