“So-what, you’re forgiving me?”
“I do not forgive,” he said with a level stare. “But a blood vendetta between us is of no use to anyone but our enemies.”
“We have enemies?” I said. “We as in you and me? Really?”
“Dead, you would be nothing more than an excuse for Baltrice to kill me.”
“That decision isn’t made yet,” she growled.
“You see?” He opened a hand toward her, as a conjuror might invite his audience to observe a nifty trick. “You’re an excellent hostage, a fact that has saved my life already tonight. As for you, Baltrice, well… you have your own reasons to hate me, and I’m sorry for that. I can only plead exigent circumstances, and ask that you accept my apology.”
She blinked up at him, her face slack in surprise-which was pretty much how I felt, too. “Are you yanking my chain?”
“I am not the man who cut you with the mana knife, Baltrice. I am not the man who ordered you into that last battle. Whether I am a better man, or a worse one, is not yet determined. Meanwhile, I am truly sorry for what I-the man I was then-did to you.”
Color was rising in Baltrice’s cheeks-never a good thing. “You think that gets you off the hook?”
“I don’t expect it to,” he said. “I wish only to express my regret. What to do with that knowledge is a decision you’ll have to face on your own.”
“I got a decision you can face in the seat of my pants.”
Tezzeret stepped over another body part or three to squat down in front of me, close enough that if I’d had a dagger I could have stabbed him. His face still displayed nothing beyond that eerie calm. “Please believe me when I tell you that I do not desire your death. I have done this to you because I have been saddled with a fiendishly difficult task, and I can’t risk any interference. Especially from you. You need to understand your situation, Jace-may I call you Jace?”
“I guess not killing me lets you call me whatever you want.”
“Thank you. You have some idea already of the gross parameters of what I’ve done. To make sure you don’t inadvertently take your own life, I must share with you some of the subtleties that underlie your condition.”
“As long as it doesn’t involve any more demonstrations,” I said. “Tell, don’t show, all right?”
“See this?” He held out the coil of wire that he’d used to tourniquet his hand. “This is a metal called etherium.”
“It’s what that arm of yours was made of, right?”
“Very similar. It is also what the device is made of, the one that is currently inhabiting your central nervous system. The salient feature of etherium is that it doesn’t wholly exist in this universe. Or in any. In ways that can’t be precisely explained in words, etherium simultaneously exists in the Blind Eternities; it is an alloy of?ther itself. Etherium, in a very real sense, has a, oh, I suppose you’d say, an inanimate version of a Planeswalker’s Spark. Understanding this is essential for your survival. Are you following me so far?”
“I guess…”
“I know that you will try to remove my device, or deactivate it. You will fail, and the attempt may kill you.”
Well, of course he’d say so. Didn’t make it true. “Go on.”
“First, the device cannot be drained of power, or choked off from its source of mana; etherium, by virtue of its special nature, is a source of mana. Or it channels mana from the Blind Eternities, or carries with it the energy that is reality. As I said, words are imprecise.
“You have experienced already the sort of pain that attempting magical operations can cause. You need to understand that even worse effects will be created by someone using magic on you. You also need to know that analgesic treatment, up to and including magically deactivating your brain’s pain center, will only hasten your death. It would be a death you wouldn’t want me to even describe. Trust that it will be torment that transcends description.
“The special nature of etherium also means that it cannot-I repeat, cannot-be fully manipulated by anyone who is not a Planeswalker. My own Spark-my own connection to the Blind Eternities-enables me to do things with etherium that cannot be matched by any plane-bound mage, no matter how powerful.”
“So I’d have to find a Planeswalker to turn this thing off.”
“One particular Planeswalker,” he said. “Me. Unless you know of another Planeswalker who is a mechanist of my ability. To the best of my knowledge, there has ever been only one other being with the requisite abilities, and he has been lost in the infinite reach of the Blind Eternities for decades. Nicol Bolas himself can’t find this being. Nothing that can be done by you or anyone you can find will work, and any serious attempt will likely kill you. Your best course is to resign yourself to your situation, and console yourself that it is temporary.”
“Is it?” I said. “Temporary?”
“Unless I am slain or incapacitated,” he said. “Think of it as a vacation.”
I wasn’t worried. Not really. Not yet. Though I had a feeling that after a try or two demonstrated Tezzeret wasn’t lying, I might start getting a little anxious.
Baltrice found the words that I didn’t even really want to think, let alone say. “This ‘fiendish task’ of yours-just how dangerous is it?”
He turned to her with a decidedly pensive look. “I do not expect to succeed,” he said evenly. “Nor do I expect to survive the attempt.”
“Then why in the hells are you gonna try it in the first place?”
He sighed. “I have never been a notably original thinker,” he said. “My gifts lie in the realms of attention to detail, and-I believe the phrase is-an infinite capacity for taking pains. The device I inflicted upon you, Jace, is a slight elaboration of one that has recently been inflicted on me.”
“You?” I blinked at him while I tried to figure out how I felt about that. “I kind of think that should make me feel better.”
“But it doesn’t,” he said, again frank and almost friendly. “I know.”
“So when you don’t survive the experience,” Baltrice said heavily, “what happens to him?”
“Eventually? Insanity,” he said with a half-apologetic shrug in my direction, “and a horrible death.”
“If he’s gonna go that way anyway-” She stood up, and flames gathered around her head and shoulders. “Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t roast you right here.”
“Because,” he said seriously, still squatting, showing no slightest sign of worry, “that prediction was based on my working alone.”
She looked at him, then she looked at me, and I looked back at her, and that flush on her cheeks got brighter. So did the flames. “Oh, come on, not really, no way…” she said. “You are not expecting me to-no way!”
Tezzeret shrugged. “I have never been a great fighter, even when I had my arm and all the resources of the Infinite Consortium to back me. You, though-Baltrice, you are more than a great fighter. You’re a one-woman bloody damned army.”
Her flush spread up around her eyes, replacing some of the white-hot anger she’d been carrying there a second before. “You took me easily enough.”
“I took him. You?” He still had that open but serious look on his face. “If I’d had to fight you, I’d be dead already. You surrendered to save Jace’s life.”
“And you’re asking me to do it all over again.”
“His life isn’t actually saved yet,” he pointed out. “And if what you really want is a clear shot at me, where’s better for you to stand than right at my back?”
She looked at me, and again I looked back at her, and I could see that somehow both our lives hung on what I said next.
“I… I can’t ask you to do this for me,” I told her, and if I had even a whisper of a chance to undo the spell, I wouldn’t have to make the speech. “I sure as hell won’t order you to. Do what you think is best. Not for me. For you.”
She sighed and chuckled ruefully. “You little turd,” she said to me, shaking her head. “Like I’m gonna say no after a speech like that.”
Tezzeret’s gaze flicked back and forth between her face and mine, and he had a distinctive steely glint in his eyes-a lot like he used to look when one of his inventions had performed exactly as designed.