Agents of Artifice

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

Kerstophe shifted foot to foot, burning with nervous energy, as he waited for a response to his knock. In the crook of his left arm, he adjusted the wooden crate, utterly empty. In his right hand he held a thin stiletto, held backward so the blade was hidden up his voluminous sleeve.

He heard a faint rattling from behind the heavy door, and a small portal-one so expertly blended in with the contours of the wood that he hadn't noticed it was there-slid open, revealing roughly a quarter of a pretty elven face. "Yes? Who is it?" "Delivery for you, m'lady," he said, voice respectful but as bored as any good courier's.

"What is it?"

"Couldn't say, m'lady. Nothing written on the outside, and it's certainly not my place to open it or to ask."

"All right. A minute, please."

Kerstophe's pulse quickened, and he felt excitement radiating from his chest-to say nothing of places somewhat lower down. It always got him worked up, this moment just before it happened. Especially when his "partner" was a pretty girl.

He heard the thump-and-clatter of a bolt being drawn and a chain being unhooked, and the door swung wide. He smiled down at the elf with an almost excessively friendly grin.

"Emmari Tandars?" he asked, dramatically mangling the pronunciation.

"Close enough," she offered with a smile.

"Fantastic," he said. With a smooth motion born from years of practice, he reversed his grip on the stiletto, stepped in close until their bodies nearly touched, and sank the blade deep into her flesh, directly beneath the sternum, angled upward.

They gasped as one, she in stunned agony, he in pleasure. The elf staggered, and he withdrew the blade and shoved, so that her body tumbled backward and out of the doorway, dead before it hit the floor. Just as casually he knelt to lay the empty crate on the floor beside her, then stood, calmly shut the door, and wandered back down the steps to join the traffic on the street below.

A dozen passersby or more, and nobody had seen a thing.

Jace, clad only in the leggings he'd worn in bed, dashed out from behind the door and dropped to one knee beside the fallen elf. His hands were already reaching for her, his jaw clenching at the sight of the growing pool of blood, when her eyes snapped open like the jaws of a drake. Jace released a breath he hadn't even realized he was holding.

"Emmara?" he asked, his voice soft.

"That really hurt," she grumbled, slowly sitting up. Already the wound in her gut had started to close, the blood to dry. Jace knew that if she hadn't begun the healing spell in advance, the wound would have been lethal; as it was, the ugly bruising around it didn't fade with the wound itself, and he knew that Emmara was likely to be in more than a little pain for days to come.

"I'm so sorry to put you through that," he told her. "But I didn't have time to set up any sort of illusion-at least not anything he'd believe after sticking a knife into it." He reached a hand out to help the elf rise. "I just-

Glaring a mixture of anger and pain, Emmara pushed his hand away and rose, albeit shakily, under her own power. Then she turned that heavy gaze directly on him, matched by Liliana's own glare as the necromancer emerged from behind a nearby pillar. Both women stood with arms crossed, scowling darkly, warped and twisted reflections of one another.

"What?" he asked them.

"Would you care to explain, 'Berrim'?" Emmara demanded.

"I figured-" he began.

"Were you afraid I wouldn't be up to defending myself?" she continued unabated.

"And you should certainly know better in my case," Liliana added darkly. "Oh, heavens! We're in trouble! Let's wait for the wounded man to come charging in to save us!"

"I-" he tried again.

"You have any idea the sort of damage your lunging around could have caused?" the elf demanded. "And I don't just mean to me! There's a reason I had you resting in bed, you idiot!"

Liliana, Jace thought sourly, is a bad influence on her. "I didn't race down here to save you two!" Jace shouted, clutching his ribs as the dull ache returned. "I did it to save him!"

That, at least, was sufficient to draw a confused silence. Jace took the opportunity to move from the door and collapse into the nearest chair-a velvet-upholstered monstrosity that might well have been older than the elf who owned it.

"You," he said, stabbing a finger at Liliana, "would have had one of your specters eat his soul, or maybe rotted his flesh off his bones into a puddle of really smelly goo."

"Of course," she said.

"And you," he continued, turning to Emmara, "well, I've never seen you in danger, but I'm betting that your response to a man trying to stick a knife in your gut would be a lot uglier than your healing spells."

"You'd win that bet," she told him, still puzzled.

"So," Jace said, trying to lean forward in his chair and failing, "then what?"

Liliana and Emmara looked at one another.

"Is there anyone here," Jace asked, "with the slightest doubt that your delivery came courtesy of Tezzeret?"

Emmara frowned. "It would be quite a coincidence for it to be anyone else, under the circumstances. Unlike some people, I don't have whole swathes of angry enemies clamoring for my head."

"Exactly!" Jace exclaimed, as though pouncing on a long-sought prize. "Emmara, the only reason Tezzeret could have to come after you is because you're a friend of mine."

"Might be," the elf corrected under her breath.

"So if I hadn't talked you into letting the assassin 'kill' you, then what? What happens when the assassin fails to report back, hmm? Who-or what-does Tezzeret send next?"

Liliana nodded in sudden understanding. "But this way, the assassin goes back and reports the job done, with nobody the wiser."

Jace smiled. "And of course, without the resources of a Ravnica cell, he's got no way of finding out any time soon that his hired killer was duped."

Emmara flushed ever so slightly. "You're right, of course. I'm, um, not accustomed to dealing with the assassin's mindset. My apologies, Jace. Thank you for stepping in."

"You're welcome," he said sincerely. He turned to Liliana, opened his mouth to ask when her apology was forthcoming, and then thought better of it.

"Emmara," he said seriously, "you might be able to count on the deception to hold. I doubt Tezzeret's going to expend what few resources he has remaining on Ravnica following up on a report of a successful kill. But I can't promise that. You may want to consider moving."

The elf gazed around her at the dozens of columns and groaned softly.

"In the interim," he said, rising to his feet with a faint groan of his own, "we'll get out of your hair."

Again he found himself pummeled by a pair of stares, this time unbelieving.

"Jace-" Liliana began.

"You're not ready for-" Emmara said at the same time.

But Jace shook his head, raising a hand to forestall them both. "Kallist is dead," he said, his voice soft. "And now someone's tried to kill Emmara." Both women were startled to see Jace fighting back tears. "I've never been much for heroics; you both know that. But until Tezzeret invited me into his damned Consortium, I never set out to hurt anyone. And now that I've started, it seems I can't make it stop.

"I can't undo the trouble I've caused you, Emmara." At least not yet, he added mentally, thinking back to Liliana's ambitions. "But I won't put you in any further danger. We're leaving."

In the end, neither Liliana nor Emmara could offer any argument to change his mind, despite the occasional shudder of pain that wracked his body, or the brief moments of dizziness that threatened to knock him off his feet. Thus, fully clad once more and carrying a pouch of medicinal herbs given to them by their host, Jace and Liliana exchanged their farewells with the elf-along with Jace's promise that some day, when the danger had passed, he would find Emmara and tell her the truth about his life, about who and what he was-and moved once more into Ravnica's bustling streets.

They walked arm in arm so Liliana could catch Jace when his sporadic weakness overtook him, lest he fall to the earth amid the marching feet of the thick city crowds. His jaw was clenched in a grimace of constant discomfort, and Liliana felt his arm tremble on more than one occasion.

"When you think about it," she said, hoping to keep his attention focused, "Emmara owes Paldor her life."

Jace blinked. "How do you figure?"

"Had he not shot you, we wouldn't have been at her home. And without us there, without the forewarning that something was amiss, how much attention would she have paid to a courier at her door?"

"You may be right. I'll be sure to thank him the next time he's actually a person."

She chuckled, more so than the comment actually warranted, and Jace found himself smiling. They walked in silence-well, without speaking, as the crowds around them hardly qualified as anything less than deafening-for several more moments.

"How did they find her?" Jace finally asked. "They didn't know to question her when I first disappeared, so why now?"

Liliana could only shake her head. For a long while, Jace said nothing more, concentrating purely on putting one foot in front of the other while his companion searched the streets for a tavern or hostel where they might lay low until his strength returned. Only when they'd firmly ensconced themselves in a small, dusty room did he speak again.

"I…" He cleared his throat, trying to keep the worry out of his voice. "Liliana, I need you to do something for me. It may take a few days, even as fast as your specters travel, but I can use the time anyway."

"Of course," she told him. "What do you need?"

He'd been right; it had taken a while, almost four days. By the time the last of the spectral spies had returned with news, Emmara's magics had completed their work and Jace was feeling almost himself again-despite three nights of sleeping in a bed so fragile it seemed a particularly weighty dream would collapse it entirely.

"How did it go?" he asked, almost afraid of her response.

"You were right," she told him gently. "It wasn't just Emmara."

Jace hung his head, slumped down against the far wall, ignoring the furniture entirely. "Who?"

"Gariel's fine, at least," she told him. Of course, she'd already known he would be; she hadn't given

Tezzeret his name.

"Who?" Jace asked again, almost pleading.

"Rulan, Laphiel, and Eshton. They're all gone, Jace."

Jace buried his face in his hands, too exhausted even to weep. "I'm running low on old friends to get killed," he told her.

The look she turned on him was one of pity, yes, but tinged around the edges with a growing disdain. "This won't stop until we make it stop, and you know it. So cut it out!"

"You're right," he said after a moment to catch his breath.

"I don't understand," she said more softly. "How could they know?"

Jace jerked his head up, staring at her, but she had turned away, peering through the filthy window at the abstract shapes moving outside. For just a moment, a dark and terrible suspicion crept from the depths of his mind and lodged itself in his thoughts.

But no; no, that couldn't be. Jace shook his head, as though trying to physically shake the notion loose. He knew her intimately; he'd been inside her thoughts. It simply wasn't possible, and no trace of the foul thought remained in his expression by the time she turned back to face him.

"I don't know," he answered. "But it stops now. You were right, Liliana. Obviously, Tezzeret's got sharper eyes than I thought, and now he's turned them on my friends. He doesn't want to let me run? Fine. No more running. No more hiding."

Liliana crossed the room, squeezed his shoulder in reassurance. "We can beat him," she promised. "But we have to find him."

Jace turned to meet her gaze, and his eyes flashed a deep, inhuman blue. "Watch me," was all he said.

Of course, Jace hadn't the first notion of where to find Tezzeret. But it had occurred to him, during his restless nights waiting to learn the fate of his friends, that he just might know how to find someone who did.

Wearing his accustomed black suede outfit and burgundy coat, and his even more accustomed arrogant smirk, Mauriel Pellam swaggered up the steps to the second-floor gallery. It was always his first stop when he returned to his lavish penthouse after more than a few days away from home. Setting eyes on the various portraits and tapestries, the small gold busts of famous men and the great bronze sculpture of Razia-breasts thrust forward in an awkwardly erotic pose that the angel herself would undoubtedly have found both ludicrous and personally offensive-all this reminded him why he did what he did. Why he worked for such people as he did, delivering goods and messages whose import he scarcely understood. It was all worth it, to afford such luxuries as these.

He had just passed beyond that sculpture when something flashed out from behind it, something that had waltzed past the building's guards and even its eldritch glyphs and alarms without so much as breaking a sweat. Pellam found himself flat on his back, staring up into a pair of unblinking ice-blue eyes.

"Let's talk for a moment," Jace Beleren said to him, "about the messages you carry on behalf of Nicol Bolas…"

The chain was a long one, with nearly a dozen links. Pellam received his instructions from this man, who got them from that vedalken, who in turn received them from that other fellow… But each led him one step farther, and none could keep their secrets from him.

Until finally, near dusk some days later, Jace found himself standing at the gate of a vast estate, located just beyond the borders of Dravhoc District. The surrounding iron fence was high, topped with jutting spikes that each boasted a rune of not insubstantial power. At that gate stood a pair of guards; one merely human, the other loxodon, the gray leathery flesh of his arms and his trunk covered with tribal scars, his tusks capped with iron blades and carved with religious runes. Those tree-thick arms hung crossed over his armored chest, and a flail with a head roughly the size of a small continent hung from his waist. Beyond the guards, the path wound its way through a garden of flowers that should not have been in bloom this time of year, to the home of a man Jace knew to be one of Ravnica's greatest sorcerers. That he was also Bolas's chief agent and contact on this world had come as no great surprise.

"I'd like to see the magus," Jace told the guards as he came to a halt before them.

"So would a lot of people," the loxodon told him. "Not going to happen."

Jace, who had spent hours drawing as much mana as he could from the shores of Dravhoc's slope for just this purpose, sighed dramatically. "I just knew you were going to say that…"

He found Liliana waiting in the corner of the cold and dusty room they'd rented, adjusting the pull on her stolen crossbow and sitting in a rickety chair that was so close to giving up the ghost that she almost felt she could reanimate it. The glare she aimed at Jace as he stepped into the chamber could have flattened a herd of aurochs.

"It worked," he told her, shutting the door behind him.

She continued to glare. "What's wrong?"

"I don't appreciate," she said icily, "being kept in the dark like this." And I definitely don't like not knowing what you're up to! "Especially," she added, taking note of the holes burned into his tunic, the bits of blackened flesh on his arms and chest, "when you're obviously walking into danger. We just got you healed up, damn it! I should've been with you!"

"Wouldn't have been a good idea," he said, grunting with pain as he removed his cloak and the tatters of his tunic. "The point wasn't to kill or even mindwipe anyone. I needed information. I did not need to make a new enemy in the process."

"What are you talking…?" She trailed off, stunned first at the extent of his wounds, and then at the sight of the bloodstained manablade that he dropped to the table. "Damn, Jace, what have you been doing?"

"Talking to people. The wizard needed some convincing." Jace had been reluctant-more than reluctant, almost nauseated-to put the knife to the man's flesh. He knew the pain it caused. But he'd had to know, and he wasn't sure he could've won without the weapon to aid him, or broken through the wizard's defenses without weakening the man first.

"All right," she said, not sounding mollified at all. "So could you at least explain why you wouldn't tell me where you were going?"

Jace offered an embarrassed smile. "Because you'd have tried to stop me, and I didn't think we had the time to argue about it or to find another option."

"Why do I not find that reassuring? Jace, what did you do?"

"I knew we couldn't find Tezzeret on our own," he told her. "So I decided to find someone else who could."

"Oh, sure. You bring back an oracle in your pocket?"

Jace couldn't help it. "That's not an oracle," he told her with a leer.

"But no," he continued hastily when her glare very clearly told him that he was not funny, "I was actually talking about Nicol Bolas."

Liliana shot from the chair as though it had grown fangs. The expression she turned on him could not have been more incredulous had he actually puked said dragon into existence on the floor.

"I'm taking you back to Emmara's," she insisted. "Obviously, you're delusional with fever."

"Think about it!" he insisted. "He's got as large a grudge against Tezzeret as we do-well, close, anyway. And with his sort of power…"

"Then why wouldn't he have gone after Tezzeret himself?" Liliana challenged.

Jace just shrugged. "Bolas didn't get as old as he is by taking unnecessary chances. And even if he doesn't know where Tezzeret's sanctum is, he can certainly help us find it." "Assuming he doesn't just eat us first."

"You have a better idea?" Jace asked.

"Yes."

"What?"

"We don't go looking for Nicol Bolas. Besides," she added as Jace opened his mouth to argue, "you're just trading one wild phoenix chase for another. You've a better chance of stumbling into Tezzeret on the street by accident than you do of finding Nicol Bolas."

"But that's just it, Liliana!" Jace crowed. "I did find him!"

Liliana exhaled sharply, trying to calm her racing heart. It took her a good long moment before she felt steady enough to speak. "And just where is that, exactly?"

"What do you know," Jace asked her, "of a world called Grixis?"