you, I could have tried. Maybe even been friends again, now that I understand why Liliana did what she did, why she left 'Jace' for…'
And then he was up and running, cursing himself for a thousand kinds of fool. Here he was, moping in alleyways, with who-knew-what still happening to Liliana. He remembered her cry from the stairwell, and a surge of magic passed through him, a spell he could only have wished to cast when he'd still thought himself to be Kallist. He directed his magics sharply down and allowed them to lift him skyward, spreading out in invisible wings of pure telekinetic force that brushed the buildings to each side, the feel of the stone cold against his mind. He took to the air, arcing over the nearest buildings, angling sharply toward the apartment that his mind in Kallist's body had called home.
This was Ravnica. Nobody gave the soaring figure more than a second look.
Before him was an open window, broken and shattered in Semner's attack. Jace swooped inside, the psychic wings fading into nothingness even as his feet touched the floor.
Liliana stared with wide, red-rimmed eyes from the floor, where she'd slumped exhausted against the fallen table. Shaky as a newborn fawn she rose, and made her way toward him with tentative steps. He feared, at first, that she was injured, but the blood that stained her gown was not hers.
'Jace?' she asked softly, her hand rising, her fingers brushing the side of his face, as light as hummingbird's breath. 'Jace?'
He nodded once, trembling at her words, her touch.
'Oh, Jace, I'm sorry!' He almost found himself falling back as she wrapped her arms tight around him, as though afraid he'd simply vanish once more. 'I wanted to explain, I wanted to fix it,' she sobbed into his chest. 'I didn't know how.'
'It's all right,' he told her through tears of his own. 'It's not your fault. I did it to myself, to me and to-to Kallist.' His words ended in a soft gasp, and he refused to turn his gaze, to look at the room beyond the woman he held. 'I wonder… I don't think the right one of us survived, Liliana. I think he deserved it more than me.'
'What was it like?' she asked gently, face still pressed against him.
'It… It didn't really feel like anything,' he replied slowly, thinking back over the past six months. 'I mean, I was just him. It didn't feel like anything had changed. Even when…' She felt his chest move as he shrugged. 'We're not exactly identical twins, but it somehow never occurred to me that my face had changed. If I thought about it, I could have said 'Jace was the one who lost a toe to frostbite,' yet whenever I looked at the stump, it just felt natural. I never even questioned it.'
'Your soul,' she suggested.
'What?'
'You traded minds, Jace, not souls. Your soul was still you. Maybe that was its way of protecting your mind. Maybe knowing what had happened without being able to fix it would have-damaged you.'
'I'm not sure I believe there's any such thing as a soul separate from the mind,' he admitted.
'There is.' It was scarcely more than a whisper. 'Believe me, there is.'
Jace nodded, and finally steeled himself for what was to come. Tenderly but firmly, he pulled himself from Liliana's grasp and stepped across the room, ignoring Semner's mutilated corpse as he searched for-
Jace dropped to his knees, felt Liliana's hand on his shoulder and couldn't even turn to meet her gaze. He'd known Kallist was dead, of course, had known since he awoke in the alleyway with his own memories, but to see it…
'I couldn't save him,' she whispered to him.
'You shouldn't have had to,' Jace rasped, rising slowly. 'This is my fault.'
'Jace-'
'It is. I did this. It's my fault.
'But,' he added, turning around, eyes sweeping the room, 'it's not my fault alone.'
There, lying off to one side, half-propped against the wall, one of Semner's men still breathed. Jace watched him for a long moment, and gathered his concentration as he'd not done in ages. The air around him began to glow, a wintry breezy to waft through the chamber, as he drew on sufficient mana to rip into the man's mind.
There was no finesse, no care, only power and purpose. Jace slashed through thoughts and memories like underbrush, leaving a wake of devastation behind him. The unconscious fellow twitched and shuddered as entire swathes of his life were frayed. He wouldn't die of this. Jace had no taste for killing, not with memories of the Lurias marketplace fresh in his mind. But neither would he leave one of Semner's thugs behind, unpunished for his sins. The result was a drooling imbecile, a man who might be trusted to push carts or carry boxes in exchange for food and shelter. A grim life, but a life nonetheless, and perhaps more than the bastard deserved.
Deeper Jace delved, without sympathy or compunction; he cared about one thing only, held to but one objective. Yet no matter how thoroughly he sifted through the shreds of what had lately been a sentient mind, he couldn't find it. Eventually he had to concede that it was never there.
'He doesn't know,' he said to Liliana as he allowed the spell to lapse, ignoring the faint babbling and drooling emerging from what was no longer entirely a man. 'He doesn't know who hired Semner. I doubt any of them did except Semner himself.'
Liliana gently took his hand in hers. 'Is there really any doubt?' she asked him.
'Why would they have sent someone like Semner?' Jace challenged. 'They'd have known he wasn't up to the task. If it'd actually been me, instead of Kallist…
'So maybe they didn't send him. Maybe he found where you were-where 'Kallist' was-and decided to try for the bounty they've put on your head. But either way, it's ultimately their fault, isn't it?'
Jace looked away. 'It is,' he agreed.
'So what,' she said, taking his chin and forcing his face around to meet her gaze, 'are we going to do about it?'
'We could walk somewhere. Like we meant to do before. Somewhere the Consortium would never find us.'
'Is there any such place?' she asked. 'Would you really want to live in a strange place, without friends, looking over your shoulder every day?
'Would you really,' and her voice grew suddenly hard, 'want to let them get away with what they've done to Kallist? To us?'
Again Jace pulled away from her, moving across the room to stare out the window at the flickering lights of Favarial. Fear and anger warred across his face, staking out territories in the depths of his soul.
'You don't know Tezzeret,' he whispered finally. 'Not like I do. I can't-we can't beat him, Liliana.
'But-''
Jace turned, shaking his head. 'We can't,' he insisted. 'But we don't have to.
'The Consortium will regret what they've done, Liliana. And we can blind them in the process, throw them into enough disarray that they won't be able to come looking for us. Not for a while, at least, not until we're well and truly gone.'
It wasn't enough, not nearly. But she dared not push any further, not so soon. And at least it was a start. She nodded, and if Jace noticed the sudden tension in her shoulders, he surely attributed it to the evening's horrors.
Jace returned to the body of his best friend and knelt beside him one last time. Ignoring the blood that was already drying into a thick stain, he lifted the heavy blue cloak that had always been his favorite. He wrapped it around his shoulders and joined Liliana in the doorway. Later, when he'd had the chance to rest, to draw mana from the waters below, he would sprout his wings and take to the sky once more, carrying them as far as he could. For now, they had only their feet on which to rely as they began the long, monotonous journey toward the Rubblefield.
'Damn it to raging puss-soaked hell!' Paldor ranted at the blinking glow that limned his beard and fleshy features in a blood-red aura. 'Why are you doing this to me? Why?'
Oddly enough, the desk didn't answer.
Constructed by Tezzeret, Paldor's desk was attuned to every external door and window in the building through an intricate magical alarm system. Should anyone other than members of the Consortium attempt to enter the complex, the wood glowed, alerting Paldor to the possibility of intrusion.
