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“Kavin, this is my friend Emmara,” said Jace with mock etiquette. “Emmara, we have to. You are not stopping this. I won’t wander into a guild conflict just to satisfy my own curiosity. And I won’t let Kavin be used as a pawn in a dragon’s game. You remember my previous employer, Tezzeret. You should understand why.”

“You’re crucial to this effort, Jace,” she said. “You’re the only one who can help me. Please don’t turn your back on me. Not after all the times I stitched you together, not after all the trouble you got yourself—and me—wrapped up in. You can’t abandon me when I need you. When we all need you.”

“I’m not getting involved because of all the trouble I caused you. Tezzeret sent his men to kill you. I can’t let something like that happen again. I won’t let it.”

“Excuse me,” said Kavin, “but you’re Selesnya, correct? What stake does your guild have in this? How does this affect the Conclave?”

“It affects all of us,” said Emmara. “Or it will, soon enough. Whatever the Izzet are planning, it comes at a time when the guilds are especially distrustful of each other. Niv-Mizzet is very old and very covetous. The dragon could be planning something dire. He could be making a play for power that could never have been possible—not until the Guildpact dissolved.”

Kavin’s eyes widened. “A coup. You’re talking about a coup.”

“Even if he isn’t planning it, don’t you think the other guilds will be expecting it? They’ll arm for a guild war. We have to pull together. This is the time for us to reach out to everyone. And I need your help.”

“No. I won’t be part of it.” Jace shook his head. He could see where this was going. He would be recruited into a fight with the promise of enforcing the peace, then be used as a tool by powerful individuals to wage their private war. The more he knew, the more value he had to the dragon, and perhaps to others. And as long as he was valuable to them, he could envision how those powerful individuals would see his friends. Kavin and Emmara would be no better than bargaining chips, commodities bound to what was between Jace’s ears. He didn’t like to surrender to the whims of this dragon, or to abandon his research. But that’s not what he was doing, he told himself. The last thing he wanted to do was to destroy information, to erase hard-won knowledge—but he had no choice. It was better for no one to know it at all.

“Talk some sense into him, Kavin,” she said, making a frustrated gesture toward Jace. “Tell him that this is going to boil over and hurt many, many people. Tell him that this isn’t the time to back away.”

“I can’t, Emmara,” said Jace. “I can’t. Not this time. Kavin, please sit.”

And with that, he began the spell to destroy memories.

***

Jace was at home inside another man’s mind.

He had been a mind mage for as long as he had wielded magic. He had explored the contours of consciousness and plumbed the murky depths of memory. He even had some experience in destroying minds entirely. When he worked for Tezzeret’s Infinite Consortium, an interplanar cartel of planeswalkers and thugs, he had reduced multiple men to drooling, mindless simpletons, on the justification that it was better than killing them. He wasn’t proud of the psychic harm he had caused. But the fact was that he was good at inflicting it when he needed to.

He assessed Kavin’s mind, his inner eye soaring over the vedalken’s mental realm like an eagle at sea. He peered into his compatriot’s memories, tracking glimpses of those weeks during which he and Kavin had worked on the code. Jace used his own consciousness as a scalpel, slicing through those pieces of the past, tearing them free of their bindings like glittering cobwebs. The memories took time to dissolve completely; as he passed through Kavin’s mind. Jace set off specialized tremors of mental destruction, letting his efforts ripple into all the associations, metaphors, and mental juxtapositions that might have led Kavin back to those thoughts again.

After a time that felt like days, Jace pulled back from Kavin’s thoughts. He could not locate any other scrap of memory that pertained to the code, their research, or the maze. The obliteration was complete. Kavin’s mind was intact, but it contained no trace of knowledge that could bring him harm. Jace let his consciousness slide back to his own mind.

He awoke, lying sideways on the bed in the room at the Cobblestand, drained and sweating with effort. He pushed himself up to a sitting position. Emmara was there, concern written on her face. Kavin, though, was gone.

“Where …” Jace wiped the perspiration from his face. “Where did he go?”

Emmara couldn’t hide her horror. “Jace. He could feel it. He could feel you doing it to him. At first he was calm, sitting there with you, but then he stumbled out of here. He ran, mumbling. What did you do to him?”

Jace wiped his brow, rubbing the hair that was matted against his scalp. “I did what I had to do. He won’t remember anything that will involve him in this.”