on his mattress, struggled to find his center, to focus on the rushing, mana-rich waters. And then, through his pain, through his confusion, through his lingering fear, he began to cast a spell far simpler than mind reading.
He waited nearby, this mage called Gemreth, sitting beside a fruit-vendor's stand and crunching contentedly on a honey-apple. His salt-and-pepper beard was thick and bushy, rather than neatly trimmed, but otherwise he appeared every inch the rich and stylish citizen of Dravhoc, draped in multiple layers of tunics and coats of rich crimson and black. And he smiled, taking a last bite of the candied fruit, as his pet came scurrying around the corner, clinging to the walls and windowsills.
For a few moments they conversed, the minuscule demon hanging just above the wizard's shoulder. Only then, with an upraised hand, did Gemreth dismiss the abomination back whence it came. Picking a bit of peel from between his teeth, he strode away, merging with the nighttime traffic.
Above him, all but invisible in the darkened sky, its dragonfly wings fluttering in unnatural silence, a tiny insect-winged cloud sprite followed in his wake.
Not all the wealthy neighborhoods of Ravnica were quite so dramatic as Dravhoc, of course. That particular district might cling to a mountainside like a tired explorer, but much of Ravnica was covered not in great peaks, shining lakes, or thick swamps, but gently rolling plains. In the center of one of the largest was the district Ovitzia- and in the center of Ovitzia stood a number of manors, among the largest that Ravnica had to offer. And it was to one of these, up the gleaming steps from the curb, across the broad marble porch to the front door, that Jace's steps carried him early the next day.
The woman who opened the door in response to his tug upon the bell was clearly no servant. She wore a gown of the finest white gossamer over a snug slip of woven gold, a perfect match for the waist-length hair swept back behind her pointed ears. Her reed-slender figure could most generously be described as 'boyish,' but her features were soft and elegant, and she moved with what Jace could only think a purely feminine grace.
'Berrim!' She greeted him warmly, with an affectionate if shallow embrace, a purely chaste kiss upon his right cheek.
'Hello, Emmara,' Jace smiled broadly in turn. 'I hope you don't mind me dropping by unannounced like this.'
'Oh, don't be stupid,' she told him. 'You know I don't. What brings you to Ovitzia?'
'Nothing in particular,' Jace hedged. 'Just fluttering around the city, and realized I wasn't accomplishing anything, so I figured I'd visit a friend.'
'Well, of course you weren't. Isn't it you humans who always say 'Fluttery will get you nowhere'?'
Jace blinked, replaying the sentence to be sure he heard what he thought he had. 'Funny,' he finally dead- panned. 'How long have you been saving that one?'
'Oh, years at least,' Emmara replied cheerfully. 'Elves have that kind of time, you know.'
Both broke into large grins then, and she stepped back, allowing her visitor to pass through the doorway and into her home.
'Home' indeed. 'Private indoor villa' was more accurate.
Emmara Tandris was the first mage Jace had met in Ravnica, and still one of the most confusing. Rumor had it she was once a member in good standing of the Selesnya Conclave, but if so, her own fortunes clearly hadn't faded with the influence of the guilds. In public, she made little if any show of her powers. But in private, just about everything with her was magic, even when it would have been just as simple, or even more so, by mundane efforts.
No living servants occupied her vast manor. Instead, various constructs-some of white marble, some of stuffing and woven fabric in the form of various humanoids and woodland animals-fetched and cleaned and gathered at her need. Most were tiny, barely able to carry a platter full of food, though a few were as large as the elf herself. Animating these 'dolls' was only one of her many hobbies, and in fact Emmara had been known to take commissions for these mindless servants as a means of bolstering her income.
Even stranger, the manor boasted no internal walls, no doors, no stairs. A vast array of marble columns, carved to resemble the bark of trees, stood at intervals throughout the domicile. They supported the weight of the floors above but did little to separate one chamber from another; in fact, 'chambers' pretty much began and ended where Emmara said they did. If one required privacy, one simply adjourned to a different story-and that, too, involved the many pillars. For while each seemed solid enough, if one chose, one could physically step inside (a feeling that Jace could only liken to walking through a wall of the fatty accumulation scraped from the top of a pot of heavy stew), and emerge from any of the other pillars, anywhere in the manor.
It was, all things considered, a bizarre way to live, and far more space than any one human could ever have needed. But Jace had long since given up trying to understand the mindset of elves in general-and Emmara was stranger than most.
For an hour or so, they sat at her dining table and talked about the current state of affairs: which districts were struggling to survive since the guilds disintegrated, which were thriving, which were ripped by political or criminal warfare. The little constructs scuttled about, appearing from various pillars with carafes of juices, nectars, and fruit teas, and plates of elven pastries that liquefied in the mouth, requiring no chewing at all.
Finally, when the glasses stood mostly empty, the plate of sweets far lighter than it had been, Emmara's eyes turned serious and flickered first to the vague singeing on Jace's face, which he had thought was light enough to go unnoticed, and then to the stinging scab on his chest, which should have been hidden by his tunic and vest.
'I can take care of those, if you'd like,' she offered.
Jace smiled but shook his head. 'They're really pretty minor. Don't hurt much at all, anymore.'
'So are you going to tell me why you're really here, Berrim? I adore your company, and you know you're always welcome, but it's a pretty long walk to take by accident.'
Jace lifted the last of his drink, sloshed it around in his glass and replaced it untouched. 'What do you know about a man called 'Tezzeret'?' he asked finally.
The elf raised an eyebrow. 'I know that if you got those wounds tussling with him or his people, you haven't run nearly far enough.'
'Well… Yes and no.' Then, 'Tezzeret?' he prompted again.
Emmara shook her head. 'Have you heard of an organization called the Infinite Consortium?'
'I think I've heard the name.'
'Before the guilds fell, it was just another mercantile organization, but now? Now I wouldn't be surprised, some day, to see it become a political body.
'The Consortium, in brief, is one of those 'We'll find anything and sell it to anybody for the right price' operations. I'm sure they deal in contraband at least as often as legal goods, but nobody could prove it before, and there's nobody left to prove it now.'
'I see,' Jace muttered, leaning back and wondering what they wanted with him.
'The thing is,' Emmara cautioned, 'they really do seem able to get anything, or at least so I've heard in some of the more esoteric circles I frequent. Including objects and creatures of pretty potent mystical power, and things that don't seem to come from anywhere I've ever heard of.'
Jace straightened, his brow furrowed. He'd never quite figured out if Emmara knew of the existence of other worlds, of planeswalkers and the Blind Eternities. Most folk, even most wizards, did not.
Regardless, reading between the lines, Jace had a whole new understanding why they called themselves the 'Infinite Consortium.'
'And Tezzeret?' he pressed. 'He's their leader?'
She nodded. 'Not their first, as I understand it. But certainly he's in charge now.
'He's a mage, Berrim, a potent one. And word is he's not the only one in the group, either. I've never heard of them hurting people without cause, but they'd definitely make unpleasant enemies. What's your interest in them, exactly?'
Jace offered a smile that was meant to be reassuring, but instead implied that something wasn't sitting still in his stomach. 'They want to meet with me. And their invitation was, um, fairly insistent. Not to mention impolite.'
Emmara frowned, and she leaned forward intently, placing one slender hand atop Jace's own. 'Do you want
