by Ari Marmell
The clicking and thumping of the device grew louder, faster, until the entire table vibrated. And then the mechanism reached some predetermined threshold, and the sounds faded entirely, except for a faint background hum.
All the sounds faded—not merely those of the device, but the hubbub of the tavern, and the noises of the city beyond as Ravnica’s nocturnal citizens went about their business in the darkened streets. Jace gawked at Tezzeret, unbelieving.
“It matches sounds,” the other explained, “and nullifies them. That’s why it needed a sample of your voice. We’ve already provided ours. Noises from without, unless they’re really loud, cannot reach us—and our own voices, assuming you don’t feel the need to start screaming at the top of your lungs, cannot be heard by any beyond the table.”
“Handy,” Jace said, attempting to cloak his amazement in sarcasm and failing miserably.
“It is.” Tezzeret gestured melodramatically, placing his artificial hand to his chest. “Before we go any further,” he continued, “I must apologize for the manner in which you were invited to meet us here. I realize that it must have been both disorienting and perhaps a tad uncomfortable.”
“To say the least,” Jace muttered.
“It was also, however, quite necessary. The Consortium employs only the best, and we succeed at what we do because we admit only the best. We had to be sure that you fit the bill.”
“And?”
“And we’re here, are we not?”
“What if I hadn’t passed?”
Tezzeret said nothing. Baltrice grinned and shrugged. “Probably best none of us know.” She extended a hand across the table. “No hard feelings, hey?”
Jace watched the hand as though it were a viper, then raised his gaze to meet her own and allowed just a taste of his own power to gleam in his eyes. “I’ll let you know,” he intoned deeply, “after I decide if I like what I hear tonight well enough.”
Yeah, that’s right! You bastards aren’t the only ones who can be all dramatic and sanctimonious!
Baltrice snarled and dropped her hand, but Jace was gratified to see her tense. Tezzeret merely chuckled.
“I must assume,” the blond mage continued a moment later, “that you’ve taken the time to learn a bit about us?”
Jace nodded slowly. “Tezzeret, mage and artificer of no small skill, and leader of an organization of no small reach.” Tezzeret bowed his head in acknowledgment. “You,” Jace said, turning to Baltrice briefly and then looking away as though dismissing her outright, “I haven’t heard of.”
He pretended to ignore both the snarl across the table and the gurgle in his stomach. Maybe baiting her wasn’t the best idea …
“As far as I can tell,” Jace said, choosing his words carefully, “the Infinite Consortium, at its heart, is a mercantile guild. You acquire or buy items here and sell them there, where they’re a lot more valuable.”
Time to put the head in the dragon’s maw. “And frequently, I’m guessing, ‘here’ and ‘there’ aren’t on the same world at all. You’re a walker, Tezzeret, or have one working for you.”
Tezzeret smiled, and actually applauded briefly. “Bravo. See, Baltrice, I told you he’d figure it out. Anything else, Beleren?”
Jace looked down at the table, fiddling with the wood, idly drawing a finger over and over across an old scrape. He chewed his lip, as though trying to build up the nerve to say something. For a moment, Tezzeret waited patiently, but slowly his lips began to curl downward, his own fingers to drum on the tabletop.
But that was fine. They’d given Jace the time to gather his concentration, to focus his mind. And using those gathered energies, Jace Beleren—who was never happy with, and unaccustomed to having, only part of the answers—pushed. Tezzeret rocked back in his seat as he felt the younger man peering through the windows of his mind, on the surface at first, but threatening to dive ever deeper.
“I know you weren’t the Consortium’s first master,” Jace continued, voice puzzled. “What I don’t understand is how one steals an entire organization. And from …”
The entire table jumped, threatening to split down the middle beneath the impact of Tezzeret’s metal hand. He leaned across the wood, ignoring the spilled beer, and Jace quailed beneath his gaze as though it were a physical weight. Baltrice stood, and fire—not mere “anger,” but literal flames—burned in her pupils and across the palms of her hands. She leaned forward, murder evident in her scowl, but a swift gesture from Tezzeret held her back.
Through it all, the customers at the other tables continued to drink, unaware of the volcano ready to erupt in their midst.
“I know that it’s been some time since you had any formal training,” Tezzeret growled, “so let me offer you a brief lesson. You may be accustomed to wading through men’s thoughts without consequence, Beleren, and you may be confident in your knowledge that few mages share your gift for reading minds. But any mage with the slightest knowledge of mind magics can sense your intrusion, even if we cannot duplicate it. And we do not care for it.”
Slowly Tezzeret leaned back; Baltrice sat, albeit far more reluctantly. “You get this one free, Beleren, as you didn’t understand the rules. But make no mistake. Try that again on me, or any of mine, and I’ll kill you, no matter how useful you might be.”
Jace, though he wished he’d heeded his first instincts to run, kept his face impassive as he nodded.
“To answer your prior question,” Tezzeret continued, voice as calm as though nothing untoward had occurred, “I do, indeed, possess the Spark, as does Baltrice. The Infinite Consortium boasts more planeswalkers than any other organization I’m aware of, on any world.”
“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 fo
r 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.
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.”
&
nbsp; “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.