Gatecrash: The Secretist, Part Two (5 page)

“Now, drop out everything that is stone or brick,” said Ral.

“Sir?”

“You heard me. We won’t need anything that was originally stone or brick. Leave the ashes.”

As Skreeg swam through the cloud, quivering with strain, he made alterations to his gauntlet. The mass of debris wobbled, and then some of the wreckage floated down into the pit, separating from the finer particles of ash.

“Aha!” squealed the goblin. “Sir, I think I did it!”

“Now get rid of glass or thicker pieces of wood,” said Ral, stroking his chin.

Skreeg whimpered briefly. “Of course, sir.” He altered his spell once again, and other fragments of the cloud filtered out. All that remained were fine flakes of ash, swimming and rolling on air currents.

Ral wove a matrix of tiny strands of electricity between his palms, stretching and expanding them into ever-finer threads, forming a gauzy mesh of lightning. “Now bring the ash close together. And get out of the way.”

Skreeg was moaning with the complexity of the spell. The ash cloud condensed into a flat sheet, several feet on a side, and Skreeg’s floating body rolled to one side. Ral lashed out at the sheet of ash with strands of electricity. Electricity zigzagged throughout the cloud, bounding from particle to particle like a dense thunderstorm.

“I’m exploring the natural resonances of the materials,”
said Ral. “Keep floating.”

Ral sent another web of delicate lightning through the ashes. He studied how the tiny bolts leaped from fragment to fragment, connecting similar substances.

“Ow!” yelped Skreeg as one arc of electricity crackled through him. The floating ashes shuddered as the goblin shook and gritted his teeth with the effort of his spell.

Ral altered a control on his mizzium gauntlet, gathered a strong swell of mana, and electrocuted the floating debris once more. This time his lightning not only danced between the specks of burned materials, but drew a selected collection of them together into a stable, fused lattice. It lingered there, hovering before him, a crackling pattern of electric threads.

“All right, Skreeg. Now drop everything but this.”

Skreeg exhaled in relief, and crashed through the burned floorboards and into the cellar. The ash floated down after him. The goblin and various pieces of debris clunked and clattered in the pit below Ral’s feet.

Ral had what he needed. “Routes,” he said, scrutinizing the puzzle still assembling itself in the air before him. The connected fragments of ash reunited in his electric field, forming readable passages of notes. “Beleren had discovered a series of routes through the maze. They were encoded, but viable. He had almost solved it. Skreeg, where are you?”

A pair of small hands appeared at the edge of the pit. The goblin pulled himself up, and flopped onto the ground by Ral’s feet, huffing and coughing. “Can we find Beleren now, sir?”

Ral grinned. “You know, Skreeg, I don’t think we need Beleren anymore.”

We don’t even need Niv-Mizzet anymore
, he thought.

AID FROM AN ENEMY

Jace left the Selesnya grove feeling like a puzzle with its pieces scattered. He pulled his hood up over his head and his cloak around his arms, and stalked off into the metropolis, letting the endless buildings and crowds of pedestrian traffic swallow him.

He was a planeswalker who was once involved in a planar plot—but now that he assessed his circumstances, he had successfully cut himself off from everything about this place. Knowledge of Ravnica’s woes had been excised from his mind. His mage sanctum was ruined. His compatriot Kavin had run off, presumably never wanting to see him again. And Emmara was back with her guild, back in the arms of someone important to her. The exit was open to him, hanging wide like the gates of an abandoned estate. This plane didn’t need him. He was not required here. He could simply step through the veil of reality separating this world from the next, and leave Ravnica behind.

But of course, he couldn’t be
sure
of that. Certainty was one of the many things that had fallen into the
dark hole in his mind. Whatever the guilds were plotting—whatever the Izzet had discovered—whatever the Dimir wanted with Emmara and the knowledge inside his head—it was all gone. And his sense that Emmara was in danger remained. He had thrown open the gate out of Ravnica himself, and had practically put down a fine carpet to ensure total comfort for his departure, but he couldn’t quite bring himself to take the final step and go.

Something was missing. Something wasn’t quite as tidy as it seemed, and it nagged at his mind like an itch inside his skull. It didn’t sit right with him that everything had played out this way.

I need those memories back
, he thought.

A patrol of Boros legionnaires turned the corner toward him, even-shouldered and marching in smart precision. By reflex he hid around the other side of a cart of market goods, eyeing the soldiers through the gaps in the rigging, letting them pass by. If he was their target, they didn’t seem to notice him. He wasn’t even sure who was looking for him now, but his impulse was to hide from guild authority figures, and he trusted his impulses.

Jace paused at the edge of a huge thoroughfare, the so-called Transguild Promenade, a pedestrian walkway that passed between many of the guild-held territories. As beings of all races and shapes and guilds passed by him—a Simic biomancer holding the leash of a ten-legged crablike monstrosity, a Golgari trader with a handcart of treasures found in the undercity, an Orzhov aristocrat with an entourage of dutiful thrull servants—he strained to devise some way to recover what he had lost. The hole in his memory was real, to the degree that any absence could be real, and thanks to the fissure he had no way of remembering
what he had actually done with his memories during the excision spell.

The promenade branched into multiple directions, some of the roads winding their way toward various guild territories, and others leading out of the Tenth District entirely. He found himself stopping in the middle of the street, letting the pedestrian traffic flow around him.

Jace had created a knotted riddle for himself. The question consisted of the excruciating sense that he had given away the answer. He wracked his brain, trying to think of who might have a shred of a clue about that night at the Cobblestand Inn, and trying to stifle the feeling that if he failed, Emmara would die.

Exava swung her swords in figure eights, slicing through the air with unbridled glee as the towers of the district streamed past her. The Rakdos witch stood atop a war platform, held aloft by four muscular, masked minions, who in turn were surrounded by a massive horde of Rakdos cultists that filled the street from shop front to shop front. A wave of Rakdos flowed through the thoroughfare from Rakdos territory, sending up a chaotic clamor that could be heard for miles. Screams and impish laughter mingled with the clatter of the bone drummers and the hissing of riot demons.

Exava was smiling so hard that blood trickled from between her clenched teeth and down the sides of her mouth. She liked the feeling, so she smiled harder. Exava had a wisp of a plan to find the insolent mind mage; he was the type who would concern himself with the lives of innocents. A soft touch, like the
Selesnya elf. She would only have to kick up some chaos, and he would, in time, reveal himself.

She looked down below her at the glorious bedlam she had created. She rode the frenzy and let the riot take her where it wanted. Every once in a while she would give the horde a nudge, guiding the riot toward population centers and guild landmarks. She only needed to lean on her platform, applying her weight in the direction she desired. The man-minions below her would feel the shift in the weight of the platform, and they would compensate, drifting in the direction she leaned. She wondered if her muscle could even see. The spiked leather masks they wore, like all Rakdos gear in general, were designed more for the impact on the viewer than for the comfort of the wearer. No matter. She would see for them.

They approached an Azorius guard station and checkpoint. An archway of elegant white marble stretched across the road, with an intricate triangular guild symbol of the Azorius at its apex. A band of Azorius lawmages raised their swords to the oncoming Rakdos horde, chanting the minutiae of legal protocol as if it were scripture.

“In accordance with public conduct code, section four-two-one, subsection D,” droned one of the officials, “you are requested to reverse your trespass and proceed to the nearest registered guild boundary.”

“Any incursion beyond this point shall be considered warrant for the request of a writ of barred action,” recited another.

A third lawmage just stammered the same phrase over and over. “Entry hereby denied. Entry hereby denied.”

When the snarling Rakdos rioters reached the archway, they smashed through the lawmages like a
bull through a curtain. The Azorius officials’ shining swords were more reference material than weapon, their blades etched with runes of law. Some of the lawmages gave way, and Exava laughed and made rude faces at them, knowing they couldn’t stop her horde without days or weeks of intricate bureaucracy.

The rioters proceeded around a turn. The horde flipped horse carts, smashed shop windows, and trampled pedestrians. Exava grinned with all her teeth, stretching the stitches at the edges of her mouth. As the throng of Rakdos cultists marched, she began to chant, and the cultists chanted with her.

Jace leaned against Lavinia’s door frame like a book propped up diagonally. A globe of lamplight, identical to the staid and precise globes throughout the towers of New Prahv, lit only half his features. The rest of his face was still hidden under the hood of his cloak. Between them was Lavinia’s desk, full of tomes, architectural charts, ancient maps—evidence of deep study in the Azorius archives.

“Didn’t expect you,” said Lavinia.

“You should be asking yourself why I would come,” said Jace.

“Would you like some tea? I could send for the hussars. My captain of the New Prahv guard brews a mean pot.”

“You do, and I vanish. I leave and never come back. And your case never goes anywhere.”

“Until I track you down.”

“Believe me. Where I can go, you’ll never be able to follow.”

Lavinia sat back in her chair and sighed. “Well, my
‘case’ is already nowhere. You’ve been handed off to the Boros, did you know that? The Boros, whose idea of a proper investigation these days is barging into random addresses with a fireball spell. But I’m not even sure you’re such a hot property anymore.”

“I’m not. Before I had my hands on something of value, something dangerous—you would have been right to track me down. But I’ve lost it. And I need to get it back.”

“And you thought you’d break into the Azorius guildhall, and ask your arresting officer? That was your plan to get yourself some help on that score? You’re not a very good criminal, are you?”

“You’re after the truth. I think you know I can be of help in finding it.”

“You know what’s sad? It’s that part of me believes you. But I don’t help those who think they’re above the law.”

“I’m not trying to escape justice. I’m using everything in my power to expedite it. You want to solve the case of the kidnapped Selesnya woman? I can tell you which guild is responsible for the abduction.”

“The Rakdos. We already know that.”

“Go deeper.”

“We know Exava was involved. The demon’s most trusted witch.”

“Deeper.”

Lavinia paused. “You think someone put her up to it? Another guild?”

“Think. Who benefits from guild infighting? Who wants to rouse the ranks of the Selesnya, and start a riot with the Rakdos, so that the public sees nothing of their own schemes?”

“The Izzet? We know they’re up to something.”

“But they’re being anything but subtle about it. In
fact, the Izzet helping the cause. Helping draw attention away.”

Lavinia’s eyes glazed over. “House Dimir.”

“After setting up Emmara’s kidnapping, a Dimir agent attacked me for something I no longer have. And I need to recover it as soon as possible.”