Vincalis the Agitator

by Holly Lisle

  But perhaps it wasn’t so strange at all. Look at what else Gellas had done. He had walked away from the woman everyone had been under the impression that he loved, had ceased coming to Artis House even for holidays, and had even seemingly separated from his dearest friends Solander and Jess.

  Something about Gellas sat wrong with Dafril. It had something to do with this magnificent theater, converted from industrial space; it had something to do with the play, written by a complete unknown, and with the astonishing actors, not one of whom bore a familiar name or face….

  Dafril sensed an opportunity. Neither he nor Luercas had ever liked that scrawny weirdling, Gellas. Luercas actively hated him. But Dafril and Luercas could point the Dragon Council at Gellas and this anti-magic play; if they could raise any question that this A Man of Dreams nonsense was more than just a play, they might win themselves promotions. Power.

  By the time the play was over, he’d forgotten Faregan and his old cronies. He left in a hurry to contact Luercas and to let him know that an opportunity had fallen into their hands.

  After the show, Jess went back two aisles to greet Ander Penangueli, whom she and Jyn had met when they were putting together a proposal for their live-music scheme. “Master Penangueli!” She held out her arms, and exchanged a polite brush of cheeks with him. “Did you enjoy the show?”

  “Dear child, what a delight! The young man who wrote that is a genius. But it was a very dark theme—very dark. I found myself laughing during the show, but now it’s over and I find myself thinking instead. Such a sad tale—such sad little lives. And the poor wizard, too.” The old man stroked his beard and said, “You know the producer, don’t you?”

  Jess nodded. “We were great friends as children. We don’t actually see each other anymore, sadly, but …” She shrugged.

  “You must introduce us. And perhaps the writer, too?”

  “I don’t know the writer,” Jess said. “But Gellas is around somewhere—I know he’d love to meet you.”

  Penangueli nodded. “He found quite a work of art in this play. A tragedy that makes one laugh—or perhaps it was a comedy that makes one cry. Quite unexpected.” Master Penangueli said, “And now let me introduce you to my friends. This is Jess Covitach-Artis, the girl who will be bringing live musicians to our homes—and evidently touring them around the empire, as well. Jess, Master Grath Faregan and Master Noano Omwi.” He turned to his associates. “Jess and the daughter of a dear friend of mine had the lovely idea of gathering up musicians and placing them on stages for a more intimate entertainment. Can you imagine?”

  “But then their audience will be present if they make errors in their playing,” Master Omwi said. He looked to her for an explanation.

  She nodded. “They will. But their listeners will hear the living music, with natural variations and the passions of the moment—it will not have the perfection of a performance preserved for the videograph, but no one else save those who are there at that moment will ever hear that exact performance. It will be like the theater tonight—the actors may play all their parts slightly differently tomorrow night. It will be a different experience for tomorrow’s audience. You see?”

  And the three men smiled and nodded. Then Master Faregan, who seemed quite familiar, though she could not place him, said, “CovitachArtis? Which branch of the family is that?”

  And she felt the same fear that had plagued her since she’d come to Artis House. “Most of the Covitach-Artises are in Ynjarval,” she said. “We’re from the Beyron Artis lineage that settled in the area about three hundred years ago.”

  She chatted about the lineage—patter she had memorized years ago—and they smiled and nodded, smiled and nodded. And then she noticed that two of them, Penangueli and Omwi, were looking past her as they smiled and nodded—that something down around the stage seemed to have their real attention, and that while they were pretending to give her and her dull family history their attention, they were in fact surreptitiously watching something behind her that interested them much more.

  The same could not be said for Faregan. He watched her—watched her with such unblinking intensity that she began to feel sick to her stomach.

  She did not turn around, either to avoid Faregan’s stare or to see what the other two men were watching, though the impulse to do so was almost overwhelming. Instead, she claimed a prior engagement for which she was rapidly growing late, and gave cheerful good-byes.

  When she finally dared to turn away, Wraith was accepting the congratulations of some of the members of his opening-night crowd in front of the stage. Some of the actors stood with him. They were all in the right area to have caught the old men’s attention.

  She suddenly wondered at the business of the three old men. Jyn had only introduced Master Penangueli by name, not mentioning that he held a position anywhere, so Jess had assumed he was a covil-osset. Somehow, now she thought he might have some other interest—something unpleasant, though she could not imagine what. That he could choose to be in the company of Master Faregan made her think him not such a nice man after all.

  And this outing might not have been as casual and friendly as it appeared: Three old Masters braving the Belows after dark could speak well of the play—or it could suggest that after all these years, someone was starting to have questions about Wraith. Or her. Or both.

  The Silent Inquest gathered in the Gold Building, named not for its color or its construction materials, but for its putative designer, Camus Gold, said to have been the greatest architect of the Third Age. The Gold Building gathered its aura of power around itself like an ancient goddess; it stood atop the highest of the Merocalins, the seven hills that had been the heart of Oel Artis before the wizards built the Aboves and sent them sailing into the clouds, and stared haughtily down onto the lower city that had been the whole of the city, once upon a time.

  Many of the old buildings had lost their luster and their pride of place as the true heart of Oel Artis moved into the sky, but the walled and mazelike Gold Building was different. For more than seven hundred years it had been the place where little cabals of powerful old men gathered secretly to decide the fates of those beneath them, and its soul echoed with the resonance of those old men, that power, those choices.

  Now a Dragon of the Council, a man of great power and respect, came with his face hidden to stand before three old men dressed in green and black robes.

  “You saw it?”

  “We saw it,” Ander Penangueli, Grand Master of the Inquestors, said.

  “The play presents a view of magic that I am not sure we in the Dragons wish to permit to exist. The writer was reaching for metaphor, I believe, but he has managed to lay bare an unfortunate literal truth by doing so. He used magic as his metaphor, and used the sacrificing of lives as fuel for a wizard’s petty spell as the engine that ran his story.”

  Heads nodded. “We saw. Get on with it.”

  The Dragon swallowed hard and said, “A Man of Dreams is going to make people think. It’s going to point them straight at the things we don’t want them to think about, and it’s going to make some of them ask some very dangerous questions.”

  “Then close the play,” Penangueli said. “Why should we even be here on this late night for this discussion? Close the damned thing and be done with it, and let’s get home to our beds and the sleep we’re missing.”

  The Dragon said, “If we step in and order it closed, we raise curiosity about why the Dragon Council would choose to involve itself in harmless entertainment. We don’t want to raise curiosity.”

  Master Omwi said, “You say you think the writer trespassed accidentally on this issue. Is there any chance he knew what he was doing?”

  The Dragon shrugged. “No way to tell. We don’t know the writer. The producer is an Artis. He’s spent his life surrounded by magic—learned the mathematics of it, as does every child with an Artis tutor, and lived in a house where magic was the sun, the moon, and the stars. But he has never— and I
have checked this carefully—absolutely never, done anything with magic of any sort. His interests have always lain within the realms of literature and philosophy, and even his best friend for years, who is a rising young wizard heading toward a place in Research and before long, I’m sure, a seat on the Council, has said that he tried for years to get the boy to choose a more practical course of study. Apparently, clever though he is with words, the lad has no aptitude for even the simplest of spells.”

  “But you don’t think he’s aware of the Warrens?”

  “Why would he be? That is information never available to anyone who is not a Council member or working directly the spells that actually fuel the city—and the people who do that job always become Council members. It’s one of the perks, and they know it. There is no way he could get to that information.”

  “You want the producer killed?” Penangueli asked.

  The Dragon swallowed again. “I’d rather not take that step. He’s stolti. But I need a way to get rid of this play quietly.”

  The Inquestor Triad sat silently for a short while. Finally Penangueli said, “Use money. And a diversion. Commission the boy to produce something else in the style of this one. Something less volatile. He can hire a different writer, or have the same one work on a theme of your choosing.”

  Faregan asked, “And what of the writer of this play? What might he know?”

  Here the Dragon faltered. “We do not know any Vincalis, nor have we had good fortune in finding out about him. He takes his pay in cash, has someone pick it up for him, has never attended rehearsals, sends changes and corrections via courier from a variety of courier stations, none of whom know him personally or can describe the person who brought them their package.”

  Faregan began to laugh softly. “Ah. Those are not the actions of an innocent man. This Vincalis, I wager, knows exactly what he is about. I think in Gellas Tomersin he’s found himself a convenient sheep. A front. I’d guess he might be a disgruntled member of the Council itself—perhaps his money funded the renovation of the playhouse.”

  “We’ve checked that. A group of dummy investors funded it. They don’t know where they received their funds, only that they got a twenty percent commission for handling the deal.”

  Murmurs around the room. Old voices whispering through the chamber that had heard nothing but old voices, carefully measured tones, thoughtful whispers, for seven hundred years and more. The Silent Inquest, not even known by most of the people of the Empire to exist, dreaded with reason by all who knew it, had predated the building it occupied by nearly two thousand years. The Silent Inquest had survived dynasties, revolutions, wars, famines, disasters, and periods of vast, sloth-inducing abundance by being slow, patient, careful … and right.

  “Yes,” Penangueli said at last. “Vincalis is your problem, I think. Give young Gellas Tomersin a commission, then. Let him give you a great comedy—something light and frivolous and far from souls and wizardry. We will have people watch him. And watch his friends. And we will see who he hires as a writer, and see if, in this second work, we find the same threads of treason. If we do, we will know that the first time was no mistake, and we will act.”

  “And of the current play?”

  “Let it run its scheduled handful of days. But make sure the pressure is on Tomersin to get the next one out immediately—that it is needed for some close holiday for which he must meet a specific date. Give him no option but to close this one when its initial run is finished.”

  The Dragon bowed. “Yes, Inquestors. We will do this—or, if necessary, I shall do it myself. If we have a traitor on the Council, better he or she not know anyone suspects.” With his palms sliding back and forth over each other, the Dragon then asked, “And the price of your assistance, so that I may draw your fee from the private funds?”

  Penangueli smiled slowly, no longer looking much like a sweet, charming old man. “You can owe the Silent Inquest a favor at a later date. You may leave us now. We have implementations to discuss.”

  The Dragon grew pale, but bowed and backed his way to the door, and hurried from the chamber.

  When he was gone, Penangueli leaned back. “We’ll hold this favor for the day that we need a vote to go our way in Council. Or possibly for something greater. Its worth will depend on what we can discover—so make sure that the Dragons owe us greatly.” He smiled again.

  Faregan said, “The girl who came up to you tonight might be a key.”

  Penangueli raised an eyebrow. “Jess? She’s harmless, I suspect.”

  “I’m sure she is. But she is and always has been great friends with Gellas Tomersin. They’re from the same part of Ynjarval. And until recently, she was none other than Solander Artis’s lover. Solander is the only son of the late Rone Artis.”

  “You knew her? I never would have guessed.”

  Faregan gave a dry laugh. “I had reason once to find out about her. If I may, I’d like to put some of my people on her. I suspect she may bring our investigation some luck.”

  Penangueli, who knew something of Faregan’s interest in young women, but not of his collection, said, “She’s stolti, Grath.”

  Faregan nodded acknowledgment, but said nothing.

  “Very well,” Penangueli said. “Remember that she is not our target.” And with that injunction, they moved on to other matters.

  Dark, and silence, and in the primarily outlander Perhout District of Oel Artis, peace—but peace soon shattered, as the city guards set up a perimeter around the district and began marching through the streets, knocking on doors, bringing sleeping people out into the street.

  “Your papers,” they would say at each house, and when the papers were produced, would look at them and either say, “By edict of the Dragons, since we have ceased diplomatic relations with the Camarins, you and your family will be temporarily interned in a house in the Warrens.” Or they would say, “You’re Kaan. You’re not in the Kaan district, and you’re not wearing the mandated Kaan garb. You’re going to have to come with us—you and your family.”

  Half the district vanished that night. And the neighbors who remained trembled, and stared out windows, knowing that the others would never be back. Everyone knew, no matter what the guards might say about temporary internships, that no one came back from the Warrens.

  In a week, all the emptied houses would have new outlander families in them—families from places that had uncertain relations with the Empire of the Hars Ticlarim. These families would settle down and live their lives, until the next harvest from their district, when some of them, or maybe all of them, would be collected to feed the gaping maw of the Warrens.

  Chapter 11

  The negotiating agent for the Dragon Council sat across from Wraith in Wraith’s office, a broad, false smile on his face. “The city will celebrate the three thousandth anniversary of the birth of Greyvmian the Ponderer, who has been considered the father of mapping, and whose work led to the exploration of much of Matrin. And thus to the greatness of our magnificent Empire. Secure within, secure without.” His name was Birch, and though Wraith had managed never to cross paths with him before, he didn’t like him at all.

  Wraith nodded. “I vaguely remember hearing of Greyvmian the Ponderer, I think. He is not much celebrated these days.” He smiled at the man and waited.

  “True. True. We have been remiss over the years in our celebration of Greyvmian’s memory. But this is a special anniversary—the three thousandth—and the Masters of the City have decided that there will be great public festivals to honor this year. And for that, I have come to you, representing not only the Masters of the Dragon Council, but the Landimyn of the Hars himself.”

  Wraith, with his hands folded on his knees, raised his eyebrows and waited.

  “You have done something new. Something fresh and different. Your play in Common tongue stirs the imagination; it sings to the heart with a passion the old forms have put aside in favor of … of prettiness. Though you gave us a tragedy, it was a
fine tragedy. Some of the lines of it still ring in my mind.” His eyes focused far away for a moment, and Wraith realized that the man was telling him the truth. Something about the play had reached in and touched even him, and had left some part of him moved, shaken … uncomfortable.

  This startled Wraith. He had not thought that those who held power could be disturbed from their positions of comfort. He had never even considered the possibility. And now, with the truth facing him, he felt real opportunities opening up and sprawling out before him. He said, “So how may I be of service to you, Master Birch?”

  “The city would like to commission a play from you. One that will run the whole of the year of Greyvmian’s celebration. We would like something stirring, passionate, but also …” He stared off into space pensively and at last said, “We do not wish another tragedy, nor do we wish a piece of bombast—the glory of the old dynasties, the greatness that lay behind. We want something contemporary. And … ah … funny. Humor is very important. Something that people can come to and spend a few hours learning a grand story and laughing at the funny bits, and that they can take home with them and … and cherish. You can bring this play to us. You have already presented such a play—but it is a tragedy, and a tragedy will not work for a year-long celebration.”

  “But I’m not a writer,” Wraith said. “I merely produced a play that came to me from … well, I don’t actually know where it came from. I can’t guarantee that I could get hold of another so fine … unless, of course, you know how I might reach Vincalis?”

  “No. I had hoped you would know that.”

  Wraith shrugged. “I don’t. But he obviously knows me. Perhaps if I make the need known, he will choose to fill it.” Wraith rested his chin on the palm of his hand and said, “Perhaps it would be well, too, if you commissioned one of the Empire’s great playwrights to produce something, in case Vincalis doesn’t.”