Reaching out with my mind, I found the tiny device Baltrice wore in her ear. He’s heading for the courtyard along the west colonnade. It would be best if you were there first.
Her muttered response was conveyed through the same link. Really? Boy, it’s a good thing I’ve got you around to remind me about crap we already planned.
The upside of this method of communication was that I didn’t have to endure running commentary from Doc. I pulled the scry view to the colonnade and briefly angled it into the courtyard to confirm my expectation: the immense, elegant majesty of the Grand Hegemon of Esper, flanked by two young adult male sphinxes near enough to her size to have been her sons, all three shimmering with a fortune in etherium filigree that shone even through the residual smoke of the raid. The balance of her retinue was more or less as expected, human and vedalken mages, homunculi, a pair of juvenile firedrakes, none of any concern or consequence to me.
Renn shortly entered view, striding briskly toward a small clot of maids and porters who stood gaping just short of the colonnade, as a personal visit by the Grand Hegemon was a once-in-a-generation event. He snarled at them with his characteristic flap of the hands, and I touched the control on the rim of the scrying dish to pick up audio, as this was about to become amusing.
The maids and porters scattered like a flock of startled geese, except for one huge and hulking porter who didn’t seem to hear. The porter just stood there without reaction, leaning casually on the long handle of a push sweep. “Boy! Porter!” Renn snapped, stomping forward. “Are you deaf, boy? I said get out of sight!”
The porter still did not react. Renn’s face was nearly as red as his crushed-velvet surplice by the time he got close enough to the porter’s shoulder to yank a sleeve. “I will count to three, boy, and when-”
The porter responded with a casual backhanded pimp slap that smacked Renn off his feet and sent him skidding along the corridor, out of sight from the courtyard. “Who are you calling boy, bitch?”
“You know,” Doc said as we watched the semiconscious Renn try to fumble out some kind of defensive magic, “you gotta give her points for style.”
“She does make a vivid first impression.”
Before Renn could remember what plane they were on, Baltrice pounced like a feral viashino, hooked an enormous hand around one of Renn’s etherium ribs, then picked him up like a suitcase and gave him a good shaking. Once she had satisfied herself that she had shaken him well before using, she turned him rightway up and slammed him into the wall. “Shh, now, sweetcake. Don’t make a fuss.”
“You, ah, you, ah-” Renn still seemed to be having trouble understanding exactly what was happening to him. “This isn’t-do you know who I am?”
“I’ll tell you what I know.” She lifted her free hand, which now sprouted flame hot enough to melt steel. “I know etherium won’t burn,” she said, “but I’m pretty sure your balls will.”
“You can’t do this!”
“You don’t know what I can do,” she said. “Screw with me and you’ll find out.”
“What-what do you want from me?”
“I want you to take me to the dance, sweetcake.” She set him down and stripped off her porter’s coveralls, revealing a very credible-if I do say so myself-surplice-and-cloak outfit such as those worn by the Anointed Fellows of the Arcane Council of the Order of the Seekers of Carmot. “I know you can’t see it without a mirror, but that fancy glowy hunk of etherium you’re using for a heart? Now it’s a little extra glowy. What that means is that any time I start to worry you might be trying to get smooth with me, every part of your body that isn’t etherium will burn to the kind of ash that blows away in a soft breeze. With me so far? Good.”
She got rid of the coveralls, then paused a moment to raise her arms, admiring what was-again, if I say so myself-a spectacularly detailed illusion that they were both constructed of etherium.
“The other thing you should absorb here,” she went on, “is that you’re not on fire right now because I’m stopping the little extra glowy business from igniting, get me? You savvy what’ll happen to you if anything happens to me? Here’s a clue: it’s the same as what’ll happen if you so much as sneak up a hint of a shield to interfere with my control. Or if a sudden move breaks my concentration. Fwhoosh. Soft breeze. Got me? No? Give me a sign here, Renn. Wave a flag. Send up a flare.”
“You can’t-” Renn swallowed and started again. “It’s impossible-no such spell exists!”
She smiled. “He told me you’d say that.”
“He? There are others? How many?”
“Depends on how you count,” she said through a predatory grin. “There’s at least one of them who’s gonna give you a pretty nasty shock.”
I found myself with a bit of a predatory smile of my own as I pushed the scrying dish aside. “If only I could have been there to do it myself,” I murmured.
Through the device in Baltrice’s ear I could pick up their voices as Renn made introductions. “Arcane Fellow Silas Renn, and-”
“Baltrice,” she said. “Just Baltrice. It’s a, y’ know, an honor and all that.”
“You are called by a single name, then?” The voice of a sphinx is different from that of other creatures, for their vast hollow bones can function also as organ pipes, and so every phrase from a sphinx is a motif, and a speech can be a symphony. “That is uncommon for a human, is it not?”
“Yeah, well,” she said through a crooked grin, “a last name’s just for people who want you to be impressed by their parents.”
I made a mental note to give her a bonus.
There followed a bit of hastily stammered conversation, as Renn haltingly attempted to explain why the rest of the Arcane Fellowship was not on hand to greet her. He couldn’t exactly admit the truth, which was that every Arcane Fellow and even many of the lesser masters were out desperately scavenging etherium. Etherium, as the basis of most weapons and an adjunct to every combat mage’s power, was central to Esper’s war effort… and the Seekers of Carmot, who had been pretending for many years to know how to make the stuff, now were faced with either providing for the whole land’s needs, or publicly confessing their decades-long conspiracy to defraud the public.
Sangrite had been discovered in the mountains of Jund (with whom, inconveniently, we were currently at war), but carmot, the last essential ingredient-in an irony that warmed me every time I thought about it-remained so elusive that the masters couldn’t even agree on what it was, much less where to find any. This meant that for the first time in the entire history of the Order, the Seekers of Carmot were out in the world, and-not to grind too fine an edge on it-they were actually, well…
Seeking carmot.
I doubt I’ll ever stop finding that funny.
While it probably would have been even more amusing to leave Renn twisting in the wind of his own lies with his underclothes hanging out, Baltrice moved the plan in its intended direction with her customary bluntness. “I believe Master Fellow Renn might be unaware that the Exalted Hieresiarch of the Order has unexpectedly returned, and awaits the Grand Hegemon in the Vault of the Codex.”
Renn was unquestionably unaware of this, as it was a bald-faced lie-but as I had anticipated, he was too concerned with protecting his own anatomy to do anything other than play along.
“He awaits me?” Sharuum fluted somberly. “Then go we shall. There might we slake our thirst for knowledge at the original spring.”
They proceeded on through the Academy’s innards without delay-due to protocols that were rigidly enforced at the Academy’s construction, all public areas were easily accessible to sphinxes, most well-mannered dragons, and all but the very largest gargoyles-while Renn kept trying to summon some plausible excuse for preventing the Grand Hegemon from entering the Vault and discovering that the legendary mystical Codex Etherium to be wholly legendary and not mystical at all.
Sharuum shed members of her retinue at every juncture. By the time they reached the Tower of the Vault, only the two young male sphinxes remained, and she set them to guard the doors behind her.
Sharuum, Baltrice, and Renn wound their way up the great spiral stair to the spire-top Vault of the Codex. At the last, Renn was reduced to simple pleading. “Please, Your Wisdom-the Vault is not intended for any but the Fellowship!”
“I suppose that when one is made of glass,” Sharuum replied solemnly, “everything looks like a stone.”
At the door, he gave it one last shot. “But-but-but-”
“That’s already two more than most folks have any use for,” Baltrice put in, bless her snide little heart. “How
