Test of Metal

by Matthew Stover

  I don’t mind the aside part, but no skull banger puts hands on me. Until I tell him to.

  He read his future in my flames and backed off. Probably didn’t realize he was sweating like a cross-dress whore in navy nick. “I dunno, Baltrice. He swears he ain’t seen him. Swears. Ain’t seen the kid in ten, twelve years.”

  “Tezzeret’s no kid.”

  “I’m startin’ to believe the old bastard. I really kinda am.”

  “You’re not paid to believe. Work him till you hear me say stop.”

  “I dunno, really, I mean, he’d of told us, Baltrice—”

  I had had more already of back talk from the local talent than I was prepared to swallow. I stepped next to him. Filthy little squit barely came up to my armpit. “You’re getting awful free with my name, Pimple.”

  “I’m Posner—”

  “You want to argue your name before you get mine straight?

  “Uh, your—?”

  “My name, Pimple,” I said, leaning over him enough to give him a good look at the underside of my chin, “is ma’am. You get that? Say it, bitch.”

  “Uh … ma’am.”

  “You and the rest of your bitches keep it straight, and nobody goes home with a fatal sunburn. Right?”

  “Uh … yeah, okay, sure.” I stared at him, waiting.

  “Ma’am,” he said. His tongue located some of that sweat on his upper lip. “Okay sure, ma’am. About the old guy—”

  “Keep on him.”

  “What if he really don’t know nothing?”

  “I’m not paying you to get answers. I’m paying you to inflict casual damage.”

  “I don’t get it.”

  “Well, there’s a twist I wasn’t expecting.”

  Meanwhile, Nozzle had given over the boot-leather kidney massage. He’d found a pair of pliers somewhere and was now applying a clumsy Wojek manicure. I stepped over and undertook my own boot-leather massage to Nozzle’s left butt cheek while the geezer still had some fingernails left.

  Nozzle’s opinion on the subject—which he delivered sprawled on the dirt floor—started with “What the,” included a “you” or three, and indelicately named some of my delicate parts before going on to suggestions that might have made me blush if I hadn’t done everything on his list at least twice, not to mention a couple already this morning.

  I looked at Pimple. “Why am I about to deep-fry your partner?”

  Pimple blanched. “I—I dunno.…”

  I cocked my head at him, and his whole face lit up as somebody in the vast whistling darkness of his empty head finally managed to strike a match. “Ma’am!” he almost shouted. “I don’t know, ma’am!”

  I looked at Nozzle. “So. What was it you said should have improbable varieties of sex with unlikely parts of my anatomy?”

  “Uh, I … uh, I forget. Uh, ma’am.”

  I pointed at a bench against the far wall. “Sit.”

  Nozzle decided the better part of valor was to glue his butt to the bench.

  I took a minute to look over what was left of the old man’s left hand fingertips. There wasn’t much. I’d have to get more local money from Jace and buy the poor old bastard some healing, since my own particular talents run mostly in the opposite direction. “Who told you it was a good idea to start with the pliers?”

  Nozzle went paler. “I just thought—”

  “You thought. Really. As in thinking. Wow.” I shook my head. “Listen, chucklebrain, you know who Tezzeret is, right?”

  “Uh, well, sure I do. Uh, ma’am.”

  “So you understand what your future is gonna look like if he slips our noose here?”

  “Uh … what?”

  I tried to say it slow enough that even these two could understand. “You two ass-clowns are, right now, the guys who maimed Tezzeret’s father … unless, maybe, the old man goes into shock. And dies. Then you’ll be the guys who tortured Tezzeret’s father to death. With me now?”

  Both skull bangers’ eyes went round as soup plates.

  “One of your bitches outside must have some kind of bandages and first-aid crap, in case one of you nancies stubs a toe or something. Go get it, then come back in here and fix his goddamn hand.”

  Nozzle jumped up like he’d been shot from a bow and bolted for the door.

  I beckoned Pimple over. “Forget about answers, all right? When I say work him, you work him. If I want him maimed, I’ll say maim him. If I want him dead, what do you think I’ll do?”

  “Uh … you’ll say kill him?”

  “No, dumbass. I’ll kill all three of you and pretend I was never here.”

  Idiots. But you can’t do everything yourself. If you could, all these brain-dead bastards would’ve starved a long time ago.

  Nozzle got back with the first-aid stuff. The geezer was bleeding from eight or ten places, not just his hands and mouth but an ear and his crotch, so it took a little time there to get the shackles off, and get him cleaned up, bandaged, and straightened out at the table. I had Nozzle bring him a cup of water, but he didn’t seem too interested in drinking until I pulled my flask, at which point he lit up and his mouth started twisting like a hooker’s hammock. I let him take a swallow that made his eyes cross. Cross more. Tezzeret told me once that alcohol’s a luxury item on Esper—not enough surplus fermentable starches. It looked to me like an opening.

  “You like that?” I said, weighing the flask in my hand. “Want some more?”

  “Garn,” he said sullenly, which I took to be the local term for “Quit pulling my leg” or “Get the hell out of town” or something. “Garnen git. I sezafore whuddize godda say.”

  I should’ve bought a damn phrase book; I’d freeze my naked ass to a glacier before I’d ask Pimple and Nozzle to translate, so I went with my best guess. “I’m not even asking, geeze. Want another hit, help yourself.”

  He squinted sidelong at the flask. “Etz pizen.”

  “Well, sure.” I took a whack myself, just to be neighborly. “If it weren’t poison, it wouldn’t be any fun.”

  Given enough time, even this wetbrain geezer could calculate that if I wanted him hurt or dead, I didn’t need to booze him up to do it. “Arright,” he said, taking the flask from my hand. “I thanks ye.”

  “You’re welcome. Go ahead and kill it if you want. Because I think I believe you.”

  Pimple snorted and opened his mouth to object. I shut him up with a look.

  “It’s a shame, though,” I said. “If you had been able to give us Tezzeret, we’d be long gone by now. Since you can’t, I guess we’re staying.”

  I got up and headed for the door. “Pimple. Don’t let him get bored.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “And you,” I said to Nozzle, “if I see those pliers in your hands, I’ll start using them on your hands. Got it?”

  He nodded vigorously. “Ma’am.”

  Time to check in with the boss. I left them to their work and went outside.

  Outside? Yeah, tell me another. Outside is where you can see sky. Not here. Nothing to see here except rock, seawater, and poor stupid bastards without enough brains to know their lives suck.

  Being poor sucks. I know it sucks. I don’t need to be reminded.

  Especially since being poor could still happen to me, if we didn’t smoke Tezzeret in a tenth of a damn hurry. Who would have guessed that stuck-up fancy-pants sonofabitch would turn out to be so damn hard to kill?

  Jace should have let me handle the bastard in the first place. Get it done proper.

  Still, though, I might have trouble against three em-scorps myself. Some, anyway. Wish I could have been here to see the look on his face when they were chasing him bare-ass naked right through the middle of his hometown.

  I did a so-so job of being inconspicuous while I walked the perimeter. Too good a job, and not even Tezzeret would know I was there; too bad a job and he’d know I was showing myself on purpose. But I walked the walk nice and slow, all the way around, and nobody took a
shot at me. Even though I’m a plus-size target.

  Not that I was really expecting anybody to try me. Hanging myself out there was mostly just for fun. Gave me something to do while I waited.

  There’s lots of things I’m good at. Waiting’s not one of them.

  Say what you want about the Conflux and this Planes War going on all over Alara; one thing it’s good for is turning out bucketloads of combat-trained mages. I had eight of them in camouflaged blinds in a double-diamond setup, where at least two had eyeballs on every approach, and each of the eight was in sight of at least two of his mates. And I had another six of the local skull bangers primed and ready to tangle with anything on two legs, because you never know when you might need somebody to do something stupid. Like put a sword to Tezzeret. My skull-banger reserve was lying flat on the highest point in the neighborhood, which happened to be the top of the geezer’s hovel.

  In this toilet, that probably makes him some kind of nobility.

  I had four of Jace’s summoning stones out there, too, loaded with all kinds of Jumbo Economy Nasties that Tezzeret would never know were there until way too late. In any given five seconds, I could put critters on the ground that’d make those em-scorps look cuddly as kittens. I had the place tagged and bagged eight ways from Gruulsday, signed and sealed and stamped and shipped, but I was starting to get the feeling that somehow I wasn’t going to deliver. Something had already gone wrong.

  It wasn’t just a hunch. I’d had time enough to get everything together, and enough time left over to get bored. It just didn’t scan.

  Tezzeret’s a methodical sonofabitch, but there’s not one slow bone in his body. The Tezzeret I knew would’ve hit me like a thunderbolt while I was still trying to separate spellers from choppers. Even coming back from the sort-of dead without that frappin’ arm of his wouldn’t change him that much.

  So either something fatal had gone wrong for him—which meant we’d be waiting till the wrong side of forever—or else he got here, grabbed the skinny with both hands and then bailed like the Giant Brain bastard he is. Either way, it wasn’t good news.

  We’d missed him. Somehow.

  I pulled my Jacequin out of my breast pocket and stood it up on a fold of rock. After straightening its clothing, I had to adjust the legs to keep the damned thing upright, which it mostly refused to do.

  I told Jace this was a bad idea. I never played with dolls when I was a girl, and I’m too damned old to start now. If Tezzeret was watching me, I knew he was laughing his ass off. I could feel my ears burning—which for me can be literal—and I had to clench my jaw to keep myself from looking around to see if any of the local talent was smirking, because if they were, my ears wouldn’t be the only things burning.

  Pretty soon, though, I found the mana channel to activate it, and the Jacequin’s shimmery blue aura lit the thing up vividly in the cavern gloom. The doll shook itself, took a couple steps to find its balance, then turned its painted face up toward mine. “Do you have him?”

  That little squeaky voice usually tickled the crap out of me, but right now my giggles were frozen out by stone cold dread. “I don’t think he’s coming. Any luck topside?”

  The doll shook its head. “I’ve got reliable eyes all over the Seekers, the Ethersworn, and the Mechanists’ Guild. We must be missing something.”

  “Maybe it was never him.”

  “Had to be,” the doll insisted. “Nobody else could have even found his trap, let alone triggered the em-scorps by disarming it.”

  “Maybe he’s got a flunky, right? Somebody he can just send, instead of coming himself. Told the guy where it was, and how to disarm it.”

  “I don’t buy it.”

  “All reports have the guy running from the em-scorps as having two arms. Both flesh. On this plane, they notice that kind of crap.”

  “Try to imagine Tezzeret trusting someone enough to tell him where he keeps his spare etherium.”

  Couldn’t argue with that. “Unless he tipped to the gaff,” I said. “He could have sent somebody expendable just to trigger the trap, right? Somebody he didn’t like anyway. To make us think it was him. So we’d waste our time laying the ambush here, instead of reinforcing defenses on Ravnica. He’s probably back there right now, killing everybody we ever met.”

  The doll lifted a wooden hand to its painted eyes, like Jace was getting a headache. Tezzeret can do that to you. “Ideas?”

  “I think he’s got all the edge there is to go around,” I said. “The thing about Tezzeret is that you can’t outthink him. It’s useless to try and guess what he might do, because he can figure what you think he’ll do based on what you know about him … and then he’ll do something else.”

  “Then what’s our play?”

  “I don’t much like the idea of looking over my shoulder for the rest of my life, but if this kind of stunt was going to work, it would’ve worked by now. We might get lucky. We probably won’t.”

  “What about his father?”

  “Tough old hunk of gristle, that geezer. I’ve had a couple of my skull bangers work him a couple hours now, and the old bastard hasn’t even told them his name.” I shrugged. “If a beat down on his dad won’t draw him, I can’t guess what would. I been around the perimeter four times. If he was gonna take a shot …”

  “There’s only one more thing he’d be waiting for.”

  “Jace, don’t. Don’t even think about it. You do not want to tangle with Tezzeret when he’s ready for you.”

  “If the two of us together can’t handle him, we might as well just—”

  “Might as well and likely will,” I said, even though I could tell he wasn’t listening.

  “And if the old man does know anything, I can get it. With you in a sec.”

  The blue shimmer faded, and the Jacequin was just a doll again.

  I went over to the door of the hovel. “Blade up. Both of you. If Tezzeret has a move to make, it’s gonna be basically now.”

  They drew the thick, squarish hacking swords the local talent favored, and pretended to be smart enough to be on guard. The old man just sat there staring at the ceiling, completely pie-eyed, the flask lying forgotten on its side in front of him.

  There came a soft whumpf like distant artillery, and the ghost of a breeze stirred the hair on the back of my neck. I turned around. “Hey, boss.”

  “Don’t call me boss,” he said, but just on reflex. Jace figures that if nobody in the organization actually knows he’s in charge, nobody will show up to take him out like he took out Tezzeret. It seemed to be working. So far.

  “You’re getting faster with that teleport.”

  “Practice makes perfect,” he said. “Never know when you might need to make a hasty exit.” He leaned sideways to peer around me, which for a guy his size is a considerable lean. “That’s Tezzeret’s old man? He looks drunk. He is drunk.”

  “Hey, nothing much gets by you, huh?”

  He flashed me that quick and easy grin of his. “Well, if it does, I’ve got you for a backstop, right?”

  I gave him a sidelong squint. “Is that a fat joke?”

  “Nah, I’m a fat joke,” he deadpanned. “That was a tall joke.”

  “Next time use a ladder. And somebody else’s sense of humor. And you’re not fat. Just soft enough to be cuddly.”

  So we had our little chuckle there before Jace got down to business. He’s like that. It’s one of the things that make him a good boss—he wants his people to be happy. Tezzeret only wanted us to be obedient. Though I guess maybe Jace’s mind powers could be part of the deal; it’d have to be hard for a telepath to spend all his time around people who think he’s an asswipe. But even if that’s true, it’s not the whole story.

  The big picture is that Jace Beleren really is a damn fine human being. The Multiverse’d be a better place if there were more people like him in it, and I’ll never forget it.

  That last dustup, against that little rot-sucking slag Liliana Vess, had left me in ba
d shape. There wasn’t much I could do except moan and crawl. When I finally managed to drag myself into the Blind Eternities, I made for Ravnica. Not for any reason. I don’t remember being able to even think about it. Just blind instinct, like any other wounded animal. All I wanted was to die at home.

  But Jace found me.

  He had plenty reason to hate me. Hells, if our situations had been reversed, I would’ve healed him up just so I could torture him to death. Even if he decided not to hate me, he didn’t have any reason to help. He could have left me there to die in the sewers. Instead he picked me up and put me back together. Took care of me while I tried to get past the nightmares of all those shades and spirits Vess had plastered me with. And as soon as I was strong enough to work, he offered me a job.

  If I spend the rest of my life paying him back, I’ll never even the score. Every breath I draw, I owe to him. If there is such a thing as a good man in this toilet of existence, it’s Jace Beleren.

  He frowned a little as he turned himself around and reached out with his mind, checking off each of my local talents in turn. “Double diamond, huh?”

  I shrugged. “Classics never go out of style.”

  He glanced up toward the hovel’s rooftop. “Good spot for the spare mercs, too. They’ll never stop him, but at least we’ll hear him killing them.”

  “This isn’t the first time I’ve set up an ambush.”

  “So: his dad, eight mercs—two inside, six topside—eight mages, and you. And me.” His frown deepened. “There’s nobody else here.”

  “We booted the locals. A handy way to ring the neighborhood bells, y’know? News would have been all over the ghetto hours ago.”

  He nodded. “Good idea, but it’s not working. He’s nowhere around here. If he’s even watching, it has to be through some kind of remote device—scrying pool, magic mirror, something. I don’t think he can hide from me, but if he can, he’s not taking his shot. Even with me out here in plain sight.”

  I shrugged. “Maybe he forgave you.”