He hesitated for one final moment, as one of his subminds-probably the same one that had been heckling him earlier-quietly observed that going back into the artificer’s memories was exactly what Tezzeret had invited him to do, which really turned his stomach for a moment. The sensation resembled dread.
He couldn’t remember the last time he’d been actually frightened.
And he couldn’t imagine why he would be frightened now.
He bared his fangs, silently but sternly instructing that mouthy submind to shut the hell up before he permanently reassigned it to bowel-management duty, and pushed his mind for the last time-really the last time, he promised himself, really really-into Tezzeret’s past.
TEZZERET
This is a stupid plan,” Baltrice said. “And that’s coming from a girl who knows something about stupid plans. I’ve come up with some doozies. But never this stupid. Seriously, Tezzeret, you’re begging him to kill you.”
“Not quite,” I said, a bit abstractedly because most of my attention was focused on fashioning greaves and sabatons out of my sled’s remaining etherium, while reserving enough for rerebraces, vambraces, and gauntlets. “I’m allowing him to choose whether or not to do so, which is not the same thing.”
“Might as well be,” she said. “What in the hells are you gonna do when he makes you start to age like a year per second or something?”
“In that eventuality,” I said, “I’ll depend on you to rescue me.”
“Yeah. And hope that I can get to you-or him-before he kills you.”
I returned my full attention to my work; the obvious needed no validation.
“I’m just worried, that’s all,” she said. “Waiting gets to me. Doesn’t it bother you?”
“You’re waiting,” I said. “I’m working.”
The sabatons seemed to be coming together nicely. Creating my armor from the untempered etherium of my gravity sled obviated the need for tools or workshop. The metal was more than malleable enough to shape with my will alone. It meant as well that the armor would not prove to be much of a defense against spear, sword, arrow, or javelin-but those were not the sorts of threat that concerned me.
I manipulated the several joints of the sabaton’s instep, to ensure that its flexibility sufficed to allow me to walk normally without being so loose that it might expose my tender flesh to Silas Renn’s untender attentions. Finding it suitable, I created its mate without difficulty, donned them both, and moved on to my greaves.
“You’re betting a hell of a lot that he’s a reasonable man,” Baltrice said.
“I am gratified by your concern.”
“I’m not worried for you,” she said. “No offense.”
“None taken.”
“It’s-well, you’re tossing my boss’s life in the pot, too. That’s who I’m worried about.”
“Of course you are.” The greaves were actually quite simple, and fitting them to my calves was the work of a moment. I moved on to the gauntlets.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
I glanced up at her. “The nature of your working relationship is not a mystery to me.”
She squinted at me suspiciously. I went back to work on my gauntlets.
“I still don’t see how doing something stupid isn’t actually stupid.”
“I won’t pretend it’s not stupid,” I said, “but I believe that of all the varieties of stupid at our disposal, this is the safest.”
“The safest way to go in would be to find the bastard in one of your scrying bowls, then open this gate of yours right behind his neck and boil his brain till his skull explodes.”
“I have explained the issues with direct assault,” I said, again a bit distantly, as the gauntlets proved a bit more complicated than I had anticipated. To make them glovelike, with individually jointed fingers, might consume enough etherium that I’d need to cannibalize some of Baltrice’s sled to complete my bascinet. “Renn may have been here for weeks, subjectively-even months. He knows your abilities, and mine, and he has had more than sufficient time to prepare a defense against any attack we can devise. Which is why we’re not going to attack.”
“Yeah, I follow the logic. It’s just not exactly my style, you know?”
“Yes.” I looked up from the gauntlet, a frown curdling upon my brow. “Nor mine, in fact. The old me-the angry man with the etherium arm-would no doubt use this etherium to devise several Tezzeret doppelgangers of some sort, thinking to use them to confuse Renn’s foresight, as cover for a lightning sally of overwhelming destructive force.”
“Hey, I like that one!” Doc chirped.
Baltrice said, “Sounds un-stupid to me.”
“Doc agrees with you,” I said, “which is reason enough to abandon it.”
“Aww, Tezz, that hurts.”
“I wonder if you even know what it is to hurt,” I muttered in reply. “Do you understand suffering at all?”
“Have to listen to you, don’t I?”
That was, I reflected, a fair point. “Baltrice, there is no form of attack that Renn can’t anticipate. Given enough subjective time, he can scan very nearly all his possible futures. The attack I just described is no doubt among them. And this is why I have no intention of attacking him-why I can’t intend to attack him, or so much as plan a contingency assault. Any tactic I can devise, no matter how subtle or arcane, will be obvious to him in the very instant he first sees me.”
She shook her head skeptically, watching me sidelong. “You are different,” she said.
I shrugged and went back to work on the gauntlet. “So are you.”
“Do you ever wonder who you really are?”
“I don’t know what you mean.” The solution for the gauntlet was clear-a succession of five overlapping bands to cover the backs of my hands and fingers, so that making a fist would protect my entire hand, though my palms would remain bare.
That being accomplished, I focused my will to once again draw from the plates threads of etherium finer than hairs. The hand being relatively more sensitive than the chest and back or the legs, worming those threads in through my skin for the direct connection to my motor neurons was exceptionally uncomfortable, rather like dipping my hand in boiling water. But the direct connection would allow me to use the armor much in the same way as I had used my erstwhile right arm: as an extension of myself.
“You know Bolas did something to you, right?” Baltrice was still giving me that sidelong squint. “That he made you different from who you used to be?”
“It seems the simplest explanation. Otherwise, the difference in my behavior would have to be ascribed to some conjectural experience in a hypothetical afterlife-an afterlife I can neither recall nor seriously imagine.”
The only problem with the vambraces and rerebraces was how to properly joint the elbow. It would have been easier if plate armor had ever been the fashion on Esper, as opposed to our defensive magics. All I had to work from were some none-too-detailed memories of Bantian crusaders and my own ingenuity.
“Doesn’t it bother you? I mean, it’s like he turned you into one of those golems you used to make all the time, except you’re self-aware. You’re so calm all the time, it’s festering creepy. Don’t you ever feel like you should, you know, act like the real you? Do things how you know the real Tezzeret would?”
I set the vambrace on her gravity sled, and for a long moment I stared at the sand beneath my feet. I had no idea how to express an honest answer to her question.
At length, I could say only, “Baltrice, I am the real Tezzeret.”
“Yeah?” She squinted at me. “How do you know?’
I spread my hands. “How do you know you’re the real Baltrice?”
“Well, I–I mean, you know, what do you want me to say? I just am.”
“Yes. I, too, just am.”
“Except you’re not,” she said. “Look, I spent a lot of time with you back before-you know. And I’ve spent time with you here. You are not the same guy.”