Vincalis the Agitator Page 15

  Solander could not be seen funding the play personally, of course; in order to continue with his education in the Academy and to keep from alienating the Masters whose recommendations he would need when he got ready to find his place within the ranks of the Dragons, he needed to keep his distance from anything that so clearly questioned the always sacrosanct nature of the work of wizards. If he wanted to change the Dragons from the inside, first he had to get inside. And he would never get there by being patron to a play that suggested a wizard (and a stolti) might also be a murderer.

  And of course Wraith, in his stolti persona as Gellas, student in the Materan Ground School and respected member of upper society, couldn’t be known to have written such a piece of inflammatory prose. But Wraith could deny any connection with the thing. Could attribute it to some other writer, and produce the play as part of his graduate projects for the Materan School.

  Solander could fund the staging of the play in a moderate venue if he used third parties that would be difficult or impossible to trace back to him. That would be … He smiled. That would be a challenge, and a great deal of fun. As for finding actors to take such interesting parts— well, because the play had been written in Common, it wouldn’t have to be acted by the stolti Poets’ Presentation Covil dilettantes who were fluent in half a dozen dead languages—but who would, no doubt, insist on proper structure, Skursive rhyme, and coma-inducing content. Instead, Wraith would have his choice of people from all walks of life—anyone who could speak and read Common would be a potential actor.

  Solander suddenly realized that Wraith was talking to him.

  “What?”

  “Where did you go? One moment we were discussing my pathetic play, and the next, you were a world away and deaf as the dead.”

  “I’m going to underwrite A Man of Dreams.”

  “You’re what?”

  “I’m going to underwrite it. I’m going to put up the money, channeled through a couple of reliable people I know so that no one knows I’m the one who’s paying to produce it, and you are going to produce the play on a stage. You’re sure no one knows you wrote it?”

  “Very sure.”

  “Good. Attribute it to someone else. That way, if anyone has problems with what it says, you’re just the fellow who thought it was clever and who decided to give it an airing. Your imaginary writer can take the heat for its actual production.”

  “You don’t think people will wonder?”

  “Give your writer a life of his own. Create him as you’d create a character in a play—know where he lives and who he knows and how he gets around. Set up a way to pay him, and always remember to pay him. Send him notes by messenger, and make sure to read his replies. Make him clever. Make him careful. Make him solitary. And never forget that he is someone other than you—not with anyone. Not even me.”

  Wraith nodded thoughtfully. “That should keep me from being banned from the Empire or sent to the mines.”

  “What shall you call him?”

  “I don’t know. Something. Something from the Warrens, to stick a finger in the Empire’s eye.” Wraith closed his eyes and thought. Finally he shook his head. “I don’t know. I’ll think of something sooner or later.”

  Solander shook his head and crossed his arms over his chest. “This secretive writer of yours needs to come to life today, because I’ll give you money to start financing your theater, and some of it has to go to him to pay for his work.”

  Wraith suddenly laughed. “Here’s something. Why not? Call him Vincalis, for all that it will ever matter.”

  “Vincalis?”

  “The name of the gate the beautiful and unsuspecting Shina and I went through, when I first discovered the nature of the Warrens. The gate you and Velyn came through to take Jess and me out. The gate my family is going to walk out of one day.”

  “Doesn’t sound much like a person’s name.”

  “Doesn’t matter, does it? This Vincalis is a fellow who’s concerned with his privacy. No one’s ever going to think that’s his real name, anyway.”

  “Vincalis it is, then.” Solander raised his glass. “Here’s hoping he doesn’t make a fool of all three of us.”

  Wraith raised the bottle he’d been drinking from and said, “From your mouth to the gods’ ears.” They drank. “And now, what of the breakthrough you’ve been hinting at?”

  Solander grinned. “Actually, I’ve had two.”

  “Damn braggart.”

  They both laughed, and Solander said, “Personal or professional first?”

  Wraith’s eyebrows rose. “Oh, personal, of course.”

  “You’re as much a gossip as any covil-osset, aren’t you?” He leaned forward and his voice dropped. “This is good, though.”

  “Well … ?”

  “Jess and I are a couple. Or will be tomorrow, when she becomes a legal adult.”

  Wraith rose, lifted his bottle, and said, “A prayer answered.” He drank the remaining contents in one long, hard gulp, and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. Then he smashed the bottle into his trash basket. “That was to your happiness, and mine.”

  Solander said, “You’re too hard on her.”

  Wraith just looked at Solander from under his eyebrows and said nothing.

  “My other news, then.”

  “Please. But I’m not sure my heart can take it.”

  “I think I may have figured out why you are the way you are.”

  “You’re joking.”

  “Didn’t say I’d learned how to use it yet. But with those documents you … acquired, I’ve been doing equations, trying to figure out the effects of all those different spells that are pouring into the Warrens all the time. The spells on the food, the shield spell around the place, the control spells that go in through the daily lessons and daily prayers. And I hit on something.”

  “Toxic magic overdose.”

  Solander pointed a finger at Wraith. “Close. I was using the school’s equipment after hours, running all the equations and testing them at different power levels. And suddenly I got what I thought was an artifact. All my waveforms went flat. I got a paper copy of what was running at that instant, and saw that it wasn’t really an artifact at all. All those spells, and all that power, blasting through the Warrens—and all that energy being drawn back out of the Warrens—and all those levels constantly adjusting themselves. I think, just once … or maybe more than once, but you’re the only one who got hit by it, I don’t know—anyway, in your Warren, at the moment you were conceived, I think everything hit that single flat note that I discovered, and the result was that you were saturated with every conceivable form of magic for one critical instant. You probably shouldn’t have lived. Most babies conceived at that instant—if there were any others—probably didn’t.”

  “It was a fluke, then.”

  Solander looked at Wraith and shook his head. “Was it? I think I found the mechanism that made you the way you are—but the fact that you survived something that I think should have killed you might have been … fate. A higher destiny.”

  “The gods?” Wraith laughed. “It’s interesting, anyway. Theoretically, then, I might not be the only one in the world like me.”

  “Right. But you probably are. I couldn’t find another series of power levels that had the same result, and I ran up and down the scale in every direction as far as I could—for as long as I could get away with using the school equipment without having anyone ask me what I was doing, anyway.” Solander shuddered, recalling more than a month of nights when he’d used every spellchecker in the student lab, all the while listening for footsteps and knowing that if anyone came in, there was no way he could hope to get everything shut down in time—and knowing that the spells he was checking were government secrets, and that the penalty he’d incur just for having them in his possession was death. Bad memories. He’d finally decided he’d found as much as he wanted to find.

  “Will what you discovered finally give you what you’ve b
een looking for all these years?” Wraith asked after a moment. “Is it the key to magic with no rewhah?”

  “I don’t know. I think it’s a start.”

  With Solander in the Belows visiting Wraith, Jess found herself with too much time to think, and too many things to think about. She walked slowly through the Rone Artis Memorial Starpark, watching the starsetters changing the seasonal displays to either side of the thin ribbon of translucent pathway that led around the starpond. The following day would mark her last day of childhood, according to her forged documents, and her last day of tutoring within Artis House. As an adult, she would be at loose ends. The stolti could not hold paying jobs, as this was below them; if she had been good at theoretical magic, she could have found a position in government, which was considered the realm of the stolti. But she’d hated the necessary maths, and had no real aptitude for the poetic forms of spellcasting beyond the simplest spellwork. So government would be out. She might develop and manage a business—a lot of stolti did that to augment their family fortunes. Her Artis stipend, plus a few investments that Solander had made and then turned over to her management, would keep her going. She could live in Artis House as long as she wanted. But what was she to do with herself?

  She liked art and music and dance. She could join a covil, perhaps, and spend time with other stolti who liked the same things. Maybe she could find some direction there.

  “Pretty, aren’t they?”

  Jess jumped, and turned to find a gray-haired man behind her, smiling at her with an expression of mild amusement on his face.

  “Pretty?” she asked. And then realized he meant the displays. “Oh, the starpond and the staryards. They’re lovely. Considerably more dramatic than ours. The comets are especially nice.” She turned away from him, hoping that this brief exchange would satisfy his urge for conversation, and that he would move on. She didn’t like him, though she couldn’t say why.

  But he didn’t move on. Instead, he said, “You look terribly familiar.”

  She studied him and shook her head. “I don’t think we’ve met.”

  “Then let’s meet now. Come with me to Ha-Ferlingetta, and I’ll buy you a meal and a drink, and we can get to know each other. You’re a lovely young woman.”

  Jess suppressed a shudder and forced a smile to her face. Everything about this man sent her skin crawling and scared the breath out of her. “Actually, I’m a child,” she said, and managed to put a note of apology into the statement. “I’m afraid I can’t accept your kind offer.”

  He frowned. “A child?”

  She pulled the locket from beneath her tunic and showed it to him. It glowed—proof that she was, indeed, still under the protection of the Childlaw.

  He took a step back, nodded, and said, “My forgiveness, then. You look older than your age.”

  Which was a lie. She looked considerably younger than her age and knew it. But she merely nodded and said, “No harm done.” And then, with a smile and a bow, she excused herself, and hurried back to Artis House, trying to figure out what it was about the man that so filled her with dread, and thanking all the gods of her childhood that she’d had the locket for one more day.

  A spring, a summer, an autumn, and a winter. And back again to spring, as Wraith and Solander walked through the theater in the New Brinch District. “Hard to believe it was a warehouse a year ago.”

  “Not for me,” Wraith said with a laugh. “I’ve been here every day. I have no trouble believing it at all.”

  “It’s beautiful.” Solander pointed to the tiers of seats that rose up almost to the ceiling. “But those don’t look very comfortable.”

  “They aren’t supposed to be. They’re fine if you’re sitting up in them, but not at all friendly if you try to take a nap.”

  “Still determined not to cater to the covil-ossets, eh?”

  Wraith shook his head. “I’m not trying to win their awards. I want to reach people.” He paused, vaulted onto the raised circular stage, and sat with his legs dangling over the edge. “True what I heard about Jess?”

  “Depends on what you heard, I suppose.”

  “I heard she joined a covil.”

  Solander wrinkled his nose. “Music Council—spreading pretty sounds and telling the stolti what they’re supposed to think about them.” He chuckled a little, but Wraith didn’t.

  “Why is she wasting herself with a thing like that? Endless committees, arguments about which music is appropriate and should be accepted as part of the canon and which is somehow unworthy, nasty little in-groups, petty backstabbing….” Wraith frowned and drummed his heels against the stage. “She could be doing something worthwhile with her life.”

  Solander hopped onto the stage beside him, and sat staring up at the vast dark cavern of seats. “Scary,” he said. And then, after a moment, “You think she should be working alongside you and Velyn—that she should be here every day, directing the workers, planning the production, trying to figure out how to save the Warreners, whatever the cost. But that isn’t what she wants. She can’t stand to see you and Velyn together, she doesn’t ever want to have anything to do with the Warrens again … and what is she supposed to do with her life? She’s stolti; she can’t take employment, she has no particular talents to follow like you do—or like I do, for that matter—and I think her days are starting to stretch out in front of her now, looking all much the same. She doesn’t want to take vows—I asked—and the covil is something. She talked about an exploratory covil that does digs all over the world, but they’ll be working in the ruins over in the territories east of the Strithian Empire for the next several years, so I finally managed to talk her out of that.” He shrugged, looking a little ashamed of himself. “I didn’t want her to be gone for so long.”

  Wraith lay back on the stage with an exasperated sigh. “She’s with you, but she resents Velyn being with me?”

  “She’s with me,” Solander said. “But she doesn’t love me—she never has. I’m just her fallback position from you.”

  “I’m sorry,” Wraith said after a while. “I truly thought she would outgrow that infatuation of hers.”

  “She loves you,” Solander said. He sounded testy, and Wraith looked at him with surprise. “She’s always loved you. At least have the courtesy to call it what it is.”

  “I know. But I can’t love her,” Wraith said. “She’s a memory of every failure, every lost friend, every death I caused in the Warrens. I look at her and all I can see is everyone who didn’t get free.”

  “Just as well for me that she doesn’t know that, then,” Solander said after a long silence. “Because if she did, she would probably be here helping you—in the hopes that if all the Warreners were suddenly free, you might find a way to love her.”

  Wraith looked puzzled. “And … ?”

  “Don’t be an idiot, Wraith. Just because she doesn’t love me doesn’t mean that I don’t love her. I have only as much of her as she’ll give me— but I don’t want to lose that.”

  They were two days from the first open call for actors when Wraith finally came to a decision. Velyn was bent over a piece of the third act backdrop, painting. Her hair fell around her face, and paint speckled her hands, and the graceful curve of her back made his mouth go dry.

  He sat beside her and for a while simply watched her, while he tried to consider which words he could use to ask her the question that had been driving him to distraction for so long. At last he said, “Velyn?”

  She looked up at him and smiled—the smile he loved so much. “You’ve been quiet today. Having doubts about our little enterprise?”

  “No doubts,” he said. “Not about the play, not about the theater. But … yes. I’ve been doing a lot of thinking.”

  Velyn laughed her soft, low laugh, shook her head with mock seriousness, and said, “You shouldn’t do too much of that. It isn’t good for you.”

  “I shouldn’t,” he agreed, “but I can’t seem to stop myself.” He took her hand in his a
nd said, “You and I have been working toward the same goals. We want the same things from life—to bring freedom to the people of the Warrens, to make a difference in the world. To leave Oel Artis a better place than we found it.”

  Her expression seemed to him a bit bemused, and he thought, I’m not saying this right. I’m not saying any of this the right way.

  “We fit each other, Velyn,” he said. “And I love you. I love everything about you—the way you move, the way you talk, the way you keep surprising me with things that you know I never, ever heard of. I would spend an eternity with you. I would spend two eternities with you, if I could have them.”

  Velyn laughed. “I love you, too, Wraith. But you already know that.”

  He nodded. “I want to offer you vows, Velyn. I want to offer you myself. I want to be your love, your partner, your companion and friend, for the rest our lives and beyond into eternity if the bonds of our vows will transcend death.”

  He had done it in a rush, hoping to see in her face receptivity, excitement, joy. But what he saw in her eyes was … evasion.

  She smiled, and her smile was sad. “I love you, Wraith. Can’t having now be enough? Can’t it be enough that we have this moment, this work we share, our nights together for as long as we have them? Can’t we find what joy we can in that and hold it to ourselves—create memories that we can keep, and accept the days that come?”

  He didn’t understand. “You love me. Don’t you?”

  “With all my heart. With my body. With my soul. I have loved you since we first met.”

  “Then why won’t you say you’ll join in the nutevaz with me?”

  What he saw next in her eyes he liked even less than the evasion. He saw pity, and inwardly he shuddered.

  She sighed deeply and looked down at her paint-speckled hands. “I’m stolti,” she said, not looking at him. “I couldn’t take vows with you if you were chadri—not even if you were rich and powerful and had your own house in Oel Artis Travia.”