“You have any idea where this is going?”
“No,” Doc said. “But this looks like a good time to fire up the rest of your shields.”
Sharing his perspective, I did exactly that. “Baltrice,” I said, “are you seeing this? I seem to be getting some sort of response.”
Silence.
“Baltrice?” I said, more sharply. “Baltrice, respond.”
Frowning, I sent my mind into the etherium circuitry of our linked ear-and-eyepieces. Mine, built into my bascinet, appeared to be perfectly functional, so I bypassed it and sought Baltrice’s device with my mind… and found nothing. As though the device no longer existed. My heart began to pound like a living creature trying to bash its way out through my sternum.
Apparently I was not yet the emotionless golem she had described. “Doc. We’re in trouble.”
“Oh, you think? Are you watching this?”
The mound of zombies had grown nearly ten feet tall, and likely three times that in diameter. Now their rotting flesh had begun to melt as though they lay under a waterfall of aqua regia. But whatever power might be liquefying their flesh, it left their skeletons untouched, even as it dissolved tendon and ligament. In moments, the mound of zombies had become a pile of naked, disjointed bones. The bones themselves began to move, lifting and twisting and fusing themselves into a web-work archway that anchored itself upon a ring fused of the remaining bone. The archway stood ten feet tall, and the ring on which it stood was perhaps sixty feet in circumference. In the very instant it was complete, an eldritch reality whorl distorted the view through the arch.
A transit gate not unlike mine, differing mainly in materials.
When the view stabilized, I was looking into what appeared to be a lavishly appointed sitting room, and looking back at me was what appeared to be a young woman of exceptional beauty, her lustrous obsidian hair unbound and draped in ringlets to perfectly frame her flawless oval face. She wore a wrap of translucently sheer silk, artfully layered to leave exactly enough to the imagination. She said, “Tezzeret. It’s been a while.”
“Vess,” I said slowly. “Liliana Vess. The necromancer. I remember you.”
“That’d be more flattering if it hadn’t been quite so much work. We need to talk.”
“You’re a Planeswalker…” More and more about her was coming back to me, but in glacial drips and drops, slower than cold treacle-almost as though the information had been deliberately obscured. By Bolas, undoubtably. But why? “I don’t recall you having this level of power.”
“That’s part of what we need to talk about,” she said impatiently. “I work for Bolas, just like you. We don’t have very much time.”
Interesting. Almost interesting enough to divert me from my immediate necessities, which included reestablishing contact with Baltrice. “Are you alone?”
“For now. Briefly.”
“Silas Renn.”
She nodded, her gaze flickering from side to side as though he might unexpectedly appear.
“How long before he gets back?”
“Depends,” she said. “How long do you think it’ll take him to kill Baltrice?”
The sitting room on the far side of the transit gate was every bit as well-appointed as it had appeared. I stood in the middle of a rug that undoubtedly cost more than my father had earned in his entire life. I was still in my armor with all my shields working, excepting only the outermost, as it is an ungracious guest who sets his hostess’s house on fire.
The sunlight had a peculiar quality here, brighter and warmer than I’d ever experienced on-in-Esper, as well as displaying a distinctly more golden color. Bant, perhaps? I had not yet had the leisure to acquaint myself with the finer details of our newly conjoined planes.
I tolerated an extended account of why Liliana Vess had helped Jace escape from my presumably villainous clutches, and how she had managed to defeat some dark interrogations to which I had apparently subjected her, and why this and how that and who everything else, seemingly without end; her tale was larded with evasions, rationalizations, and excuses for various acts of which I had no memory at all.
There was no reason to reveal this to her; quite the opposite. Her account offered substantive insight into how she thought, and into what she took to be the truth of why, and the power and ruthlessness she was willing and able to wield in pursuit of her goals.
That I stood there at all was the result of a coldly rational assessment of Baltrice’s chances against Renn-especially if he’d managed to take her by surprise-and my own chances of rescuing her against a forewarned and forearmed clockworker.
If I survived the morning, I might have an opportunity to avenge her.
At length, I felt I had to cut Vess off, in the interest of expediting our negotiations, though there was one point of curiosity that I felt should be satisfied. “I am still unclear why you would have bound yourself to Bolas’s service,” I said. “I should think a woman, mage, and Planeswalker of your obvious intelligence and experience would know better than to sign anything in blood, much less a binding contract with Nicol Bolas.”
She looked a bit nettled. “You work for him too.”
“Against my will,” I said. “Whereas the sort of contract you signed is willing by definition. No one sells their soul by accident, through deception, or under duress. It doesn’t work like that.”
She looked away, a shadow settling upon her face, dulling the sparkle from her eyes. “There’s willing and there’s willing, and not all duress is created equal,” she said. “Let’s just say that Bolas was the best choice I had left.”
“Your other options must have been dire indeed.”
“You can’t begin to imagine.” She shook her head to drive the shadow away. “We need to talk about Crucius and Bolas and Renn.”
“Are you accepting my offer?”
“I’ll take any help I can get. Even from you.”
I shrugged away the insult. She did not know me anymore, if she ever had. “Your brute-force-and-ignorance approach has failed to solve the Labyrinth. Believe me when I tell you it never will.”
“Bolas gated the zombies in from Grixis,” she said grimly. “But it was my idea.”
“He’s not fond of wasting mana on futile operations,” I said. “But neither am I. If you-or he-had bothered to ask me, I could have told you in advance that it wouldn’t work. And, more usefully, I could have told you why.”
“You can tell me now.”
“I can.”
After a second or two, she said, “Well?”
“Can is not synonymous with will.”
Her face set as though carved in cold stone. “What do you want?”
“I want-I need-some assurance that I can trust any single word that comes out of your mouth.”
She allowed herself a humorless laugh. “Trust? We’re both grown-ups here, aren’t we? If you don’t want to work with me, you’re welcome to go back to burning Bolas’s zombies.”
“He has you in a screw press, yes? And he’s tightening it every day.”
“Every hour,” she said. “He has zero faith in your ability to find this Crucius character on your own.”
“Was making a deal with me your idea?”
“I’m desperate, Tezzeret.”
“An imperfect rhyme.”
“Damn it, listen to me! Bolas knows everything-your little chat with that sphinx-queen of yours and the whole damned thing.”
“I anticipated that he might know what transpired at the Seeker Academy,” I said, “but that’s far from everything. What’s your offer?”
“You don’t understand,” she said. “You’ve got it all backward. He knows way too much-he can probably solve the Labyrinth by himself.”
“I doubt it.”
“We have to stop him. Somehow.”
“A project even more dubious than locating Crucius.”
“If only,” she said. “The last thing in the Multiverse we want to do is give that bastard what he wants. We need to make sure he never finds this sphinx of his. Never.”