Dragon's Maze

“No. Because I actually need your help. I’m not an emperor. I don’t lead the guilds. I just have the privilege of trying to keep them from devouring each other. Besides, I won’t be able to adjudicate all the time. I’ll need advice.”

“An advisory council.”

“Yes.”

“You thought of who’ll be on it?”

“Yes. Representatives from all the guilds, of course. People I can trust.”

“Sounds wise. So what do you need from me?”

Jace couldn’t tell if she was being coy, or if she really didn’t know what he was offering. “I think you actually want me to ask.”

Lavinia paced around the unfinished floor, not facing him, but Jace could see she wore a slim smile. She looked through the rafters, through the half-completed roof, to the sky, sheltering her eyes with her hand. “Looks like it will be a fitting edifice. So this will be the official embassy? The headquarters?”

“Well, this is where people will see the sign. This is where we’ll conduct official meetings that we want the public to know about.”

“This is the place that’ll go on maps.”

“Exactly.”

“Who gets to know where the real one is located?”

“Let me put it this way,” said Jace. “You’re not one of them. Not yet.”

Another set of footsteps came up the makeshift stairs. Emmara appeared without a word. Her gown indicated some new important station within the Selesnya Conclave.

“Can I talk to you later, Councilor?” Jace asked Lavinia.

Lavinia nodded, and smirked at the mention of the title. She tilted her head at Emmara, and made her way down the stairs.

Jace didn’t look at Emmara for a long time. He leaned his hands against one open windowsill, looking out onto Ravnica. He let her explore the nascent building, and gave her time to come up with the words she wanted to say. It was her place to speak, he knew.

“Have you heard any cases yet?” Emmara asked finally. Her tone was light, casual. That was good.

“A few,” Jace said. “A dispute over recruiting rights. A destruction of property claim. Nothing world-shattering.”

“And you’re able to mediate between the guilds? They abide by your judgment?”

“It seems they have to.”

Emmara wore a small smile, which brought rose to her cheeks. “You did it. You brought them together.”

Jace didn’t know where to look, so he inspected his palms. “We’ll see. There’s a lot to do yet, and you know I have to take care of some things … elsewhere.”

He saw Emmara’s smile falter, and he thought he saw her eyes unfocus for a moment. The talk of other worlds, of his planeswalker nature, had stripped away the lies between them. He didn’t know how she was taking it, but he had wanted to include her, to reveal the walls he put up around his life and let her inside. He wanted his secret to bind them together, as he had bound together the minds of the maze-runners.

“And then there’s you,” he went on. “I don’t know that I can ever express to you how sorry I am for the various ways I’ve hurt you. I think I have a list written down somewhere.”

Emmara fell against him abruptly, and her mouth found his, and she pressed against his lips like making an impression in clay. His eyes fell closed and his body froze, as if to contain the feeling of her skin this close to his, and to hold it inside him for as long as he could. But when she broke the connection and pulled away, and she smiled with her lips together like a courteous houseguest, he knew. He knew that it had been a gesture of gratitude, a one-way gift to show her appreciation, hardly more than a missive from her guild. He opened his eyes and composed himself, pulling his cloak around him. Her smile grew into her cheeks as she looked at him, but he saw a coiled-up pain in her eyes as they retreated from him and she looked anywhere else but his face. A politeness had frosted over them.

“Jace …” she began.

“Well, thanks for coming to see the place,” Jace said. His voice sounded too loud, too pedestrian. “I hope that we see each other again.” That was the wrong thing to say, too, as if he expected them to become total strangers. But he couldn’t unsay it, and it hung there in the air.

“We will,” she said, mending the awkwardness with two words. She was a healer in all ways. “But Jace, before I go, I need something from you.”

“Name it.”

Her lip trembled slightly. “In order for me to do my duty to my guild, I need to be able to share everything with them. I need to be able to commune with Trostani, with the woodshapers and guildmages, with every soul in the Conclave. That is my charge and my guild oath. Do you see?”

Jace’s heart thumped. “You want to tell them what I’ve told you. About my travel beyond Ravnica, about the other worlds. But you can’t tell them that—it’s not something they’d be able to understand. They can’t know.”

“That is not what I’m asking,” she said, pressing her hands together. “You are correct that I can’t tell them that, Jace. They can never know. It would kill them to know. Just as it’s been killing me.”