“He was an old man!”
“He was attempting to rob me. I defended myself and my property.”
“Rob you?” Renn said wildly. “Rob you in his own study?”
I sighed. “Baltrice?”
“Yeah.” She put a hand to Renn’s etherium breastbone and shoved him into a chair. “Sit.”
“The current Hieresiarch is elsewhere,” I said, “presumably mugging innocents for their etherium.”
This comment turned Renn such an alarming shade of purple that I briefly wondered if his etherium heart might after all be vulnerable to spontaneous arrest.
“Ah…” Sharuum came slowly over the threshold, watching me as if I might be some exotic, unfamiliar, possibly dangerous bug. “Tezzeret, isn’t it? Tezzeret the Renegade-I’ve encountered your legend.”
“Your Wisdom is very kind. Though I would resist the epithet the Renegade, as it implies that I broke faith with the Order, when the truth is precisely opposite.”
Sharuum did not appear interested in the distinction. “Is there an epithet you prefer?”
This stopped me for a moment; I’d never actually thought about it. “I suppose,” I said finally, “the Seeker suits me as well as any I can imagine. Unlike these fraudulent Seekers of Carmot, my search is real.”
I watched closely to see how she would take this characterization of the Seekers, but again my powers of observation were insufficient to penetrate her seemingly infinite opacity. “I have been given to understand that you are dead.”
“He’s been dead for more than ten years-” Renn forced out in a strangled gasp, and his hands went under his surplice, no doubt seeking some sort of anti-zombie spell or some such silliness.
Baltrice said, “Fwhoosh. Soft breeze.”
Renn, with uncharacteristic insight, decided to shut the hell up.
“Ten years?” Fully within the Vault now, Sharuum brought her own light with her, in the softly twinkling radiance of her fantastically intricate etherium filigree, as well as the miniature solar system of etherium droplets the size of strige eggs that orbited around the majestic sun that was her humaniform mask. “My information is younger than that-hardly dry, much less weaned.”
I inclined my head. “Your Wisdom has excellent sources.”
“Hey-hey, didn’t Jace rip up your brain in, like, a whole different universe?” Doc hissed. “You think she knows about us? Well, not me, but about, y’know, Planeswalkers and such?”
“I have reason to believe she does,” I murmured.
She inclined her head to take in a different view of my face. “To whom do you speak?”
Hmmm. Distressingly good ears. I took a breath. “As do many tinkerers, artists, and others who spend too much time alone, I have developed an unfortunate habit of talking to myself, Your Wisdom. I humbly beg your pardon.”
“For mumbling, or for lying?”
I drew breath to protest, but the faintly sly smile that touched her humanlike lips was enough to stop me. “You spoke truth, not honesty,” she fluted, “and thought I wouldn’t know the difference.”
Well.
I took a second or two to try out my response in my head before I let it pass my lips.
“I have spent entirely too much of my life around beings all too unfortunately resembling Master Renn, Your Wisdom,” I said. “It has left me ill-prepared for thoughtful conversation.”
“A pretty answer,” she piped with a hint of amusement. “A thorny union of truth and honesty, birthing graceful flattery.”
I inclined my head. Feeling myself flush, I did not trust my speech. It was unexpectedly gratifying to be appreciated by someone with real intellect.
She went on. “Please assure your stealthy friend that he need not whisper, and then please introduce him.”
“Hey-hey, is she talking about me? She can hear me? How can she hear me?”
“The Grand Hegemon, Doc, was not born into her title, nor did she win it at dice,” I said. “Your Wisdom, I call my friend Doc, short for Doctor Jest. My friend is stealthy from necessity, not discourtesy. His body is, for good or ill, coextensive with my own. He speaks to me by manipulating the nerves of my left ear. He and I have been… joined… only recently, and we are still unsure of our relations to each other, much less the rest of the world.”
“And now we have an answer of more honesty than truth-but truth is, after all, merely fact,” she piped.
“Whoa, crap, she talks like you!” he hissed.
“I have a more melodious voice.”
“Um, yikes. Flinch. Cower.”
“And Doc-if I may address you thus-would you care to share exactly where and how you learned the word zoophiliac?”
“Ah… not really. That is, hmmm, if it please Your, uh, Wisdom, I respectfully answer, well, no. I would not care to. My thanks.” He tried once more to whisper. “How long do I have to keep this up?”
“Until you are satisfied you have sufficiently embarrassed us,” I said.
“Yeah, okay. I’m done then.”
“In the future, child,” Sharuum piped, “it may serve you well to remember that one never knows who might be listening.”
This was, I reflected, a useful admonition for me, too.
“In the interest of sparing your valuable time, Your Wisdom, may I speak at some length? I hope to briefly outline my understanding of the parameters of our situation, in hopes that you may be able to correct where I am mistaken, and enlighten where I am ignorant.”
She graciously inclined her head.
“Wow, you do have nice manners.”
“Shh.” I moved out from the lectern of the Codex and stood before the great sphinx, close enough that should she choose, she could crush me with her forepaw.
“This is what I know,” I said. “I know that Esper is lately engaged in a pair of brushfire wars-one of aggression against Jund, and one in defense against Grixis. I know that both of these brushfire wars are escalating to full military conflicts of a sort our land has never known; the significance of today’s bombing raid against this city is not lost on me. I know that we of Esper are far, far fewer in number than our enemies, and that the survival of our land rests wholly upon our superior arcane weaponry and command of magic. I know that our superior weaponry is dependent upon etherium, as is the depth of power of our mages, and that numbered among our land’s enemies are powerful beings who have come to understand the power of etherium, and who seek to deny that power to us by taking it for themselves. I know that even the limited war so far has exhausted, or nearly so, our land’s etherium reserves, and I know that the publicly proffered rationale for Your Wisdom’s travels has been to seek among the vedalken, the Ethersworn, the Proctors of the Clean, the Architects of Will, and finally here, to the Vault of the Seekers of Carmot, for any surplus etherium, and to seek those who might create it anew. And I know that this publicly proffered rationale is an intentional deception.”
This came out sounding a great deal more harsh in my ears than it had in my mind. For a moment I mentally stumbled, struggling for words to continue; for his part, Doc contributed a hoarse, “Tezz, buddy, listen-don’t piss her off. Really. Oh, crap-I think she’s really mad!” which was, as usual, the opposite of helpful.
But despite Doc’s alarm, Sharuum showed no reaction. She made no move of any variety. I was unable to determine that she was breathing. I swallowed, and took a deep breath of my own.
“It is legendary among the Seekers that Your Wisdom was the closest confidant of Crucius the Mad himself. The Seekers of Carmot teach their adherents that it was Crucius who installed you as Grand Hegemon, and that you learned more of his secrets than any other being, living or dead. That all Esper’s recent advances in the exploitation of etherium flow, ultimately, from you.”
I discovered I was sweating, though the Vault was dank and chill.
“If all this you say is true,” she said with slow and careful precision, “what significance do you attach to it?”
“That you know full well a truth known by only a few beings outside this very room: that the Seekers of Carmot have never had any secret of etherium’s creation. That you know full well the supposed Codex Etherium is blank. That no one other than Crucius himself has ever created etherium, and that carmot itself, the ‘missing ingredient’ of etherium, is entirely fictional. That there is no such thing as carmot. It has never existed and it never will.”