Vincalis the Agitator

by Holly Lisle

  Beneath the fixed smile on her face, she seethed.

  At the end of the long corridor, they went left. Straight ahead lay a garden with stone fountains and fixed sources of water, little paths carved through the deep shade of ancient trees, straight-backed wooden benches. Velyn thought it austere. To the right, another corridor. The path they took led them to an office, and a man dressed as Velyn and the boy were, but in gray.

  “Welcome,” he said, not rising from his seat. “Please, make yourself comfortable.” He glanced at the boy. “Joshen, you may go now. Be back by third bell, please—I’ll need your assistance.” The boy nodded, smiled, and scurried out the door, closing it behind him.

  All the chairs in the room were straight-backed, uncushioned, hardly created with comfort in mind. Velyn took the one farthest from the door, turned it slightly so that she could face both the desk and the door, and settled cautiously into it.

  The man said, “I am Brother Atric. That is not, of course, my real name. None among the Order of Resonance keep their names; we give them up when we join, and burn our pasts.”

  “Hardly legal,” Velyn said.

  “If one does not avail oneself of the services of the Empire, it is entirely legal. We are an independent order of artists, musicians, writers, philosophers, builders, creators—some of the finest minds and greatest talents in all of Matrin reside within our walls. We offer shelter and privacy for those who create to do so free from the Empire’s tendency to dictate content, form, and presentation.”

  “How long have you existed?” Velyn asked.

  “I’ll assume you mean the Order, and not me personally.” He smiled a little at his joke, but did not seem in the least disconcerted when Velyn did not smile back. “The Order of Resonance has held lands in the Hars Ticlarim for over two thousand years. In Manarkas and Ynjarval, we have been around for even longer.”

  Velyn tried to keep her surprise from showing on her face, but knew she’d failed. She’d been sure Wraith had abducted her into the underground about which he had once spun such enthusiastic plans. Instead, he seemed to have dumped her into a well-known artists’ colony.

  Gods-all. He didn’t even trust her enough to put her someplace where she might learn something she could use.

  “How did I come to be here?” she asked. “I was in a boardinghouse, awaiting the resolution of legal actions that I took against my vowmate. Several men dressed in black kicked in my door, blindfolded me, bound my hands, and held something over my nose that smelled atrocious and I have to assume made me sleep, for my next memory is of waking in the room here, with a bath drawn for me, clothes waiting, and my hair already cut and colored pale.” She sighed. “Actually, I have a good idea of how I came to be here. What I don’t understand is why.”

  “You needed a place to stay, where you could be protected adequately from the considerable power and fury of your ex-vowmate. Gellas sent a messenger to me telling me that you would be arriving, and that we were to give you shelter and treat you as one of our own until he could be certain that you were no longer in danger.”

  “He was concerned?”

  “I got the feeling that he was very concerned.” The man looked at her with eyes as gray as his tunic, eyes that got lost in the creases around them when he smiled. “He said that you were the woman he had once loved, and that we were to protect you at all costs.”

  “Why would you do this?”

  “Protect you?”

  “Yes. If Luercas can figure out what happened to me, he could do terrible things to your Order. Why would you put yourselves in danger on my account?”

  “Master Gellas has been tremendously generous to our Order, both in terms of financial donations and in terms of placing our actors in his plays, and utilizing our musicians and our painters and our builders and even our writers in his ongoing projects. He is our finest patron.”

  “That’s all?”

  Brother Atric laughed gently and shook his head. “We have never been a destitute order; we have resources of land, property, and creativity from which we reap a significant profit. But until Master Gellas came along, we held no center spotlight in the affairs of the world. Now we do. Now … now our artists and writers and dancers and actors perform before the broad spectrum of society, both in the Empire and beyond. That’s more than anyone else has been able to do for us in two thousand years. To me, it seems to be enough.”

  “But you aren’t part of Wraith’s underground?”

  The blank look on his face might have been feigned, but the timing of it was so perfect, so without pause or break, that she did not believe it was. Even if Brother Atric were a great actor, she did not think he could have hidden the initial flicker of awareness that she felt sure would have been there had he been in on the truth.

  “Wraith?” he asked. “Underground?”

  “Wraith. Master Gellas’s real name. The underground is the group of people he has gathered together to overthrow the magic system in the Empire and free the Warreners.”

  Brother Atric’s expression changed from bewilderment to horror. “You’re suggesting that … that Master Gellas is a traitor? Do you know this to be true? Can you offer proof of his identity, or his subversive activities? Gods be damned—we cannot permit ourselves to be associated with someone who is … who is involved in treason.”

  “You didn’t know anything about Wraith? About where he was from, or … anything?”

  “If what you say is true, we will cut ourselves off from him entirely. We survive at the tolerance of the Empire. We do not seek its overthrow. And what do you mean, where he’s from? He’s from the Aboves—from the Artis family.”

  “He’s from the Warrens,” Velyn said. “I pulled him out of there myself, when we were both children, more or less. I was less of a child than he was, but …” She shrugged.

  Now he was looking at her with horror. “You’re a traitor, too? You admit to assisting a Warrener in escaping from the Warrens? Woman, are you mad?” He pressed the palms of his hands to his temples for a moment and closed his eyes tightly, as if his head pained him. “You know what you did as a child—I would not think to question the truth of what you say. But you cannot stay here. You …” He sighed and opened his eyes, and the gray of them no longer seemed warm. To Velyn, this man suddenly looked frightening.

  “It was a stupid childhood prank.” She shrugged, making little of it.

  “And yet, if it is true, you have kept the fact of it secret as an adult— for many years, in fact. Had you confessed to your actions as a child, I doubt anyone would have held your actions against you. But by hiding your actions into adulthood, you have changed a childish prank into treason.”

  “Nonsense,” Velyn said. But it wasn’t nonsense. She’d been so sure that Brother Atric was a part of Wraith’s underground that she had not considered the price she might pay were he not.

  “I’ll arrange transport for you,” he said, standing. He pulled a plain black silk cord above his head, and out in the corridor a bell rang in clusters of four. Clang, clang, clang, clang. Clang, clang, clang, clang.

  “Transport where?”

  “Out of some misplaced remainder of loyalty to Master Gellas—or … Wraith,” he said with distaste, “I will not turn you in to the Dragons. I will, instead, send you out with a troupe we have leaving for the Southern Manarkan Chain. You’ll travel as a prisoner, and my people will leave you on one of the isolated islands. I suggest that you stay there. Should you ever return here, I will be forced to declare your confession to the Dragons.”

  “And your complicity?”

  “Not at all, dear.” His smile this time was cold. “I’ll say that you confessed your transgressions while in the islands, and we abandoned you there immediately.”

  Velyn felt sick. She had no wish to go halfway around the world. No wish to be trapped on a primitive island, far from the comforts of her home. She couldn’t believe that she had so misjudged the man. “And what of Wraith?” she asked.r />
  “We will no longer associate with him. He does not need to know why. We will create a dispute over contracts—such things are easy to arrange, and can be impossible to resolve. If he is guilty of treason, his actions will reveal him soon enough.”

  Four large men in deep green ran into the room. “This woman, who has no name but is no Sister, is to be put into the robes of a Dispossessed and sent out with the troupe leaving today to tour the Southern Manarkan Chain. I will send orders along with her. You are not to speak with her, nor are you to permit her to speak. Use whatever means you must to accomplish this.”

  He looked at Velyn. “You understand what I just told them?”

  Whatever means you must. Yes. Velyn understood that. She nodded, not saying a word.

  Brother Atric stood. “I would wish you good luck, traitor, but you have not earned it. Rather, I wish you an end fitting with your actions.”

  The men marched her out of Brother Atric’s office. She did not look back. She was too busy berating herself for her own stupidity for thinking she knew the game, the players, and how to make herself look like one of them.

  “We sent her to Bair’s Island,” Brother Lestovar told Wraith.

  Wraith’s head ached. He sat down on the long bench in his great hall and said, “I went to a great deal of trouble to send her to you.”

  “I know that. But in the first minutes of her conversation with Brother Atric, she mentioned the underground, referred to you as Wraith, and said that you were from the Warrens and that she was the one who had pulled you out of there. No matter whether she was trying to get us to admit to something or whether she was merely being stupid, she’s more of a risk than we can keep in anyplace as high-traffic and open to the outside as Resonance House. A slip like that to the wrong ears could get her and us and you executed for treason superior.”

  Wraith rose and walked to his fireplace, where he had a fine little wood fire burning. He took a poker and stirred the logs and watched the sparks fly up the chimney, and he thought. “I cannot tell you how she feels about me, or what her intentions were in telling you so much that should be secret. She was quite angry with me for not giving her shelter in my home. I suspect she feels that I have treated her poorly. Perhaps she mentioned the things she did because she thought she was among friends; I can’t swear to that, though, and don’t know that I would believe it if someone said it to me.”

  “Do you want us to leave her on Bair’s Island?”

  Wraith thought about the woman he had once loved. After she’d been healed, she had looked unchanged from the time when he knew her. A hardness had lain behind her eyes, though—a cynicism that placed a barrier between the two of them. He could care about what happened to her; he suspected that he always would. He could love her; he seemed incapable of putting that love behind him. He would not replace her with another woman; as long as the two of them lived, he would never want someone else. But he could not want her. He could not want what she represented: something cold and shallow and conniving and dishonest. He was a fool to love her, but not such a fool that he would let his love for her destroy him.

  “Bair’s Island will be fine,” he said. “Resonance House has a small chapter there, correct? One that can keep track of her and keep her out of trouble?”

  Brother Lestovar nodded. “All that’s on Bair’s Island is the chapter— which is run as a village where none wear the cowl and cloak—and a collection of old ruins that keep some of our Brothers entertained. And jungle, of course. More jungle than anyone could ever hope to see. We’ll make sure that she doesn’t come back to haunt you or us.”

  “Be kind to her,” Wraith said. “Make sure she has whatever she needs—food, shelter, someone trustworthy to talk to.”

  Brother Lestovar sighed. “We could have one of the mute Brothers—”

  Wraith laughed. “No. You want someone who can tell you what she’s up to. Make sure she doesn’t know her friend is a Brother or a Sister.” He turned away from the fire and said, “A moment.” He left Brother Lestovar standing in the great hall, went into his library, and from his hidden vault pulled out enough money to cover Velyn’s stay on Bair’s Island for the rest of her life. He handed the cash to Brother Lestovar and said, “For her upkeep. She’ll probably be quite … difficult. I’ve added a bonus to, ah, make keeping her on more palatable.”

  Brother Lestovar laughed. “She fought well. She impressed all of us.”

  Wraith didn’t laugh. “I suspect she’s had a lot of practice of late.” He shook his head and rested a hand on Lestovar’s shoulder. “Thank you for taking care of this.”

  “You’re a friend, Wraith. The Kaan stand beside our friends.”

  “I’m grateful.”

  Lestovar—who had given up his Kaan name with his old identity and life—was a dancer, one of the best who graced the stage. Along with many other young Kaan, he’d left the village to help Wraith fight against the magic that all of them despised. When Wraith lost hope, Lestovar carried on with a conviction born of a lifetime of living free of magic. And because Lestovar’s belief was never shaken, Wraith always found the strength and the hope to go on.

  “I’ll be on my way, then.” Lestovar smiled. “Breathe easy. She’ll be fine in our care—and best of all, she’ll never know it’s our care that she’s in.”

  Wraith saw Lestovar to the door and closed it behind him thoughtfully. He wondered if he should put some sort of fail-safe into place; after all, Velyn had a way of turning left when everyone was sure she would turn right—and with what she knew and what she thought she knew (an even more dangerous category), she could destroy the underground if they didn’t handle her correctly.

  “She’s simply gone,” the investigator told Luercas. “We tracked her as far as a boardinghouse in the Bellhareven District; none other than Master Gellas paid for her room and her court hearing. But apparently she said something wrong, or made enemies other than you, for her rooms were broken into in the middle of the night and someone kidnapped her. A few witnesses have admitted to seeing several men dressed in dark clothing carrying a large bag that looked like it might contain a body from the room, but none of these witnesses stopped the men or questioned their activities.”

  “Of course not. People aren’t fools—or if they are, they manage to avoid being fools when it could get them killed.” Luercas sat in the central garden, the one Velyn had preferred above all others. He didn’t miss her. He didn’t miss the constant irritation of her presence around the place, of her voice, of her face; in truth, he didn’t miss anything about her. But he’d received the judge’s ruling against him, and with it an assessment of the penalties that he would be required to pay to her family. Were she not found, he was likely to be held accountable, and the penalties would be increased. So for the first time since the two of them had taken their vows, he found himself truly wanting her back.

  Just for a while. Just until he could figure out a way to get the penalties that had been assessed against him reversed by a sympathetic judge. To do that, he’d have to have Velyn back in his possession—and he would have to find a way to make her look like the whole of the problem. He had no idea how he would do that, but he was certain that if he thought about it long enough, he would come up with something.

  “Pay whatever you have to pay,” he told the investigator. “Do whatever you have to do. But locate her, and get her back here. Check Gellas Tomersin first—I find it strange that she should visit him and immediately thereafter disappear. Check anyone with whom he has regular contact. If you need to take on associates to follow leads, then do so. You have only a week to find her—if she isn’t back here by then, I’ll have to pay the penalties and any added judgments her family seeks because of her absence.”

  “Then you need her back here alive?”

  Luercas stared at the man as if he had sprouted a second head. “Yes. Alive. Unharmed. Unscratched. Uninsulted, even. She needs to be back here looking and feeling perfect, and if you find
her in less-than-perfect condition, make sure she sees a healer on her way here. I cannot risk her being seen in my presence with a mark on her.”

  “I can do what you want. But I’m going to need a large advance. Hiring colleagues away from their own investigations will not come cheap, and considering the people I’m going to have to bribe to find out about the people you want to have watched, I’ll also need cash. Lots of it. Small denominations. Silver, small gold, and perhaps untraceable paper promissories.”

  “Fine. You’ll see Woljis on your way out. He’ll have orders to give you an initial supply of money.” Luercas stood up and glanced around to make sure that none of the staff was watching from indoors. “Do keep track of expenses. And don’t play with the numbers. If you steal from me, you’ll have the opportunity to regret it. I don’t know if it will be a long opportunity or a very short, intense one. But keep in mind that you want me to … to like you.”

  The investigator nibbled at the corner of his lower lip and nodded politely. “I’ll be on my way, then.”

  Luercas waved a hand, and into the tiny sphere of light that appeared, he said, “Woljis, give this man the money he needs to help me. Be generous.” To the investigator, he said, “Follow the light. It will lead you to Woljis, wherever he might be. And remember. Eight days. Beyond that, I’ll have to start looking for you.”

  When he got her back, he would make sure that she told him who had helped her. Then he would have his revenge, just as he would make sure that Velyn would pay for causing him public humiliation and the threat of financial distress. He stood in her little garden for a long moment, fanta-sizing about different ways of discrediting her, her helpers, perhaps even her family. He didn’t have anything solid, but he was sure he would be able to find something. If he couldn’t find it, he would create it.

  Master Faregan, whose meteoric rise through the ranks of the Silent Inquest had left some envious and others nervous, sat in the anteroom of the Hall of the Triad in the Gold Building, preparing for his next promotion. The poison in his ring had not the faintest taint of magic to it, and was an excellent, slow-acting drug—whichever of the Masters who received it would not begin to show symptoms for a full day at minimum. As much as a week if he were hearty and hale.