handcraft workshops. At this hour only scattered windows showed lamplight, but here, above the caverns, the night was clear and the moon provided light enough for me to find my way. A wall of stone twice my height and topped with razorglass closed off the brewery’s midden, and theoretically prevented rats and other local vermin from feasting upon the rotting remnants of the malted grain and dead yeast dumped here to drain.
The smell alone was a powerful deterrent to potential interlopers. Also, being who I am, the stash was concealed not only from mortal eyes, but from every magical sense I could replicate. The most powerful rhabdomant on Esper might lean against this wall for however long he might fancy and never get the faintest glimmer of what lay inside.
I paused only long enough to reach inside the wall with the fingers of my mind; to trip a hidden catch, where none but a mage could use it. A section of the wall above the plinth turned sideways just long enough for me to slip through. Wading through the chest-deep trub, the slimy high-protein residuum of the wort, was an unattractive but necessary step; here in the midden, the trub was allowed to drain much of its water through gratings into the sewers, after which it was scooped out and pressed into the yeast cakes that are the only protein source most Tidehollow folk can afford.
At the buttress, I spent a bit more of my available mana to press the trub away from the stone; to give myself room to work, and also to clear a spot to set down the chunk of sangrite Bolas had given me. I didn’t know what dropping the sangrite into the trub might do, and I had no desire to find out.
There was no sign of any kind that a treasure might lie within the wall. This particular treasure had, in fact, been built into the wall at its first construction, when the brewery was expanded some seven or eight years ago-the brewery being a local venture financed and partly owned by the Infinite Consortium. Having built my career on etherium salvaged from inadequately concealed caches, I had made quite certain that this could not be found by anyone who did not already know it was there.
I pressed the flat of my left hand against the block I knew to be hollow, and cast my mind within it, allowing the device within to slowly define itself within my consciousness. Once it had, I tapped the device itself for the power necessary to recover it; being cast of pure etherium, it was a generous source. Though at clockworking I am not even competent, much less great, I know a trick or two; creating a localized hypertemporal field in an inanimate object is no large feat. Only seconds later, the stone collapsed to powder.
But as I reached for the device, my hand burst into flame-of a sort. I saw a flare of scarlet fire, and I felt my flesh char and peel back from the bone… but my instinctive recoil drew back my hand, uninjured. Not even smoking. And I had seen the flare and the flames only from my left eye.
The source of the pain was obvious. “Doctor Jest,” I murmured grimly. “Interesting. It seems you’re hooked into my optic nerves in addition to my touch/pain network.”
“WOW. YOU ARE A GIANT BRAIN, AREN’T YOU?”
I clapped the hand now to my left ear. The roar had been so overpowering that had it been actual sound, I should have been bleeding from a ruptured eardrum. That I was not, and that I had heard the titanic roar only with my left ear, made its source obvious.
“You can talk.”
“SO CAN YOU.”
Flinching, I could not help pressing my hand more tightly to my ear… though of course it could do no good at all. Bolas must have given this “Doctor Jest” access to my entire sensory system; the incredible roar had to be the result of direct neural stimulation, in very much the same fashion as had the pain. “Um, can you speak a bit more softly?”
“How’s this?” This time the voice was only that of a large man standing too close and shouting.
I took a moment to catch my breath and settle the triphammer race of my heart. “That’s… tolerable. Even softer would be better. Um, hello.”
“We’ve already met.”
“I recall,” I said grimly. “How should I call you?”
“Anything but late for breakfast.”
My hand went from my ear to my forehead. “You did not just say that. Please. You didn’t.”
“My friends call me Doc. You can call me Doctor Jest.”
I had to sit down. “Let’s go about this in something like an organized fashion, can we? So. You are conscious; are you a living creature, as opposed to a device?”
“Yes. Nineteen. And I’m smaller than a bread box. Whatever in the hells a bread box is. That one’s free.”
“Are you a naturally occurring creature? That is, you are not a homunculus, golem, nor other form of constructed life?”
“Yes. Eighteen. Wait-no, I’m not. Still eighteen. But… aw, crap. Truth is, I don’t know. I’m still kinda new at this consciousness business.”
“Really?”
“Sure. Why would I lie?”
Say rather, I thought, why would you tell the truth? “Why do I hear you only with my left ear?”
“Shrug. I might screw something up.”
“Did you just say shrug?”
“How am I supposed to gesture? Smoke signals?”
“All right,” I said. My head was pounding, and it wasn’t because of Doctor Jest. Well, it was, but not in the usual fashion, so… “All right, wait. Let me think.”
“I won’t hold my breath.”
“What?”
“Because I can’t, dumbass.”
“Look, can you… Can you please just be quiet for a moment? Not very long, I promise. Please.”
“Aww, you don’t like me anymore…”
“Please,” I said. What else could I do? To beg was my sole remaining option short of bashing my head into the stone until I lost consciousness and drowned in the trub.
Though that option became more attractive with every passing second.
After a few moments of careful questioning, during which I was tempted to kill myself only three times, my- our-situation began to come clear.
Doctor Jest was a fully conscious individual, who inhabited-or had some sort of magical bond with-my sensory nerves. He had exceptional control over them, though it seemed their activity remained largely electrochemical, as it is by nature-he spoke only through my left auditory nerves because misuse might cause nerve damage and deafness, and he was, as he’d said, still exploring the parameters of his power.
Beyond that, he knew-or believed, which amounted to the same thing, under the circumstances-that the binding that joined us could be unbound only by Bolas himself. His fate was linked with mine, since Bolas would have no reason to do either of us any favors until we finished his job. And any others that the dragon might think up in the meantime. Our fates were inextricably linked; whatever happened to me would happen to him as well.
I also discovered, to my considerable relief, that he could not read my thoughts. I was able to keep private my suspicion that Doctor Jest had no separate existence at all, being nothing more than a phenomenon of the alteration of my nervous system accomplished by Bolas in the process of repairing what Jace had done to my brain. I wouldn’t put it past the dragon, for example, to have built Doctor Jest into this meat arm he had inflicted on me.
We also determined why gathering sufficient power for any major effect seemed so difficult. Yes: ripping away my right arm had left me magically crippled-but that wasn’t the whole story. It seemed that while Doctor Jest had some not-inconsiderable powers at his command, he did not draw mana directly, but instead existed as a vampirelike mana parasite, living off my own reduced reserve.
“Another gift from Bolas,” I muttered.
“Yeah, I hate that scaly monkey dunker,” said Doctor Jest. “You know what he needs? A good hard boot to the nads. Do him a universe of good.”
“I don’t think he has nads,” I replied glumly.
“Can we try anyway?”
“You’re not thrilled to be working for him.”
