you?'
'No.'
Jace glowered but let it go. 'So if you've managed to keep pristine through all this, why help me escape now?'
'Because I don't want to see you suffer what they're going to do to you.' Then, at his expression, she actually slammed a palm against the floor. 'I mean it, Jace. I really do care for you. I won't pretend it'll stop me from doing what I need to do, but it's true all the same.'
'Say I believe that,' Jace said, and he was shocked to realize that he wanted to believe it. 'What's the other reason?'
'Because I've gotten too close to give up!' Liliana leaned in, her eyes suddenly bright. 'We can still win!'
Jace shook his head. 'You're insane.' 'No, think about it! He won't be expecting a second attack, not from you!'
'I can't beat him, damn it!' He found himself clutching the bars, unsure of when he'd actually grabbed for them.
'Not alone,' she whispered.
'You? So who handles Baltrice and the guards?'
'No, I didn't mean me. We get help, Jace.'
'Who could… You're not serious!'
'You have a better idea? All we have to do is get Tezzeret to Grixis.'
'Oh, is that all?'
'Much as he hates you? If he thinks you're escaping, he'll follow you just about anywhere. And if he realizes you're going to Grixis, he'll be that much more desperate to stop you! He knows as well as we do that he can't stand up to you and Bolas.'
Jace could only stare. 'Even if it proves that easy, you really think Nicol Bolas would interfere?'
'He helped us before. We might have to make a deal, but I think it'd be worth it, don't you?'
That was it, then. Jace could all but hear the last piece of the puzzle click into place in his mind.
Of course. The Consortium wasn't her prize, could not free her from her debt; it was payment, payment to the only one who could.
And now he knew what he had to do.
'If we're actually going to try this,' he told her thoughtfully, 'there are a few things I need you to find out first.'
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
It was some few days later, as best Jace could tell, when Liliana returned. He'd suffered through only a single 'session' with Baltrice in the interim; she must be busy.
'We've less time than I'd hoped,' Liliana said to him as the door once more slid shut behind her. 'The dreadful duo are conducting some sort of experiment, but I don't know how long that'll keep them occupied.'
Jace forced himself to stand, ignoring the pains of his most recent burns, and shuffled across the cell.
'I thought we were waiting until they were off-world again.'
Liliana shook her head and placed a large bundle on the floor near the bars. 'I don't think we can, Jace. I think they're close to finishing.'
He didn't need her to complete the thought, felt himself trembling again at Tezzeret's plans. 'Then I guess we'd better hurry,' he said, voice quavering.
Despite his frayed nerves, however, he couldn't help but smile as Liliana began to unwrap the bundle, and he recognized the equally frayed blue cloak that served as the bag. She glanced up at his expression and smiled in turn; for just a moment, it was almost enough to make him forget that more than bars now stood between them.
Her movements swift but precise, she laid out an array of odd devices, near the cell but not directly beside it.
'The guards won't miss those?' Jace asked.
Her grin turned nasty. 'The guards have bigger problems right now.' On cue, the door slid open, and a quartet of Tezzeret's soldiers shambled into the room. Jace barely had to glance their way to see that they were already dead.
'Infinity Globes,' she said, not allowing time for further questions. She lifted a pair of small dark orbs. 'It's what he used to follow you when you tried your 'tactical withdrawal.' I understand he started work on them after the two of you had trouble escaping from Bolas's berserkers a few years ago.'
Jace nodded, remembering how near they'd both come to dying that day.
'As I understand it,' she continued, 'They're made of an etherium filigree, so tightly packed it's almost fused. It provides a lot of the power you'd normally have to focus from the world around you, so you don't need to spend more than a few seconds in concentration. It's easier for Tezzeret, thanks to his etherium arm, but they should work for us as well.'
'Handy.'
She nodded, then pushed them aside. Frankly, she still wasn't certain he'd live long enough to need them. She lifted her other prize, a bizarre contraption of tubes and pipes, and set it beside the cell.
'That's it?' he asked. 'It looks like an Izzet water pipe.'
Liliana chuckled. 'Maybe. But yes, that's it. There's enough mana stored in here to help you recover if…' She sighed. 'Jace, are you sure this is a good idea? There's a reason I don't summon these things, you know. They're notoriously hard to control.'
'I'm sure it's a lousy idea,' he told her. 'But unless you found something in that arsenal that looks like an antidote to Tezzeret's Stay Where You're Put poison…?'
She shook her head.
'Then it's the only idea I've got,' he concluded. 'All right,' she whispered. 'Then let's get it over with.'
At her silent command, the four zombies advanced, one producing a heavy chain they had picked up elsewhere in the complex. Because the undead could not place so much as a finger between the bars without falling inert, Liliana passed the end of the chain to Jace, who ran it around two of the bars and fed it back out. The zombies lifted both ends, stepped away, and began to twist.
Jace stepped as far back as the walls of the cell allowed, crouching in a corner and lifting his arms to protect his face from any flying debris. Liliana moved behind the zombies, muttering under her breath, exhorting them to ever greater efforts.
A high-pitched squeal echoed throughout the chamber, and flakes of metal sifted earthward where the chain rubbed against the bars. Tireless and impossibly strong, the zombies continued to twist.
'Are we sure there's no alarm?' Jace asked, shouting over the rising screech.
'Would it matter?' Liliana called back.
I guess not, Jace thought. He could only hope, with Tezzeret and Baltrice occupied in the laboratory and the guards beyond the cell now deceased, that nobody would be in a position to hear it if there was.
A second, equally deafening tone joined the first, as filings sifted from the sockets in which the bars were housed. The bars began, every so faintly, to quiver.
And then the zombies fell back as one of the links in the chain snapped open. Jace and Liliana took just a moment to reposition one of the shorter lengths, and the undead efforts continued.
It took only a few moments more. With a final, ear-piercing rend, the two bars bent inward and tore loose from their sockets. Jace was free.
Sort of.
Pale and perspiring-not from the toxin, for he'd not yet left the cell, but at the notion of what had to happen next-Jace forced himself to stand beside the gap without quite passing through. Carefully he lowered himself into a crouch and stuck his left arm out.
