Gatecrash: The Secretist, Part Two Read online

  “Time we start a riot,” she said.

  One by one, she sliced through the shackles, releasing the slavering spikers and cultists. One by one, the imps and warriors formed up behind her, grabbing weapons and snarling in sadistic delight. One by one, she enlisted her soldiers of chaos, and their howls sang Berrim’s name.

  Jace walked through the tunnels ahead of Emmara, listening to the way her footsteps made little splashes on the dank floor and the wet sound bounced around him.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, glancing over his shoulder.

  “For what?”

  “When you sought me out, I know you weren’t looking to get in the middle of all this. Trouble just seems to follow me around.”

  “Yes, it does,” she said. “You are a vortex of trouble. Always have been, as long as I’ve known you. But it’s not just you. Things are bad up there. I’ve been around for a long time, and the guilds have never been this tense. Kidnappings. Territorial attacks. Killings. And it’s going to get worse.”

  “And through it all, you’ve kept me safe.”

  “I’m glad you’re safe,” she said. “It was worth it.”

  “If I hadn’t ruined my own memories, I could be of more help.”

  “No. You were doing the same thing I was. You were taking steps that you thought would keep us safe. Paying the cost.”

  “Once we get you back to the Conclave, once Trostani knows you’re alive, maybe we can put an end to all this. Defuse these guild tensions. You’ll be an example for peace. We’ll show them how the Selesnya don’t retaliate, even against the Rakdos.”

  Emmara smiled. “That sounds nice.”

  They walked through the undercity, climbing staircases when they came upon them, making their way toward sunlight.

  “Hey, Emmara?”

  “Yes?”

  “Remember that carved leaf you gave me? The artifact, to use to contact you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did it work?” he asked. He wanted to ask: Did you hear the words, “I need you?”

  “Yes. I heard it. I was preoccupied with my Rakdos captors at the time, but I heard it.”

  “All right, good,” said Jace. “Just making sure.”

  He was walking ahead of her, and he didn’t look back to see her face, to know what, if anything, those words meant to her. But he felt a warmth in his chest, just knowing that she had heard them.

  UNFAMILIAR DEPTHS

  In print, the words looked formal, inescapable, and undeniably official.

  “Notice of Change of Assignment.”

  Officer Lavinia’s spirits sagged. The letter seemed to be taunting her in its gleaming blue print. It listed her greatest honor—ultimate responsibility for the enforcement of law for the whole of the Tenth District—under “Previous Position.” Under “New Position” it said merely, “Supervisory Official, New Prahv.”

  She knew it was more than a change of assignment. It was a demotion, a punishment for her failure to capture Beleren. For that, she was effectively jailed in her own guildhall, chained to her post by her own strict compliance with guild law. She knew that meanwhile, Beleren walked free.

  Before her guildmaster, the sphinx Isperia, assigned her to the towers of New Prahv, Lavinia had never spent much time in her office. The chair and desk were utilitarian but beautiful pieces of furniture, and her pen set gleamed under the luminous sphere that hovered near the vaulted ceiling. Everything around her had been designed to rigid specifications. But to her, nothing was perfect but walking the streets of the Tenth. Nothing could approach the sound of her boots clacking against pavement, the scent of a crisp morning dawning after a night’s patrol, the feeling of a suspect’s cheek mashing against the cobblestones.

  The hardest part to take was that she had no way to track down Beleren from inside the towers. Kavin’s visit had given her fresh motivation to capture the mind mage. Kavin had been with the Azorius years ago, and had been as fine a lawmage as any she had encountered—so when he came to her, his mind invaded and altered by this man Beleren, her imprisonment had become too much.

  She stood up from the finely-crafted desk and traveled down the flights of equally finely-crafted stairs. She approached the main entrance of the Lyev tower: her would-be doorway out into the bright streets of Ravnica.

  “Greetings, Officer Lavinia,” said the head gatekeeper.

  “Hello, Samil.” She moved as if by somnambulism, telling herself she only wanted to ask the guards something. Anything. “How goes the shift?”

  “Well, the rioters have all passed through. No Azorius casualties. Some property damage.”

  He was talking about the Rakdos, of course. She hadn’t done more than scan the reports. She knew it was important, that such a large-scale uprising by the chaotic cult merited more of her attention. But her mind was fixated on finding Beleren. “Any arrests?”

  “Many writs filed with the Minister of Territories and Holdings. No arrests.”

  “That’s good. I mean, it’s good there weren’t casualties.”

  “Right.”

  Lavinia looked past the gatekeeper, who was backlit by the bright afternoon out on the street. The marketplace in the plaza nearby would be in full swing by now, pickpockets cutting their way through the crowds, swindlers luring their marks into illegal dice games, agents of the more corrupt guilds eavesdropping and casing the wares. And somewhere out there Beleren, a mage capable of even more devious crimes, walked free, unknown to the populace. While she was in here.

  The gatekeeper wasn’t standing in the way of the exit, and didn’t even have his polearm angled to block her path. The way was open. She could simply walk through the doorway and leave New Prahv. She knew the gatekeeper would rely not on force, but on her loyalty to the law, on her devotion to the judgment of her guildmaster, the Supreme Judge Isperia, to prevent her departure. It was a gate made of principle rather than iron. All she had to do was to forget that Azorius loyalty for one moment, to sleepwalk her way through a hole in the wall, and she would be free to pursue Beleren.

  “Can I help you with something, ma’am?”

  She glanced at the gatekeeper. She could see that the man could read her dilemma, and that it was creating a profoundly embarrassing moment for him. The shame was excruciating—not only to consider violating the direct order of her guildmaster, but to have an underling witness her entertaining the idea.

  Nevertheless, she took a step toward the door. It was just one step, no further.

  “Ma’am?”

  “Just let me do this,” she said quietly, hovering on that one foot.

  The poor gatekeeper looked terrified. He didn’t move to bar her way, but he didn’t move aside, either.

  But she had pivoted on the ball of her foot and had returned to the heart of the tower, leaving the gatekeeper behind her. The word of the sphinx was law. If she did not live in accordance with that law, she would be no better than the criminals she pursued.

  In the spiral staircase, she paused. She produced the sheet of paper again, the official words in tall blue type, the runes of the writ that shackled her to the building. As long as she was part of the Azorius Senate, this was what she must obey. But she thought of the Tenth all around her, just beyond the walls of the tower, the people of the district constantly under siege by the schemes of the other guilds. And she thought of Jace Beleren.

  She pulled another piece of paper from her cloak—the hurriedly scrawled notes given to her by Kavin. What a horrifying ordeal, she thought: to lose your memories to some mind-withering spell, and to try to capture them on paper as you lose them.

  Kavin and Beleren had been researching a code, according to the notes, and Beleren was convinced that it had to do with the actions of the Izzet guild. This was what drove Beleren. This was the key to understanding who he was, she thought. This was the key to bringing him to justice.

  Rather than walk up the stairs to her office, she turned and headed down. She spiraled past the senate offices, pa
st the ministers’ floors, past the entrance gate. She continued spiraling down below where the street would have been, through the tower’s sub-levels, until she reached a new checkpoint. The guards down here wore robes rather than armor, and had owls perched on their shoulders.

  “What brings you to the Grand Archives of New Prahv?” asked a guard. The owl on her shoulder swiveled its head around to look at her, and blinked its blue eyes.

  “Just a bit of research,” said Lavinia.

  “You failed me, Vosk,” said the voice, the syllables echoing from everywhere.

  The vampire Mirko Vosk stood in a cavernous corner of the undercity, deep below street level in a structure that had been built centuries before. Vosk had guessed it had probably been a library or archive at some point; the texts were long gone, but the smell of moldering pages soaked the walls. As usual, he could not see his guildmaster, but only cast his answers to the air around him. Not only had Vosk never seen Lazav, ruler of the Dimir guild, with his own eyes, he had never met anyone who had. But Lazav’s omnidirectional voice had a special closeness to it tonight, a hostility that Vosk felt as a chill on his neck.

  “Our information was wrong, Master,” Vosk said. “Beleren knew nothing. I’m sorry.”

  “Beleren knew everything,” rasped Lazav’s voice. The last word rebounded around the chamber, ringing with accusation. “You dare tell me my information was incorrect? You dare come here without Beleren and without the elf, with nothing but a mealy-mouthed apology? How am I to utilize their secrets if you never deliver them to me?”

  A shadow darted along the wall behind a heap of crumbled marble. It was too quick to identify, and it disappeared into the darkness.

  “His memories had a hole in them,” Vosk said to the air around him. “He had lost everything he had learned. I don’t know how. Someone … someone else must already have drained him.”

  “Someone else? You think there’s some other Dimir-trained psychic vampire stalking Beleren for the secrets of the maze?”

  “No, Master.”

  Shadows coalesced into the silhouette of a man, a hooded figure that stepped forth. Vosk could not see the face of the man under the dark cloak, but when the figure spoke, it was Lazav’s voice.

  “You have failed me, my once-promising agent, and now I must see to matters on my own. But I have devised a fitting punishment for you. I trust you will find it poetic.”

  The cloaked figure of Lazav moved silently forward, like a shadow unmoored from its host. Vosk stepped instinctively backward as it approached.

  “You will be … forgotten.”

  Clawed hands emerged from the sleeves of the cloak, and Lazav pulled down his hood to confront Vosk face to face. Vosk saw Lazav’s face and gasped.

  Mirko Vosk saw his own face grinning back at him.

  It was himself, down to the last detail. Every line of his forehead, every eyelash, every curve and vein of his neck was repeated in the other’s visage.

  “Shapeshifter,” Vosk breathed.

  “Take him,” Lazav said.

  The rasping voice, the voice he had heard giving him orders for years, sounded so wrong coming out of his own leering face. He was so struck by the incongruity, by the violating horror of seeing his own skin stolen, that he hardly noticed the figures shimmering out of the shadows.

  Dimir guildmages emerged through the walls and took hold of his arms and neck, clamping some cold, enchanted metal against his skin. They blindfolded him and dragged him, his heels scraping along the uneven floor, as Lazav, snickered at him. The laugh reverberated around the chamber, scattered by acoustics and illusion magic, sounding sourceless and omnipresent and terrifying. The sound penetrated Vosk’s brain as hands pulled him, blind and helpless, into the undercity.

  Where will they take you? asked Lazav’s voice, now spoken in frozen words inside of his mind, feeling even closer than it had felt before. Where will your prison be?

  The guildmages pulled him through rancid puddles, down staircases, through curving and sloping tunnels for what felt like days. His captors lifted him over unknown obstacles and carried him through windy, echoing spaces. They escorted him over creaking, unstable boardwalks and dropped him in stinking water. They tied rope around him and lowered him down a pit that felt miles deep, and then dragged him through pipes and tunnels again. At all times, an uncertain number of hands retained their iron grip on him, other agents of House Dimir, just like him.

  Finally Vosk’s captors used magic to push him through tunnel walls—and he knew by the duration of the sensation of passing through stone that the walls were thick. He fell against a flat, cold, stony surface, and the hands released him all at once. His bonds dissolved, and he was free to move his arms and head again. He removed the blindfold from his face but he saw nothing. The darkness around him was complete.

  He felt around. The boundaries of the floor were quickly apparent, and the ceiling was low. His cell was uncertain in dimension, but featureless other than the smooth stone. Vosk’s sensitive fingers felt nothing in the stone, not a crack, not a ridge, not a single fissure of any kind. He pounded on the walls with his fists, but they were so solid that they barely registered the blows. He was in a black, featureless box in some unknown place far below the district.

  The voice in his head laughed, and the sound echoed from one side of Vosk’s head to the other. “I’ve hidden you away,” it said. “And using a technique I learned from my formerly most promising agent, I’ve drained the memories of my mages who’ve brought you there. Now no one but I will ever know where Mirko Vosk is laid to rest. No one.”

  Lazav’s voice in his mind said nothing else. All was quiet.

  Vosk slumped against the flat, unyielding wall.

  After a moment he heard a rustling in the darkness, and the sound of breathing. Someone else was in this cell with him.

  “Hello?” said a man’s voice in the void. “Is someone there? My name is Kavin. Please, where am I?”

  STIRRING UP THE PAST

  The sacred grove of the Selesnya Conclave was new to Jace. It was a manicured temple garden, natural yet sculpted. Trees and creeping ivy were allowed to grow and thrive, but were manicured in pleasing patterns against columns of white marble. Around the edges of the garden, soldiers of Selesnya stood at attention, bowing their heads to Emmara as they passed.

  Jace had never seen Emmara take on her guild persona like this. Even with days of travel on her, and the muck and injury of the undercity, her bearing was noble—not the cheap nobility of title or holdings, but originating from somewhere within her. She was a true hero of the Conclave, and all the sentries admired her as she passed through the Selesnya gates.

  A group of Selesnya elders greeted them as guests of honor. They adorned Emmara with leaf garlands and bowed to her. Jace’s presence was met with politeness, but tinged with looks of suspicion. When their eyes shot to him, their faces became stern, and their tranquil smiles were strained. Perhaps they knew that Jace had once refused an offer of membership in their guild, or perhaps they blamed him for the Rakdos attack on her.

  Still, one of the Selesnya elders, a wizened woman in a white robe inset with wooden elements, put a small gift into Jace’s hand. It was a carved wooden leaf, like the one Emmara had given him before. This one was different in shape, long and tapered, with a slight twist in its edge, but equally delicate and masterfully made—a precious gift of welcoming. Jace bowed to the creator.

  A tall elf man, geared in Selesnya soldier dress, stepped out from the ranks and strode toward him and Emmara. He smiled broadly at Emmara, and when she saw him, the two elves seemed to fall toward each other, their movements as symmetrical as partners in a dance. When they met, they took each other’s hands and locked eyes for a significant moment. Then, in a formal gesture but with great tenderness, they touched foreheads together, and it was more intimate than a kiss.

  It struck Jace that Emmara had never looked happier. And he had never felt more naïve for thinking that she
actually might have had feelings for him.

  Of course she had never said anything that specified that her relationship with Jace was in any way romantic. She had come to him as a friend, looking for someone who could help her and her guild. And, as a matter of personal policy, he had never plumbed her mind beyond a wisp of a surface thought. He knew she had said she was not interested in humans. He knew they were only friends. He certainly didn’t know that Emmara was with someone, but that was certainly nothing she was required to volunteer.

  Finally the elf man extended his hand. “Jace, is it?”

  Jace shook it dazedly, then more firmly, trying to remember the etiquette of the situation. He swallowed his mortification like a stone.

  Emmara saw his face. “Oh, I’m sorry,” she said sheepishly. “Captain Calomir, this is my friend Jace Beleren.” Her eyes were trying to apologize to him, but her cheeks were flush with joy. “We’ve been on a bit of an adventure together.”

  Jace tried hard not to begin the process of finding flaw with the man. Involuntarily he imagined the man’s skin being cold, cold as a lizard’s scales, as cold as the vampire’s had been—but that was nonsense. Jace felt a dark twinge of intuition about Calomir, a morbid desire to find what lay behind this rival, but that was, after all, what jealousy felt like.

  “I’m sorry, Calomir, she didn’t mention you,” he heard himself say. That was childish, he thought. But he took a momentary, mean pleasure in saying it.

  Calomir didn’t bite. “Thank you for bringing her back to me,” he said. “But aren’t you the mind mage? Seems like something that’d be hard to miss for someone who can read minds.”

  “My magic doesn’t work like that,” Jace mumbled. But that was probably how others thought of him: as an invader of minds, someone who probed into the secrets of everyone he met. It was a wonder Emmara even considered him a friend, if she believed that of him. She had wanted him to join the Selesnya guild—she likely saw him more as a weapon than a friend, a dangerous asset to secure within her own organization rather than letting it fall into the hands of the enemy.