Vincalis the Agitator

by Holly Lisle

  Better than Benedicta—relatives there were always sending their children to Oel Artis to get a real education and to meet the right people to further their careers. But they were the sort of relatives who called their children home for holidays and made surprise visits, which wouldn’t work well for Solander’s needs. Or Wraith’s.

  Solander would have to create a couple letters of introduction and forge necessary identification papers. He’d heard Luercas bragging about doing that so that he could get into adults-only taverns and theaters down in the Belows. If Luercas could find a way, then Solander thought he could find a way, too. But any chance Solander had of asking Luercas how he did it was now gone. If Luercas were to get wind of Solander’s searching after forged papers, he would find out why and Solander would spend the rest of his natural life paying blackmail to the bastard. And Wraith … Solander didn’t even want to think about what would happen to Wraith.

  He flopped back on the bed and closed his eyes. Letters. Forged papers. A means of transporting three people from the Warrens to the Aboves, and some sort of excuse for going into the Warrens that wouldn’t raise suspicion. A foolproof, questionproof reason for three Warreners to be in Oel Artis and staying in Artis House more or less permanently. A good change of appearance for Wraith, so that Luercas wouldn’t recognize him.

  Rone Artis cleared his throat—evidently he’d been standing in the doorway for some time.

  “Are you ready?” his father asked, and Solander, guilty of all sorts of disobedience in his heart, nearly jumped out of his skin.

  “Sorry,” he said, scrambling to his feet. Solander gathered all three balls and the cord with a single mental swoop. He began spinning the balls in the air, concentrating on their differing weights and masses, and the very different composition of the cord. “This is what I’ve been working on most.” The balls swam like fish through the air, forming the test patterns perfectly; the cord played counterpoint, weaving its way through each of the prescribed forms.

  Out of the corner of his eye, he finally saw a small smile on his father’s face—the first one in a long time.

  Chapter 2

  Vincalis Gate—a lesser gate, unfrequented, unimportant, mostly unnoticed—led to a place no one wanted to go. Its broad arch sat next to a narrow, rarely used thoroughfare, providing a comfortable, hidden perch for anyone agile enough to clamber up to it and slender enough to lie across it without sticking up above the little parapet. It was Jess’s favorite perch. Jess, tiny for her age and whisper-thin, could lie along its gentle curve and watch the wondrous traffic that traversed the cloud road to the Aboves, and the occasional pedestrians who passed on the walkway beside her from mysterious points of origin to mysterious destinations, and wonder at the world outside of the gates … a world denied to her by tradition, by law—and by the murderous gate that only Wraith could pass at will.

  Wraith, who dared challenge the gate, told her about what lay beyond her narrow view, and she loved to hear his stories. More than anything, she yearned to move from the dreary, dead confines of the Warrens into the living world beyond.

  And where was Wraith?

  Jess dreaded giving him her bad news—and at the same time, she feared that this time something had happened to him, and that he would not come back. That she would have to face—alone—the choice between Sleep and death.

  She’d lain across the arch, watching and waiting, all of the previous day and most of this one. She’d returned to the basement the night before only after dark, when she felt safe on the streets, and resumed her perch along the arch at first light. The guards who patrolled the Warrens never paid much attention to anything around them, but in daylight accidents were much more likely to happen, so she only moved in darkness.

  Now, thirsty, hungry, and worried, and with the sun dropping toward the horizon for the second day—with still no sign of Wraith—she contemplated her choices. She tried to imagine stepping into one of the homes, taking a bowl from the dispenser, pouring in the Way-fare, and eating herself into oblivion. Her memories of her time in Sleep were vague—little flashes of conscious desire to move, to breathe, to act, to escape, that lay in the middle of vast, deep, ugly pools of nothing. The Sleep terrified her. But she didn’t know if she had the courage to choose death. Already, she felt the burning in her gut that the few bites she’d allowed herself from the last crusts of old bread, doled out over two days, did nothing to assuage. How much worse would the pain be in four days, or in ten? How long would she take to die?

  And then, movement down the narrow road. In the twilight, she could not at first be sure the boy was Wraith, though he was thin enough. His way of moving was right, but his clothes were all wrong. And he carried an enormous box with him. She wondered what it was— he had never brought anything with him that he could not hide beneath his shirt. This he carried openly.

  But it was Wraith. She checked on the street behind to make sure the Warren guards were nowhere nearby, then shinnied down the arch, dropped to the low roof of the guards’ shed, then lightly to the ground.

  Wraith came through the gate, heralded by the usual explosion of light, and said, “Quick. We need to get out of sight. I have wonderful news.”

  And I have terrible news, Jess thought, but she kept her silence and ran beside him. Her news would become obvious all by itself, and if she did not need to crush his apparent joy right away, she would not. She loved him, and she loved this new smile he wore on his face, and this air of excitement that he carried in his step.

  They ran down their street, ducked into their stairwell, and squeezed through the broken window into their hideaway.

  Boxes and crates stacked along all the walls and in the middle of the floor, a dirt floor with a little nest of rags for sleeping on, and darkness, always, because they did not dare any light to call the guards’ attention to their presence—this was the home that was, to Jess, freedom and life.

  “Where’s Smoke?” Wraith asked, putting his box on one of the crates. “He has to be here to hear this, too.” And without waiting for an answer, he handed her something beautiful, and cool, and smooth, and round, and said, “Take a bite. It’s the best thing I’ve ever tasted in my life.”

  She took a bite and almost cried. It crunched, and its juice burst on her tongue, and its sweetness seemed to her to have not just smell and flavor, but color and sound as well. She took another bite, and the sweetness began to mix with the salt of her tears. Smoke would have loved this thing, whatever it was.

  “Great, isn’t it?” Wraith asked, grinning.

  She swallowed around the growing lump in her throat and put the round thing aside. “Smoke is gone,” she said.

  Wraith’s smile vanished. “Gone? The guards found him?”

  “He … he gave up. He said you couldn’t provide for two of us anymore—that we ate too much and that trying to keep us both fed was killing you. And he said I was the smallest and I ate the least, so I had to stay, and he would go back. He ran out of the door. I chased him, but he runs faster than me, and I don’t even know which of the homes he went into.”

  “When?” Wraith whispered.

  “Right after you left.”

  “Then he’s been asleep for two full days, and then some.”

  Jess nodded.

  “Too long. And he’s too old now. If we tried to take him away from the Way-fare again, this time it would probably kill him.”

  “If we even knew where to look for him.”

  “Yes. That, too. He would still be easy to pick out—he won’t start actually looking like them for months. But where would we start looking?”

  “He didn’t want you to find him. He didn’t want to be a burden anymore.”

  Wraith’s face wore anguish. “But I found us a way out. All of us— you, me, and him. I found us a home, a place where the three of us can live, where they serve food this good and better several times a day, every day, and where they walk in the streets whenever they want, and wear different clothes
every day.” He buried his head in his hands. “Why couldn’t he have just waited?”

  “He’s been talking about this for a while now,” Jess said. “He made me swear to keep silent; he worried for you, that something bad would happen to you because of us. I’ve worried, too, but I was too much of a coward to do what he did and go back. If I weren’t so weak, I would have just gone to Sleep one day, too—and then you wouldn’t have had to risk the gates anymore. You could have stayed out there, where it’s wonderful.” She whispered, “But I miss him.”

  Wraith had his knees pulled tight to his chest and his face pressed into them. He sobbed. Jess sat beside him for a long time, patting his back and stroking his hair. “He wouldn’t have gone if he’d thought you would ever find a way out of here for us. He only gave up because he could see us getting you killed, and for nothing.”

  “Never for nothing,” Wraith said between sobs. “What I do for you is never for nothing. You’re my friends. You’re my family. You’re all I have in the world.”

  “That’s why he went back,” Jess said softly. “Because he loved you.”

  He looked up at her. In the dark, she saw the gleam of his tear-filled eyes and the pale blur that was the rest of his face. He looked haunted, haggard. Despairing. “I can’t go to get him, Jess. After my brother, I swore I would never chance killing anyone else. He’s already had the Way-fare in him for too long. I can’t get him back. And I won’t try. I won’t kill him, too.”

  “He knew that. He knew when he went.”

  “But we’re going to get out of here, Jess. And someday, I’m going to come back, and I’m going to find a way to free everyone who’s in here. Every single one.”

  She held his hand and nodded. “You will. I know you will. You can do anything, Wraith.” And then she hugged him, and prayed that once they were free of this place, he would never look at the Warrens again. She would miss Smoke; her heart ached for him, and for the knowledge that only two days had stood between him and hope.

  But the Warrens had a poison to them, a creeping, insidious evil that she could feel hanging in the air, leaching the life out of her day by day by day, and she feared that if Wraith didn’t get away and stay away, he would at last fall victim to that poison.

  “Grath Faregan, bound and blindfolded you come into this chamber to take an oath—to swear fealty not to magic, and not to the government of lesser men, but to the Secret and Honorable Society of the Silent Inquest. We hold the reins of the world in our hands, and you have, by word and action, proven that you deserve to be one among us. Before you passed through the final doorway, you were told that you could only pass through it again in one of two ways—either as our friend or as a corpse. Do you acknowledge that you came here of your own free will?”

  “I do,” the bound man said.

  “Will you take the test of loyalty?”

  “I will,” he said.

  “Know that if you fail, you will die—and your death will be terrible. You still have the option of a quick and merciful death, should you so choose.”

  “I’ll take the test.”

  “Very well.” Two men removed the bonds from Faregan’s hands and the hood from his head. Shackles still held his ankles to the dais in the center of the floor.

  He could see nothing beyond a brilliant light that poured at him from all directions. He lifted his chin, and took a deep breath, and waited.

  From all sides, then, spells attacked him. He knew that under no circumstances could he defend himself in any way or resist or reverse what was done to him. He proved his loyalty by proving he acceded to the will of those above him, whoever they might be. But when his body caught fire, he needed every bit of his control to let himself burn. He screamed, he fell to the ground—but he did not use the power at his disposal to put the fire out.

  He smelled his own flesh burning, and he wept, and he pissed himself from fear and pain—and then, suddenly, the ordeal ended. Though he still had pain in his right leg, in every other way he was fine.

  “Stand,” one of the voices from the darkness said.

  He stood. The right leg screamed, but he bore it without a whimper. No signs of piss, no signs of fire, no smell of smoke or roasting skin.

  “Repeat after me: I am a friend of the Inquest, a brother of the Secret Masters of Matrin, and I acknowledge no power save that of the Master of the Inquest….”

  Faregan repeated the words.

  “No god, no vowmate, no child shall come before the needs of the Inquest….

  “No life shall be sacred, if I am ordered to end it….

  “No law shall be sacred if I am ordered to disobey it….

  “From this day until death, the Secret and Honorable Society of the Silent Inquest is my first family, my first love, and my sole master, even to death.”

  As he finished repeating the oath, a voice said, “The brand on your leg is your mark—the mark that you are chosen. Your life is bound to it—if you deface it or remove it, you shall in that instant die. You are ours, and we are yours. And together we rule the world. Welcome.”

  The bright lights went down, and a cluster of old men moved around him, and hugged him, and gave him the clasp of family—right hand to right hand, third and fourth fingers curled tight to the palm.

  Faregan wept with the joy of it. He was one of the Masters of the Inquest at last. As low in the order as a Master could be, but still a Secret Master. Time and good fortune would carry him higher, he thought. And if it did not, still he stood among the only men in the world he had ever cared to join.

  Wraith sat in the basement, listening to Jess breathe. For a while he sat next to her, watching her curled on her little pile of rags. In the next few days her life would change, and he couldn’t know whether he was taking her into a disaster or rescuing her from hell. Trusting, she slept.

  Wraith couldn’t sleep, though.

  He moved to the top of the stairs and opened the door just a bit and stared up at the sky above, and at the dark spots that blotted out some of the stars—blots that were the grand homes of the Aboves floating overhead. Solander waited up there at that very moment.

  Solander had said he thought he might be able to move them in as little as three days.

  Wraith listened to the silence around him. The Warrens were always quiet at night—people went to bed soon after the sun set and got up just as it rose—mindlessly obedient to the dictates of the gods, the lessons, the prayers, and the distribution of the Way-fare.

  He had created Jess and Smoke—had stolen them away from their worlds of prayers and lessons and Way-fare because he had been lonely. A lost, lonely little boy, surrounded from the moment of his birth by people who could not see him—who fed him and changed him by rote and dictates, but who did not understand when he cried, and did not respond to his pleas for someone to play with him. Wraith was in his world but not a part of it, and he had discovered early that in his world, he could do almost anything without reprimand, censure, or even notice. He could skip lessons, could skip prayers, could go out the doors after dark—and contrary to the endless droning teachings, the gods never struck him down for his blasphemy.

  But he could not get his mother to see him. Nor his brothers, nor his sisters. He went to his daily lessons because he could think of nothing better to do—and when he was there, he began to notice children whose eyes wandered from the teacher-screen. They did not speak to him when he spoke to them, but sometimes they looked his way for a moment— and for the first time since his birth, he thought he might not have to spend his life alone.

  So he’d led the children whose attention wandered away from lessons, only to find that they would not stay with him. They fought him stubbornly, returning to the nearest homes and prayer-lights as soon as they could break away from him, and going the next day to their lessons and the teacher-screen as if nothing had happened. They did not recognize him. They did not seem to remember anything. But when he spoke to them, they sometimes briefly glanced his w
ay.

  A girl he’d called Shina had been his first success. She’d been closer to the surface all along than the rest of his classmates, and when he spoke to her one day, she’d managed to make an actual sound. She had not made any words, but just the sound had been so exciting to Wraith that he had wept. He pulled her to his little hideout, and this time he locked the door with both of them inside. He’d stolen food from beyond the gates, for even then he suspected that the food was part of what was wrong with everyone in the Warrens—that something about the Way-fare, the manna of the beneficent gods, held a deadly bite within it.

  He’d ventured out of the Warrens before, startled but unscathed by the flashing gate light, to find a wonderland beyond. He kept in his hideout a little stash of foods he’d found or stolen—wonderful foods, with flavors and textures and colors—and when his still-nameless captive stopped trying to get out the locked door, he’d shared with her.

  It had been a hard night. She would sleep, and in her sleep rise and try to leave, and Wraith had worried that she would hurt herself on the stairs or the crates. Finally he’d taken off his shirt and used it to tie her feet together.

  When morning came, she was … herself. She looked around her— the first person in the Warrens that Wraith had ever seen do that except for himself—and then looked right at him.

  And her first words were the first words each of his subsequent rescues had asked, in one way or another. “Are you one of the gods?”

  He did not know what to say. He’d once thought he might be one of the gods. So he told her his name was Wraith—the Unseen One. That seemed right to him. And he told her she was Shina. The Mother Goddess. He’d liked the name, and the image of lovely, dark-eyed Shina (one of the few benevolent gods of the Warreners’ pantheon) speaking from the prayer-lights reminded Wraith of the girl who sat before him.