“You intend to represent our guild in the maze,” she said. “Perhaps I have information you need.”
“You’ve spoken to Beleren,” Calomir said. He glanced around the house. “He was here?”
“I’ll tell you what you want to know. But first there’s something I want to know from you.” Emmara’s hands trembled behind her back. She hoped she looked calm and cooperative. She cast her eyes down, then up into his. “I’ve been doing some thinking. Do you remember the day we met? In the Ovitzia District?”
“The day we … met?” His eyes darted for a moment, but he never lost his composure. “Of course.”
“You do?”
“You thought I’d forget a moment like that? Just because we’ve quarreled doesn’t mean I’m not the same man.”
Emmara looked straight into his eyes. He held her stare. “You said something to me that day,” she said. “Do you remember? You told me a joke. It was about one of the vendors at the market, or something. I thought it was so clever, so funny coming from a young, uniformed soldier of the Selesnya. Remember that?”
“Of course I remember.”
“Tell it to me again.”
“What, the joke? No, Emmara, not now.”
“Just say what you said.”
“A joke told on command has no humor to it.”
“But it was just so funny, the way you said it. It endeared me to you that day. I could use some of that, after how you’ve left me in here.”
“The dragon’s race is the important thing now.”
A cold shadow passed over Emmara’s heart. There was no such joke on the day they met—Calomir had never been much for verbal humor. And they had met here in the Tenth, not in the Ovitzia District. “You don’t remember that day, do you?”
“Enough of this. If this was all you had to tell me, I have to go. I need to prepare my team and be ready at the start of the maze, first thing tomorrow.”
Emmara remembered what Jace had said—that under no circumstances could Calomir be chosen as the Selesnya maze-runner. “Trostani chose you?”
He tipped his head and gave a faint smile. “I recommended myself, and she assented. And once I win the race for our guild, then we can see to your case. I can ask for leniency from the guildmaster. But you’ll have to remain cooperative.”
Emmara bit her lip and fingered the shard of glass. “I’ll be good.”
“I know you can be.”
“Calomir.”
“Yes?”
“Come here.” Emmara held one arm out to him, the other demurely behind her.
Calomir paused. But he went to her, and they wrapped their arms around each other.
Vines snaked out of the floorboards, slowly wrapping themselves around his feet and legs. Emmara clutched him and whispered in his ear. “You. Are not. Calomir.”
Calomir tried to pull away, but Emmara held him fast. She sunk the shard of glass into the center of his back. Calomir pushed her away. He craned his neck, trying to see and reach the shard, but it was just out of reach. He turned back to her.
“You little fool,” he said.
“How did you do it?” she hissed. “How did he die?”
“Shall I tell you you’re delusional now? That that mind mage has fed you lies and sickened your mind?” He tried to step toward her, but his feet wouldn’t move. He looked down and saw the roots and vines twisting around his ankles.
“Was it poison?” Emmara spat. “Did you slit his throat while he slept? Did you wring his neck with your own vile hands?”
Just then a Selesnya guard, the young man with the thin red beard again, looked in through the door. His face opened with surprise to see Captain Calomir under attack.
Emmara needed to keep the shapeshifter talking, and keep his attention on her. “You tell me,” she said. “You tell me how you murdered my Calomir. Tell me where you left his body, you thing.”
The shapeshifter smirked. His legs became like liquid for a moment, easily shedding Emmara’s vine spell, and he stepped toward her. Behind him, the guard’s eyes went wide.
“You’re not necessary,” the doppelganger said. “I was doing you a favor by allowing you to rot in here. You know I can take your form just as easily as I took his. Now I see that I should do you the same way I did him. It was with his own sword, by the way. This sword.” He unsheathed Calomir’s sword.
“You look like him. But you can never be him, Dimir deceiver.” Emmara did not look at the guard at the door for fear of alerting the shapeshifter to his presence, but she pronounced those last two words for his benefit.
The shapeshifter shifted his spine, and tendrils spread out from his back as his flesh rearranged itself. The shard of glass dropped out of his back and shattered on the floor. The shapeshifter stalked toward her, raising Calomir’s sword. She had no power to summon her elementals anymore. She had very little magic that could constrain a being with such a fluid form.
“It’ll look bad if you kill me,” she said.
“I’ll tell them the traitor tried to esc—” the shapeshifter began, but then he toppled forward and collapsed on the floor. Not dead, but not moving.
The red-bearded guard stood there, holding an artifact in the shape of a carved branch, an item designed to hold a spell—a stunning spell. The man looked terrified.
“You’ve done well, fellow soldier of Selesnya,” said Emmara.
The guard blinked at the prone shapeshifter. “That’s not Captain Calomir.”
“No. It’s a shapeshifter. A face-taker. And that spell won’t keep him down long. Give me your sword.”
“I—I don’t know … I can’t …”
“Quickly! He’ll kill us both. He might even steal your face, and kill anyone who learns his secret.”
“I can’t kill a superior officer.”
“He’s not—” Emmara began. She stopped herself, and sighed. “It’s all right. Can you let me out of here? Trostani needs to know.”
The guard unlocked the door and let her out. Emmara slammed the door closed behind her. “I doubt it will do much to lock him in there, but it might slow him down.”
But when she looked back through the window in the door, the shapeshifter was melting into the floorboards, his liquefied body finding fine cracks in the wood and descending out of view. Emmara didn’t even have time to shout—he was gone, and she couldn’t detect which way he had slithered.
The ruddy-bearded Selesnya guard stood agape, taking in the barrage of new truths about Calomir and therefore about her guilt. “I … I’m sorry I doubted you, ma’am,” he said.
“That’s all right,” she said.
The guard bowed his head, this time not from disgust, but with respect. “I wish there was some way I could repay this slight against you, Dignitary.”
Emmara brushed house dust from her robes. “I could use a witness when I speak to the guildmaster.”
When Jace opened his eyes, he lay on a pebbled shore by a river. Gray-barked trees flanked the river, admitting a strip of bright gray sky above them. Jace put a hand on his neck, feeling the ragged holes left there. He kept his hand squeezed against the wound, but blood trickled through the gaps between his fingers and down his arm. He tore a strip of cloth from his cloak, wadded it, and pressed it against the wound, and used another strip to tie the bandage fast to his neck.
Jace stood and walked along the riverbank. He couldn’t remember how long it had been since he had been to Zendikar. It was as good a destination as any, as different from Ravnica as any world he knew, barely touched by the hand of civilization. It was too savage a plane for conspiracies and intrigue, too changeable for permanent nations. There were no guilds, no streets, no scheming guildmasters. Still, the shifting, smooth pebbles under his feet reminded him of a cobblestone street.