seeing.
Baltrice darted through the dancing shadows, wading through water up to her thighs. She made at least a cursory attempt at stealth, not that it mattered. Every face in the village was turned toward one mass of flame or the other. Jace was certain that the two of them could have marched on the center of the community with a battalion, a full company of drummers and trumpeters, and possibly a war-elephant, and still had an even chance of going unnoticed. He nevertheless took the time to wrap himself once more in a cloak of shadows, just to be sure.
As they neared the large central hut, Jace found his attention drawn to a smaller structure, rising beside the main house. It stood atop an impossibly narrow trunk, one that appeared utterly incapable of supporting the bulk of the structure. It lacked windows, boasting instead a single door and a chimney that protruded from the roof at a sharp angle. But it wasn't the house itself that drew his notice, but rather the sounds emerging faintly from within. Even over the surrounding cacophony, Jace was certain he heard the rhythm of a tribal drum, accompanied by an inhuman, hissing voice raised in an ongoing chant.
Even as he recognized the cadence as the basis of a potent spell, a heavy rain began to fall. The conflagration that had spread from the fireball's impact sizzled and shrank. The elemental seemed largely unconcerned, though puffs of steam shot from its body in random wounds. But behind it, the water of the swamp began to bulge, to shift, and to rise, as something equally primal struggled to be born.
Jace concentrated briefly as he mounted the first of the steps leading to the chieftain's hut. We're definitely going to have to watch out for the shaman, he sent in warning.
Baltrice froze in mid-stride, her feet on two separate levels of the stair. Her shoulders tightened as though she'd been stretched on a rack, and when she twisted about to glare at Jace, he was certain those muscles must snap.
'I don't give a plague-rat's ass what our situation might be,' she hissed at him furiously. 'You put your thoughts in my head one more time, I swear I'll put my fire in yours!'
Jace shrugged and tried to pretend he hadn't leaped back off the stairs in reaction to her sudden turn. 'Just thought you should know,' he said aloud.
Baltrice burst through the doorway of the chieftain's hut, ripping aside the leather curtain that served as his door. She had a bare instant to examine in the room in the flickering firelight from outside. It was unevenly round, a single chamber that filled the entire hut. Numerous bones and skulls hung as trophies upon the walls, as did weapons won in a dozen different battles from a dozen regions of Kamigawa. The entire place reeked, and
Baltrice noted a filth-encrusted hole in the floor across the chamber, opening onto the swamp a few dozen feet below-the closest thing the rat-king had to a privy.
As she scanned the space before her, something slammed into the side of her skull, something that felt like a stone wrapped in velvet. Her vision swam and she sank to one knee, struggling to regain her equilibrium.
The projectile that struck her fell to the floor at her side, revealing itself to be the head of a light-furred nezumi, its expression still slack from surprise.
'This is the vile traitor for whom you would slaughter my brothers and sisters?' To Baltrice, the words were gibberish, utterly incomprehensible; but Jace, who had made his way to the open doorway, understood perfectly.
Baltrice rose to attack, and a three-clawed foot whipped across her face as a spinning back-kick sent her sprawling across the open chamber. Blood poured from her nose and lip, and one of her eyes was already swelling shut.
The figure that emerged from the dark was hunched forward, as were most male nezumi, making him appear far shorter than his true height. Black fur streaked with patches of aging grey covered his body, save for the scaly pink tail, the clawed feet and hands, and the very tip of his twitching nose. Thick whiskers hung beneath night-black eyes that reflected the dancing fires. He wore a segmented breastplate of salamander hide and a wide-brimmed conical hat. The naginata he held was longer than he was tall, with a serrated, cleaving blade.
Baltrice, the world spinning around her as she failed to summon a creature to her aid, found herself desperately wishing she hadn't wasted so much of her strength on her previous spells.
'I am Bonetooth,' the ratman continued, advancing slowly across the hut. 'Son of Swamp-Eye, the daughter of Moon-Hand the Third. I am leader of the Nezumi-Katsuro gang, as were my fathers and mothers before unto the tenth generation.'
He stood above Baltrice's prostrate form, the edge of the naginata pressed against her neck until the skin parted, ever so slightly, and the blood welled up from within. She froze, hoping to forestall his stroke long enough to gather her senses.
'You have conspired against me with my worthless son, whose name I cast out along with his head. He has, perhaps, lied to you, as he has me and so many others, and so, though I know you came to slay me, I was prepared to let you leave.
'And then this!' His twisted, taloned finger quivered with rage as he pointed at the flames that shown through the open doorway. 'You came to slay one, yet many have died!
'For such a brutal crime against Nezumi-Katsuro, I can offer no forgiveness.'
The naginata rose, a single drop of Baltrice's blood glistening along its edge.
And there it stayed. Heartbeats passed, then long seconds, and Baltrice could only wait, looking up at her would be executioner. What was he waiting for?
Only then did she notice the violent quiver in the rat-king's arms. Turning, she saw Jace in the doorway, one hand raised toward Bonetooth, fingers clenched in a grasp that was not quite a true fist. Sweat beaded his brow, and Baltrice knew it was due to no fire of hers.
Tezzeret had been right. Jace felt the shogun's mind, a presence independent from the physical world. He sensed-he knew-that if he wanted, he could hold it, rearrange it, take it with him, rebuild it or destroy it. He knew that that the power Tezzeret had promised him was indeed within his grasp.
But there was no triumph in that discovery. Jace felt soiled, as though the waters of a thousand rivers could never wash him clean, and he tasted bile in the back of his throat. In his mind, he heard the chieftain screaming and shrieking to be free. He swore that he felt, beneath his fingers, the writhing of the nezumi's brain as it kicked and thrashed to escape his hold.
And more than once it almost did just that, almost escaped the paralysis in which Jace held it-not because the shogun was stronger, but because Jace wanted to let him go. Through their mental link he felt every urge, every desire, and every fear, and he yearned for nothing more than to release the ratman's mind.
To say nothing of the fact that Jace felt he could happily watch Baltrice pounded and shredded into a carpet of quivering meat. But somehow, he didn't think Tezzeret would understand.
He could keep his grasp on the shogun's mind, nauseating as it might be, force him to guide them out, hold him as hostage against the nezumi's cooperation. But it took too much concentration, too much attention. He'd be unable to defend them if the rats attacked anyway, or against the shaman's spells, and Baltrice certainly wasn't up to helping. He could let Bonetooth go, but how then to prevent him from killing Baltrice, or from leading the village in pursuit of those who'd attacked them?
Had he taken the time to think about it, to really understand what he was doing, Jace could never have gone through with it. But by the time he consciously acknowledged that he had only one option remaining, he'd already followed through.
Jace adjusted his grip on Bonetooth's mind and commanded the shogun, who had already ceased moving, to cease his breathing as well. The ratman's eyes went briefly wide, his entire body quivered, until finally he dropped dead to the floor of the hut.
Keeping his own mind nearly as empty as the corpse's own, Jace knelt beside Baltrice, who looked at him with a puzzled and, for some reason he wouldn't even try to fathom, vaguely hostile expression. 'Can you walk?' he asked her. There was just enough emphasis on the last word to suggest that he wasn't talking about a stroll down the stairs.
'I don't…' The pounding in her head had subsided, but only slightly. 'I don't think I…'
Jace placed a hand on her shoulder and concentrated, muttering sounds under his breath that were not words. For an instant, it felt as though something rose from within his chest, tingled its way through his arm, and vanished. His shoulders slumped; he felt- not weak, but certainly weaker than he had a moment before.
'How about now? And I suggest you say 'yes,' because if not, you're damn well stuck here. I'm not wasting
