A/N: In which Ral irritates Lavinia, and Jace and Ral geek out together.

Chapter Twelve

Jace laid his aching head on the desk, trying to slow his breathing. He had managed to keep himself from collapsing until Emmara had left, but he was paying the price now. Despite how carefully she had tried to contain it, her sorrow and mourning had shaken him to the core, and that, combined with the effort of threading into her memories and cross-referencing the subconscious responses in her memories of Calomir, had left him miserable and exhausted.

Emmara couldn't have had any idea what she was asking of him. And she would have accepted it if he had told her that determining the last thing the real Calomir had said to her was beyond even his formidable capabilities, just as she would have accepted a simple lie. But Jace felt that he owed it to her to find the truth.

It had taken over an hour, but finally, he was able to tease out an evening that ended with a murmured declaration of love and a "sleep well" from Calomir. Feeling sick-at-heart and heavy, he'd brought the memory to the forefront of her mind, and the gratitude on her face was enough that he felt he'd taken a step toward mending their friendship and eradicating his own guilt. When she'd left, he'd collapsed. Maybe tomorrow, he would have the energy to excise the quick flashes of Emmara's naked body from his mind, but for the time being, he thought he would just have to live with them.

He was dazed enough that, though he heard the sound of the door opening, he didn't register what it was until the person who had opened it was directly behind him.

"Zap," said Ral Zarek, putting a hand on Jace's shoulder. "You're dead."

"What?" Jace asked miserably, slowly lifting his painful head from its place on the desk to turn and look at the Izzet mage.

"Your guards are not very useful," Ral said. "I barely had to try to get past them."

"Don't move, Zarek," snapped Lavinia's voice from the doorway.

"Aren't you a little late?" Ral asked easily, his hand still resting on Jace's shoulder. "If I had actually been trying to assassinate him, the Guildpact would be dead by now. It wouldn't mean much if you caught the perpetrator afterwards."

"Wait," Jace said slowly, trying to piece this together in his head. "Ral, you're here because you—wanted to show Lavinia that her precautions were insufficient?"

"I don't care what he's doing here," Lavinia said stonily. "Guildmage Zarek, even if I believe that you had no intention of harming the Living Guildpact, you are in violation of at least four laws and regulations, immediately after having been under investigation on charges of suspected kidnapping, and you have left two of my arresters stunned outside the door. Do you really think this was your wisest course of action?"

Ral took half a step forward, his hand moving out to the side. Jace was struck by the protectiveness of his position, and wondered if Ral had noticed it himself. "I think that me getting in here was by far the best-case scenario for Ja—the Guildpact," Ral said in an icy tone of voice.

Lavinia glared at him, and Jace, with a mental sigh at the effort, managed to lever himself out of the chair. "Could you two both stop fighting over what's best for me without asking me?" he said quietly. "And don't bother to pretend that your motives are altruistic—no, not even yours, Lavinia. I am a mind mage, after all." As they sputtered, Jace tried to push back the headache enough to speak coherently. He adopted what he hoped looked like a confident posture, while really standing so that his desk would prop him up. "You are both my friends," he continued. "And I'm aware that you care about me. But you have got to stop acting as if I am incapable of taking care of myself—"

"Incidents in the last few weeks would suggest otherwise," Ral pointed out snidely.

Jace fixed him with a sideways glare. "—to the point where you are jeopardizing my safety by not telling me things or letting me leave this room."

Lavinia huffed an angry sigh through her nostrils. "Jace," she said pleadingly.

Jace sighed. "If I die of claustrophobia, it won't matter to the people trying to kill me. And if you and Guildmage Zarek do not stop squabbling, you're liable to be more harm than help."

"But he—" Lavinia protested just as Ral put in, "But she—" They stopped and glared at each other.

Jace sighed. "If we could just solve the problem of the bells…" he murmured softly.

"Bells?" Ral echoed sharply.

"I heard bells in the attacker's head," Jace explained. "Lavinia believes it's evidence of a Dimir sleeper agent."

"Guildpact, would you please refrain from telling outsiders about the details of internal investigations?" Lavinia said in irritation.

"Maybe you should tell more outsiders about it, since apparently the Azorius are incompetent enough not to have arrested the perpetrator by now," snarled Ral. "Bori Andon. He was carrying around a silver bell with him and he stopped in and saw me just before I met Jace for dinner. I would bet you half my experimental equipment—which the Azorius still haven't returned—that he put a spy machine of some kind on my clothing. We're just lucky he didn't try to kill Jace again."

Lavinia opened and shut her mouth into a thin line. "Thank you for the information, Guildmage Zarek," she said frostily. "It will be taken into consideration. Now, perhaps, if you would not mind leaving, I will see what can be done about the charges leveled against you. In light of your help in this matter, I may be able to minimize or dismiss them."

Jace could see Ral mulling over the order, and decided to push him in the direction of least confrontation. "I need to get some sleep," he said. "It's been a very long, tiring day. If we can put this damn assassin into prison, I'll come by your lab as soon as I can, Ral."

Ral's hand tightened on Jace's shoulder, and he took in a long, irritated-sounding breath. "Yeah, all right," he said finally. "Arrester Lavinia, I hope your Azorius guards won't have too much difficulty dealing with Andon."

Lavinia made an indescribable noise, and Jace hastened to smooth things over. "I'm certain they'll do fine," he said. "Now, I really would like to get some sleep, if you don't mind—"

"Of course, Guildpact," Lavinia said firmly. "I will escort Guildmage Zarek out and send someone to conduct you to your apartment at your leisure."

Ral gave a soft snort, but nodded as well.

There were boxes piled to the ceiling. While it was technically true that, by now, the Azorius had returned every piece of confiscated equipment—Ral had a very long list to prove it—they hadn't bothered to unpack it, and it was almost certainly now completely out of order. Oh, it was surely in some kind of order—what kind of Azorius worth their salt would fail to take the opportunity to organize anything?—but probably not the kind of order that Ral would be able to figure out, and, thus, not a terribly useful sort of order at all.

In the meantime, he was kicking his heels trying to get himself to go through the entire giant pile and move it back to places in his lab where it would be able to perform useful functions again, but so far he hadn't been able to muster the energy. Azorius arresters had been swarming in and out all day, conducting interviews in the wake of the arrest of Bori Andon under suspicion of 'Dimir complicity.' Ral himself had had to put up with a number of extremely uncomfortable sessions with Niv-Mizzet; the Firemind was not pleased about Andon, or about Ral's lack of results over the past few weeks. He didn't take kindly to excuses like "I had no equipment," and Ral was left feeling faintly harassed and, paradoxically, terribly unmotivated.

A knock on the door made him start to get up and then collapse lethargically back into his chair. No doubt it would be another of the weirds Maree kept sending up with offers to help him unpack. Ral disliked weirds. Even the most intelligent ones were too literal for his taste, and most of them were little more than one-trick ponies. "Go away!" he called.

The door opened. "Is that any way to talk to the incarnation of law and order on Ravnica?" Jace asked mildly.

"Oh," said Ral. "It's you again. I should have known."

"For someone who was willing to stand up to multiple gods for me—not to mention a detention sphere—you're not very welcoming."

Ral grunted. "I never said I wanted you to die," he said plaintively. "Just to go away."

"If you really want me to leave, I will. I was going to offer you some help with your equipment, though—I heard Lavinia saying something about alphabetizing it? Which occurred to me might not be optimal for scientific enquiry."

"Ah, the great bureaucratic master of scientific enquiry," Ral said snidely, swiveling around in his chair, wondering why exactly he was being so rude all of a sudden. The kiss he had given Jace replayed in his mind, sudden and forceful, and his eyes slid away from the mind mage, hoping he would stay out of Ral's head.

"You know, I have been the Guildpact for a comparatively short period of time," Jace said smoothly.

"Ah, yes, before that you were a blackmailer. Very scientific."

"I'm sure that having a person who literally knows where you want something to be before you do would be completely useless to have around while unpacking."

Ral swiveled around to face him again. "Stay out of my head, Beleren."

"So it's back to 'Beleren' now? Consistent." Before Ral could retort again, Jace sighed and leaned against the door. "If I were in your head right now—and I'm not—I'd think you were getting defensive, Zarek."

"What possible reason could I have for getting defensive, mind mage?" Ral asked coldly.

"The fact that you put your life on the line for someone several times in the past week?" Jace said quietly. "Not to mention went to dinner with, which I'd hazard a guess you enjoyed. But I suspect neither of those are things you're used to doing. Me being a mind mage bothers you because you don't trust people, Ral. Not because you don't trust me."

Ral growled. "Don't flatter yourself. I don't trust you."

"You don't want to."

Getting to his feet, Ral shrugged and moved across the room to the boxes. "If you're really not going to leave, you might as well make yourself useful. Stay out of my head unless you want another scar, though."

Even without sharing a mind, Jace was more help than Ral had anticipated. He was quiet and methodical, but not in an offensively Azorius way. He was also reasonably good about not being in Ral's way when the Izzet mage was unpacking. After an hour or two of work, the lab was starting to look almost like itself again.

"Ral?" Jace asked. "What's this?" He indicated a large box with trailing wires and the letters FLUX scrawled across the side in Ral's messy handwriting.

"Oh, that," said Ral. It was ironic to see Jace kneeling beside that particular failed project. "Maree was trying to make a machine to read brain patterns. Didn't work."

"A mind magic machine? How was it supposed to work?" Jace sounded far more interested than Ral would have expected. Leaning over Jace's shoulder, he grimaced down at the mess of wires unfolding underneath the Guildpact's hands.

"We tried to write some equations that would let it echo the patterns of electricity inside your head," he said. "But it never managed to hold together a coherent standing wave."

"What did the equations look like?" Jace asked. Ral glanced at him with a raised eyebrow. "What? I have some experience with mana theory. I haven't spent my entire life blackmailing people."

Ral grunted skeptically, but moved to the chalkboard that formed one wall of the room and began to write. Jace followed him over and stood on his tiptoes to peer over his shoulder. "You're short," Ral commented with a smile.

"I was—undernourished as a child," Jace said defensively.

"Oh? How would you know?"

The Living Guildpact made an angry noise, but instead of moving away, rested his chin on Ral's shoulder, much to the other's surprise. "What's this?" he asked.

"That's Nekulai's flux equation," Ral answered. "Best description I came up with. But I couldn't get an analytical solution, and the machine kept coming up with infinities."

Jace's chin moved, and Ral glanced to the side to see that he was chewing on his knuckle. "What kind of boundary conditions?" he asked after a minute.

Ral sighed. "I tried periodic, fixed, linear, and Charlez polynomials."

"I have no idea what that last one is, but—" Reaching up to a piece of the chalkboard that remained pristine and uncovered by scribbles, Ral wrote the formula. It took several minutes. When he was done, Jace whistled. "That is complex. Are they orthogonal?"

"Yeah. Perfectly fine basis set if you want to use them that way. Not that that helped. I eventually decide the damn thing wasn't separable and gave up."

Jace continued to stare and chew lazily on his thumb. "Did you try any solutions?"

Ral grunted and reached for a scrap of paper. "That's the list down this page here. I tried everything I could think of. Look—we're not going to get anywhere. Might as well just throw this piece of junk out."

"No, no, wait. I want to look at it some more." Ral glanced to the side. Jace looked genuinely interested.

"Suit yourself. I'll go unpack the rest."

Jace slithered to a squatting position and leaned back, staring intently at the chalkboard. With a slight shrug, Ral headed back to finish cobbling his derivian-meter back together. He was going to need more manalines.

Groups of weirds had been in and out several times, and Jace still hadn't really moved. Ral was impressed. He tended to fidget when he was focusing on a problem, but Jace hadn't budged, except to lick his lips and move his fingers slightly. His eyes were glowing very faintly blue, and, sometime when Ral was distracted reorganizing manalines, he had started sketching equations in mid-air. His mental handwriting was scratchy and elongated, but surprisingly clear. Ral wondered if he did this often when he was working on a problem—it was fascinating to watch, as variables and numbers disappeared, reappearing in different locations or slightly modified.

Most of the equations were lines of thought Ral himself had tried out and exhausted, and Jace wasn't traversing them any faster than he had, but it was still enjoyable to watch. Ral felt the problem drawing him in again, as he slowly laid down his hammer and pliers and walked over to sit behind Jace. After all, a fresh perspective was always good.

He was staring at a summation symbol when one of the numbers ticked up. Ral frowned. He hadn't looked at this problem in months, but he was pretty sure that was new. "How many dimensions are you working in?" he asked.

"Hm?" said Jace, abstractly. The illusions flickered dangerously, and he raised a hand for the first time, grimacing slightly. "I started in three, but it didn't feel right."

"It didn't feel right?" Ral echoed. It was something he might have said, but it was surprising to hear from his methodical companion.

"Mm, that sounds a little strange, I know," Jace said, frowning, his eyes glowing more brightly. "But I've been in a lot of minds, and I don't think you get enough information in three dimensions. I mean there's time to begin with, and that doesn't really get treated differently—"

"I did try a four-dimensional version for a little while, but it was even more complex," Ral interrupted.

"What about five?" Jace asked. "I think something cancels, I just can't quite see—"

"Fuck," breathed Ral, heading for the chalkboard. He broke two pieces of chalk trying to write quickly. "Dammit." Variables filled his head, flashed in front of his eyes. If he started with five—then the equations grew more complex—but the symmetry changed. Five wasn't a number Ral associated with symmetry—two or four was much more common, but still, this wasn't hard, this wasn't groundbreaking, this was stupidly easy. How had Jace seen this when he hadn't? Months in the lab, working on this, and the damn Guildpact had waltzed in and in one day—

Ral rounded on him, to see the wide-eyed wonder poorly hidden in Jace's eyes. The stab of irritation was instantly replaced with something closer to gratitude. "You are too damn intelligent," he growled, and he crossed the room to put out a hand to Jace and help him up. "Do you want to stick around and help me put this thing back together? I need a knowledgable test subject."

Jace grinned at him. "I'm not sure I want to be a test subject," he said. "But I can stick around for a little longer. Just for you."

"You're not interested in the machine at all?"

Jace smirked. "Just for you," he repeated.