“When I said there is no secret,” Tezzeret said through another of his slim smiles, “that’s what I was talking about.”
“That-? That?” The dragon’s great yellow eyes widened, and for a long second his huge lower jaw swung loose. “That’s him?” he wheezed as though he couldn’t quite get his breath. “That-that statue right there-that’s Crucius…?”
“Some of him. It’s more accurate to say that the Metal Sphinx is an expression of him. Everything in this place is an expression of Crucius and of his not-so-mortal remains. He is what he made, and what he made is him.”
“All this time-ever since-you were standing right there, when you said you know everywhere he isn’t. You were standing between his paws!”
“Yes,” Tezzeret said. “Interested in more of the story?”
TEZZERET
So, Tezz,” Doc said thoughtfully inside my head, “this Silas Renn character-you know what I like about him?” Watching in the scrying dish as Renn strode about as though he were actually doing something useful in the Academy’s defense, shouting orders at the top of a voice I had hoped to never hear again, I could say only, “No.”
“Me neither. What a tool, huh?”
“I agree. And as a master mechanist, I am a recognized authority on the subject.”
“Tezz-wow. Was that a pun? Is it my birthday?”
“Hush now, Doc. He’s moving.”
“What, somebody’s gonna hear me?”
“No, but I have to pay attention. The only reason he does not know he is being observed is that our surveillance is not focused on him personally, but generally, on the chamber. If I lose him, he will be difficult to reacquire without giving myself away.”
“So? You’re still afraid of him?”
“No. I despised him,” I muttered as I adjusted the point-of-view angle in the scrying dish to follow Renn out into the corridor. “I was never afraid of him.”
“Even when he was handing your ass to you with a complimentary swirly on the side?”
“Like most weak men, he is dangerous only when frightened,” I said.
“If he’s so weak, how come he kicked your butt up and down that courtyard all the time?”
“Weak in character, not in ability.”
Renn paused at an intersection long enough to berate a couple of the Order’s chairwomen. I left the vision silent-I have heard enough of Renn’s self-righteous upsloper ranting to last me several lifetimes-but I took the opportunity to adjust the scry view to where it could cover the intersecting corridors in any direction.
“His natural magical ability outstrips mine by an order of magnitude. And his family is obscenely wealthy-they bought enough etherium for him to replace most of his body. In three years of trying, I never defeated him.”
“You don’t sound too worried about losing again.”
Several nearby detonations rocked the building enough to shake not only dust from the ceiling but flakes of stone from the buttresses.
“I didn’t come here to fight, Doc.”
“Good thing, too,” he said. “Save your fighting for sometime when screwing up won’t get me killed along with you.”
“If we have to fight, I’ve already screwed up,” I muttered. The shrieking discharge of the city’s anti-dragon artillery set my teeth on edge.
A string of detonations laddered rising thunder as though coming straight for me; the final blast seemed to be just next door. The room pitched and bucked like a maddened gargoyle. Dust and razor-edged stone chips filled the air. Statues that had stood for centuries tumbled from their pedestals and shattered on the floor.
“I hate that-that explosion thing!” Doc whined in my ear. “What in the hells are those?”
“I’m not sure.” Renn was moving again. I turned the scry-view angle to follow. “Magical, mundane, whatever-I hope never to be close enough to one to find out. Don’t worry too much; the Academy’s defensive screens will deflect any that might hit us directly.”
“Which isn’t gonna do us a hell of a lot of good if the concussion knocks down the building and thirty bajillion tons of stone falls on our head,” Doc said. “I still think we could have done this from a little bit farther away. Like, say, Bant.”
Further blasts, however, sounded only in the distance, and shortly they too faded. No more than a few moments passed before the sirens outside wailed the all clear. The etherium chime on the desk by my left hand gave out a musical ping. “All right. Apport interdiction’s suspended while they evacuate the wounded, which means that right about now…”
There came a deep, resonant thump, more like distant thunder than nearby explosives, which was, to my educated ear, exactly the sound I’d been expecting-the air displacement created by something very, very large teleporting into the Academy’s courtyard. In the scrying dish, Renn jumped as if stung and ran for a window.
“Do you get tired of being right all the time?”
“If I were right all the time,” I muttered, “you and I would have never met.”
Reaching out with my mind, I found the tiny device Baltrice wore in her ear. He’s heading for the courtyard along the west colonnade. It would be best if you were there first.
Her muttered response was conveyed through the same link. Really? Boy, it’s a good thing I’ve got you around to remind me about crap we already planned.
The upside of this method of communication was that I didn’t have to endure running commentary from Doc. I pulled the scry view to the colonnade and briefly angled it into the courtyard to confirm my expectation: the immense, elegant majesty of the Grand Hegemon of Esper, flanked by two young adult male sphinxes near enough to her size to have been her sons, all three shimmering with a fortune in etherium filigree that shone even through the residual smoke of the raid. The balance of her retinue was more or less as expected, human and vedalken mages, homunculi, a pair of juvenile firedrakes, none of any concern or consequence to me.
Renn shortly entered view, striding briskly toward a small clot of maids and porters who stood gaping just short of the colonnade, as a personal visit by the Grand Hegemon was a once-in-a-generation event. He snarled at them with his characteristic flap of the hands, and I touched the control on the rim of the scrying dish to pick up audio, as this was about to become amusing.
The maids and porters scattered like a flock of startled geese, except for one huge and hulking porter who didn’t seem to hear. The porter just stood there without reaction, leaning casually on the long handle of a push sweep. “Boy! Porter!” Renn snapped, stomping forward. “Are you deaf, boy? I said get out of sight!”
The porter still did not react. Renn’s face was nearly as red as his crushed-velvet surplice by the time he got close enough to the porter’s shoulder to yank a sleeve. “I will count to three, boy, and when-”
The porter responded with a casual backhanded pimp slap that smacked Renn off his feet and sent him skidding along the corridor, out of sight from the courtyard. “Who are you calling boy, bitch?”
“You know,” Doc said as we watched the semiconscious Renn try to fumble out some kind of defensive magic, “you gotta give her points for style.”
“She does make a vivid first impression.”
Before Renn could remember what plane they were on, Baltrice pounced like a feral viashino, hooked an enormous hand around one of Renn’s etherium ribs, then picked him up like a suitcase and gave him a good shaking. Once she had satisfied herself that she had shaken him well before using, she turned him rightway up and slammed him into the wall. “Shh, now, sweetcake. Don’t make a fuss.”
“You, ah, you, ah-” Renn still seemed to be having trouble understanding exactly what was happening to him. “This isn’t-do you know who I am?”
“I’ll tell you what I know.” She lifted her free hand, which now sprouted flame hot enough to melt steel. “I know etherium won’t burn,” she said, “but I’m pretty sure your balls will.”