Agents of Artifice p-1

by Ari Marmell

  "And how many would that be?" Jace asked, trying to sound casual.

  "If you accept my offer," Tezzeret said seriously, "you'll make five. Plus three more I can hire for certain jobs but who aren't true members of the Consortium."

  Ah. And now we come to it, at last.

  Jace didn't bother to ask why they might want him. He knew well the value of his magics, in particular the rarity of his telepathic proficiency. Nor did he wonder, any longer, how Tezzeret knew of him; a man with his resources, spanning multiple worlds, wouldn't need to read minds to learn just about anything he could ever want to know.

  What he asked, then, was, "Why would I want to join you? I'm pretty comfortable as I am."

  "Are you really?" Tezzeret asked, and there was no masking the disdain in his voice. "Blackmailing the rich and foolish by threatening to spread their deepest secrets? What was the last one, Beleren? Lord Delvekkian and his Deriab-root addiction? And for keeping that little secret, he paid, what, a few hundredweight of gold?"

  Jace didn't even start this time, just shook his head at the extent of Tezzeret's sources.

  "And when your funds run out, then what? Another rich fool? Living secret to secret and threat to threat, until finally you push one of them farther than he's willing to go? A bad way to live, Beleren. A shameful one. And frankly, one unworthy of your skills."

  "I make do," Jace muttered defensively, but he could feel his cheeks flush, the truth behind the words stinging worse than Gemreth's demon.

  "You make do," the artificer parroted. "But nothing more. You obtain nothing. Accomplish nothing. And you, Jace Beleren, have far too much potential to live a life that comes to nothing.

  "You ask why you should join with me. Perhaps because you want the opportunity to make a living-a real living-that allows you to live comfortably without hopping from one depraved miser to another. Because you want to earn the respect of others, men and women who would hold you in awe based on who you are and what you've done, rather than because of what you hold over them.

  "And because a part of you knows, even if you haven't admitted it, that your skills are stagnating here. You have power, Beleren, including an instinctive grasp of magics that few others can master, but you're letting it wither. Working for the Infinite Consortium, I guarantee you the opportunity to exercise those abilities, to stretch them far beyond your current boundaries, to learn from others."

  Jace glanced up, his pulse quickening. "There are those among you who can teach me?" He hadn't had a true mentor in years, not since…

  "Not thought-reading, no. But other magics of the mind, such as your illusions, your clairvoyance? Absolutely. I myself know a bit about such things, though they're not my primary area of study. I could teach you myself, when time allows. And if I cannot instruct you in reading minds, at least I can help you build up your discipline, do so more effectively."

  "You would do that?"

  "Beleren, to have potential such as yours on my side, I would do far more."

  "Just make sure you do better than his last teacher," Baltrice snickered.

  The sharp crack of ceramic sounded across the table as the mug shattered in Jace's grip. His entire body so rigid he could have been having a seizure, he glared at the woman through abruptly glowing eyes, and if wishes could kill, it would have been her neck breaking within his fist.

  "What do you-How…?" He could scarcely choke the words past the bile in his throat.

  "Come on, Beleren," Baltrice smirked at him. "Everything else we know about, you didn't think we'd learn about Alhammarret? I understand you're still a wanted man in every town within a hundred miles of Silmot's Crossing."

  His vision veiled in a film of red rage, Jace found himself standing, his chair lying on the floor behind him. "You will never utter that name again."

  His voice was surprisingly steady, not even raised in a shout, but it slashed across the table, an invisible blade. Baltrice recognized the danger sign for what it was, but backing down before this upstart never entered her mind. She, too, rose to her feet. The air above the table grew heavy with tension and gathering magic. Tezzeret said nothing, perhaps curious to see if one would relent.

  And Jace turned away, unwilling to start a fight he wasn't certain he could win. Eyes downcast and cheeks slightly flushed, he straightened his chair and slumped into it. And yet, one corner of his mouth turned up, as though he'd succeeded in making some sort of point.

  With an ugly, arrogant grin, Baltrice too returned to her seat.

  "Baltrice," Tezzeret announced, "wait for me outside."

  The woman's smile died as though shot with a crossbow. "What? Boss, I-"

  "I need to speak with Beleren, and I need to do it without the two of you threatening each other every second breath."

  Jace's jaw twitched as he suppressed a smirk.

  "But, boss, what if he-"

  "I am in no danger from Beleren. Go."

  With a scowl and a final flash of fire in her eyes, Baltrice left the table, hoping against hope that the little bastard would be stupid enough to refuse Tezzeret's offer. Then, given what he already knew, the boss would have no choice but to let her…

  So wrapped up was Baltrice, daydreaming about what she'd do to Jace Beleren if she had the opportunity, that it didn't occur to her until later:

  For the life of her, she could no longer remember the name of Jace's mentor.

  CHAPTER TEN

  They sat on the floor, across from one another, in the heart of a cavernous room beneath the Rubblefield complex. Here, though the perimeter of the room was stone, the internal walls were thin metal, divided into slats that folded and slid along runners in the ceiling. With those walls, the huge room could be divided into any number of smaller chambers, of almost any shape. At the moment, the "sub-room" was an almost perfect oval.

  "I assume I don't need to tell you," Tezzeret began after several moments of silence, "just how potent a tool telepathy can be to an organization such as mine?" "No," Jace said with a faint grin. "I think I can figure that much out on my own."

  "Excellent. You've passed the 'not a raving imbecile' test. I-"

  "What I don't understand," Jace said, "is why you don't already have access to such powers. I know my talents are rare, but they're not that rare! Are they?"

  "You wouldn't think so," Tezzeret admitted, "but you'd be surprised. In all my years, I've come across only two mind-readers other than yourself. One of them is dead, and the other-well, isn't available for employment."

  "But-''

  "I've tried building a great many devices," the artificer said, refusing to be interrupted again. "Tools to accomplish what I and my agents cannot. They, too, came up short. I built two crowns of etherium-"

  "Etherium?" Jace repeated.

  Tezzeret clenched his jaw at yet another interruption and held up his artificial hand. "Etherium. A powerful, magic-rich alloy capable of holding any manner of enchantments. It's also exceedingly rare, since the secret of its creation is all but lost across the entire Multiverse. This hand is probably more valuable than the entirety of this district."

  Jace's eyes widened.

  "As I was saying, then," the artificer continued, "two crowns of etherium, one of which should have allowed me to read the thoughts of anyone wearing the other. We managed to communicate, speaking as though we were right beside one another across a distance of miles, but I could never read any thought he didn't choose to project. I constructed a sarcophagus of needles and tubes, into which a subject could be placed. I managed to extract the equivalent of two words' worth of thoughts before the machine turned the subject's brain into so much gargoyle guano."

  Jace shuddered.

  "I even once fashioned a crystalline chamber,"

  Tezzeret reminisced, eyes glazing slightly, "capable of storing the memories and personality of a dying man. But the mechanism that should have allowed communication with the mind within failed to work, and since I'd built it purely for communication, I hadn't
included any means of placing him into a new living body. So I've no idea how much of him was actually preserved.

  "My point," he concluded sharply, coming back to himself with a sudden blink and glaring at Jace as though somehow he were at fault for the digression, "is that, though it comes so easily to you, and though it's a form of magic wizards have been struggling to develop for ages, it's actually proven to be a very rare, and very elusive, talent.

  "And that means that we've got to get you, Beleren, as skilled as we possibly can."

  "I can live with that," Jace said with a fierce grin.

  "I'm so glad to hear it. Talk to me."

  "What?" "Talk to me." Tezzeret leaned forward, fists on the table. "Not with your mouth. With your mind."

  For an instant, Jace stared. Tezzeret wasn't certain if he was concentrating, or had somehow failed to understand the command. Then…

  Like so? The words formed directly in Tezzeret's mind. Jace's lips, his tongue, his teeth moved not at all.

  "Precisely like that," Tezzeret told him. "I see you've done this before."

  It's come in useful a time or two.

  "How far?"

  Jace shrugged. "Never tried it beyond a few yards or so," he said aloud "We'll have to test that." He pointed a metal finger at the door. "There are several guards in the hallway outside. Can you communicate with them?"

  "Hm. I've never tried this outside line of sight, except with people I already know." "Then now's a good time to start."

  A moment more, and Jace's eyes grew wide, his jaw muscles twitching as though he were repressing a shout. And then the door flew open and a trio of guards dashed inside with the clatter of mail, hands reaching for their swords. The room abruptly smelled of oiled steel.

  "Boss?" one asked. "Is everything okay? I thought I heard someone shouting for us."

  "And you?" Tezzeret demanded of the other two.

  Both shook their heads. "Heard nothing, boss."

  "It's a start." Tezzeret pointed to the first guard, though he'd turned back toward Jace. "Can you include him and me both?"

  "What?"

  "Can you talk to both of us like this?" Jace frowned, felt his fists clenching. I'm… not sure. Tezzeret glanced at the guard, who nodded. "I heard him, boss." "Excellent!"

  The young mage was tiring swiftly, in mind if not in muscle. The sensation was like trying to juggle two balls in two different directions.

  And then his entire body slumped when Tezzeret pointed to another guard. "All three of us, now."

  It took Jace half a dozen tries before the second guard also heard his mental "voice." His entire forehead was drenched in sweat, his mouth had gone dry as a mummified bone, and his vision was starting to blur. Tezzeret and the guards were starting to look as fuzzy as their reflections in the steel walls.

  "No!" He shook his head-a bad idea, as the world spun around him-as Tezzeret pointed to yet a third guard. "Tezzeret, I can't. I-"

  "You are not giving up already!" Tezzeret shouted, face slowly going red. "I won't allow it!"

  "But… But I-"

  "Do it! Damn you, Beleren, do it now!" Jace cast out his voice to encompass all four men. His head felt as though it would split open, like someone had stuck a pry bar through his skull and was steadily working it this way and that.

  "Pathetic," Tezzeret said, rising to his feet. Yet despite his tone, he reached out and helped Jace to sit back against the wall, rather than leaving him curled on the floor. "I expect better of you, Beleren. I know you're capable of more than this." He turned to the nearest guard even as he rose. "Once he's recovered, he's not to leave until he's proven to you that he can at least still reach three of you. I want to know-and I want him to know-that pain and prior failures aren't going to hold him back or undo what we've accomplished."

  "You got it, boss."

  And then the artificer was gone, leaving the guards to stare at Jace, shuddering not merely with pain but with the shame of his first failure.

  Jace lay upon the thick down mattress, arms crossed behind his head, and stared up at the ceiling-just as he had for many hours, across the span of many days. And he wondered, not for the first time, if Tezzeret's notion of an exciting life was perhaps different from his own. Oh, he had his training sessions to look forward to. They weren't anyone's definition of "fun," and he might have thought seriously about leaving after that first one-except that they worked! Damned if, in mere days, he hadn't felt his mind expanding, comprehending spells he'd never used before, honing even familiar incantations like a razor's edge.

  But those sessions were sporadic, occurring when Tezzeret had the time to devote from his many other concerns on many other worlds. And Jace was getting more than a little bored.

  The Consortium's Ravnica compound was, or so Tezzeret had claimed, one of the nicest on all the various worlds. Jace had passed through marble-walled and lushly carpeted halls, kitchens capable of producing foods that nearly qualified as magic in their own right, libraries boasting any book one could ask for, on any topic one might imagine.

  His own domicile was a suite of chambers, complete with self-lighting chandeliers that glowed without heat; a fireplace that never ceased burning and produced either warmth or cold depending on Jace's command; even a few mechanical servants that were, if not as efficient or unobtrusive as Emmara's animate dolls, still more than capable of accomplishing whatever menial task Jace might assign them.

  For the first few days, it was a paradise, and Jace luxuriated in an opulence he'd never known.

  After two months of dwelling here with nothing to do but peruse said libraries or wander about the streets of Ravnica (something he'd been quite capable of doing before the Consortium, thank you very much), he was ready for a change of pace. But neither Tezzeret himself nor the Ravnica cell's own leader seemed ready to actually let him do anything.

  That local lieutenant was an enormously corpulent, sausage-fingered fellow with untamed hair and beard of darkest black, so short and squat that Jace briefly wondered if he might be one of the mythical dwarves he'd heard of on other worlds. Paldor was his name-"Almost like platter," he would say at every opportunity, hands clutching at one roll of fat or another, "so really, could my parents have expected anything else?" It was a joke nobody found funny, but that never stopped him from repeating it.

  He seemed a friendly enough sort, willing to show Jace around and introduce him to other members of the cell, but Jace wondered more than once just how black a dark side the man must possess to have worked his way so high in Tezzeret's ranks. But of course, Paldor's duties prevented him from spending more than a few moments on that project, and again Jace found himself left to his own devices. He couldn't really even go out to make new acquaintances on his own, for he didn't know how many members of the Ravnica cell knew about the Consortium's other-worldly nature-and he wasn't about to spill Tezzeret's secrets to the uninitiated.

  And so he lay on his back, and stared, and brooded, and fell into that state of half-sleep that comes so often when one lies abed with nothing important to do. And it took him several moments of trying to rouse himself to realize that someone was pounding upon his door.

  Jace took a moment to tug the worst of the wrinkles from his tunic, flung open the door, and found himself staring, or so it appeared, into a slightly warped mirror.

  "You'd be Jace," the man suggested.

  Jace blinked eloquently in response.

  "I'm Kallist. Kallist Rhoka. And you need to either learn to sleep more lightly, or get yourself a doorbell. Preferably one taken from a church steeple."

  "Um," Jace added.

  "We've been summoned. We're supposed to be in Paldor's office in, oh, five minutes ago. So unless your magic can either take us back in time, or summon up a really potent excuse, I suggest we get moving."

  Still not entirely certain what was happening, Jace got moving.

  Although he'd long since mastered the ins and outs of the complex, he allowed the other man to lead, and took
the time to study his guide. Now that he was a bit more awake and a lot more alert, Jace realized that they did not look quite so similar as his drowsy senses had at first suggested. Kallist was clad in black leather armor over deep blue padding; a match to Jace's own wardrobe in color, perhaps, but certainly not in style. The various blades that Kallist wore about his person also indicated a wide gulf between their skill sets. Still, they could certainly pass as relatives, a fact that Jace refused utterly to dismiss as coincidence.

  Kallist clearly knew the winding halls at least as well as Jace, since he hesitated not at all in his path to Paldor's office, on the uppermost floor of the highest building. Jace was vaguely irritated, as he panted for breath at the top of the stairs, to note that Kallist wasn't even winded.

  The office, which Kallist entered after giving a perfunctory knock, was massive but largely empty. A mahogany desk, quite broad but abnormally short to accommodate Paldor's stature, occupied the far end of the room. Several chairs stood scattered before it, arranged in a vague semicircle. On the wall above hung a large clock of brass gears and heavy pendulums. The rightmost wall was one large window, staring out over the slowly recovering expanse of Rubblefield, while the leftmost…

  On the leftmost wall was a peculiar contraption, smaller but far more complex than the clock itself. Tubes of glass twined over and about each other; some seemed almost to be tied in knots, bending at impossible angles. Through those pipes flowed long wisps of… It wasn't smoke, exactly, for no smoke had ever been so unnatural a color. It took Jace long moments to recognized the aether of the Blind Eternities, for never had he seen so much as a puff of that stuff in the physical world. He couldn't begin to imagine what purpose the device might serve.

  But that was it, the entirety of the office. A great deal of space, with little purpose except, perhaps, to show visitors that Paldor could afford to waste a great deal of space.

  Paldor looked up from the desk, scowled briefly at the clock above his head, and then took several steps away from the desk. Today he wore what Jace would politely have called a robe, and more honestly thought of as a tent. It was wine-purple and made