Agents of Artifice

CHAPTER TWELVE

From a balcony halfway up one of Ravnica's great spires, Jace stared downward, his eyesight enhanced by a touch of clairvoyance. He leaned casually against the railing and watched for a few moments as crowds of people ran screaming from the columns of fire that heralded the arrival of Baltrice's firecat. Their quarry, one of the bald and blue-skinned vedalken-named, uh, Serien? Sevrien? Something like that-rolled across the cobblestones and came swiftly to his feet, a gleaming shield on one arm, a brutally serrated scimitar in the other hand.

"Is this what you do with every potential recruit?" Jace asked disdainfully. "I mean, what, you really couldn't think of anything new?"

Baltrice snarled from beside him, keeping half her focus on the struggle below. "It works, doesn't it?"

"So do chamber pots," Jace told her, cocking his head as the vedalken took a blast of fire on his shield, then riposted with a devastating slash that almost took one of the cat's legs clean off. "Doesn't mean I don't prefer indoor plumbing."

The fire-mage glared at him, and Jace wondered if she wouldn't actually have attacked him had her concentration not been required elsewhere.

He wondered, as he often had, just what it was about him that she hated so much. He didn't worry about it too terribly, since he readily hated her back-but he was curious.

"And what are your plans?" she asked gruffly, wincing in sympathy as her summoned pet took another nasty wound below.

"Not sure yet," Jace admitted. "I know I'm supposed to 'test his abilities,' but… I mean, the guy's not even a mage."

"Wow, you noticed that? You're as smart as Tezzeret said you were."

"My point," Jace said, ignoring the jibe, "is that it seems like more of a Kallist thing. Why does Paldor want me testing him?"

"Maybe," Baltrice told him, "figuring that out is another test."

It wasn't, of course. Baltrice had specific instructions for Beleren; she just hadn't bothered to give them to him.

She could always claim she had, of course. He was the only mind-reader, after all, so it wasn't as though Paldor could prove otherwise. And he wouldn't dare ask Tezzeret to subject her to one of the artificer's truth elixirs; not Baltrice.

She grinned after Jace as he shrugged and departed the balcony, ready to invisibly follow

Sevrien (Serien?) home and conduct his own test. No, a failure here wouldn't cause much in the way of lasting repercussions. But every little disappointment was a black mark in Tezzeret's eyes.

Her grin faded and the old fear returned to gnawing at her gut as Beleren vanished. Good as she was at her job, there were always plenty of people who could kill, a few even as efficiently as she could.

But only one, so far as she knew, who could read minds.

And despite her many years of service, she wondered deep in her soul which of them, should it ever come down to it, Tezzeret would consider the more expendable.

"… know what I was supposed to do," Jace lamented bitterly, flopped in a thickly upholstered chair in his quarters. "But Paldor certainly didn't seem happy with me, even though he decided to let Sevrien join up."

Kallist nodded, leaning against a bookcase on the far wall. "What did you do, exactly?"

Jace shrugged. "Sort of an obstacle course. A bunch of illusions, popping up out of nowhere. Tested reactions, accuracy, that sort of thing."

"Hmm. You know, Jace," Kallist offered thoughtfully, "there are other illusionists in the Consortium. Maybe you were supposed to do something a little more, well, uniquely you? Read his mind?"

"Looking for what?"

"How do I know? Or maybe you were supposed to prod at him. Test his willpower. His pain tolerance. Or see how quickly you could read his mind! That sort of information could be useful to know about an operative, right?"

"Oh, please, Kallist," Jace scoffed. "What would be the point of that? Of course he couldn't have stood up to me. He can't even wield magic."

"You know something, Jace?" Kallist said after several long breaths. "If Tezzeret's training you to be a dromad's ass, you're certainly shaping up to be a great student."

"What? What did I-?" But the door was already slamming behind his friend, before Jace could finish the sentence.

"You're late, Beleren," Tezzeret snapped without preamble as Jace entered the stone-walled room beneath the streets. "I'm sure you have every reason to think that my time is yours to do with as you will, but believe it or not, the business of running an inter-planar organization actually requires a little attention."

"Uh…" Jace all but fell back before the sudden tirade. "Sorry," he continued. "I lost track of the time."

"Did you now? And what were you doing that was so important?"

"Mostly getting chewed out by Paldor, with a side of irritating my best friend." "Ah. And will I be hearing about this chewing out from Paldor?"

"Probably."

Tezzeret nodded, motioning Jace to move away from the doorway. "Then we'd best get your practice out of the way before I've any further reason to be angry at you."

Jace moved in, glancing around at the now-familiar steel walls-once more in their oval configuration-and at the table that had been placed in the room's center. It was a great stone slab, easily the size of a small bed.

Or perhaps a coffin.

There were no chairs, and sitting on the floor seemed foolish beside the looming table, so Jace just stood, his posture one of mild confusion.

Tezzeret rapped an etherium knuckle on the steel slats. The entire wall chimed like the inside of a bell, and before the reverberations had faded, one of the steel walls slid aside, allowing fetid wafts of old sweat and human waste into the chamber. A quartet of guards followed after, carrying a filthy, unconscious man. His body was covered with an array of brutal burns and recent scars, his hair was slicked to his head by sweat and oils, and he was clad only in gray trousers. Jace, with a growing nervousness in his gut, only barely recognized him as the records-keeper who'd sold them out to Ronia Hesset.

The man he'd turned over to Paldor's mercies, and whom he'd assumed had been killed those many months ago.

"We kept him alive," Tezzeret answered Jace's unspoken question. "Paldor wanted to be sure we knew everything of value, every secret of ours he'd sold. We thought of having you draw it from his mind, but Paldor seemed to feel you wouldn't take kindly to that. Since he really wanted the chance to punish the man, I let it go; Paldor takes betrayal almost as poorly as I do.

"But from here on out, you don't escape the hard stuff anymore. Today," Tezzeret said as the guards dropped the insensate form on the table. "We're going to talk about the mind. Touch his thoughts, Beleren."

"I… You said you'd learned everything. What am I looking for?"

The artificer shook his head. "Nothing yet. Don't worry about reading it. Just make contact."

With an uncertain nod, Jace directed his attentions to the man on the table.

"All right," he said, a moment later, not turning back toward Tezzeret.

"Good. Feel his mind."

"What?"

"His mind, Beleren. You read minds, you can talk to them. And as you showed Alhammarret, you can destroy them.

"The mind is its own presence! It's real, no less so than the mana you and I both drink from the world around us. Feel it! See it!"

And Jace did, though he had to close his eyes to blot out the physical world around him. For the first time, Jace felt the mind of another living being not merely as a source of images to be read or as an engine to be turned off, but as something far more. Something all its own. In his own mind he felt the other, turned it, examined it like a jeweler with an unfamiliar stone, prodded at its contours.

"Good." He heard Tezzeret's voice, heard the honest pleasure and perhaps even pride within. "You see?"

"I… I do." Still he kept his eyes squeezed shut, fearful of losing the ephemeral image, or the feather-light touch of the other mind on his own. "But what… What's this for? What am I doing?"

"Whatever you want." There was something ugly in Tezzeret's voice, a viscous toxin dripping from each word. "Isn't that the point? If the mind is an object, you can manipulate it as an object!"

Jace found himself shaking, and he felt the first stirring of bile rising up the back of his throat.

"Don't just read his thoughts!" Tezzeret urged, so close now that Jace could feel the artificer's breath on his neck. "Control them! He lies unconscious, but you hold his mind in yours!"

"No…"

"This is what power over the mind truly means, Beleren! Reading thoughts? That's child's play, a feeble game for the man who can control thoughts! You can make him move as you wish. You can shape his memories!"

"No!"

Jace staggered away, his eyes flying open, and allowed all contact with the limp form before him to lapse. He spun on Tezzeret, fists clenched.

"No?" Tezzeret asked, his voice deceptively mild.

Could he make Tezzeret understand? Could he possibly explain how revolting a notion it was, the thought of reaching into someone's thoughts and stirring them like a pot of soup? Could he make Tezzeret understand just how horrifying Jace found the idea of losing his will to another? How filthy it made him feel, to the depths of his soul, to contemplate doing it to someone else?

What he said instead was, "What you're asking of me… It could go wrong in a dozen different ways. It could kill him."

"You're worried about the life of a traitor to the Consortium?"

Jace quailed but stood his ground. "I am if I have to be inside his mind when it happens," he offered as his excuse.

"I see." Tezzeret nodded, then turned to face the guards. "A pity. I was hoping to have you erase all knowledge of the Consortium from his mind, so we wouldn't have to execute him. He truly is a skilled bookkeeper. We could have hired him for some of our local businesses, those that don't require direct contact with Consortium secrets." The artificer heaved an obviously artificial sigh, and waved one of the guards forward.

"Ah, well. I can understand your reluctance,

Beleren." He reached out, drew the sword from the guard's belt and reversed it, holding it hilt- first toward Jace. "So, all right. Just kill him, then."

The steel walls seemed to close on him so tightly that Jace actually took a moment to stare at them, to reassure himself they hadn't somehow slipped their tracks. "Why…" He cleared his throat, tried to swallow. "Why me?"

"Because Paldor told me of your 'problems' when you uncovered this man's treason!" Tezzeret hissed at him, his voice as cold as those sliding walls. "Because you cannot become what you could be-what you should be! — without overcoming the barriers you've placed on yourself!

"You think I'm asking you to kill this man," he continued, his voice suddenly far more calm. "But I'm not. I'm asking you to save him, Beleren. I cannot trust him to live with what he knows. I'm asking you to give me another, more merciful option." Jace stared at him, his jaw working.

"Now," he continued, breathing deeply, "take the sword or not, as you choose. But either his memories must go or he must. And if you're to have any place in the Consortium, it will be at your hand."

Jace clenched his fists until his fingers turned white, and then slowly released a breath, uttered the first words of an incantation…

"No." Tezzeret reached out and tapped him on the head, just barely hard enough to hurt. "No summoning. What you do, you do."

Choking back vomit, Jace spun back toward the table. Mustering everything he had, throwing his all into the spells so he wouldn't have to think of what he was doing, he once more wrapped his awareness around the record-keeper's mind. Again he stared at the fellow's thoughts, his memories, his dreams. And as the better part of him wept, Jace carelessly peeled those thoughts away.

Then he collapsed to his knees, one hand clenched on the edge of the table above his head.

Tezzeret knelt beside him, placed his hand-his left hand, the hand of flesh-on Jace's shoulder. "Thank you, Beleren. Come." He rose, helping Jace to his feet as well. "Share a drink with me in the dining room, before I have to leave Ravnica. Today has been a triumph for us both."

Surely they must have talked, as they trod the corridors of the complex, as they sat and shared a bottle of Paldor's finest wine. They must have, but Jace could never recall a word of it. He only remembered sitting there, drinking goblet after goblet, long after the artificer had left; drinking until he could no longer remember the slack expression on the archivist's face, the stench of his sweat, or the feel of his slowly vanishing mind.

It wasn't until days later that Jace learned that his powers weren't nearly so precise as he'd believed them to be; that he hadn't erased merely the man's memories of the Consortium, but the memories of his life. That he'd left the man an empty husk, an infant in an adult's body.

But by then, Jace had managed to convince himself that he no longer cared.

For a time, then, Jace's life was routine. His assignments for the Consortium primarily required him to verify information or guard shipments of goods, and while he accompanied Kallist on a great many operations, only a few ended in violence. During the many days between such activities, their lessons continued apace, and if Jace never became more than an adequate swordsman, and Kallist never mastered more than a smattering of spells, still the both of them kept trying.

As Tezzeret had promised, Jace's regular practice honed his spellcasting to a level he might never have achieved alone. His pursuit of Consortium goals took him to new regions of Ravnica, and even twice to other worlds. Here he touched the essence of the land, connected with it, absorbed an ever-increasing flow of mana that empowered his spells further still.

As his power grew, the nature of his assignments became ever more nefarious, ever more brutal. After a few months, he was once again accompanying Kallist on assassinations, though still it was always the swordsman to do the final deed.

And eventually, he no longer needed to drink to stifle the guilt.