“Did you like my previous self better?”
“Oh, Hells no,” she said. “You were a dead plumb rat bastard.”
“Then what are you complaining about?”
“I’m not complaining. I’m wondering. I’m wondering what goes on inside your head. Because, you know, there were a lot of things the old Tezzeret could be called, but hard to read sure as hell isn’t one of them.”
“Perhaps you find me hard to read because you’re looking for depth where there is none to be found. I am what you see. Neither more nor less.”
“Depth, nothing. You’re completely festering screwed in the head, and you act like you’re glad about it.”
“Baltrice, let me turn this around,” I said slowly, and with great care, as this was a subject to broach with her gently. “I, too, remember you as being different from who you are now. The Baltrice I knew was… Well, let’s just say you seemed unhappy. Viciously unhappy. And you seemed to be interested primarily in inflicting unhappiness upon as many other beings as possible, often in the form of burn scars.”
“Yeah, I wasn’t very nice.” She shrugged. “Still not.”
“But you are,” I said. “You smile now. You laugh. You occasionally make a joke that doesn’t involve harming or humiliating someone. You think about things other than how to hurt people.”
“Yeah, well, I found a better job.” She waved a hand. “Again no offense.”
“Again none taken.” I smiled at her, as openly and innocently as all my craft could conspire to display. “But suppose, for just a moment, that your happiness had a foundation more concrete than simply enjoying your work. Suppose someone had made you happy-say, for the sake of argument, with a secret wish like what you’d find in children’s adventure stories. If some mysterious benefactor had cast a spell to transform you from the bitter, angry, aggressive woman you once were into the confident, cheerful woman you’ve become, wouldn’t you be grateful?”
“Are you kidding?” She stared at me incredulously. “If some bastard put magic on me to screw with my life? You think I’d thank him?”
“I would.”
“I’d jam both hands in his ass and rip him in half from the bottom up.” She looked as though even considering the possibility had brought anger to a rolling boil. “People who screw with me get third-degree thank-yous.”
I maintained my smile, to show her I’d not intended to make her angry. “I suppose you haven’t changed so much after all.”
“Festering right I haven’t.” She was still tilting her head, though, and giving me those sidelong looks. “You’re really saying you’re okay with it? Knowing that Nicol Bolas stuck his talons into your brain and stirred it like soup?”
“That was Jace,” I reminded her.
She flushed. “He had reason.”
“Granted,” I said easily. Jace Beleren was a subject about which I could not expect her to be rational. “But Bolas was the one who, to extend your metaphor, un-stirred my brain. With his own real-life version of that spell from the adventure stories. Hypothetically. I’m confident it’s within the range of his powers to alter my brain to make me less volatile, less avaricious, more focused, possibly even more intelligent. More capable in every way. If this is so, I owe him more thanks than I do hatred.”
“Are you nuts?”
“Yes, I have lost my precious arm-but Beleren did that, not Bolas. What Bolas has done is restore me to life and health, and to set me forth upon exactly the fantastical quest I had painfully outgrown, and was forced to abandon decades ago-and because of who I’ve become, I may actually have a chance to achieve what has always been my heart’s most cherished desire. How can I not be grateful? Should I hate Bolas for making me a better man?”
“He made you a better tool.”
“I still fail to see why you think this should upset me.”
“And I can’t understand why it doesn’t. Tezzeret, you’re barely even human.”
“Yes,” I said, picking up the vambrace again. “That’s exactly my point.”
I stopped for a moment before triggering the gate, pausing with my fingers on the control surface of the intricate etherium archway, and looked back at Baltrice. She crouched on her sled, bobbing gently a few feet above the sand. “Controls functional?”
“Sure.” She demonstrated by manipulating the twin control sticks to spin the gravity sled fully around, shoot it toward me, and bring it to an instant stop a hand span from my legs. “Same as when you asked two minutes ago.”
“It’d be better if you’d let me set you up with a mindlink.”
“Maybe in my next life.”
“Those control sticks are the sled’s only moving parts,” I reminded her severely. “If too much sand accumulates-”
“I know, I know.”
“How’s the view?”
She flipped forward my most recent modification to her earpiece, a jointed arm that supported a small ring of etherium a couple of inches in front of her left eye. I blinked as I found the earpiece-ear-and-eyepiece-with my mind. “Focus all right?”
“Dunno.” She squinted through the loop. “All I see from here is a giant festering pile of stupid.”
“Hey, same as me!” Doc chimed in.
“Exactly,” I said, which served as a sufficient response for them both; her view came from the perspective of my left eye. “Doc, I need your whole mind on the job, all right? Sometimes you see things I don’t, which may very well make the difference between success and an ugly death.”
“I’m with you, Tezz. In every conceivable sense. But you know if I had even a hint of a better idea-”
“I’d be thrilled to hear it,” I finished for him. “Baltrice. Ready?”
“Close to it as this lifetime’s gonna get.”
I sent a pulse of mana through my hand into the control surface of the transit gate, and within its archway, the view of the dune beyond wavered and wiped itself away, showing now an up-close-and-personal view of several thousand zombie butts.
“Wow,” Doc said hoarsely. “Wow, they’re worse from close up, huh? Practically smell ’em. Shudder.”
“Yes.” One last glance over my pauldron to Baltrice. “A transit gate is not like a conventional teleport,” I reminded her. “It’s a reality warp, to bring the two points together.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah, like a magic door. I get it.”
“Just bear in mind that it’s not a magic door. Do not linger on the threshold,” I said. “I’m holding it open with my own power. When you activate it, the gate will draw on the innate power of the etherium of the archway. It will stay active for only about five seconds, so don’t delay. If it deactivates while you’re passing through, there will be part of you there, and part of you here, and both parts will be messily dead. Right?”
“Right,” she said, all business now.
“If the gate fails somehow with you on this side of it, remember that your sled is very fast. We’re only fifteen miles out, which that sled can cover in less than two minutes from a standing start. Just don’t-”
“Stand up or stick my arms out from the energy screen, or do anything stupid. Stupider. I got it.”
“If all goes well, you’ll never need to move at all. I will let you know via the earpiece when matters are settled. Then you can either return to Vectis or stick with me, at your discretion.”
“Yeah, and how likely is all to go well?”
“It’s not. At all. But the possibility must be prepared for.”
“Yeah.” She gazed pensively through the etherium archway at what I would face at the Labyrinth. At length, she took a deep breath and said softly, “Luck to you.”
“And to you. To us both.”
“It’s a hell of a thing you’re doing. A hell of a thing,” she said. “But I guess you never were a coward. Maybe you’re not so different after all.”
“You’d be amazed.” I turned for the gate.
“Tezzeret?”
I paused at the threshold.
“Have you thought about-I mean, what if he actually takes you up on it? What’ll you do if he just, like, opens his arms and says, Glad to see ya, come on in?”
“Drop dead from the shock,” I said, and stepped through.