by Ari Marmell
"I know… know someone here who is," he gasped between clenched teeth. "But I'm not sure… I can manage to get there."
"The sphinx?" Liliana asked. Such a creature soaring over the peaked towers of Ravnica would draw a few eyes, but it wasn't any more unusual than a dozen other sights the citizens would see that day.
"Dismissed her… after she dealt with the guards. Brilliant… wasn't it?" Jace chuckled, then shuddered as the bolt shifted against his ribs.
Liliana stood. "All right. Whatever you do, don't fight this." Her voice was clear as ever, but her lips quivered of their own accord, as though reciting a litany separate from the words she spoke.
Something rose from the floor by Jace's side, something wispy and insubstantial, a fume on the air that clung only vaguely to a humanoid shape. It reached out, not with a hand, but with its head, on a neck that stretched ever thinner, impossibly thin. A mouth that wasn't brushed against the young man's skin, and his body quivered with a shudder that had nothing to do with the pain of his wound.
"Don't fight it," Liliana had said, yet how could he not? Its touch was unnatural, a blight as it flowed through flesh to caress him from within.
At his strongest, Jace could have resisted easily, kept the phantasmal thing from infecting him. But as the pain flared in his wound, as his blood spilled across the floor, Jace struggled to gather his thoughts, to muster what power he had remaining… and failed.
He felt it pour, liquid and cold, through his body, across bones and muscles. His every limb went numb, and the world grew subtly distorted, as though a gossamer veil had somehow unfurled between his mind and his eyes.
"What did you do to me?" Jace demanded. He was startled to find that it hurt less to speak than it had moments ago-but also that a full second had passed after he thought the question before his lips and tongue formed the words.
"You're possessed," Liliana told him in much the same tone of voice she might have used to tell him he had something in his teeth.
"I-what?" "Relax, Jace. I've told him to obey your thoughts. You're still in control of your own body."
"Why would you…?"
"How do you feel?"
Jace took a moment. The torment had indeed lessened, though he still winced at the feel of the inches of wood currently inside him. "A little… better," he admitted.
Liliana nodded. "He'll keep you insulated from the worst of the pain, try to hold your body together so that walking doesn't cause any further damage. You won't be able to go far, but we should be able to get outside, wave down a carriage."
"All right." Slowly, perturbed at the odd delay between intention and movement, he rose to his feet. He felt a faint surge of deja vu, staggering wounded from the complex. "We'd better get… get out of here. Liliana?"
"What?" "Paldor. Left sleeve."
Liliana took just a moment to kneel beside the catatonic man, and rose clutching the manablade in her fist. "What in Urza's name…"
"Manablade. Powerful, could be useful." And I'll be damned if I'll let Tezzeret have it back!
She nodded, handing him the dagger, which he fumbled into his belt. She reached down once more to grab Paldor's small crossbow and a handful of bolts. No telling when they'd prove useful, especially with Jace helpless as he was.
"Where are we going?" she asked as they moved toward the door. "Where's this healer of yours?"
"Ovitzia District," he said.
"Well," Emmara said, craning her neck to look up at the two newcomers on her porch, faintly luminescent in the orange glow of the setting sun and the magic streetlights flickering gradually into illumination. "This is a surprise."
"Emmara!" Jace greeted her, his words growing ever more slurred. "It's great again. You… I mean… He blinked once, languidly, reaching out toward her. "I can't find my hands." His eyes rolled back, their lids fluttering shut, and Jace went limp, dangling upright like a coat on a hanger thanks to the possessing spirit within his unconscious body.
Emmara circled Jace once, as though looking for the wires that held him erect, then knelt to examine the obvious wound. For the entire circuit, Liliana watched with an expression hovering between hopeful and darkly suspicious. A pall of silence hung over them, broken only by the trundling wagons and passersby on the street beneath, the occasional boat passing even farther below, and Jace's labored breathing.
"Can you help him?" Liliana asked, even as Emmara brushed the cloak aside for a closer look at the protruding bolt.
Emmara rose again to her full unimpressive height. "Who am I helping?" she asked blandly. "Berrim? Or Jace?"
Liliana didn't even blink. "Which one gets your help faster?"
The elf narrowed her eyes but nodded. "Bring him inside."
At Liliana's command, the spirit within Jace plucked at tendons and muscles, driving his body into a shamble as awkward as any newly animated zombie. Emmara cast the necromancer a look of profound disgust and found herself reviewing a suite of her own defensive spells-just in case-before following them in and slamming the door shut behind her.
Darkness gave way to a muddled gray, and then to a fuzzy image of an off-white room.
No, not a room. Rooms had walls. This had pillars, with only a single wall whose window looked out on the street below. He'd made it.
Jace all but gasped in relief, then groaned as agony danced across his ribs with stomping feet and iron shoes. The world went gray yet again, and when it finally resolved itself once more into Emmara's home, Jace saw a beautiful face and a halo of black hair staring down at him.
"Miss me?" he asked, his voice weak.
"More than Paldor did," she said, sitting beside him-no mean feat, considering how narrow the bed was-and wiping the sweat from his brow. "How do you feel?"
"Like someone-"
"If you say 'like someone shot me with a crossbow,' I may just get the bolt back from your elf friend and stick it back in you."
"Uh… I hurt," he concluded lamely.
"I know," she said softly. "And I don't want to see it happen again. But Jace-"
Jace recognized the tone, felt his lips press together in a flat line. Don't say it. At least give me a few days-a few minutes-to recover First! Don't say it.
"They'll find us again," she said firmly. "They'll keep finding us, if we don't make them stop."
She said it.
Jace opened his mouth to argue, then froze as the question finally sank home. How had Semner found them? The man had no magics, they'd done nothing to give themselves away, or at least nothing he could think of. Nobody of any import traveled through Avaric, so how…
He realized Liliana was still talking, and shook off his reverie as best he could.
"Liliana, look at me! This was just one cell, and I've got a hole in me! There's no way we're taking on the entire-"
"Damn it, Jace, listen to me!"
"No."
Liliana leaned forward, staring him in the face. "We can beat him!"
Jace barked out a laugh, then wished he hadn't as the room swam and his chest seemed to catch fire. "Liliana," he insisted through clenched teeth, "you're wrong. You have no idea how powerful Tezzeret is!
" I-"
"He's not stronger than us. Not both of us together."
"Even if you're right," Jace argued, hoping a new tack would head off yet another repeat of the same argument, "what good would it do? Let's say by some miracle we do get rid of the bastard. What then? Go back on the run while his replacement comes after us for revenge? 'Can't let people think the Consortium is vulnerable,' right? So either way-"
"You're an idiot." Liliana shook her head and rose, pacing to the nearest pillar. "How did I come to care so much for someone so thick?"
Jace watched her, squinting as she passed in front of the open window and the sun laughingly stuck needles in his eyes. "Enlighten me."
"You may know Tezzeret," she told him, "but I've studied the Infinite Consortium itself."
"Tezzeret is the Consortium," Jace corrected
.
"No, he's not. Think about it. A dozen worlds, each cell with dozens of employees, soldiers, and spies. How many of them even know about worlds beyond their own?"
"Well, right, but-''
"How many of those know who Tezzeret is? And of those who do, how many care? A few of his lieutenants and personal operatives, maybe. Nobody else, Jace. For Urza's sake, why do you think he was able to take over the damn thing to begin with? It's because most of the personnel don't know who's giving the orders. They certainly don't care, as long as they get their share of everything!"
Maybe it was the pain, or the lingering disorientation of the wound and Emmara's healing magic, but Jace could not-or would not-comprehend. She couldn't be saying what it sounded like she was saying! Could she?
But she only nodded at his bewildered gaze. "You don't have to hide from the Consortium. We take Tezzeret, and we can run the damned thing!
"No more hiding. No more dashing from home to home, wondering who's watching you, or how to pay for your next meal. You can do what you want. You can make the Infinite Consortium into what you want!"
"Just by getting rid of Tezzeret?" Jace asked skeptically.
"Well, you'll have to kill a few of his closer associates, too, but-"
"Oh, is that all? Kill Tezzeret and a few of his associates?"
"What?" she asked, puzzled at the sudden bitterness in his tone.
"I don't want to kill anyone anymore, Liliana. I certainly don't want either of us to die. And if we try this, we're going to do both. We're going to kill a few people, and then Tezzeret's going to kill us, and none of it will matter."
"Jace…"
"No! Even if you're right about everything else, how would we do it? Do you know every world the Consortium touches? The location of every cell, the name of every leader? How to build those aether-tubes so you can feel if someone needs to reach us? We can't rule the Consortium, Liliana!"
"We can once you pull that information out of Tezzeret's mind."
"It's stupid, it's suicide, and it's not happening." Jace lay back in the bed, suddenly desperate for more rest. "I'm going back to sleep," he continued, "until I start feeling better. And then, if you're ready, we can talk about where to hide after we leave Ravnica."
He winced at the sound but otherwise gave no notice as Liliana snarled and vanished into the teleportation pillar. And damn it, he wouldn't feel bad about this! It was a stupid idea. Asinine. The notion that they could somehow take the Consortium from
Tezzeret was as ludicrous as taking on the artificer himself. Liliana was fooling herself.
But when the pain finally subsided enough for Jace to return to sleep, his dreams were dreams of power.
Damn him!
Liliana stormed from the house, ignoring Emmara's questioning glance. For many minutes she walked the streets of Ovitzia, almost hoping someone would accost her, give her an excuse to really cut loose, but of course nobody did. Finally, as her mind began to clear, she found herself before a storefront that had already closed down for the evening.
It would suffice. A swift touch and the wood around the latch rotted away, allowing her to slip inside. She propped the door shut behind her, glancing around at the shelves of rope, hammers, nails, and lumber, smelled the overwhelming aroma of sawdust, and wondered briefly who in Ovitzia built with wood anymore. Then, with a shrug, she stepped away from the windows and began to breathe deliberately, steadily, relaxing for the effort to come.
For many long minutes she stood, unable to calm herself, her body tense. The moment of truth, now-and she had to admit, to herself if nobody else, that she didn't want to go through with it. This would hurt Jace, hurt him terribly, a thought that filled her with genuine remorse. It wasn't a feeling to which she was accustomed, and she found she didn't much care for it. For a few moments, Liliana Vess allowed herself to pretend that she might choose a different path.
But she knew she would not, that she could not, that any thought to the contrary was as immaterial as one of Jace's illusions. And if he wouldn't allow her to talk him into doing what must be done, then the suffering to come was his own fault.
They would both just have to live with it.
Liliana worked her magic and stepped away from the world of Ravnica.
"Anything?" Tezzeret asked, leaning back in his chair, etherium fingers interlaced with those of flesh and bone. His reflection stared up from the glossy metal panels before him, a warped and twisted view that just might have matched his soul better than the face he actually wore.
"No." Baltrice took a deep breath. "I got nowhere near the complex myself, as we agreed. But I did find a few of Paldor's surviving guards and sent them back to check. The cell's more or less lost, boss. Paldor, Sevrien, and Ireena are all mindwiped, the archives have been burned… There's nothing useful left."
Tezzeret screamed, cursing Beleren's name in half a dozen languages, promised a thousand different deaths to the young mage, to any who harbored him, to any who spared him so much as a kind word or a friendly glance. Cracks spiderwebbed the desk as his fist struck it, again and again, allowing a foul-smelling elixir of oils and blood to leak from the eldritch mechanism. Baltrice, who had witnessed more than one such display in her years, took a careful step back and prepared a simple spell to ward off any further projectiles that might indiscriminately come her way.
None did, however, and the storm passed as swiftly as it had arisen, though the redness in his face and the quivering in his neck and jaw were more than sufficient evidence that it roiled still, just beneath the surface. "Damn him…" Tezzeret muttered, having exhausted all his more colorful curses. "The Ravnica cell was one of my best. Have you any idea how hard it was to set up?"
"Yes. I've been here through most of it," Baltrice reminded him. He ignored her.
"Why?" he demanded of the Multiverse itself. "Why come out of hiding now?"
Wisely, Baltrice didn't even try to respond.
Tezzeret sighed, the deep, heartfelt lament of the truly put-upon. "I was too kind, that was my problem. Too kind, and too lazy. I should have made a greater effort to find him over the past years, and to put him out of my misery."
As I told you, more than once, Baltrice noted silently.
Another sigh, and the room began to resound with the staccato beat of metal fingers on metal desk. And just as abruptly he froze, a far-off look on his face, a look that Baltrice had seen many times before.
"Who?" she asked him.
"Kamigawa," he muttered after a moment. "Just what I need right now. I swear, if that damn rat-shaman's interfered with another of our shipments…"
"Do you want me to deal with it?"
"No," he told her. "I'll handle it. It'll give me time to think, if nothing else."
The room into which Tezzeret eventually walked was highly ornate. Silk curtains in bright hues, chosen to perfectly offset the darker rugs, draped the walls and the open doorways. Paper lanterns illuminated the chamber in a dim yet steady glow, and the scent of heavy incense was almost overwhelming.
Standing before him, bowing low in a show of great respect, was a seemingly young woman clad in a dark kimono, her hair hanging loose around her ears. Only the narrowness of her features and the pale hue of that hair suggested a faint trace of the tsuki-bito moonfolk in her ancestry. The third leader of the Kamigawa cell in as many years, she'd inherited a dangerous post, and Tezzeret honestly didn't think much of her long-term chances. The shaman of the Nezumi-Katsuro had not only never forgiven the attack that claimed the life of his shogun, he'd killed half a dozen Consortium agents, as well as tortured and murdered the cell's prior leader, in an effort to coax Tezzeret into facing him personally. His most recent challenges had been addressed to the "Metal-Armed Emperor," suggesting that he'd learned much from his interrogation of the prior cell lieutenant.
Tezzeret, of course, couldn't be bothered to deal with the rat himself. The cell would handle it eventually, no matter how many leaders it had to go through in th
e process.
"What is it, Kaori?" he asked gruffly, glancing at the broken shards of tubing on the wall. "You know how hard it is to replace those."
"My sincerest apologies, my lord," she offered, her musical accent almost lost amid the buzzing of the gears. "But there is one here who would speak to you, one whom you have employed in the past, and who swears she bears information that you must hear. She claims she knew of no other way to contact you."
"Is that so?" Tezzeret furrowed his brow, then nodded as one of the curtains on the far wall drifted aside and a newcomer entered from the adjoining hallway.
"Well. Liliana Vess."
"Tezzeret," she greeted curtly.
"And to what do we owe-"
"Forgive me if I don't take the time for pleasantries," she interrupted. "I don't have a lot of time before I'm missed."
"All right. I'm assuming this is important, since you damn well know better than to contact me like this."
"Depends. Do you consider Jace Beleren important?"
Tezzeret leaned forward like a hound straining against his leash. "You know where he is?"
"Not exactly," she lied. "The ghosts from whom I've learned of his recent activities were not so specific. Either they don't know, or they have reason not to tell me. But they've told me much of his activities, past and recent, and I can tell you how to flush him out."
The sun had set on Gnat Alley-or rather, the sun had set on one end of Gnat Alley, for the longest thoroughfare in all of Ravnica saw neither dusk nor dawn at the same moment on each tip. Here on the ground, beneath the veritable webwork of bridges and suspended streets, the towering spires and floating platforms, the streets were ill maintained, the structures dark and often dilapidated. Squatting in their midst like bloated spiders were numerous brothels, gambling halls, and bars that sold drinks unavailable or illegal topside. Gnat Alley had to be as long as it was, for somewhere along its length a brave or foolish stranger could find for sale any goods or services imaginable, and a few inconceivable to any sane mind.
Assuming, of course, that said stranger survived long enough to do so.
