by Holly Lisle
Faregan rose as the tea boy came in bearing his tray and three cups. Faregan willed the contents of his ring into the nearest of the cups, then sat contentedly, as if waiting for an audience. The boy went into the inner chamber, and the secretary came out, his expression puzzled. “You were not called for, Master Faregan,” he said.
Faregan frowned and looked at the summons—which he had written himself—and then at the secretary. “If you’re certain, I’ll be on my way. I have the summons, but if none of the Masters wrote it, then none of the Masters wrote it. This is a shabby trick someone played on me, though.”
“I’m most sorry,” the secretary said. “The Masters apologized—they told me to tell you that they promise to find whomever it was who played this trick on you.”
Faregan bowed. “Tell them they mustn’t worry about such a small thing when they have matters of great import to attend to. I’m more than willing to find out myself who was responsible.” He bowed again and exited.
Behind him, the tea boy came out carrying the empty serving tray.
It was the funniest thing. Or not, perhaps, but definitely odd. Wraith had seen the same man with the shabby blue tunic and the mismatched eyes twice earlier that day—once while he stood in the market buying himself a few fresh vegetables for his dinner, and once as he was walking in the door of the Cinder Hill Theater. And now, going up his walk to his home, he saw the man again—standing down the street a ways, and not looking at him, but still there, and unmistakable.
It’s just one of those odd coincidences, he told himself. I must pass the same people dozens of times each day, and the only reason I noticed this man is that he is so shabby and his eyes don’t match.
He didn’t fool himself for a second. He didn’t believe in coincidence, and after his visits with both Velyn and Solander, he had not one but two likely candidates to suspect of hiring spies. He couldn’t decide which was more likely, though: Luercas had reason to hate him, but the Dragons, if they had any suspicions of Wraith’s activities or his true nature, had reason to fear him. He thought he would rather be hated than feared.
He wondered if he should just walk up to the man and ask who had hired him. Or if he should hire someone of his own to follow the man and find out who was watching him, and perhaps why. Or if he should decide that this was a very good time to take one of his troupes on tour personally, claiming that too much work had left him in need of a rest and a change of scenery.
He lit the fire in his stove, diced his vegetables, put his steaming pot with a little water in the bottom on the flat stovetop, waited until it boiled, then tossed his vegetables in. And all the while, he kept watch through the window. The man moved away from the street corner, came up to Wraith’s house, and used one of the popular little hand-voxes to talk to someone. Probably to his employer.
Wraith started running his day’s activities over in his head—he’d been in contact with his undergrounders on and off, but since they were primarily his actors and other creative people, he didn’t think that would trigger any suspicion. He’d met with Brother Lestovar briefly, but it had been to go over his newest grant to the Order of Resonance—that shouldn’t trigger any trouble. Solander had been by the day before, and he knew the Dragons had been monitoring that, but they’d been watching Solander, not him. And aside from that, he’d met with wealthy patrons of the theater, interviewed potential managers for the New Brinch Theater so that he could transfer the current manager, who had done brilliantly, to the still-under-construction Terus Theater in Terus, the fastest-growing city in Arim.
He’d done plenty that the Empire would like to know about, but he’d done it in such a way that it all looked innocent.
He hoped.
Had Velyn told her story to anyone else? Had someone decided that it merited checking?
His “family” in Ynjarval were living well, thanks to him. If anything happened to him, their source of income would dry up like surface water in a drought. He believed he could count on them to protect him.
His employees received better-than-average compensation, interesting work, chances to travel if they so chose, and opportunities to exercise their own creativity.
His friends shared dreams and passions with him, common loves and common hatreds. He could not see any of them betraying him, even if they did find out the truth about him.
He had enemies, and from them he would expect anything—but he’d always been sure he knew who his enemies were. He’d done his best to make sure none of them could hurt him.
And yet, as he leaned against the side counter in his kitchen, eating his steamed long beans and yam cubes, he could see the man who had been paid to follow him setting up for an overnight stay—hiding up against the house in the shrubbery, with a few little bits and pieces of magical apparatus that looked to Wraith like listening and viewing devices.
Charming.
Perhaps he should hire someone to kill the man and be done with it. Except he might not see the next one. And he didn’t want to be someone who operated that way.
Early bed tonight, he thought. Early out of bed tomorrow. His first objective would be to find someone who could locate the people following him and find out why they were doing this, what they wanted, and what it would take to get rid of them.
“I have not yet found your vowmate,” Luercas’s investigator said, “but I’ve found something that will lead me to her. And I believe it has such value to you that I had to meet with you to tell you what I’ve found.”
They stood at one of the rails of the Rone Artis Memorial Starpark, looking down past the stars to the shore of the sea, which glittered like a blanket of gemstones on that sunny day.
“If you’re wasting my time,” Luercas said, “I’ll throw you over. I feel unwell today—I would rather be anywhere than here.”
The investigator didn’t look worried in the least—though Luercas thought that more a demonstration of stupidity than confidence. Luercas meant it when he said he would throw the man over. The rages held him firmly in their grip, and he found himself once again yearning for his own body, for flesh unbound to the soul of some stranger.
“You’ll like this,” the investigator said. “I have a reliable source inside the Order of Resonance who swears to me that none other than Gellas Tomersin hired men to kidnap Velyn from the boardinghouse where he paid for her to stay. And that the people who took her were members of the underground that has been causing such trouble to the Council of Dragons.”
“Which would tie Gellas in with the underground.”
“It gets better.”
“How does it get better?”
“On the very night Velyn disappeared, and during the time that she was being kidnapped, guess who Gellas was having dinner with?”
Luercas turned to face the investigator and in a low voice said, “I don’t like guessing games.”
“Gellas Tomersin ate dinner that night with Solander Artis, and Artis’s assistant from the Department of Research.”
Luercas smiled just a little. “They’re Tomersin’s alibi.”
“Yes.”
“Tomersin and Artis were inseparable from the time that Tomersin came over from Ynjarval. Skinny little bastard. And if they’re both tied in with the underground, it would only make sense that they’d avoid each other most of the time.”
“The underground is trying to overthrow the government. They want to free the Warreners—they’re lunatics.”
Luercas merely smiled. “If both Gellas Tomersin and Solander Artis are involved in their activities, the more trouble they plan, the better for me. I’d love to see both of them executed.”
The investigator nodded. “I can understand—if someone made off with my vowmate, I’d feel the same way.”
Luercas didn’t bother to correct the man’s error. He said, “Find Velyn for me, of course. But if by chance you or your contact in the underground could funnel any information to me about just how exactly the underground plans to free the W
arreners—or, for that matter, how they’re keeping the city guards from collecting insurgents and illegal aliens—pass that on to me, too.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out a generous credit tab. “And this is to thank you for your work so far. You were right. That was worth getting out of the house to hear.”
Jess stepped out of the chartered aircar behind a dozen other passengers, wishing that she had been able to sleep at least a little during the flight. “I’m going to hire an aircar to take me home,” she told Patr. “Listening to you snore the entire trip over exhausted me.” She smiled to let him know she was teasing him. “I have several things I need to have you do immediately—essential things. And we’re going to be incredibly busy the whole time we’re in the city. I expect to be working as close to night and day as the two of us can manage. So if you don’t mind, I’ll ask you to stay in my guest room this trip. You’ll be comfortable. The room’s large and airy, and has everything you’ll need.” She gave him an apologetic smile. “Probably isn’t the way you intended to spend your trip home—”
He waved off her apology. “I expected to spend my time acting in my capacity as your assistant. I knew you had a full schedule planned. I’ll be fine staying at your place. Anything I can do to make your work easier.” His smile managed to be both tender and concerned.
“Thank you.” Jess was relieved. “This is everyone I need to see while we’re here.” She handed him the list she’d put together during the long flight. “You’ll be able to use the hand-vox for most of the appointments, but not for the one with Master Gellas. He’s …” She shrugged and gave Patr an apologetic smile. “Well … Gellas is eccentric. He doesn’t use any magic in his productions, and apparently not in his personal life, either. He can be a bit difficult to contact. So take care of that appointment first.”
“First?”
“I’m going to be sleeping for a long time,” she said grimly. “You’ll have the time to do everything on the list. Oh, God. I don’t have a bite of food in the house. There’s a grand restaurant on the corner that will deliver—tell them we’re going to want a light meal for tonight, and one for yourself for this midday if you don’t want to take your chances while you’re out … and, I think, something for early tomorrow morning. They’ll deliver, and it will be wonderful. Once we have a tentative schedule of appointments, we can make better plans for the rest of the week.”
He looked at her and sighed. “You look positively gray. You’re running yourself too hard, and you aren’t paying a bit of attention to your health.”
“I don’t have time.”
“You had better find time. You’re going to run yourself into your grave.” He glanced down at the list she’d given him and said, “How can you hope to fit in meetings with all of these people in one week? Even if I can schedule them all on short notice, how are you going to see them all?”
“I want to secure patronage from half the people on that list. I want to see if I can work out a deal with Gellas to use some of our musicians in some of his productions, both touring and at home—I’d have to say that rated my first priority. And if I don’t see the other half of the people on the list, I’m going to lose friends.”
“If they were really friends, you wouldn’t have to worry about losing them. They’d want you to catch up on your rest.”
Jess snorted. “You think so? Try it with your friends sometime. Come into town and don’t see the people you really like and do see people you don’t like, but whose money you need, and see how long you have any friends at all.”
He handed her the list and a pen. “Number them, ‘one’ for most important, down to ‘twenty-five’ or whatever your least important visit turns out to be. I’ll make the first batch of appointments today, and see how you stand up to the strain. If you’re still gray tomorrow, I’m going to have to lock you in your room for the day.” He gave her his sad little smile and said, “I’m only joking, you know.”
“I appreciate the concern. You’ll be amazed at how fine I am once I’ve had some sleep, though.”
Those sad eyes never left hers. “No, I won’t. I’ve always known how fine you were.”
She turned away, and he didn’t say anything else. She pretended most of the time not to know that he cared for her, or that he would have been happy to become her lover in an instant, and he pretended most of the time that he thought no more of her than any assistant felt for his employer. Every once in a while, though, the masks slipped, and Jess was always the first one to back away.
He wasn’t Wraith. Nobody but Wraith was Wraith, and she knew she was an idiot and a fool, but her few lovers since Solander had been disasters, simply because she couldn’t put Wraith aside. She wasn’t going to destroy a perfectly good working relationship for a romance that would end in ruin.
“Well, I guess I’ll go ahead and hire that aircar now,” she said. “You find Gellas—or one of his secretaries—and make that appointment. A good hour, please—no less. I don’t believe we’ll be able to get to contracts on a first meeting, or even on this visit, but I think we should be able to work out the majority of the details, provided he’s interested.”
Patr nodded. “And then I’ll order a meal to be delivered to your home for the two of us.”
“That sounds wonderful.” She reached out a hand and flagged down one of the passing aircars-for-hire. “Then I’ll see you tonight. Good luck.”
She fell into her bed without being aware of how she got there, and dropped into darkness still fully clothed and wearing her shoes.
Chapter 16
Morning. Wraith had slept poorly, woke tense, went out into cool break-of-dawn air, and discovered that the odd-eyed man who had been watching him the night before had been replaced by an attractive young woman with dark, swept-back hair and delicate features. She did not meet his eyes when he passed her, and when he glanced back, she was talking into a hand-vox.
At the New Brinch Theater, he checked receipts for the previous night, went over the day’s problems with his manager, headed out to the Galtin District Theater.
And the attractive young woman was waiting. She sat on a bench beneath a fashan tree, reading a book. She did not look at him.
His heart raced, his skin felt clammy, and he felt light-headed. Knowing that he was being watched made his blood feel like ice in his veins.
At the Galtin, he checked sets, glanced over the short stack of scripts from new writers that his on-site manager thought would be worth giving short runs, and ate the meal his Galtin secretary had waiting for him. When he stepped out into the midday sunshine, he didn’t see the watcher, and he breathed a little easier. Perhaps she had lost track of him.
But then he saw the odd-eyed man again, and his heart slammed up into his throat and for a moment he couldn’t breathe.
They couldn’t touch him. He was stolti. He had people who would swear to it. He had covered his tracks.
But there were people who knew who he was, too—who could sell him for their own gain.
He proceeded to the West Beach Experimental Playhouse, this time hiring one of the aircars he so hated. He stepped out, saw the odd-eyed man step out of a car half a block down the street behind him. Did they think he didn’t see them? Or did they not care?
“You don’t look like you’re feeling well,” his assistant, Loour, said. She brought out a list of items that needed his attention. Halfway down the list, he saw an appointment with Jess scheduled for midday on the morrow. One hour. At the West Beach.
“I can’t do this,” he said.
“Oh, I’m sorry. I knew she was an old friend of yours, so I didn’t even question it.”
“Contact her, tell her I won’t be able to make the meeting.”
“I can’t. She didn’t leave a contact address. But when she comes tomorrow, I’ll convey my apologies.”
Wraith closed his eyes. He didn’t want Jess linked to whatever was going on in his life. He didn’t want her seen at any of the theaters, didn’t want h
er followed, questioned, considered as suspicious by whoever it was that was watching him. She couldn’t come to the West Beach. And he couldn’t go to her.
Or could he?
He was in a theater, for the gods’ sakes. Every sort of costume, makeup, and appearance-changing artifice in the world was within his reach. He had talented costumers and makeup artists—and he could damned well pull one of the junior makeup assistants off of a character and let him try out his wings for the evening, while Wraith became someone else.
Wraith smiled. “Don’t worry about it. I’ll get word to her somehow. We’ll set up her meeting for another day.”
Loour looked relieved. “I’m so glad. Her assistant said the meeting was quite important. He mentioned a plan for increasing your business and hers, though of course he didn’t have many of the details—or if he did, he didn’t give them to me.”
“I’ll find out what she has in mind.” He gave her a quick hug. Of his several assistants, she was his favorite. She always seemed to care about what he was doing and how he felt. He sometimes wondered if he ought to ask her to dinner sometime. He thought it might be nice to have someone to talk to in the evenings. She would never be Velyn—but that was a good thing, wasn’t it? He didn’t love her, but he liked her a lot. If he didn’t love her, she couldn’t hurt him.
He smiled to himself, just a little. How easy it was to think to the future now that he’d come up with a plan that would let him leave the theater without being followed. How easy to pretend that not being himself for a night would be the same as just disappearing. Someone was waiting to follow him, someone who would be waiting when he reappeared.
