the ignorant, refinement by the coarse, and intellect,” he said with a tiny sigh of apology, “by the stupid.”
The dragon’s growl, low in his throat, had much the same brick-grinding quality as had his earlier chuckle. “Who in the hells cares about your manners?”
“My manners, for better or worse, are keeping you alive.”
“This is a joke, right? Some kind of a put-on. You’re just yanking my tail.”
“I would never taunt someone in my power,” he replied. “To mock those who have power over you is a valid occupation of anyone with the wit to do so; witness satirists, jesters, and court fools across every plane of creation. Rulers who mock their subjects, on the other hand, only advertise their unfitness for the position they hold. Taunting the helpless is the province of scumbags, assholes, and doltish thugs like you.”
He lifted a hand before Bolas could respond. “No disrespect intended; I use doltish thug in its technical sense: a violently criminal blockhead.”
“You’re too kind.”
“Now that I think of it,” he mused, “I may owe you an apology for my earlier use of the word stupid; blockhead is a more apt term. It’s not that you can’t think; it’s just that you don’t like to.”
“You’re enjoying this.”
“No more than is appropriate, I hope,” Tezzeret said with a thin smile. “When I allow the gate to open, it is very important that you make no sudden move, and that you make no attempt to exert power of any kind. Either will be dangerous for you. Possibly fatal.”
The dragon blinked. “When you allow-?”
“Yes.”
“You are yanking my tail.”
“Bolas,” Tezzeret said patiently, “weren’t you at all curious about why you kept seeing an interplanar gate in your immediate future, while none ever appeared? Every time you looked for it, I delayed its opening-which is to say, I moved the gate farther along our time line. I couldn’t risk allowing our visitor to arrive before you and I had our little talk.”
“Who is this visitor you’re so worried about?”
“One of three. We’re about to find out,” Tezzeret said. “Before you arrived, I had determined that there were four candidates, but the fourth was Silas Renn, so unless he was a great deal more skilled a clockworker than I gave him credit for, we can rule him out. Another candidate is Crucius himself.”
“Now I’m interested,” Bolas said. “Is that what you were talking about when you said, ‘There is no secret’?”
“No,” he said simply. “Another possible candidate is me.”
“Really? You? I mean, another you? Using a gate?”
“How do you think I got here in the first place?”
“Huh. Were we here when you got here in the first place?”
Tezzeret smiled. “I’m not telling.”
“Wouldn’t that be some kind of paradox-put you in two places at the same time, something like that?”
“Where we are is all one place,” Tezzeret said, “and time, old worm, is a slippery concept. Especially here and now. Because here, it’s always now.”
The dragon snorted a gust of greasy smoke. “The next time I bring you back to life, it’ll be without a mouth.”
“Once our visitor-whoever it turns out to be-has come and gone, you will be free to leave.”
“Sure I will.”
“Whether you believe me or not is irrelevant,” Tezzeret said. “I am inviting you, however, to stay yet awhile.”
“Just to be friendly?”
The human shrugged. “We have known each other for well over a decade. An eyeblink to you, of course, but a substantial fraction of my life. In that time, we have never achieved a real understanding; our relationship has been a structure of your domination set against my resistance. I would prefer not to simply reverse that dynamic.”
“Not to mention that any reversing of that dynamic is over as soon as I get the hell out of your fantasy playground here.”
“Which is why you will be free to leave.”
“You sound like you actually mean that.”
“I am done with taking from you, Bolas. I have no more interest in your freedom than I have in your life. But I wish to share with you the progress of the journey you set me on. I have some hope that when you understand what I have experienced-what I have done, and not least, what you have made of me-you will realize that you have nothing to lose, and a great deal to gain, by simply letting me go my way.”
“Live and let live.”
“Exactly.”
“Why not?” Bolas said. “It’s not as though either of us has ever been known to hold a grudge.”
Tezzeret displayed just enough thin smile to signal that he’d registered the sarcasm. “If our visitor proves to be the individual I regard as most probable, she will be elderly, and likely quite frail. I tell you this by way of warning. Do not make any movement that I might interpret as hostile. As she will be unable to defend herself, I will defend her. Aggressively.”
The dragon’s brow ridge arched again. “She must be something special.”
“I’ll introduce you,” Tezzeret said, and gestured toward the sand directly in front of the plinth, where presently a shimmer in the air gathered itself into a broadly arching span of silvery plane. This plane was vertical and freestanding, and it showed the very faintest of ripples chasing one another across it, as if perhaps some current of the Blind Eternities stirred the surfaces of the two universes.
“There?” Bolas said in mild surprise. “When I was seeing it, the gate-”
“Was several hundred meters down the beach, yes,” Tezzeret said. “I’ve shifted the gate so that she won’t have quite so far to walk.”
“You are a wealth of surprises today.”
“The measure of character lies not in how powerful you are, but in how you use the power you have.”
“And you’re just full of half-nifty aphorisms, too. I bet you’ve been saving them up.”
“I’ve been preparing this conversation for a long time,” he admitted with a fractional widening of his thin smile. “I’d hate to leave anything out.”
“Is that the Good Manners version of gloating?”
“Hush now. Here she comes.”
Out from the far side of the shimmering plane hobbled the wreckage of an ancient sphinx.
Even at her obviously advanced age, she was huge, much larger than an ordinary sphinx, very little smaller than Bolas himself. Her wings hung in tatters, her feathers showing iridescent azure only in patches, as though most of them were dying or dead, little more than naked quills hanging from perished follicles. The joints of her enormous legs were swollen, and her toes were knobbed with arthritis. Her shield-shaped head swung uncertainly, as though seeking an angle that would allow her cataract-webbed eyes to focus, and her skin was everywhere crosshatched with striated scars that once had held etherium filigree of extraordinary complexity and grace.
Facing away from the Metal Sphinx, she spoke to the only figure her ancient eyes could discern. “Dragon. I am no threat to you, and what remains of meat on these old bones will be stringy and tough.” Her voice was thin, a breathy rasp, as though her vocal cords had shredded from age. “Let us be civil with each other, though our lands be at war. I do not come here for battle.”
“Don’t worry about me,” Bolas said. “I’m not from Jund-and even if I was, I wouldn’t exactly go to war for them. And looking at you, no offense, I just lost my appetite.”
“It is well, then. There is a human, a mage, called Tezzeret the Seeker. Do you know this man?”
“A little,” Nicol Bolas said. “He’s right behind you.”
“Indeed?” The sphinx began the slow and apparently painful process of turning herself about. “Tezzeret?”
“I’m here, Your Wisdom.” Tezzeret vaulted down from the plinth, landing catlike on the etherium sand. “I am honored by this meeting, and gratified that you have achieved the transit.”
