by Holly Lisle
“Am I a god, then?” she had asked. And because she had not been struck down by the gods for the heresy of not praying the night prayers or going that morning to lessons, he told her that he thought she might be.
Three days later, never suspecting that the gate would do more than shine light on anyone who dared trespass it, he tried to take her out to see the city beyond the Warrens’ walls. He’d been holding her hand when they started across, had been staring into her eyes with a delight and a joy that he had not imagined possible in his pale, lonely existence. And in the moment of crossing, the gates that could not touch him devoured her utterly. She did not have time to cry out. Did not have time to blink. He was staring into her eyes, and then staring into nothing. Nothing remained of her except the rags she’d been wearing.
Shina. He tried not to think of her, but every time he lost another friend, he found himself staring into her lovely brown eyes in that single last instant they shared, and wondering what his life might have been like had she lived to share it with him.
That had been long ago, with its brutal lesson not lost on Wraith. Never again had he let anyone try to cross the gate. Never again had he tried to make one of his made friends into a true equal, a true partner.
Wraith, sitting in the doorway staring up at the sky, thought of the ones he’d rescued after. Red-haired, freckled Smoke. A boy he’d named Trev, lost to guards perhaps a year ago. Jess. His own older brother—the first and last member of his true family that he’d tried to save—who had won his way to awareness, had wept his thanks for the freedom of mind and body, and then had died in wracking, horrible pain because he was too old to escape the poisons of the Way-fare.
Those who lived had kept the names Wraith gave them because those names were gifts. To have a name at all was a gift. To be aware of names, to see the world, to do things by choice and understand that the choice existed—all gifts. Of all of them, only Wraith had been born free. The rest of them had come to freedom through him, and they held him in a place of honor for that.
But he had never let himself care for or love them the way he had cared for and loved Shina. They were his friends … but fragile friends, held always at a slight remove, so that if he lost them—the way he had now lost Smoke, second-born of the free—he would still be able to sleep at night, at least a little. Would still be able to rise to face the new day. Would still be able to go on, sneaking out the gate, gathering food for his … companions? Associates? Pets?
Wraith leaned back against the doorframe and felt the movement of air against his cheek, and smelled the night smells of the city, and wondered what mistake had created him free in this city-within-a-city of helpless slaves. Solander said that magic couldn’t touch him. But why? Why was he different? Why had he been so long alone, so long hungry for simple acknowledgment from another human being?
Wraith ran a finger over one of the pieces of fruit Solander had sent. He’d lost so many people. With each one he lost, he lost another part of himself, because when he alone remembered the things that happened, it was as if they had not happened. Only when he had someone to talk to and to remember with did he feel that he had really existed at all.
He took a bite of the fruit, marveling at its sweetness and the way it quenched both his thirst and his hunger at the same time. To him it represented wealth—more than the grand houses of the Aboves, more than the streets built on air, that single piece of fresh fruit, intact, unbruised, and free from maggots and flies, spoke of a life that he wanted to have, and wanted to share. With Shina—the dark-haired, dark-eyed girl he still loved and still cried out for in his nightmares. It was the best of the world he had wanted to give her. Of everything that he had fought for, of everyone he had tried to save, only Jess remained—the youngest. The one who had shared the least with him. He would have traded her for any of the rest.
But he tried to be grateful that at least she survived, and that he did not go to his new life alone.
Solander sat in his room working on the distance viewing kit his father had brought for him from the research base in Benedicta, when the doorman rang his room. Solander snapped his fingers to activate the speaking spell and said, “I’m here, Enry. What do you need?”
“There’s a boy here for you, Ris Solander. He says his name is … er, Wraith. Were you expecting him?”
“He’s a friend of mine,” Solander said. “Bring him in, will you? I can’t get the pieces on this dorfing kit to go together, but I don’t want to leave it right now. I think I almost see where I’m going wrong.”
“Yes, ris. I’ll bring him straightaway.”
He must have taken Wraith by the long way, though, for Solander already had the lens fitted against the spell-projector and was connecting them when Wraith finally tapped at his door.
Solander watched Wraith as the Warrener nodded polite thanks to Enry. Nothing the boy did would have told Solander that he was from the lowest of the lower classes. A chadri like the merchant who imported silks and brought samples to the house would duck his head to any stolti. A mufere like Enry kept his head down and averted his eyes unless spoken to directly, and never spoke uninvited or about something not within the realm of his duty as houseman. A parvoi would have hidden himself from the presence of a stolti. And Wraith was a Warrener, even lower—if not by much—than a parvoi. Considering that, Wraith’s complete lack of awe or respect seemed to Solander astonishing, if fortunate. Just as well Solander had given the boy some of his own clothing, though; the questions Wraith’s old clothes would have raised with the houseman might have found their way to Solander’s father—and who needed that? Not Solander. He was simply grateful to have come through his father’s last test without making an ass of himself again.
The houseman gave Wraith the same bow he would have given Solander and said, “Ris Wraith, when you need to leave you may call on me. I have greatly enjoyed our talk.” Wraith nodded politely and smiled at Enry, and met his eye; the houseman was first to look away.
This pleased Solander. Wraith had none of the subservient characteristics of the lower classes. He acted exactly like the highest of the stolti—like Solander or any of his cousins. When Solander brought Wraith and his friends into the house and presented them to his father as relatives from someplace far away, Wraith would have to look Solander’s father in the eye—Solander’s father, who made everyone nervous— lie about where he came from and who he was, and exhibit no fear of the great man. And then Wraith would have to live that lie for gods-only-knew-how-many months or years. Maybe forever. And his friends would, too.
Solander had a brief, niggling sense that perhaps this plan of his was not the best—that if he enlisted his father in it as an ally, he might hope to at least gain some of the credit for the discovery of the magical rules that Wraith broke simply by existing. Solander would still further his career, would still get an appointment into the Academy, would still be able to become a researcher.
But he wouldn’t have the discovery under his name alone. He would be a minor footnote to the single greatest proof ever presented that the Dragons’ view of the magical universe was incomplete, when what he wanted was to be that theory’s sole author. The difference would be one of degree, but at fifteen he was sensitive to how great a degree that would be.
And his father might decide not to share at all. Rone might decide that the secrets to be found on Wraith’s person were far too important to be entrusted to a child; he might classify Wraith “Secret—With Prejudice,” as he did anything that he thought might be of real interest to his competitors, and if he did that, Solander wouldn’t even be able to find out what was happening.
Wraith might not like becoming a classified study object, either, Solander thought.
Wraith came over and looked at the equipment Solander was putting together and said, “That looks complicated. What is it going to do?”
“It’s a distance viewer—one of the really good new models with focusable sound. My father told me he wouldn�
�t buy the completed model for me because it was much more expensive and had more features than I could justify, but he told me that he would get the kit for me if I’d do all the preliminary studies so that I could put it together when I got it. He tested me, too. When I had the theory down, he got me the kit.”
Wraith nodded. “Well. That’s … very good of him, I suppose. But what does it do?”
Solander stared at him. “You’ve never seen …” But perhaps they didn’t have distance viewers in the Warrens. “Once it’s all together, I’ll be able to look at the screen on the base—right here—and turn these knobs—they adjust for altitude, longitude, and latitude, you see, based on true north. This one has gross controls and a switch—right over here, you see?—that changes the knobs over to fine controls, so that you have basically room-to-room capability anywhere within the viewer’s range. And here—this is your sound capability, so that you can hear what people are saying. Getting the spells for simultaneous sound-and-view transmission into place has been almost as hard as doing the gross-to-fine coupling link-up to the switch.”
Wraith sighed, and Solander, who’d become absorbed in the explanation of his new piece of equipment, looked over to find that the Warrener looked exasperated.
“What?”
“What can you do with it?” Wraith asked. “What’s it good for?”
“Oh.” Solander felt just a bit stupid. “You can watch people with it. This one has a range of about fifteen furlongs—pretty good, really. You can get amplifiers that let you see farther away than that, but a lot of them ruin the purity of your main signal—” He caught himself and said, “You can turn the viewer to anyplace you’d like to watch, and if that place isn’t shielded by magic, you can see what the people there are doing—and with this model, you can also hear what they’re saying.”
“When they’re outside?” Wraith asked.
“It wouldn’t be much good if it only worked when they were outside. No, you can see inside, too. No place like here, of course—my father has shields on top of shields around this place. All the Dragons do. And a lot of the other people who live in the Aboves, too—the ones who know about things like the distance viewers. They aren’t too happy about the idea that someone might be watching them at any time.”
“I can understand that,” Wraith said.
“But it’s a lot of fun,” Solander told him. “And you can learn some interesting things by focusing on places that aren’t shielded.”
Wraith gave Solander a doubtful look. “I bet.”
“You don’t sound like you like the idea much.”
“I don’t. The fact that someone might have been watching me at any time—”
Solander stopped him. “Not a chance. The Warrens are shielded.”
Wraith looked startled. “They are?”
Solander nodded.
“Just like the houses of the richest and most powerful people in the world?”
Solander nodded again.
“Why?”
Solander, dumbfounded, couldn’t come up with an answer to that. He had never even considered the strangeness of the fact that an entire section of the city had a shield around it as solid as the shield his father had cast around their house. “I … that’s a really good question,” he said. “Once you and your friends have moved in, we’ll find out.”
“Me and my friend,” Wraith corrected. “I lost one right after I left to get food the last time.”
Solander didn’t catch his meaning. “Lost? Lost how?”
“He gave up. He went back to the houses, and he went back to Sleep.”
“That doesn’t sound so bad. When will he be back with you?”
Wraith said, “Never. He’s too old. If Jess and I tried to wake him up now, he’d die. Just like my brother.”
Solander considered that and tried to understand what Wraith might mean. “That doesn’t make sense. What kind of sleep don’t people wake up from?”
Wraith said, “The food in the Warrens makes people Sleep their whole lives away. They have their eyes open, they can follow the instructions of the prayer-lights and the dictates of the gods, but when they aren’t being told what to do, they don’t do anything. They sit. They stare ahead of them. For their entire lives, they just sit and stare ahead of them.”
Solander shuddered. “How many people does this happen to?”
“All of them. Mothers give their babies Way-fare as soon as they’re born, and the babies don’t cry. They sleep, they wake, the mothers give them Way-fare just like the prayer-lights tell them to, and the babies grow up to be children who walk in lines to classes where they learn command words, and how to bathe, and how to move while they’re sitting so they don’t get sores on their bodies, and how to use a toilet, and how to flush it when they’re done. And how to take their own disposable bowls, and get their own Way-fare from the taps.”
Wraith closed his eyes, remembering the endless, repetitious droning of the gods who spoke through the prayer-lights: “Time now to get out of bed. Walk in place. Walk. Walk. Walk. Go to piss and move your bowels now, each in turn. Form a line, and wait patiently until the door opens in front of you. Wait. Wait. Wait. Eat your Way-fare now. Two bowls each for people this tall, and one bowl for people this tall,” with the lights flashing the correct heights, “and in a disposable bottle mixed with water for those no taller than this. Remember to feed littles who cannot feed themselves. Don’t forget the littles. Don’t forget. Don’t forget. Don’t forget.”
He shook off the memory. He and Jess needed papers that said they belonged in the Aboves. They needed a story that would allow them to blend in with Solander’s enormous extended family. They needed a way out of the Warrens, and the person who got them out would first have to get in—no easy task.
Solander sat there shaking his head. He said nothing—he had no words that could comfort someone who had lived in such a hell. All he could do was keep Wraith and his friend from having to go back. He was fifteen years old, and he had no illusions about his ability to find the person he needed on his own. He lived a sheltered life of privilege, far from the sort of people he was going to need. He spent his time in study and practice of the things his parents felt would give him the world when he became old enough to take it—his father’s magic, his mother’s philosophy. Even within his own family, he had few friends.
But he did have one person he thought could help him: a distant cousin a few years older than he, whose secret interests had taken her out of the Aboves and introduced her to the sort of people Solander figured he would never meet on his own. She and he got along well enough—he impressed her with his ambition and his talents for magic; they both enjoyed a good debate over the importance of the Ruminations of Chedrai and the Tosophi Feschippi Tagottgoth. Most importantly for his needs at the moment, however, he had recently caught this cousin, named Velyn Artis-Tanquin, with a boy from the Belows doing things that would have cost her any hope of making a permanent alliance among the right families, and that would have, most likely, forced her parents to cut her off and find placement for her among one of the cadet branches of their line overseas. He had not only looked the other way, but had supplied an excellent alibi for her when her parents had heard a rumor that she had broken family law.
She owed him. A lot. Enough, he thought, that he could trust her to help him out and keep the secrets that he needed to have her keep.
He sent word via one of the servants that the friend he’d wanted her to meet had arrived, and not long after, she tapped at his door.
Velyn, tall and lithe and golden-skinned, with a silken curtain of copper hair that hung far below her waist and copper eyes flecked with gold, sauntered into the room and Wraith fell silent in midsyllable, his mouth open and his eyes wide. Solander wanted to laugh—Velyn had that effect on a lot of men, both young and old.
“Dear cousin,” she said, “you interrupted me as I was winning at dice. Another roll and I should have had all of Drumonn’s weekly allotme
nt.”
“And Drumonn’s mother would have cried foul and made you give it back,” Solander said. “This is my friend Wraith—the one I told you needed help. Wraith, this is my cousin Velyn. Don’t play cards or dice with her. She cheats terribly.”
“Untrue,” Velyn said, smiling at Wraith. “I cheat very well—that’s why I win so often. I’m delighted to meet you.”
Solander watched Wraith’s pale face go vivid red. “I’m … yes,” he said, and faltered to a stop.
Velyn tipped her head and her smile grew broader. “You should remember how you did that,” she said after a moment. “It makes a woman feel like she’s the most beautiful creature in the world.”
The red of Wraith’s face grew even redder, to Solander’s amazement and amusement, but he did find his words at last. “That’s only because you are.” He was looking her straight in the eye when he said that, and to Solander he sounded completely sincere.
Velyn blushed. This stunned Solander; Velyn hadn’t even blushed when he’d caught her and her young man wearing little pieces of next to nothing and doing things that Solander doubted were legal even when both participants belonged to the Registry of Names. She stood there staring at Wraith, and Solander saw something pass between them: some spark, some understanding. He wondered what Velyn would do when she discovered that Wraith wasn’t even Second Registry, but was from the Warrens—so far below her that she should never have even been able to lay eyes on him.
“Wraith and I and a friend of his need your help,” Solander said when it became apparent that both Wraith and Velyn would be content to stand in his room looking at each other like the long-lost lovers in a bad play. “You have access passes to the aircars, and you know people. Wraith and his friend Jess need Registry papers. Good ones. Good enough that both of them could move in here. And Jess is going to need transport, too—and from someplace even you might have a hard time getting into.”
