wood currently inside him. 'A little… better,' he admitted.
Liliana nodded. 'He'll keep you insulated from the worst of the pain, try to hold your body together so that walking doesn't cause any further damage. You won't be able to go far, but we should be able to get outside, wave down a carriage.'
'All right.' Slowly, perturbed at the odd delay between intention and movement, he rose to his feet. He felt a faint surge of deja vu, staggering wounded from the complex. 'We'd better get… get out of here. Liliana?'
'What?' 'Paldor. Left sleeve.'
Liliana took just a moment to kneel beside the catatonic man, and rose clutching the manablade in her fist. 'What in Urza's name…'
'Manablade. Powerful, could be useful.' And I'll be damned if I'll let Tezzeret have it back!
She nodded, handing him the dagger, which he fumbled into his belt. She reached down once more to grab Paldor's small crossbow and a handful of bolts. No telling when they'd prove useful, especially with Jace helpless as he was.
'Where are we going?' she asked as they moved toward the door. 'Where's this healer of yours?'
'Ovitzia District,' he said.
'Well,' Emmara said, craning her neck to look up at the two newcomers on her porch, faintly luminescent in the orange glow of the setting sun and the magic streetlights flickering gradually into illumination. 'This is a surprise.'
'Emmara!' Jace greeted her, his words growing ever more slurred. 'It's great again. You… I mean… He blinked once, languidly, reaching out toward her. 'I can't find my hands.' His eyes rolled back, their lids fluttering shut, and Jace went limp, dangling upright like a coat on a hanger thanks to the possessing spirit within his unconscious body.
Emmara circled Jace once, as though looking for the wires that held him erect, then knelt to examine the obvious wound. For the entire circuit, Liliana watched with an expression hovering between hopeful and darkly suspicious. A pall of silence hung over them, broken only by the trundling wagons and passersby on the street beneath, the occasional boat passing even farther below, and Jace's labored breathing.
'Can you help him?' Liliana asked, even as Emmara brushed the cloak aside for a closer look at the protruding bolt.
Emmara rose again to her full unimpressive height. 'Who am I helping?' she asked blandly. 'Berrim? Or Jace?'
Liliana didn't even blink. 'Which one gets your help faster?'
The elf narrowed her eyes but nodded. 'Bring him inside.'
At Liliana's command, the spirit within Jace plucked at tendons and muscles, driving his body into a shamble as awkward as any newly animated zombie. Emmara cast the necromancer a look of profound disgust and found herself reviewing a suite of her own defensive spells-just in case-before following them in and slamming the door shut behind her.
Darkness gave way to a muddled gray, and then to a fuzzy image of an off-white room.
No, not a room. Rooms had walls. This had pillars, with only a single wall whose window looked out on the street below. He'd made it.
Jace all but gasped in relief, then groaned as agony danced across his ribs with stomping feet and iron shoes. The world went gray yet again, and when it finally resolved itself once more into Emmara's home, Jace saw a beautiful face and a halo of black hair staring down at him.
'Miss me?' he asked, his voice weak.
'More than Paldor did,' she said, sitting beside him-no mean feat, considering how narrow the bed was-and wiping the sweat from his brow. 'How do you feel?'
'Like someone-'
'If you say 'like someone shot me with a crossbow,' I may just get the bolt back from your elf friend and stick it back in you.'
'Uh… I hurt,' he concluded lamely.
'I know,' she said softly. 'And I don't want to see it happen again. But Jace-'
Jace recognized the tone, felt his lips press together in a flat line. Don't say it. At least give me a few days-a few minutes-to recover First! Don't say it.
'They'll find us again,' she said firmly. 'They'll keep finding us, if we don't make them stop.'
She said it.
Jace opened his mouth to argue, then froze as the question finally sank home. How had Semner found them? The man had no magics, they'd done nothing to give themselves away, or at least nothing he could think of. Nobody of any import traveled through Avaric, so how…
He realized Liliana was still talking, and shook off his reverie as best he could.
'Liliana, look at me! This was just one cell, and I've got a hole in me! There's no way we're taking on the entire-'
'Damn it, Jace, listen to me!'
'No.'
Liliana leaned forward, staring him in the face. 'We can beat him!'
Jace barked out a laugh, then wished he hadn't as the room swam and his chest seemed to catch fire. 'Liliana,' he insisted through clenched teeth, 'you're wrong. You have no idea how powerful Tezzeret is!
' I-'
'He's not stronger than us. Not both of us together.'
'Even if you're right,' Jace argued, hoping a new tack would head off yet another repeat of the same argument, 'what good would it do? Let's say by some miracle we do get rid of the bastard. What then? Go back on the run while his replacement comes after us for revenge? 'Can't let people think the Consortium is vulnerable,' right? So either way-'
'You're an idiot.' Liliana shook her head and rose, pacing to the nearest pillar. 'How did I come to care so much for someone so thick?'
Jace watched her, squinting as she passed in front of the open window and the sun laughingly stuck needles in his eyes. 'Enlighten me.'
'You may know Tezzeret,' she told him, 'but I've studied the Infinite Consortium itself.'
'Tezzeret is the Consortium,' Jace corrected.
'No, he's not. Think about it. A dozen worlds, each cell with dozens of employees, soldiers, and spies. How many of them even know about worlds beyond their own?'
'Well, right, but-''
'How many of those know who Tezzeret is? And of those who do, how many care? A few of his lieutenants and personal operatives, maybe. Nobody else, Jace. For Urza's sake, why do you think he was able to take over the damn thing to begin with? It's because most of the personnel don't know who's giving the orders. They certainly don't care, as long as they get their share of everything!'
Maybe it was the pain, or the lingering disorientation of the wound and Emmara's healing magic, but Jace could not-or would not-comprehend. She couldn't be saying what it sounded like she was saying! Could she?
But she only nodded at his bewildered gaze. 'You don't have to hide from the Consortium. We take Tezzeret, and we can run the damned thing!
'No more hiding. No more dashing from home to home, wondering who's watching you, or how to pay for your next meal. You can do what you want. You can make the Infinite Consortium into what you want!'
'Just by getting rid of Tezzeret?' Jace asked skeptically.
'Well, you'll have to kill a few of his closer associates, too, but-'
'Oh, is that all? Kill Tezzeret and a few of his associates?'
'What?' she asked, puzzled at the sudden bitterness in his tone.
'I don't want to kill anyone anymore, Liliana. I certainly don't want either of us to die. And if we try this, we're going to do both. We're going to kill a few people, and then Tezzeret's going to kill us, and none of it will matter.'
