full of crap do you have to be to need three butts?”
“Your Wisdom-Your Wisdom, please!” he stammered, pretending he hadn’t heard. “In the entire history of the Order of the Seekers of Carmot, no being who is not a Fellow of the Arcane Council has ever been inside the Vault!”
This moment was, because I share with Nicol Bolas a regrettable fondness for the dramatic, when I reached out with my mind from where I stood-on the far side of the Vault, leaning on the lectern that held the Codex Etherium-and opened the door.
Carefully framed so that the swirling dust motes in the single shaft of sunlight from the roof portal above shimmered around me in a golden halo, making me shine in the gloom-shrouded chamber like a fugitive angel, I spread my hands with an apologetic shrug.
“I’ve never been a fellow of anything,” I said, “and I’ve been here twice.”
There was very little commotion. Sharuum was even more inscrutable than is common for her opaque kind; Baltrice, of course, had known I would be there; and Renn was gob-smacked beyond speech.
“Your Wisdom.” I stood up straight, of course, in the presence of my queen. “Please come in, and make yourself as comfortable as may be possible. Baltrice, if you could please see to Master Renn. He may need assistance in finding a seat.”
Renn finally found his voice. “You…”
“Surprise.”
“It’s not possible…” He seemed to be having difficulty getting his breath. “I saw you die!”
“You share that honor with a surprising variety of others.”
Sharuum lingered beyond the Vault door, eyeing me with wholly understandable caution. “If this is your Hieresiarch,” she piped to Renn, “please convey my compliments to his doctor.”
“Is she hitting on you?” Doc whispered in my left ear. “I think she’s hitting on you. Wow, that makes her like a, whaddayasay, zoophiliac, right?”
I made as much of a shh-ing noise as I could manage without making Sharuum wonder if I might be impersonating a teapot.
“The Hieresiarch-? Him? He-he-” Renn sputtered. “He’s the man who murdered the Hieresiarch!”
“The latest previous, Your Wisdom, a decade ago,” I explained. “Nor was it murder.”
“He was an old man!”
“He was attempting to rob me. I defended myself and my property.”
“Rob you?” Renn said wildly. “Rob you in his own study?”
I sighed. “Baltrice?”
“Yeah.” She put a hand to Renn’s etherium breastbone and shoved him into a chair. “Sit.”
“The current Hieresiarch is elsewhere,” I said, “presumably mugging innocents for their etherium.”
This comment turned Renn such an alarming shade of purple that I briefly wondered if his etherium heart might after all be vulnerable to spontaneous arrest.
“Ah…” Sharuum came slowly over the threshold, watching me as if I might be some exotic, unfamiliar, possibly dangerous bug. “Tezzeret, isn’t it? Tezzeret the Renegade-I’ve encountered your legend.”
“Your Wisdom is very kind. Though I would resist the epithet the Renegade, as it implies that I broke faith with the Order, when the truth is precisely opposite.”
Sharuum did not appear interested in the distinction. “Is there an epithet you prefer?”
This stopped me for a moment; I’d never actually thought about it. “I suppose,” I said finally, “the Seeker suits me as well as any I can imagine. Unlike these fraudulent Seekers of Carmot, my search is real.”
I watched closely to see how she would take this characterization of the Seekers, but again my powers of observation were insufficient to penetrate her seemingly infinite opacity. “I have been given to understand that you are dead.”
“He’s been dead for more than ten years-” Renn forced out in a strangled gasp, and his hands went under his surplice, no doubt seeking some sort of anti-zombie spell or some such silliness.
Baltrice said, “Fwhoosh. Soft breeze.”
Renn, with uncharacteristic insight, decided to shut the hell up.
“Ten years?” Fully within the Vault now, Sharuum brought her own light with her, in the softly twinkling radiance of her fantastically intricate etherium filigree, as well as the miniature solar system of etherium droplets the size of strige eggs that orbited around the majestic sun that was her humaniform mask. “My information is younger than that-hardly dry, much less weaned.”
I inclined my head. “Your Wisdom has excellent sources.”
“Hey-hey, didn’t Jace rip up your brain in, like, a whole different universe?” Doc hissed. “You think she knows about us? Well, not me, but about, y’know, Planeswalkers and such?”
“I have reason to believe she does,” I murmured.
She inclined her head to take in a different view of my face. “To whom do you speak?”
Hmmm. Distressingly good ears. I took a breath. “As do many tinkerers, artists, and others who spend too much time alone, I have developed an unfortunate habit of talking to myself, Your Wisdom. I humbly beg your pardon.”
“For mumbling, or for lying?”
I drew breath to protest, but the faintly sly smile that touched her humanlike lips was enough to stop me. “You spoke truth, not honesty,” she fluted, “and thought I wouldn’t know the difference.”
Well.
I took a second or two to try out my response in my head before I let it pass my lips.
“I have spent entirely too much of my life around beings all too unfortunately resembling Master Renn, Your Wisdom,” I said. “It has left me ill-prepared for thoughtful conversation.”
“A pretty answer,” she piped with a hint of amusement. “A thorny union of truth and honesty, birthing graceful flattery.”
I inclined my head. Feeling myself flush, I did not trust my speech. It was unexpectedly gratifying to be appreciated by someone with real intellect.
She went on. “Please assure your stealthy friend that he need not whisper, and then please introduce him.”
“Hey-hey, is she talking about me? She can hear me? How can she hear me?”
“The Grand Hegemon, Doc, was not born into her title, nor did she win it at dice,” I said. “Your Wisdom, I call my friend Doc, short for Doctor Jest. My friend is stealthy from necessity, not discourtesy. His body is, for good or ill, coextensive with my own. He speaks to me by manipulating the nerves of my left ear. He and I have been… joined… only recently, and we are still unsure of our relations to each other, much less the rest of the world.”
“And now we have an answer of more honesty than truth-but truth is, after all, merely fact,” she piped.
“Whoa, crap, she talks like you!” he hissed.
“I have a more melodious voice.”
“Um, yikes. Flinch. Cower.”
“And Doc-if I may address you thus-would you care to share exactly where and how you learned the word zoophiliac?”
“Ah… not really. That is, hmmm, if it please Your, uh, Wisdom, I respectfully answer, well, no. I would not care to. My thanks.” He tried once more to whisper. “How long do I have to keep this up?”
“Until you are satisfied you have sufficiently embarrassed us,” I said.
“Yeah, okay. I’m done then.”
“In the future, child,” Sharuum piped, “it may serve you well to remember that one never knows who might be listening.”
This was, I reflected, a useful admonition for me, too.
“In the interest of sparing your valuable time, Your Wisdom, may I speak at some length? I hope to briefly outline my understanding of the parameters of our situation, in hopes that you may be able to correct where I am mistaken, and enlighten where I am ignorant.”
She graciously inclined her head.
“Wow, you do have nice manners.”
“Shh.” I moved out from the lectern of the Codex and stood before the great sphinx, close enough that should
