Gatecrash

She stood up from the finely-crafted desk and traveled down the flights of equally finely-crafted stairs. She approached the main entrance of the Lyev tower: her would-be doorway out into the bright streets of Ravnica.

“Greetings, Officer Lavinia,” said the head gatekeeper.

“Hello, Samil.” She moved as if by somnambulism, telling herself she only wanted to ask the guards something. Anything. “How goes the shift?”

“Well, the rioters have all passed through. No Azorius casualties. Some property damage.”

He was talking about the Rakdos, of course. She hadn’t done more than scan the reports. She knew it was important, that such a large-scale uprising by the chaotic cult merited more of her attention. But her mind was fixated on finding Beleren. “Any arrests?”

“Many writs filed with the Minister of Territories and Holdings. No arrests.”

“That’s good. I mean, it’s good there weren’t casualties.”

“Right.”

Lavinia looked past the gatekeeper, who was backlit by the bright afternoon out on the street. The marketplace in the plaza nearby would be in full swing by now, pickpockets cutting their way through the crowds, swindlers luring their marks into illegal dice games, agents of the more corrupt guilds eavesdropping and casing the wares. And somewhere out there Beleren, a mage capable of even more devious crimes, walked free, unknown to the populace. While she was in here.

The gatekeeper wasn’t standing in the way of the exit, and didn’t even have his polearm angled to block her path. The way was open. She could simply walk through the doorway and leave New Prahv. She knew the gatekeeper would rely not on force, but on her loyalty to the law, on her devotion to the judgment of her guildmaster, the Supreme Judge Isperia, to prevent her departure. It was a gate made of principle rather than iron. All she had to do was to forget that Azorius loyalty for one moment, to sleepwalk her way through a hole in the wall, and she would be free to pursue Beleren.

“Can I help you with something, ma’am?”

She glanced at the gatekeeper. She could see that the man could read her dilemma, and that it was creating a profoundly embarrassing moment for him. The shame was excruciating—not only to consider violating the direct order of her guildmaster, but to have an underling witness her entertaining the idea.

Nevertheless, she took a step toward the door. It was just one step, no further.

“Ma’am?”

“Just let me do this,” she said quietly, hovering on that one foot.

The poor gatekeeper looked terrified. He didn’t move to bar her way, but he didn’t move aside, either.

But she had pivoted on the ball of her foot and had returned to the heart of the tower, leaving the gatekeeper behind her. The word of the sphinx was law. If she did not live in accordance with that law, she would be no better than the criminals she pursued.

In the spiral staircase, she paused. She produced the sheet of paper again, the official words in tall blue type, the runes of the writ that shackled her to the building. As long as she was part of the Azorius Senate, this was what she must obey. But she thought of the Tenth all around her, just beyond the walls of the tower, the people of the district constantly under siege by the schemes of the other guilds. And she thought of Jace Beleren.

She pulled another piece of paper from her cloak—the hurriedly scrawled notes given to her by Kavin. What a horrifying ordeal, she thought: to lose your memories to some mind-withering spell, and to try to capture them on paper as you lose them.

Kavin and Beleren had been researching a code, according to the notes, and Beleren was convinced that it had to do with the actions of the Izzet guild. This was what drove Beleren. This was the key to understanding who he was, she thought. This was the key to bringing him to justice.

Rather than walk up the stairs to her office, she turned and headed down. She spiraled past the senate offices, past the ministers’ floors, past the entrance gate. She continued spiraling down below where the street would have been, through the tower’s sub-levels, until she reached a new checkpoint. The guards down here wore robes rather than armor, and had owls perched on their shoulders.

“What brings you to the Grand Archives of New Prahv?” asked a guard. The owl on her shoulder swiveled its head around to look at her, and blinked its blue eyes.

“Just a bit of research,” said Lavinia.

***

“You failed me, Vosk,” said the voice, the syllables echoing from everywhere.