by Holly Lisle
Luercas. She chose Luercas.
Or had he chosen her? Had he wanted her in order to get back at Wraith for all their years of growing hatred, for all the times they’d exchanged hard words and Wraith, master of words, had come away the winner? How could she want to spend the rest of her life with that bully, that manipulative bastard, that power-hungry cretin—the man who was known as much for his endless sexual forays as for his determination to become the head of the Council of Dragons within the next ten years? The worst rumor Wraith had heard about Luercas was that he could have saved Rone had he wanted to, but that he decided letting Rone die a martyr would be more beneficial for his own career. And look at him now. His scars from that accident completely gone; standing in the full favor of the Council of Dragons; head of Research, the department that Solander so coveted; and now creating a contractual life-merger with the woman Wraith loved.
If Wraith could have murdered Luercas where he stood and hoped to get away with it, he would have.
And then the ceremony was over. Velyn and Luercas signed their public contract, turned, held hands, and lifted the contract over their heads as if it represented some great personal victory, instead of a gods’-damned financial merger. Wraith seethed inside, but outside he applauded along with the rest of the witnesses.
He’d been a fool to come—but he had to see her go through with it. He kept thinking that she wouldn’t; that at the last minute she would realize that having a man who loved her was more important than having a man who felt that her family’s monetary assets complemented his own. He could not believe, even as he stood there watching her smiling through tears at the crowd of well-wishers, that he had so misjudged her. He’d thought she was the other half of his soul, the person who made him complete. Now he had to face the fact that to do what she had just done, she had to have been almost a stranger to him. There had to be parts of her he hadn’t seen, or had seen but hadn’t understood.
He wanted to hate her. Instead, as he waited in line with the other witnesses to offer his congratulations, he only hated himself.
Jess sat across the room at the nutevaz and watched Wraith dying inside. She’d debated telling him that Velyn was going to take Luercas to vow, and had convinced herself that he deserved to know. She’d been so sure that if Wraith could see Velyn moving on with her life, he would be able to move on with his. But as she watched him suffer, she had to question her own methods. She could have told him after the deed was done—she could have passed the news on to him in a casual little aside: Oh, Wraith, I’m sure you’ve already heard, but Velyn took vows with that ass Luercas last month, and by the way, I just heard that both Jain and Torva are expecting their first registered children.
He would have been shocked. He would have been hurt. But he wouldn’t have been sitting there staring at Velyn like a man who was having his heart ripped out of his chest one still-beating piece at a time. Everyone kept things from Wraith, because everyone thought he was too sensitive to know the hard truth about people, about situations, about anything. So he didn’t know that the woman he was so visibly mourning had never been faithful to him, or that she had never even considered faithfulness an issue.
She’d wanted to tell Wraith about Velyn’s other men as soon as she found out about them. She hated the fact that everyone laughed at Wraith for thinking Velyn loved him.
“He loves her,” Solander had said. “He won’t thank you for telling him that the woman he loves is not who he thinks she is. He’ll just hate you for destroying his illusions.”
But if he could discover the truth about Velyn—if he could just find out that she wasn’t worth all this anguish and grief—perhaps he could at last be free of her. Maybe he could find some peace.
Or maybe Solander was right.
If Solander was right, though, then this meant all of them had done the best for Wraith that they could—and that the fact that he was in pain and mourning someone who didn’t deserve to be mourned was the best he deserved. Jess did not believe that.
She could show him who Velyn really was, she realized. He wouldn’t be happy to find it out—but maybe a brief unhappiness was kinder than this lingering anguish. She glanced around the room. The people there were all stolti, of course—not the chadri or mufere who made up most of Velyn’s conquests. But among the hundreds of witnesses, Jess saw two young men with whom Velyn had entertained herself while sharing quarters with Wraith. When the last of the banquet had been cleared away and everyone headed outside to dance among the stars, Jess caught one of them and said, “Kemmart, Velyn was hoping to see you privately before this party is over.”
Kemmart jumped a little, and a guilty smile flashed across his face. “I didn’t think she’d forget me too easily.”
“Of course not. I heard that it was you she had in mind when she was negotiating her contract. Just a rumor, but …” Jess shrugged.
“When did she want to meet me? And where?”
“Zero by Dim—out behind the fountain.”
He glanced up at the clock on the wall, marked the time, and nodded. “When you see her, tell her I’ll be there.”
Jess smiled.
She worked her way through the crowd, caught Velyn’s attention, and gestured toward a quiet alcove. Velyn nodded almost imperceptibly and when she got a chance, broke free of the throng of well-wishers and joined Jess.
“I can’t believe he came,” were the first words out of her mouth. “Your fault, wasn’t it?”
Jess held up a hand. “Truce, Velyn. I’m on your side. Wraith cut Solander and me out of his life, too—remember? Or didn’t you know about that?”
Velyn looked shaken. “I’d heard that you left Solander right after … well, after. And I assumed the two of you would get together. I mean, you’ve had your eye on him all these years.”
“Solander and I separated when we realized that we didn’t have anything in common anymore. The timing looked bad, but …” She managed a tiny, amused smile that she didn’t feel at all. “But Wraith and me? No. I never intended to be upstaged by a theater. Any more than you did. I could understand completely your decision not to take vows with him.” Jess shrugged. “As for why Wraith came tonight—he thought it would be polite, I suppose. But I didn’t call you over to talk to you about Wraith.”
Velyn watched her with a wariness that Jess had to respect. Velyn might have had the morals of an alleycat, but she knew how to watch her back. “Why did you want to talk to me?”
“Your friend Kemmart said he wanted to meet with you in private for a few minutes. Zero by Dim behind the fountain. He said it was important.”
Velyn looked surprised, and then—as Jess had hoped she would— pleased. “Kemmart,” she murmured.
“He didn’t seem too terribly pleased that he’d lost you to Luercas,” Jess added.
Velyn’s little smile became broader. “When, again?”
“Zero by Dim.”
Velyn nodded. “Thank you. Oh—and if you see Wraith, you might want to suggest to him that tonight wouldn’t be a terribly good night for him to try to make amends. Luercas truly despises him, and would be more than happy to start looking for ways to destroy him, should he think that Wraith doesn’t respect the contract.”
Jess nodded. “I don’t know that I will see him—or even that I want to talk to him if I do. But …” She smiled again, falsely bright. “But I suppose if I run into him and can’t just walk on by, I could pass that on.”
Velyn glanced at Luercas, standing with a group of his colleagues discussing something that seemed to be amusing all of them, and a look of dismay flashed across her face and vanished. “Don’t do anything that makes you uncomfortable. If I happen to run into him, I’ll be more than happy to pass that on myself.”
Jess nodded, excused herself, and made her way back to the main party. She located Wraith and kept an eye on him. She wanted to be able to head him out to the fountain at about the right time—and she thought she had just the right story to get
him out there. And when he got there, he would see who Velyn really was, and he might be able to stop hurting so much.
And then maybe … maybe … he might find his way back to her.
Grath Faregan, dressed in blue velvet from throat to toes, nodded to wedding guests, sipped a drink, and finally, with a smile, turned to his companion. “There. Talking to the bride. You see her?”
“Slender, tiny, dark hair, blue silk traditional robes …”
“That’s the one. You’re to get close to her and stay close to her. Get to know everyone she knows, keep track of everything she does … and when I give the order, bring her to me.”
“To the Inquest, you mean?”
“I said what I meant,” Faregan snapped. “To me. You understand that?”
“I do, Master.”
“Very well. Off with you, then. I’ll want reports weekly. Make them … personal.” Faregan smiled, imagining Jess in his home, in his hands, in his power—imagining finally doing everything he had waited so long to do. “Not much longer,” he said softly. “Not much longer at all, Jess.”
Wraith would have been long gone—he’d made a horrible mistake coming—but people kept cornering him and congratulating him on A Man of Dreams, or asking if he might get them seats since they could not even find places in the high rows or the aisles for any of the performances.
When Jess grabbed him by one arm and dragged him free of a woman who was complaining that he should have planned for a longer run, he could only be grateful.
“You look absolutely gray, Wraith,” she whispered, dragging him out of the grand banquet hall, down a well-lit corridor, and out into the star-filled yard, where couples danced on air to the strains of one of Jess’s live musical groups.
“I feel like baked death with plantains,” he muttered. “And over-cooked, at that.”
She said, “You need some quiet for a moment. No one will see us back behind the fountain.” She led him through the yard, using her elbows like weapons, yet managing to make every well-placed strike look like an accident. He couldn’t help but be impressed. As they worked their way through the crowd, she said, “You were insane to come here; you know that, don’t you? It’s like you want to hurt yourself. Like you’re reveling in the pain.”
“I just kept hoping she would realize that she was making a mistake.”
Jess patted his arm and sighed. “You would think that, of course. But you’re a romantic.”
“I love her, Jess. I wanted to be with her forever. I kept hoping that she would finally discover that she loved me enough to …” He shrugged. “I’m an idiot. I already knew that I was an idiot. But tonight really proved the point to me.”
“You aren’t an idiot for loving her,” Jess said grimly. “She’s an idiot for not loving you.”
And they broke free of the last of the dancers, and reached the tall shrubs that surrounded the grand fountain, and moved behind them.
And there was Velyn. And one of the distant Artis cousins. They were jammed up against the fountain, in a state of partial undress, focused only on each other—engaged in an activity that put Velyn in breach of her contract almost before the ink had dried.
Wraith said nothing. Velyn didn’t see him—her eyes were tightly closed—but the cousin did. He grimaced—jerked his head at Wraith, telling him to go away without saying any words—but he didn’t forget what he was about. Velyn moaned and shivered and told him, “Oh, more. Oh, more. God knows when we’ll get this chance again.”
Wraith couldn’t see. His vision had blurred to virtual blindness, and only when he felt the tears burning down the back of his throat did he realize he was crying.
He felt hands on his elbow, pulling him away, and heard a voice in his ear saying, “I’m putting you in a car and sending you home. Should I go with you, or will you be all right to be alone?”
“I’d rather walk,” he muttered, but Jess was steering him through the crowds again, and he couldn’t see well enough to choose his own direction, and he didn’t have the will to fight her.
The car took him home. The driver delivered him to the door. And the proctor saw him to bed, and gave him some hot wine to burn away the pain.
In that manner he passed the last night he ever spent in his suite in the Materan Ground School.
Chapter 12
Greyvmian the Ponderer—A Play in Three Acts
by Vincalis
CHARACTERS
(in order of appearance)
Truuthman the Ruthless—pirate
Greyvmian the Ponderer—mapmaker
Shetha the Avaricious—landlady
Crobitt the Confused—envoy to the Empire
Nalritha the Beautiful—the pirate’s lady but the
mapmaker’s true love
Winling the Wise—Greyvmian’s friend and advisor
Dal the Seventh—Master of the Empire of the Hars Ticlarim
Act One—Pirates and Heroes Seek Common Ground
Scene 1
Time: The Old Calendar Year of Queh, Raunde 15, in the month of Gehorlen.
Place: A cluttered office of ancient style, built not of fine whitestone but of wood, full of scrolls, quills, calligraphic brushes, and reed-papers, the walls covered with maps drawn by hand with colored inks in the old fashion. The lamps burn real flame, and water pours into a stone sink from a trough that pokes through the back wall. At left stage sits a heavy wooden drawing table, its top angled toward the audience. It is covered with a map in progress—clearly the continent of Strithia, though also clearly out of proportion and with vast gaps in the coastline and interior. In front of the drawing table sits a tall drafting stool, while at center stage we see several chairs and a small desk on which sit the half-eaten remains of a poor meal and a glass tankard still almost full of weak beer.
A steep and narrow stairway rises at right stage from the working area up to a loft, which holds a narrow wooden bed with a thin and pitiful mattress covered by a tattered blanket.
Doors open to both left and right stage, and through the window backing center stage, we see a bay full of ships, and beyond, the sea.
The curtain rises to reveal TRUUTHMAN, a pirate dressed in full pirate regalia, as in the ancient scroll side-illuminations, who paces at center stage. He glares at the left door, at the audience, at the right door, and then sees the meal and the beer. Glancing around, for he is clearly not in his own home and the meal clearly is not his, he sneaks over to it and raises the beer to his lips. As he takes a huge gulp, GREYVMIAN bursts into the room through the right door, panting hard and startling the pirate, who spews beer across the room.
GREYVMIAN: (still panting, but looking with mournful eyes at his now nearly empty tankard) My beer. (And then, noticing that some of the beer has speckled his maps) My maps.
TRUUTHMAN: (putting the beer down behind him) You’re late.
GREYVMIAN: My landlady was after me for the rent. I found a good dogfight and jumped into the middle of it, and thus lost her— but it was a near thing. The dogs mistook her for one of their own and most fled in fear. (Pause) Were it not for one big fellow—more a lover than a fighter—who took a fancy to her, I would not be here yet.
TRUUTHMAN: (laughing) For just such reasons do I keep to the sea. All landladies are an evil brood, I swear—worshipers of dark and vengeful gods. I’ll take my chances with monsters, typhoons, and the bottomless ocean. Which brings me to my purpose: You have my map?
GREYVMIAN: If you have my coastline. The Golden Chain of Manarkas for the southern tip of Strithia—that was our agreement.
TRUUTHMAN: I remember it. And I have made a true copy of my logs for you—my reckonings each day we sailed along the coast, and the positions of the stars at night. I found a lovely bay at the northern edge of my journey this time that is full of islands—I did not chart them, or even try. But south of that, you should get a good line. (Offers a sheaf of loose papers.)
GREYVMIAN: (taking the papers and glancing through them) These look good.
Very good. You write a nice hand, and are remarkably concise with your whereabouts for a pirate.
TRUUTHMAN: (looks around nervously, as if afraid the two of them will be overheard. GREYVMIAN, infected by his nervousness, also looks around, though clearly with no idea what he is looking for) Have you a close tongue in your mouth?
GREYVMIAN: Close as a bound trunk with no key. Why?
TRUUTHMAN: Because you aren’t the only one to get copies of my logs. I make a copy as well for the Master of the City—from here I go to meet with his man Crobitt. But none may know the Master of the Hars puts gold in the coffers of pirates.
GREYVMIAN: (astonished) Truly! My head rolls if any find that you have stepped one foot into my house, but the Master of the City keeps you on his payroll. It simply proves that one should be born a Master, not a mapmaker.
TRUUTHMAN: (grinning) I hold the gods accountable for such things. I tell them what they shall give me, in women and wealth and weather fair, and because I am Truuthman the Ruthless, they listen.
GREYVMIAN: (kissing his palm and pressing it to his forehead to ward off the evil of such hubris) Don’t play on the gods’ fields—you won’t like their games, and in any case, they cheat.
Wraith sighed and pushed away from his pages. He needed to get both the landlady and the pirate’s beautiful mistress on the stage quickly, and while he had a grand idea for the landlady—perhaps in a ripped dress and with a huge dog still panting and grinning behind her—for the life of him, he couldn’t think of any circumstance that would bring the fair Nalritha into Greyvmian’s humble abode.
Wraith rested his chin in one cupped hand and listened to the dancing down the street from the little room he’d taken in the Kaan village. He wanted to be out there with them. He wanted to be dancing in the night air—or at least learning the steps, which was all he could claim to be doing, really. He wanted to be listening to the stories and the songs, sharing the evening meal, laughing and celebrating life. He wanted to feel the freedom that the Kaan felt.
