by Holly Lisle
“I need to leave now,” he said.
“I’ll have Patr drive you wherever you want to go.” Jess wiped her tears on her forearm, just as she had when she’d been a child. Wraith had another moment of sharp memory, a moment in which it hurt to breathe. Why couldn’t he have loved her? Why couldn’t he have seen in her the companion who would stand by him, instead of falling stupidly for the faithless Velyn?
Because he was blind. An idiot. A fool.
Because he was human, and that seemed to sum the rest of it up perfectly.
He left as quickly as he could—sat next to Patr in the front seat of the elegant aircar and said, “The Cordorale, please. At least I’ll blend in there.” The two of them had little to say to each other, but finally Wraith said, “Do you care about her?”
Patr glanced away from the corridor through which they floated, surprise on his face. “I work for her.”
“I know you do. But this is important. Do you care for her?”
Patr swallowed hard and looked away. “I love her.”
“Good. Get her away from Oel Artis by whatever means you must, and keep her away. Hide her if you have to—from everyone. Ugly things are going to happen here, and I don’t want them to happen to her.”
Patr’s jaw tightened. “You’ve been her friend for a very long time.”
“All her life. What happens to her matters more to me than what happens to me.”
Patr said, “You’ve managed to keep your distance pretty well, for someone who cares so much.”
“I’ve managed to keep the people I care about out of the parts of my life that could hurt them.”
“You have a lot of secrets, do you, Gellas?”
“None that need concern you. Except this—I love her, too. I was a fool not to pursue her when I could have. Now I can’t. But I still love her. I want to know that she’ll be safe.”
“I’ll protect her with my life.”
“That’s all I ask.”
Patr pulled the aircar into an empty lot, far from where Wraith needed to be.
Wraith glanced over at the bigger man, suddenly uneasy. “This isn’t the Cordorale.”
“We’ll get there,” Patr said. “But I have something to ask of you.”
“And that is?”
“Never go near her again.”
“What?”
Patr’s knuckles whitened on the controls, and he glared at Wraith. “You heard me.”
“I did. But when this is over—”
Patr waved him to silence. “It will never be over. I’ve heard the rumors. I have an idea of what you’re involved in. Perhaps you’ll slip free of the Empire for a while, but sooner or later they’ll catch up with you. You will never be free of the poison that you have drawn to yourself, and that poison will touch the lives of everyone you let yourself get close to. You had the sense to stay out of her life before. Trust that same sense. Let this be the last time you see her—for her sake.”
Wraith leaned back on the seat of the aircar and closed his eyes. “You offering any alternatives?”
“Certainly. I could kill you now and save everyone a lot of trouble. Should look interesting on tomorrow’s nightly—Theater Master Gellas Tomersin found dead, dressed in women’s clothing and in a notorious neighborhood.”
Wraith opened his eyes and studied his companion sidelong, warily. “Or I could kill you. There’s never much of a guarantee in situations like this.”
“More than you think. I decided to kill you when I heard her crying, and when I heard you telling her that you were involved in something that could get her killed. Don’t look all horrified—I listened to the two of you. I would be mad not to—a man I don’t know who’s dressed as a woman comes to her house in the middle of the night, claiming emergency and demanding to see her. I had no proof you were who you said you were. I had no intention of leaving you alone with her unsupervised. So I heard what you said, and discovered that you’ve put her life at risk, and for a while I wanted to destroy you with my own two hands, just because your existence is a danger to her existence. I came prepared. But I don’t want her to ever be able to think that I might have had a hand in your death—and I’m certain enough that the Masters of the Hars will dispose of you for me. And then she’ll be safe.”
Wraith smiled a little. “At least you care for her. I’m out of her life. I swear that as long as the Empire is a danger to me, I won’t see her again.”
“Then I’ll take you where you wanted to go.” Patr started up the aircar again, and pulled out into the empty corridor.
Chapter 17
The truth does indeed come to those who wait.” Master Noano Omwi, raised to the seat of prominence upon the death of Master Penangueli, bowed his head slightly to his two fellows, Masters Faregan and Daari, and leaned back in his soft seat.
“Penangueli was too soft with Solander Artis,” Daari agreed. “I thought as much at the time.”
“So how do we want to deal with this?” Faregan asked. Though Faregan had been an investigatory member of the Silent Inquest for nearly twenty years, he’d held his post in the Inquestor Triad for all of three days, and he did not yet presume to make statements. Omwi tried to keep this from annoying him—he had been new once, as well.
Omwi said, “We have a number of alternatives, depending on further investigation. Obviously we need to bring in all of his close contacts and all of their immediate contacts. I expect the roundup operation will be quite large; our challenge will be to accomplish it quietly and with a minimum of outside notice. After all, we now have proof from his own mouth and his own actions that he has committed treason in falsifying data and instructing his associate to lie, and we have him linked to another of Penangueli’s questionable decisions. The old man was getting soft in his last years.”
“Should we bring Solander Artis in immediately, then, before he bolts?” Daani seemed troubled.
“No. He ruined his test results yesterday, so we have complicity and conspiracy to hide secrets of vital interest to the Empire. But he doesn’t know that we know what he did—he thinks that he’s achieved some level of safety. He’ll take a few days to convert assets into cash, to research places where he thinks he can hide, and to make sure that anyone he trusts is safely secured away from our reach. As he does that, we simply tag the people he contacts. If Artis were to disappear prematurely, we would scare some of his fellow conspirators into hiding. But of course we cannot give him too much time, or he could get away.” Omwi drummed his fingers on the fine wood table and stared at his own reflection in its glossy surface. “Two days. Anyone he hasn’t contacted in two days is of minor importance.”
“And those he’s already contacted?”
“The only person he has already contacted is Gellas Tomersin—and we already have someone looking into him. We’ll need to step up that operation in order to gather up everyone and question them in a timely fashion. I’m uncertain that there are links between Artis and Tomersin, but my gut tells me their childhood connection has remained stronger than it would appear on the surface.” He folded his hands together in front of him and willed them to be still; his excitement at this potential catch made his heart race and his muscles twitch. He’d wanted for years to be responsible for a huge haul—something even better than the Circle of Fellows of Freedom, which Penangueli had pulled in the second year he held the top seat of the Triad. This looked like his great catch, if he could coordinate his people and keep them from making mistakes. He could barely keep himself in the chair. He wanted to pace, to shout, to kick things, and instead all he could do was sit there looking calm and reasoned and in control.
A knock sounded on the inner door—it would be someone cleared for the highest level of access, but well trained enough to give the Triad time to remove any evidence of what they were doing.
The three Masters looked at each other. All nodded, and Faregan, junior man in the Triad, rose and went to open the door.
“Agent Jethis! You have new
s?”
“It pertains,” the man at the door said softly.
Faregan waved him in. Omwi didn’t recognize Jethis, but Faregan obviously did. Faregan bowed low to Omwi, Jethis bowed lower. “Master Omwi,” Faregan said, “this is Agent Patr Jethis, who has been working on a corollary of our investigations of both Solander Artis and Gellas Tomersin. He’s my man, who has been keeping track of the young woman who was a friend of both of theirs in childhood—if both of them are guilty, then I suspect we’ll find that she’s guilty, too.”
Agent Jethis was shaking his head.
“Speak for us, Jethis,” Omwi said. “You’ve come here tonight at this very late hour—what have you discovered that will aid us in our quest for truth?”
“My subject knows nothing. She has been out of contact with your subject, Gellas Tomersin, for years, and though she did react by making contact with him when I gave her my planted rumors, she did so only out of concern for him. But I’ve had a confession to me personally, by Tomersin, of his treason.”
Omwi sat back, startled. “A confession?”
Jethis produced a little box and pressed a button on it.
Jethis’s voice came out of it. “These are the rumors that I’ve heard: that you’ve acquired or created a private army, that you are using magic to control the minds of your audiences and to force them to work for you as traitors to the Empire, that your actors aren’t truly human but are sub-human creatures that you’ve costumed to hide their monstrous natures. That you aren’t who you appear to be, but someone else instead. Perhaps a Strithian agent. Perhaps something even more insidious.”
And then the unmistakable voice of Gellas Tomersin. “That’s not good.”
And then Jethis’s voice again. “It sounds to me like you have a traitor. I mean, none of the things I’ve heard have been exactly correct …”
“But none of them have been exactly wrong, either.”
“Yes.”
“I cannot imagine who might be spreading these rumors. I have good people. Truly good people. I screened all of my employees carefully before I hired them, I’ve been careful never to mix my private goals with my public persona, or to have people who know me in one capacity also working with me in the other. I have been careful.”
“It doesn’t matter. Perhaps there’s money involved. Blackmail. Sex. I could think of a dozen reason why people would turn on an employer. Two or three that would encourage them to turn on a friend.”
“So can I. I just don’t want to believe that someone I trust could be capable of such treachery.”
“Just so long as you do believe….”
An odd overlap of the voices bothered Omwi for an instant. But Gellas’s next words fascinated him. “I believe. But it adds another question to the identity of the person or people who hired those investigators to follow me.”
“You sure they didn’t follow you here?”
“They would have had to recognize me. I left in a small crowd, and I didn’t look like myself.”
“True.” A pause, then, “Gellas, you need to have friends around you right now.”
And Gellas, sounding sharp. “That’s exactly what I don’t need. You haven’t done anything wrong, Patr.” That odd little blurring of voices again. Omwi truly did not like the strangeness of that. But this was first-rate information. He would look into how Jethis had acquired it later. “You’ve had no part in any of this; you don’t know who’s involved, you don’t know what we’ve done, you don’t know what we plan to do. And that’s the way I want it. If I have a traitor somewhere in my organization, the last thing I want is for him or her to make a connection to—” … and a blur, completely indecipherable. “So go back on your tour, and stay away from here for a while. Keep up with the nightlies; if you hear anything about me, figure that at least you’re safe.”
Jethis said, “I know a few things. I know about the Kaan … and the Warrens—”
“Shut up.”
“What?”
“Shut up. You don’t know anything. Leave it at that.” A short pause. “Whoever is watching me has placed magical listening devices around my house … and my office. I’ve left them in place because as long as I know where they are, I don’t have to try to find ones that are better hidden. But … you don’t know who might be listening to us or watching us right now.”
“That’s … silly. Why would anyone be watching us? Why would anyone have placed listening devices around this house?”
“Because you made an appointment with me. If the traitor has access to my appointment calendar—”
A tiny click, and then Jethis said, “That’s all of relevance. We had a discussion about the clothes he chose to wear, and about Jess, but nothing more that gave us relevant information.”
“Have we placed listening devices around his house?” Faregan asked.
“No,” Daani said.
“Then we aren’t the only ones watching him.” Omwi felt the excitement of the hunt intensify. This was the one, all right. This was the case that was going to make his name for all time among the Masters of the Silent Inquest. “Someone else is interested in him, too—and that can only mean good things for us.”
Patr burst into the room where Jess had been asleep only an instant before and began pulling clothes off of her shelf. The light had come on when he entered, and Jess, bewildered, blinked in the glare and tried to figure out what was happening. “We’re leaving now,” Patr said.
“No, we aren’t. I have a hundred things yet to do here in Oel Artis— I can’t even consider leaving the city until—” And then she caught sight of his face, and her throat tightened until she could not breathe.
Sweat dripped from his forehead and from his gray skin, and he wore an expression that spoke of having seen hell.
“Sit,” she told him, frightened. “Let me call someone to help you.”
But he shook his head. He handed her a cold-weather tunic, heavy leggings, sturdy boots, a hat, gloves, thick stockings. “Trouble coming. We must leave now. I know of a place—but there is no time to talk, no time to argue, no time even to gather anything. You …must … come with me now.”
She believed him—not wanting to, but knowing from her gut that he told her the truth. “What about Wraith—I mean Gellas? Is this about him?”
“Probably. Hurry.” He swept an arm around her, pulled her free from her covers, put his hands on her shoulders, and looked into her eyes with an intensity that shocked her. “We only have minutes. Maybe less. Maybe it’s too late already, but I have to try. I have to save you if I can.”
She nodded, mute, and began pulling on the clothes. He had turned away when she stripped off her nightdress; he did not look back until she said, “I’m ready.”
He took her hand and dragged her through the house at a run. He did not lead her to her fine aircar; instead, he pulled her to a scruffy little model that had been old before she was born. He leaped into one side, and she followed suit on the other—she barely had the door closed when the little vehicle lifted into the air.
Almost dawn, she thought. She could see the first slivers of gray on the eastern horizon, shading through the tall buildings at the center of the old city, and to the north and south fitting along the curves of the hills. Patr took them up quickly, circling over her house as he gained altitude in the fashion of the old vehicles; and as she looked down at her home, she saw a veritable fleet of cars move in around it, and people tiny as pebbles in her hand clamber out and run toward her house from all sides.
“They didn’t believe me after all,” he whispered. “I thought they might not.”
The aircar reached the altitude he wanted, and he set it running due north, and fast—very fast—at the high speed only permitted in the narrow band that ran on top of the Aboves and just below the point where Matrin’s atmosphere became too thin to breathe.
Jess became aware of the fact that he muttered constantly under his breath; an instant later, she finally placed the words he repe
ated.
“Gods forgive my trespasses,
My moments of weakness,
My choices against good;
Gods lead and protect in this
My hour of darkness,
In this my hour of need.”
Over and over. She’d never heard him pray before. She’d never heard from him even the slightest hints of piety. He stunned her with this display, and, watching him drive like a man fleeing the gods themselves, she wondered what he knew that made his fear so deep, so profound, so all-consuming.
She held a silent prayer in her heart—not for herself, but for Wraith. Protect him, she demanded of the gods.
She hoped they heard her.
A woman dark as death and a man white as bone came to Luercas in the middle of the afternoon, a full three days after Velyn vanished—both wearing Silent Inquest robes and insincere smiles. They made no sound when they walked, and light seemed to bend away from them as if in fear. “We would like to talk to you about the disappearance of your vowmate, Velyn Artis-Tanquin.”
Luercas felt his skin prickle beneath his thin tunic. If the Silent Inquest was coming after him, they had a lot more to banish him for than brutality to his wife. But once they had someone fixed under their viewing lenses, everything else tended to come out, too. His stolen body— and the way he’d gone about stealing it—would certainly be just cause to win him a life sentence for treason. He frowned to hide the surge of fear that enveloped him and said, “I’ve filled out the proper reports.”
The woman said, “You have. But we’re conducting an investigation that seems to have crossed paths with an investigation that you’re conducting. A very interesting investigation.”
Anything he said could be the wrong thing. So Luercas waited.
“Not going to offer to explain why you’re having Gellas Tomersin followed and spied upon?” asked the man.