Emmara's pastries, added a small bowl of cheese-and-sausage dumplings to his order.
'All right,' Jace began, once they'd ordered.
'What-'
Tezzeret interrupted with a raised hand, which clutched a peculiar device in its metallic palm. A pyramid of strange metal, neither the odd substance of the false hand nor any of the more mundane alloys with which Jace was familiar, it boasted a number of tiny holes, and shuddered faintly with the clicking and turning of miniature gears within.
Taking the object with his left hand-a hand of normal flesh, that one-he held it out toward Jace. 'Speak into the device, please,' he asked.
Puzzled, Jace furrowed his brow. 'What should I say?'
Tezzeret smiled. 'That'll do nicely.' He placed the device in the center of the table, and seemed content to wait.
The clicking and thumping of the device grew louder, faster, until the entire table vibrated. And then the mechanism reached some predetermined threshold, and the sounds faded entirely, except for a faint background hum.
All the sounds faded-not merely those of the device, but the hubbub of the tavern, and the noises of the city beyond as Ravnica's nocturnal citizens went about their business in the darkened streets. Jace gawked at Tezzeret, unbelieving.
'It matches sounds,' the other explained, 'and nullifies them. That's why it needed a sample of your voice. We've already provided ours. Noises from without, unless they're really loud, cannot reach us-and our own voices, assuming you don't feel the need to start screaming at the top of your lungs, cannot be heard by any beyond the table.'
'Handy,' Jace said, attempting to cloak his amazement in sarcasm and failing miserably.
'It is.' Tezzeret gestured melodramatically, placing his artificial hand to his chest. 'Before we go any further,' he continued, 'I must apologize for the manner in which you were invited to meet us here. I realize that it must have been both disorienting and perhaps a tad uncomfortable.'
'To say the least,' Jace muttered.
'It was also, however, quite necessary. The Consortium employs only the best, and we succeed at what we do because we admit only the best. We had to be sure that you fit the bill.'
'And?'
'And we're here, are we not?' 'What if I hadn't passed?'
Tezzeret said nothing. Baltrice grinned and shrugged. 'Probably best none of us know.' She extended a hand across the table. 'No hard feelings, hey?'
Jace watched the hand as though it were a viper, then raised his gaze to meet her own and allowed just a taste of his own power to gleam in his eyes. 'I'll let you know,' he intoned deeply, 'after I decide if I like what I hear tonight well enough.'
Yeah, that's right! You bastards aren't the only ones who can be all dramatic and sanctimonious!
Baltrice snarled and dropped her hand, but Jace was gratified to see her tense. Tezzeret merely chuckled.
'I must assume,' the blond mage continued a moment later, 'that you've taken the time to learn a bit about us?'
Jace nodded slowly. 'Tezzeret, mage and artificer of no small skill, and leader of an organization of no small reach.' Tezzeret bowed his head in acknowledgment. 'You,' Jace said, turning to Baltrice briefly and then looking away as though dismissing her outright, 'I haven't heard of.'
He pretended to ignore both the snarl across the table and the gurgle in his stomach. Maybe baiting her wasn't the best idea…
'As far as I can tell,' Jace said, choosing his words carefully, 'the Infinite Consortium, at its heart, is a mercantile guild. You acquire or buy items here and sell them there, where they're a lot more valuable.'
Time to put the head in the dragon's maw. 'And frequently, I'm guessing, 'here' and 'there' aren't on the same world at all. You're a walker, Tezzeret, or have one working for you.'
Tezzeret smiled, and actually applauded briefly. 'Bravo. See, Baltrice, I told you he'd figure it out. Anything else, Beleren?'
Jace looked down at the table, fiddling with the wood, idly drawing a finger over and over across an old scrape. He chewed his lip, as though trying to build up the nerve to say something. For a moment, Tezzeret waited patiently, but slowly his lips began to curl downward, his own fingers to drum on the tabletop.
But that was fine. They'd given Jace the time to gather his concentration, to focus his mind. And using those gathered energies, Jace Beleren-who was never happy with, and unaccustomed to having, only part of the answers-pushed. Tezzeret rocked back in his seat as he felt the younger man peering through the windows of his mind, on the surface at first, but threatening to dive ever deeper.
'I know you weren't the Consortium's first master,' Jace continued, voice puzzled. 'What I don't understand is how one steals an entire organization. And from…'
The entire table jumped, threatening to split down the middle beneath the impact of Tezzeret's metal hand. He leaned across the wood, ignoring the spilled beer, and Jace quailed beneath his gaze as though it were a physical weight. Baltrice stood, and fire-not mere 'anger,' but literal flames-burned in her pupils and across the palms of her hands. She leaned forward, murder evident in her scowl, but a swift gesture from Tezzeret held her back.
Through it all, the customers at the other tables continued to drink, unaware of the volcano ready to erupt in their midst.
'I know that it's been some time since you had any formal training,' Tezzeret growled, 'so let me offer you a brief lesson. You may be accustomed to wading through men's thoughts without consequence, Beleren, and you may be confident in your knowledge that few mages share your gift for reading minds. But any mage with the slightest knowledge of mind magics can sense your intrusion, even if we cannot duplicate it. And we do not care for it.'
Slowly Tezzeret leaned back; Baltrice sat, albeit far more reluctantly. 'You get this one free, Beleren, as you didn't understand the rules. But make no mistake. Try that again on me, or any of mine, and I'll kill you, no matter how useful you might be.'
Jace, though he wished he'd heeded his first instincts to run, kept his face impassive as he nodded.
'To answer your prior question,' Tezzeret continued, voice as calm as though nothing untoward had occurred, 'I do, indeed, possess the Spark, as does Baltrice. The Infinite Consortium boasts more planeswalkers than any other organization I'm aware of, on any world.'
'And how many would that be?' Jace asked, trying to sound casual.
'If you accept my offer,' Tezzeret said seriously, 'you'll make five. Plus three more I can hire for certain jobs but who aren't true members of the Consortium.'
Ah. And now we come to it, at last.
Jace didn't bother to ask why they might want him. He knew well the value of his magics, in particular the rarity of his telepathic proficiency. Nor did he wonder, any longer, how Tezzeret knew of him; a man with his resources, spanning multiple worlds, wouldn't need to read minds to learn just about anything he could ever want to know.
What he asked, then, was, 'Why would I want to join you? I'm pretty comfortable as I am.'
'Are you really?' Tezzeret asked, and there was no masking the disdain in his voice. 'Blackmailing the rich and foolish by threatening to spread their deepest secrets? What was the last one, Beleren? Lord Delvekkian and his Deriab-root addiction? And for keeping that little secret, he paid, what, a few hundredweight of gold?'
Jace didn't even start this time, just shook his head at the extent of Tezzeret's sources.
'And when your funds run out, then what? Another rich fool? Living secret to secret and threat to threat, until finally you push one of them farther than he's willing to go? A bad way to live, Beleren. A shameful one. And frankly, one unworthy of your skills.'
'I make do,' Jace muttered defensively, but he could feel his cheeks flush, the truth behind the words stinging worse than Gemreth's demon.
'You make do,' the artificer parroted. 'But nothing more. You obtain nothing. Accomplish nothing. And you,
